Attendance Recovery in California: The Complete Guide for District Leaders (2026-27)

PACE and Attendance Works counted 1,143,668 California students as chronically absent in 2024-25. That is kids, not a rate on a dashboard.

In 2025-26, CDE Fingertip Facts count 1,011 public school districts and 5,731,260 students enrolled. Most of those districts now have a legal way to recoup some of the days those kids missed.

That way is Attendance Recovery. It is optional. It is picky. The paperwork is what earns the day. Statute first, then the workflow. We already wrote three posts on this. They stay live. Use this page as the hub:

• CDE Attendance Recovery Program: What California Districts Need to Know
• How California Districts Are Recovering Lost Funding Through Attendance Recovery
• Protecting Every ADA Dollar: California Attendance Accounting Rules

What Attendance Recovery is

Beginning July 1, 2025, Education Code 46211 lets a local educational agency offer extra instruction so a pupil can make up lost instructional time and offset absences, including chronic absenteeism.

Senate Bill 153 (Chapter 38, Statutes of 2024), later amended, put Article 9 into the Education Code. CDE’s Attendance Recovery page directs LEAs to treat the program as voluntary for the agency and for the student.

The CDE page also directs that sessions run outside the regular school day: before school, after school, weekends, or intersession.

Participation cannot be compulsory or punitive. A pupil in both Attendance Recovery and an expanded learning program keeps the right to the full expanded learning offering for the year. That is in Education Code 46211(c).

County offices are repeating the same frame. Fresno County’s Child Welfare and Attendance office is one example. Cite the statute when a county page and the code disagree.

Who may offer it

CDE directs that school districts, county offices of education, and classroom-based charter schools may offer Attendance Recovery starting in fiscal year 2025-26.

Nonclassroom-based charter schools, and charter schools that serve pupils through an exclusive partnership under Education Code 47612.1, are not eligible. Classroom-based pupils only.

The 2026-27 Audit Guide, section HZ tells auditors to check charter enrollment against those tests when ADA was claimed.

The cap, the minutes, and the hour bank

A pupil may be credited with no more than the lesser of 10 days of attendance in a school year, or the number of absences that pupil accrued in that school year. One calendar day of participation can produce at most one recovered day. That is Education Code 46211(d).

School districts and county offices also cannot credit more than five days of attendance in a school week. Charter rules differ on the calendar-day test. Read Education Code 46211(d)(2) with your charter attorney if that is you.

Time may accrue in one-hour increments. A recovered day is not a signature on a clipboard. It is enough documented minutes to meet the minimum day for that grade or setting.

CDE publishes this conversion for ordinary grade spans:

Continuation, opportunity, county community, juvenile court, and community day settings have their own minute floors. CDE points to those Education Code sections on the same FAQ. If a pupil’s IEP lists a different minimum day, the IEP minutes are the ones that count. The audit guide tells the auditor to check that.

A remainder is allowed. CDE walks through a Saturday where a kindergarten pupil stays six hours: one recovered day, plus leftover hours for a later day. You still cannot claim two days for that Saturday. Absences that legally exclude a pupil from school, including suspension and missing immunizations, are not recoverable. CDE is direct about that.

Staffing: 10 to 1 and 20 to 1

As a condition of generating ADA, the program must put pupils in educational activities aligned to grade-level standards and substantially equivalent to the regular program. That work sits under the immediate supervision and control of a certificated teacher who is an employee of the LEA.

The ratio shall not exceed 10 to 1 for transitional kindergarten and kindergarten, or 20 to 1 for grades 1 to 12. The LEA must keep documentation that the ratio was met. All of that is Education Code 46211(f).

CDE’s May 4, 2026 FAQ update directs that employees qualified to teach in a TK-12 classroom during the regular day meet the supervision test. Remote supervision does not. In-person instruction is required for the minutes to count.

Third-party staff can run a lot of expanded learning. They cannot supervise Attendance Recovery. CDE’s Attendance Recovery webinar says so in one line.

If you braid the two programs in one room, the stricter rule wins for the recovered pupils. Education Code 46120(d)(3)(B) is the reminder.

Using ELO-P funds without mixing the day

You may offer Attendance Recovery and an Expanded Learning Opportunities Program at the same time. The Legislature said so in Education Code 46210 and 46120.

CDE directs three conditions before ELO-P dollars support Attendance Recovery:

1. The two programs are offered at the same time.
2. Both are offered at the same school site.
3. The LEA operates the Attendance Recovery program.

A pupil does not have to be an unduplicated pupil to sit in Recovery. A waitlisted expanded learning pupil cannot be skipped so a different pupil can take an ELO-P-funded Recovery seat. And a pupil is in one program or the other in a given stretch of minutes, not both at once. CDE updated that FAQ on May 4, 2026.

