CALPADS Update FLASH #305 - Revised

To:           Local Educational Agency (LEA) Representatives

From:      California Department of Education (CDE) –
                California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) Team

Date:      Updated June 2, 2026 – Originally published June 11, 2025

Subject:  CALPADS Update FLASH #305 - Revised

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This Flash supersedes previously published Flash #305 dated June 11, 2025.
This Flash has been updated to reflect all current information regarding the implementation of data collections for the Attendance Recovery Program and Expanded Learning Programs, which went into the CALPADS production environment on May 5, 2026.

Data Collections for Attendance Recovery Program and Expanded Learning Programs

LEAs are required to submit and certify two new data collections as part of their 2025−26 End-of-Year (EOY) 1 submission to the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS). For submission deadlines, refer to the CDE CALPADS Calendar web page at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sp/cl/rptcalendar.asp.

This Flash describes the new data collections for the following programs:

1. The new Attendance Recovery (AR) program; and
2. Existing Expanded Learning Programs (ELPs), which include:
   

• Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELO-P)
• 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC), which includes programs serving elementary and middle/junior high school students, and the After School Safety and Enrichment for Teens (ASSETS) program
• The After School Education and Safety (ASES) program

This Flash describes the reporting requirements for each collection and highlights how the reporting requirements for the two programs are distinct.

While this Flash provides some programmatic information as context for understanding the data collection requirements, LEAs should refer to the CDE’s Attendance Recovery and Expanded Learning Opportunities Program web pages for information on the programs. Links to those web pages are provided in the Resources and Contacts section at the end of this Flash.

Attendance Recovery Program

To mitigate the negative impact of chronic absenteeism and emergency events on the academic continuity for students and LEA funding, Senate Bill (SB) 153 (Chapter 38, Statutes of 2024), as amended by SB 176 (Chapter 998, Statutes of 2024), established the Attendance Recovery (AR) program under Article 9, Chapter 2, Part 26 of Education Code (EC) sections 46210−46211.

The AR program is an optional program for students in grades Transitional Kindergarten (TK) −12, that LEAs may provide to enable students to recoup absences for the purposes of average daily attendance (ADA) apportionment. The AR sessions must be held outside of the regularly scheduled school day and must meet statutorily required criteria. A student may accrue time in hourly increments to meet the applicable minimum daily minute requirement, after which the LEA may claim ADA from AR for any absences generated by the student. LEAs will receive no more than ten days of ADA per student, or the total number of absences the student accrued in the Academic Year (AY) at the LEA. LEAs will submit the ADA earned from students attending AR programs through the Principal Apportionment Data Collection (PADC) Web Application, or “PADC Web Application.”

Refer to the CDE’s Attendance Recovery web page to see Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and information on this new program: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/it/aarecovery.asp

Please note that the 2026 Dashboard Chronic Absenteeism Indicator, as well as data reported on DataQuest, will not be affected by the use of Attendance Recovery.

New Attendance Recovery Days Field on the Student Absence Summary File

To calculate an alternative chronic absenteeism rate, CALPADS will collect the number of AR days earned by students on the Student Absence Summary (STAS) file. Note: All other fields on the STAS remain unchanged; any absence fields should not be adjusted based on AR days.

Specifically, the following field displayed in Table 1 (below) is now in the STAS file.

Table 1: New Attendance Recovery Days Field on STAS

A student is considered to have participated in an AR program if the program requirements are fulfilled and the student attended the time required in statute to constitute a day of attendance recovery. The required time is the number of minutes, accrued in hourly increments, that constitute a minimum day for a student’s grade level and/or school setting per EC Section 46211(e). The minimum day requirement applies to all LEA types participating in AR, inclusive of classroom-based charter schools (EC Section 46211(e)(2)(B)).

A student may “bank” AR days by attending AR programs before they have accumulated any absences. This includes attending AR programs in the summer prior to the beginning of the school year. AR days generated from sessions offered after the last day of school and before the end of the fiscal year will be credited to that fiscal year (EC Section 46211(b)(1)).

