The $7.7 Million Question No One’s Asking
One California district we analyzed has 35,479 students who missed at least one day of school last year. On average, each student missed 12.8 days.
That’s not a discipline problem. It’s a funding crisis hiding in plain sight.
Our analysis of this district’s existing afterschool programs revealed something surprising: the district could recover up to $7.7 million in LCFF funding—without creating a single new program. The programs already existed. The students were already showing up. The funding was simply never claimed.
This isn’t unique to one district. Across California, districts are leaving millions on the table because they don’t understand how Attendance Recovery actually works—or they assume it’s too complicated to implement.
It’s not.
The Math of Chronic Absence
California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) ties funding directly to Average Daily Attendance (ADA). When a student misses school, the district loses money. The formula is straightforward:
Base Grant × Student Factors = Daily Funding Rate
For high-need districts (those with high Unduplicated Pupil Percentages or UPP), the numbers add up fast. The district we analyzed has a UPP of 87.6%, which means each recovered ADA day generates approximately $15,242 in total funding.
Let’s break that down:
- A district with 1,000 students averaging 10 absences each = 10,000 lost ADA days
- At $85/day average funding rate = $850,000 in lost funding annually
- Recovery rate of 30% = $255,000 recovered
The districts doing this well are recovering between $200,000 and $600,000 per year—money that was already budgeted but never collected.
What Attendance Recovery Actually Is
Attendance Recovery (AR) is a state-approved mechanism that allows districts to reclaim ADA funding by providing supplemental instructional time to students who were absent during the regular school day.
Here’s what qualifies:
- Minimum 60 minutes of instructional time
- Credentialed teacher leading the instruction
- Standards-aligned curriculum (no movie days)
- Proper documentation of attendance
Here’s what surprises most administrators: you’re probably already running programs that qualify.
Summer school? Qualifies. After-school tutoring with a credentialed teacher? Qualifies. Saturday intervention programs? Qualifies.
The difference between a program that recovers funding and one that doesn’t often comes down to three things:
- Tracking which students were absent on which days
- Documenting attendance properly
- Reporting to CALPADS correctly
The Summer Opportunity
One district we work with ran their first AR-compliant summer program in 2025. The results were remarkable.
A single school site with 120 students recovered all of its targeted attendance—over $45,000 in reclaimed funding—in just the summer session. No additional staffing costs. No new curriculum. The program was already planned—they simply ensured it met AR requirements and tracked attendance properly.
The principal now presents recovery numbers to the cabinet monthly. It’s become a point of pride.
Here’s why summer is the sweet spot:
- 180 potential recovery days per student (the entire school year)
- Teachers are often looking for summer work anyway
- Parents are looking for summer programs anyway
- Lower-pressure environment than school-year interventions
A 4-week summer program running 2 hours per day, 4 days per week = 32 hours of instructional time = 32 potential ADA days recovered per student.
At $85/day, that’s $2,720 per student in recovered funding—far exceeding the cost of the summer program itself.
The Real Barrier: Documentation, Not Desire
When we talk to district administrators about AR, we hear the same concerns:
- “That sounds like a lot of work.”
- “We don’t have the systems to track that.”
- “Our programs don’t qualify.”
The first two are solvable with the right technology. The third is usually wrong.
Most districts already have the ingredients:
- Credentialed teachers (required for ELO-P compliance anyway)
- Standards-aligned instruction (tutoring, intervention, enrichment)
- Regular attendance tracking (you’re doing this for ASES/ELO-P)
What’s missing is the connection between absence data and program attendance. You need to know:
- Which students have absences to recover
- When those absences occurred
- Which programs they attended
- Whether attendance was documented properly
This is a data problem, not a staffing problem.
Are You AR-Ready?
Most districts are closer than they think. If you have credentialed teachers running standards-aligned programs with documented attendance, you likely already meet the core requirements. The gap is usually on the data side—connecting absence records to program attendance and exporting cleanly to CALPADS.
We’ve put together a detailed AR Readiness Checklist that walks through program, data, and process requirements step by step. Book a quick call and we’ll walk through it with you.
The ROI Conversation
Here’s a real conversation we had with a district administrator:
“We’re being asked to cut our afterschool budget. If I can show that the program generates more in AR funding than it costs to run, that changes the conversation entirely.”
Let’s do the math for a modest summer AR program:
Costs:
- Teacher stipend: 4 weeks × 20 hours/week × $50/hour = $4,000
- Curriculum materials: $500
- Total: $4,500
Recovery (30 students, averaging 15 recoverable days each):
- 30 students × 15 days × $85/day = $38,250
- Net gain: $33,750
That’s a 750% ROI.
Even at half that recovery rate, you’re still looking at a program that pays for itself many times over.
Getting Started
There are three ways in. Start with summer if you want the lowest friction—you have time to plan, teachers are available, and you can use the results to build the case for expansion. Retrofit existing programs if you already run afterschool or intervention programs that meet AR requirements but aren’t being tracked for recovery. Or go for full implementation and build AR compliance into every new program from day one. Most districts start with summer and expand from there.
What Good Looks Like
Districts that do AR well share a few characteristics:
Monthly visibility. Someone presents AR numbers regularly—to cabinet, to the board, to site principals. This creates accountability and celebrates wins.
Connected data. Absence data and program attendance live in the same system. You can see, in real time, which students have days to recover and whether they’re attending programs that qualify.
Site coordinator buy-in. The people running programs understand AR and know their programs contribute to district funding. They take documentation seriously.
Realistic expectations. No district recovers 100% of absences. Target 20-30% and celebrate beating that number.
The Bottom Line
Every California district loses money to absences. The question is whether you accept that loss or do something about it.
Attendance Recovery isn’t complicated. It’s not a new program you have to invent. For most districts, it’s simply a matter of:
- Knowing which students have absences to recover
- Running programs that meet AR requirements (you probably already do)
- Tracking attendance in a way that connects to absence data
- Reporting correctly to CALPADS
The districts that figure this out are recovering hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. That’s money for staffing, for curriculum, for the programs students actually need.
The money is already there. You just have to claim it.
Want to know what AR could mean for your district? Book a 15-minute AR assessment call and we’ll walk through your numbers together.
Attendly helps California districts manage afterschool programs, registration, and compliance—including Attendance Recovery tracking. Learn more →
