CDE’s Attendance Recovery FAQ does the P-2 math in public. A district with 150 days taught and 13,500 regular student days of attendance sits at 90 ADA before Recovery. Twenty grade 9-12 pupils, two hours after school on ten days, become 100 recovered days. Divide those 100 days by 150. That is 0.67 ADA.
Copy the structure. Do not copy 0.67 into your own P-2 unless your registers produce it.
The hours are not the ADA. The assigned absence is not the ADA either. P-2 ADA is recovered days divided by days taught in the period you are reporting, then typed into the Principal Apportionment data collection the way CDE directs.
If you need the statute, ratios, and ELO-P braid, stay on the Attendance Recovery hub. The leak in the file is Absences Aren’t the Biggest Leak. Paperwork Is.. What auditors sample is Section HZ, which I walked after reading the rest of the booklet in What I Learned Reading the 2026-27 K-12 Audit Guide.
The day has to exist before you divide
Education Code 46211(e) lets average daily attendance accumulate in one-hour increments, documented by the teacher of that Recovery classroom. You credit a pupil with a recovered day only after those hours meet the minimum day for that grade or setting. Whole days. Not a half.
CDE publishes the ordinary conversion:
| Grade or setting | Minimum daily minutes | Hours of Attendance Recovery to generate a day | Statute CDE cites |
|---|---|---|---|
| TK and kindergarten | 180 | 3 | EC 46117 |
| Grades 1-3 | 230 | 4 | EC 46112 |
| Grades 4-8 | 240 | 4 | EC 46113 |
| Grades 9-12 | 240 | 4 | EC 46141 |
Continuation, opportunity, county community, juvenile court, and community day settings have their own floors on the same CDE FAQ. If the IEP lists a different minimum day, that number is the one that counts.
Two more rules sit in the same FAQ, and they wreck sloppy hour banks.
Fractions of an hour do not carry. CDE is blunt: a pupil in Recovery for 1.5 hours on Monday and 1.5 hours on Tuesday has accrued two hours, not three. You may bank in one-hour bites. You may not invent a third hour from leftover minutes.
One calendar day of participation can produce at most one recovered day. Education Code 46211(d) also caps the year at the lesser of 10 recovered days or the absences that pupil actually accrued.
You still cannot claim the day until it is tied to an absence that already happened. CDE lets you bank hours before the absence. It does not let you put those hours into PADC first.
One pupil, using CDE’s own table
I am not inventing a student. CDE’s ADA Reporting FAQ already did three.
Take their Student C. Grade 4. Minimum day 240 minutes, which CDE treats as four hours. Twelve absences. 45 Recovery hours.
45 divided by 4 is 11.25. Round down to whole days: 11. Then the annual cap cuts it to 10. That is CDE’s table, not a district model.
Those 10 days are still not P-2 ADA. They are 10 recovered days that have to attach to 10 eligible absences in the months you are reporting. Not a suspension. Not missing immunizations. Not an absence Saturday school already took. CDE says an absence can be offset once.
CDE also credits the recovered ADA to the week in the attendance month when the student was absent. If the hours happened in March and the absence was in October, the day lands in October’s month, not March’s.
If you cannot name the 10 absences, you do not have 10 days. You have 45 hours in a spreadsheet.
Then the district example, the one that hits P-2
Now the class CDE uses for Second Principal Apportionment.
Twenty pupils in grades 9-12. Two hours after school. Ten days. That is 400 hours. Four hours make a day in that grade span. 400 divided by 4 is 100 recovered days, if each day is linked to an absence and nobody is over the 10-day cap.
The district is reporting P-2 on 150 days taught. Recovered ADA is 100 divided by 150, which CDE writes as 0.67.
Regular ADA without Recovery in CDE’s example is 13,500 student days divided by 150, which is 90. Regular ADA with Recovery is 90.67.
CDE's P-2 example, line by line
| What you counted | CDE's arithmetic | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Regular student days | 13,500 days of attendance from the regular school day | Starts the Regular ADA total. CDE FAQ |
| Days taught at P-2 | 150 instructional days in the period being reported | The denominator for both lines |
| Recovered days | 20 pupils x 2 hours x 10 days = 400 hours. 400 / 4 = 100 days | Only if each day is tied to an absence and under the cap |
| Recovery ADA | 100 / 150 = 0.67 | Informational line B-8 in PADC |
| Regular ADA that funds | 90 + 0.67 = 90.67 | Line A-1. If you skip A-1, the 0.67 does not fund. |
This is CDE's worked example, posted 4 May 2026. Your divisor is your calendar. Your recovered days are your assigned absences.
Two lines. Same denominator. That is the part people miss.
CDE directs a double entry. Include recovered ADA in regular classroom-based ADA so it funds. Also report it on its own line for information. In the FAQ, that informational line is B-8. The funding total is A-1.
If fiscal types 0.67 only on B-8 and leaves A-1 at 90, you told the state a story. You did not change LCFF.
