Beginning in 2025-2026 fiscal year, school districts, county offices of education and classroom-based charter schools may choose to offer an Attendance Recovery program to eligible students enrolled in classroom-based programs before or after school, during weekends, or on intersession breaks. The AR program is an optional program for students in grades TK−12, that LEAs may provide to enable students to recoup absences for the purposes of average daily attendance (ADA) apportionment. ADA recovery is capped at the fewer of 10 days per student or the student’s total absences for the fiscal year (July 1 – June 30).
AR Tracking Key Requirements
An AR program may only operate outside of the regular school day, or on weekend or intersession days (EC Section 46211(b)(1)).
The local educational agency (LEA) must track and report attendance from participation in an AR program separately from attendance generated during the regular school day (EC Section 46211(d)(3)).
The teacher of each AR classroom must document each student's participation time. This may be done by tracking participation time by hours/minutes. Daily participation time tracking is appropriate if AR sessions meet the minimum daily minute requirements.
Participation must sum to the applicable minimum daily minutes to generate a whole day AR ADA. A student may accrue time over multiple sessions on multiple days. Only one day of attendance may be claimed for each calendar day of participation in an AR program (EC Section 46211(d)(1)).
Students may “bank” AR days if participation time in AR is accrued before a student is absent. This includes attending AR programs in the summer prior to the beginning of the academic school year.
In-person instruction is a condition of apportionment. Excludes long term IS and non-classroom students.
AR does not replace/modify Saturday School (the existing method to claim ADA for past absences).
AR and ELP can be offered concurrently (if the requirements of both programs are met).
LEAs must report in CALPADS EOY 3 submission (STAS file) the total number of Attendance Recovery days (up to 10) for each participating student. This data will be used to calculate an alternate chronic absenteeism rate that will be posted on DataQuest.
AR attendance must be reported during the Principal Apportionment cycle, through the Principal Apportionment Data Collection (PADC). Reported by grade span at P-1, P-2 and Annual.
Reference
CALPADS Update Flash #305: New Data Collections for Attendance Recovery Program and Expanded Learning Programs.
Attendance Recovery: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/it/aarecovery.asp
Instructional Time and Attendance Accounting: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/it/
SchoolWise AR Tracking
AR attendance can be recorded in the Desktop Attendance form or in the Web Attendance form.
To create an Attendance Recovery program class roster for tracking attendance, you must create an academic course section with positive attendance enabled and enroll students.
Click here for general information regarding course setup.
Click here for general information regarding course enrollment.
Click here for general information regarding attendance recording.
A) Setup required tracking of Attendance Recovery ADA Days:
Create an academic course for ‘Attendance Recovery Days’ with Credits = 0, Course Term = AR Year, Marking System = None, Course State Code (CBEDS Code) = 6012. In the course section defaults tab, enable positive attendance and set the default minutes for the class.
Create sections as needed. Enable positive attendance and set the default minutes for each section. Use ELP for the Schedule Term (this utilizes the 12 month ELP calendar track instead of the normal ADA calendar track).
Once a minimum day requirement is met for AR, LEA may record 1 ADA attendance day by recording the student as present on this date.
B) Setup optional tracking of Attendance Recovery Participation Time by hours/minutes:
Create a course for ‘Attendance Recovery Participation Time’ with Credits = 0, Course Term = AR Year, Marking System = None, Course State Code (CBEDS Code) = 6012. In the course section defaults tab, enable positive attendance and set the default minutes for the class.
Create sections as needed. Enable positive attendance and set the default minutes for each section. For the Schedule Term use ELP (this uses the 12 month ELP calendar track instead of the normal ADA calendar track).
If fixed length AR class sections are used, the default minutes for each section can be used for tracking participation time.
If variable length AR class sections are used, please contact SchoolWise support to enable check-in/check-out time tracking in the SchoolWise web attendance forms. Please provide your default start/end times for each course section.
Note that “Positive Attendance” must be enabled in both the Course Section Defaults tab and in each course section. When 'Positive Attendance' is used, students are ‘considered absent unless marked present'. When taking attendance, mark students present (when present) or leave the attendance record blank (Not Taken) when absent. AR courses should only use positive attendance tracking (considered absent unless marked present). Negative attendance recording would cause potential audit compliance issues.