The number of AR days reported for a student at a school cannot exceed 10 days, or the number of absences the student had at the school, whichever is less. If the student attended more than one school at the LEA, the number of AR days reported for the student at the LEA cannot exceed 10 days or the number of absences at the LEA, whichever is less. Absences include: 

• Days Absent – In-person Excused Non-Suspension (Field 13.19)
• Days Absent – In-Person Unexcused Non-Suspension (Field 13.20)
• Incomplete Non-ADA Generating Independent Study Days (Field 13.21) only if related to “short term” independent study defined as 15 or fewer days (students participating continually in traditional independent study for a span of 16 or more days are not eligible to participate in AR).

LEAs must track and maintain records for the total number of hours that a student attends an AR program to calculate whether a student attends for the time required to recover an AR day of ADA funding and for auditing purposes. LEAs, however, will only report to CALPADS the number of AR days the student earned.

LEAs should refer to the CDE’s Attendance Recovery web page to see Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and information on this new program: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/it/aarecovery.asp

Validations on STAS Field 13.24 – Attendance Recovery Days

Table 2 below summarizes the validations that will be implemented on the Attendance Recovery Days field to enforce these rules.

Table 2: Validations on STAS Field 13.24

Abbreviations used in the table that are not otherwise defined:

• CDD – Certification Data Discrepancy
• DD – Data Discrepancy
• Statewide Student Identifier (SSID)

Additional AR Day Column Added to Report 14.1 – Student Absenteeism – Count

Certification report 14.1 – Student Absenteeism – Count now includes a new column titled “Total Attendance Recovery Days.” LEAs can view the number of AR days that an individual student earned through the supporting report 14.2 – Student Absences – Student List.

Must attendance in an AR program overlap with a student’s enrollment where absences occurred?

No. Students may earn AR days before or after a student’s enrollment at a school. Additionally, students may earn AR days before or after absences occur. However, AR days can only be reported for a student at a school where the student had absences and the LEA where the AR days were earned.

How many AR days can be reported for a student at an LEA or at a school?

LEAs may only report up to 10 AR days for a student, or the total number of qualifying absences the student had at schools within the LEA, whichever is less.

• For students that enroll in more than one school at an LEA, and had absences in more than one school, LEAs may only report AR days at schools where the student had absences, and the number of AR days reported cannot exceed the number of absences at the school.
• For students earning more than 10 AR days and who have more than 10 absences at different schools within the LEA, the LEA can attribute 10 AR days at any school where the student was absent, as long as the number of AR days reported for a given school does not exceed the number of absences at the school.

Table 3 below illustrates some examples of how AR days may be reported:

Table 3: Examples of How AR Days May be Reported for
an Academic Year (July 1 – June 30)

Expanded Learning Programs

Assembly Bill (AB) 1113 (Chapter 1003, Statutes of 2024) cites research that finds that students participating in afterschool programs improve their outcomes, and it describes the state’s investment and goal of expanding universal access to such programs to all school-age children/youth in the state. To help assess progress toward this goal, AB 1113 requires the CDE to collect in CALPADS, beginning in the 2025−26 academic year, annual pupil enrollment in any one of the following expanded learning programs:

• Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELO-P).
• 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC), which includes programs serving elementary and middle/junior high school students, and the After School Safety and Enrichment for Teens (ASSETS) program.
• The After School Education and Safety (ASES) program.

Expanded Learning Program Data Submitted to CALPADS

Currently, LEAs submit student participation or eligibility for various programs during their enrollment at a school through the Student Program (SPRG) file. However, students may attend Expanded Learning Programs (ELPs) that are not located at the school where they are enrolled, or they may attend at times (e.g., before the school year begins or after it ends) when they are not enrolled in a school. These characteristics present data collection challenges for ELP Programs and the school-based SPRG files.

Since the purpose of collecting this data is to understand overall enrollment and attendance in ELPs, and funding for ELO-P is provided at the LEA level, this data will be a student-level collection at the LEA level and not at the school level. This means that when submitting this data, LEAs do not have to specify students’ school of enrollment. Therefore, the data will not be collected on the SPRG file and will be collected through a new LEA-level file named the Local Educational Agency Program (LEAP) file. In anticipation that the LEAP file may better fit the collection of other program data in the future, the name of the file is generic and not specific to the collection of expanded learning program data.