The Assembly Bill 176 letter is the cleanup note on ratios and certificated supervision when ELO-P funds are in the room.

Saturday school is still Saturday school

Attendance Recovery did not repeal weekend make-up classes. Education Code 37223 still lets a district or county office offer Saturday or Sunday make-up. Charter schools are not on that list. CDE keeps the old tests: parent permission (except truants), the course also offered during the week, certificated in-person instruction, minimum day.

An absence can be offset once. After Recovery takes it, Saturday school cannot, and the other way around. CDE posted that on March 20, 2025. Do not run both playbooks on the same absence.

How a recovered day shows up in PADC

CALPADS Flash #305 explains the two books you now keep. ADA earned in Recovery is submitted through the Principal Apportionment Data Collection web application. LEAs also report Attendance Recovery Days on the student absence file.

CDE directs a double entry in PADC. Include recovered ADA in regular classroom-based ADA so it funds. Also report it on its own line for information. In the worked example on that FAQ, a district claims an extra 0.67 ADA on the Recovery line and 90.67 on the regular ADA line. Copy the structure. Do not copy the 0.67 into your own P-2 unless your registers produce it.

There is no honest statewide dollar for a recovered day. Value follows each LEA’s LCFF rate. If someone quotes a single California price per ADA, ask which LEA they modeled.

CDE also directs that you may only claim Recovery ADA for absences in the complete months you are reporting. Summer hours before school starts, and hours after the last day and before June 30, credit to that fiscal year.

Independent study is not a make-up machine. CDE says a pupil cannot use later independent study to recover Monday’s absence. Recovery or Saturday school is the make-up path. The audit guide also checks that sampled pupils were not continually enrolled in independent study for longer than 15 days on the dates they participated in Recovery.

What auditors will open

Starting with the 2025-26 guide, CDE directs that annual audits verify Education Code 46211 subdivisions (d) through (g), with fiscal penalties under (j) when they do not hold.

The 2026-27 Guide for Annual Audits, section HZ is the procedure list. For sampled pupils the auditor checks classroom-based charter status, the 15-day independent study test, a separate Recovery register, whole days only, the 10-day cap, minutes (including IEP alternate minutes), 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 you cannot hand over that packet, you do not have a recovered day. You have a story.

CDE’s execution guidance recommends a published calendar, teacher-validated records, backup sign-in sheets, and an early conversation with bargaining units. Guidance recommends. Statute requires. Keep those verbs straight.

A worked week, without invented money

Use CDE’s own arithmetic. A grade 4 pupil needs 240 minutes, treated as four hours. Two after-school sessions of two hours, documented by the certificated teacher, become one recovered day. Assign it to one absence in the same fiscal year. Not a suspension. Not an absence already made up on Saturday.

If 15 pupils finish those four hours, you have 15 recovered days. Divide by the days taught in the period and you have ADA. CDE shows a sample that produced 0.67 ADA. Your divisor is your calendar. Hours, assignment, separate register, then PADC.

The documentation trail partners actually need

When I sit with attendance clerks, this is the stack that is missing:

• A roster that proves the adult is a certificated employee of the LEA
• A headcount against 10 or 20, by grade mix, for each session
• Hourly or daily participation, signed by that teacher
• The absence the day was assigned to, and proof it was not a legal exclusion
• A tally that the pupil is still under 10 recovered days and under their absence count
• Proof the minutes were Recovery, not expanded learning, when both share a site

Your student information system will store some of that. It will not invent the assignment. Someone still has to map a recovered day onto a real absence.

FAQ

Do we have to offer it? No. Education Code 46211(a) says an LEA may implement a program. If you offer it, the rest of the section applies.

Can we require it for chronically absent pupils? No. Participation shall not be compulsory or punitive, per Education Code 46211(c). Saturday school still has a truancy exception under Education Code 37223. Do not mix those powers.

Can classified expanded learning staff supervise Recovery? Only if that person is also a certificated employee of the LEA. CDE is explicit. In a mixed room, certificated LEA staff cover the Recovery pupils.

Do recovered days fix our chronic absence rate? CDE describes an alternate chronic absenteeism rate that recovered days can feed. Saturday school make-up does not count as attendance for that reporting, per the instructional time page. Do not tell a board that Recovery erases the Dashboard indicator until your accountability office has read the current rules.

How often do we have to offer access? Throughout the school year, including at least once during each term. Education Code 46211(b)(1).

Where should a CWA director start this week? Print section HZ. Sit with fiscal, expanded learning, and the people who already take afternoon attendance. Map one site. Count certificated staff who can legally sit in the room. Then schedule the hours.

I am not attaching a statewide dollar to a recovered ADA day. LCFF does not work that way. I am not describing Attendly as a student information system. Your SIS remains the system of record for the school day. The statute is optional. The chronic absence count is not.