I am not attaching a statewide dollar to 0.67 ADA. Value follows each LEA’s LCFF rate. The older ADA accounting guide still lives if you need the rest of the attendance rules. Do not paste its old per-day dollars into this example.
The path from the afternoon to P-2
How a recovered absence becomes P-2 ADA
-
Hours, in person, in ratio
A certificated LEA employee. 10 to 1 in TK and K. 20 to 1 in grades 1-12. Outside the bell.
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Bank whole hours to a minimum day
Round down. Carry leftover whole hours. Do not carry a half hour.
-
Assign the day to one eligible absence
Same fiscal year. Not a legal exclusion. Not an absence Saturday school already took.
-
Keep Recovery on its own register
Statute requires a separate record. The school-day register does not become Recovery by renaming a column.
-
Divide recovered days by days taught
Student by student, then by grade span. That quotient is Recovery ADA for the period.
-
Type it twice in PADC
A-1 so it funds. B-8 so the Recovery line matches. Same number. Same period.
Statute is Education Code 46211. Line labels A-1 and B-8 are from CDE's May 2026 FAQ.
Saturday school is still a different statute. Education Code 37223 did not get repealed. If you are choosing a weekend, read Saturday School vs. Attendance Recovery before you run both playbooks on the same absence.
P-2 is a period, not a vibe
The 2026-27 Audit Guide defines P2 as the second principal period of apportionment under Education Code 41601. CDE says you report recovered ADA at Period 1, Period 2, and Annual, and that you may only claim Recovery ADA for absences in the complete months you are reporting.
Two timing traps sit in that FAQ.
First: hours after the last day of school and before June 30 still credit to that fiscal year. Absences after the P-2 attendance period do not move LCFF. CDE is direct. Makeup applied to those later absences shows at Annual. Lottery and other Annual-based programs can see it. Most LCFF does not.
Second: a February absence, reported at P-2 by May 1, can still be made up in June. Then you revise P-2. CDE wrote that example on 4 May 2026. The recovered day still attaches to February, not to June.
Do not wait until the P-2 window to invent the assignment. The register has to already know which absence received the day.
CALPADS is a different book. CALPADS Flash 305 puts Attendance Recovery Days on STAS field 13.24 so the state can calculate an alternate chronic absenteeism rate. It also says you do not edit the absence fields because of Recovery. Funding still moves through PADC. If those two systems disagree, Section HZ will not save you.
Your SIS remains the system of record for the school day. If you sync attendance and rosters with Aeries, PowerSchool, Q SIS, or Aequitas, that sync does not assign the recovered day. Someone still maps hours onto an absence.
What has to be in the packet when the auditor opens HZ
Starting with 2025-26, CDE directs that annual audits verify Education Code 46211 subdivisions (d) through (g), with fiscal penalties under (j) when they do not hold.
Section HZ samples pupils for whom Recovery ADA was claimed. For each sampled pupil the auditor checks classroom-based charter status, the 15-day independent study test, a separate Recovery register, whole days only, the 10-day cap against actual absences, minutes (including an IEP alternate), certificated employment, the 10 to 1 or 20 to 1 ratio, standards-aligned content, one day per calendar day, and the five-day week cap for districts and county offices.
If the P-2 line moved and that packet is empty, you have an ADA finding waiting, not a recovered day.
The older CDE explainer, CDE Attendance Recovery Program: What California Districts Need to Know, stays live. So does How California Districts Are Recovering Lost Funding Through Attendance Recovery. Use this page for the P-2 arithmetic. Use the hub for the rest of 46211.
What to do this week
Print CDE’s P-2 example. Next to it, open your P-2 calendar: days taught, not a slogan.
Pick one Recovery classroom. For each pupil, write the running whole hours, the recovered days those hours earned, and the absence each day attaches to. Then add the days, divide by days taught, and see whether fiscal is putting that quotient on both PADC lines.
If you want the five questions your attendance data should already answer, that is the compliance-gap checklist.
FAQ
Can we put Recovery ADA only on the informational line? No. CDE says the informational line does not affect funding. Include the same ADA in regular classroom-based ADA (line A-1 in the current FAQ) so it funds.
Do recovered days change the Dashboard chronic absence indicator? CALPADS Flash 305 says the 2026 Dashboard Chronic Absenteeism Indicator, and DataQuest, will not be affected by Attendance Recovery. STAS field 13.24 feeds an alternate rate. Do not tell a board that P-2 Recovery erases the Dashboard cell.
If we bank hours in July, when does the ADA show? After the pupil is actually absent, and only for absences in the months you are reporting. CDE lets the hours sit. It does not let you claim the day first.
Is 0.67 the statewide yield for 100 recovered days? No. CDE used 150 days taught. Your divisor is your P-2 calendar. 100 recovered days over 180 days taught is a different quotient. Do not paste 0.67.
Where did Saturday school go? It is still Education Code 37223. One absence. One offset. Pick.
Sources
Where Attendly fits
The five questions your attendance data should already answer
A short checklist for expanded learning and fiscal leaders before the next reporting window.
Get the checklist
