In Texas<\/a>, the funding schools receive for the number of students enrolled and their daily attendance<\/a> has dropped. After the pandemic, the state legislature is discussing a possible shift from funding by Average Daily Attendance (ADA) to Average Daily Membership (ADM). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To make sure all districts can get better funding, we need to make sure we address absenteeism swiftly and effectively. SchoolStatus Attend<\/a><\/strong> is the most effective way for a school district to tackle chronic absenteeism. The data-driven attendance management platform and processes provide automatic interventions and positive reinforcement to support student success, increase daily attendance, and reduce administrative overhead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both measures allowed LEAs to have a \u201csoft\u201d landing in the current 2022-2023 budgets using the 2019-2020 ADA (twice) and the proxy 2021-2022 ADA to produce the funded ADA. The goal was that the current year would see attendance return to previous rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SchoolStatus created a \u201cfirst look\u201d sampling of the actual attendance rates of over 1 million students for LEAs in 2022-2023. The results of this analysis produce some concerning trends for district leaders to consider as part of their First Interim<\/a> Adjustments:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rates of chronic absenteeism remain in the 30%\u201340% range with the highest numbers in the TK\u20133 and 9\u201312 grade spans. The potential for a generational academic crisis grows as lost learning days add up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As California LEAs finalize their First Interim, they will need to account for the fact that the current 3-year ADA averaging will result in LEAs dropping the 2019-2020 high year and replacing it with the current 2022-2023 rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To illustrate the impact of this change, this chart shows funding for a 10,000-student district with a declining enrollment of 100 students each year (9,700 enrollment in 2022-2023) and using the 95.82% ADA in 2019-2020, 91.01% for the 2021-2022 rate, and 93.09% for the current 2022-2023 rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Viewing this LEA, the result of replacing the high year 2019-2020 (9,582.00) with the current year 2022-2023 (9,029.73) creates a reduction of 552.27 ADA with the impact spread out over 3 years. Using an average LCFF funding<\/a> for an LEA of $13,527 this is a reduction of $7,470,556. To borrow a concept from the NFL, when a player is released it creates a \u201cdead cap\u201d number and some of these cover multiple years. For this LEA in California the impact of our \u201cnew normal\u201d would be a \u201cdead cap\u201d of $2,490,185.43 for the next 3 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n