New LEA Program File and Code Set

LEA Program (LEAP) File: The new LEAP file includes the standard fields on all CALPADS files (Reporting LEA, Academic Year Identifier, Statewide Student Identifier, Local Student ID), one generic field that LEAs will populate with a code from the LEA Level Education Program code set, and one field specific to the Expanded Learning Program collection.

In addition to the standard fields, for the Expanded Learning Collection, LEAs must populate the two fields described in Table 4 below.

Table 4: LEAP File: Fields for Expanded Learning Programs Collection

New LEA Level Education Program Code Set: LEA Level Education Program codes are submitted on the LEAP file and not treated like Education Program codes submitted on the Student Program (SPRG) file where different rules apply depending on whether the education program code is considered “eligible” or “participating.” LEA Level Education Program records are also not tied to start dates and do not require overlapping school enrollments. The LEA Level Education Program code set currently includes one code 194 – Expanded Learning Program Days. The definition for this code is provided in Table 5 below.

Table 5: LEA Level Education Code 194 - Definition

Requirements for Expanded Learning Program Collection

For the Expanded Learning Program collection, LEAP records must be submitted for any student that enrolled in an ELP, defined as any student whose parents/guardians submitted a signed registration form, and the form is on file. LEAs must submit any student enrolled in an ELP regardless of whether the student actually participated in or attended an ELP. LEAs must populate:

• Field 26.08 – LEA Education Program Code with code 194 – Expanded Learning Programs.
• Field 26.09 – Expanded Learning Program Days with an integer 0 – 300 (inclusive) that is the total number of days the student attended in an ELP program during the Academic Year (July 1 – June 30). If a student enrolled in an ELP and never attended an ELP program, the LEA should populate this field with “0.”

These two validations work as follows: LEAs receiving funds for any of the Expanded Learning Programs included in the definition of LEA Level Education Program code 194 – Expanded Learning Programs, must populate Field 26.08 – LEA Education Program Code with code 194. If Field 26.08 is populated with code 194, then Field 26.09 – Expanded Learning Program Days, must be populated with an integer 0 – 300 (inclusive).

There is not a specific amount of time that students must attend an ELP to be counted as a day of attendance in an ELP program. For example, each of the following would count as one ELP day:

• 5 minutes attended on one day
• 2 hours attended on one day
• 1 hour attended before school and 1 hour attended after school on the same day

LEAP File Validations

All LEAs that receive ELO-P funding have a CCLC (including ASSETS) grant, and/or ASES grant are required to submit LEAP records. Any LEAs for whom ELP data are expected will receive a fatal Certification Validation Rule (CVR) error, CERT177 – Missing LEAP records for an LEA Participating in an Expanded Learning Program if they fail to submit any LEAP records. The specific LEAP errors are described in Table 6 below.

Table 6: LEAP File Validations

AR versus ELP Reporting to CALPADS

The primary differences between AR and ELP reporting are summarized in Table 7 below.

Table 7: Distinctions between Attendance Recovery and Expanded Learning Programs

For other programmatic questions related to operating both AR and ELP, LEAs should refer to the FAQs on the CDE’s Attendance Recovery web page (https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/it/aarecovery.asp), under the Attendance Recovery and ELO-P tab. Some of the FAQs include:

• Can an LEA offer both AR and Expanded Learning Opportunities Programming (ELO-P) at the same time?

Can an Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELO-P) student participate in AR?

The CALPADS Office has communicated with SIS vendors regarding the CALPADS data collection requirements for both programs. The CDE has also communicated with vendors that collect and maintain data for afterschool programs regarding the data that LEAs need to meet CALPADS data reporting requirements for ELP.

Resources and Contacts

Attendance Recovery

For more information about the AR program, refer to the CDE’s Attendance Recovery web page: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/it/aarecovery.asp

For questions on apportionment-significant requirements for AR, contact the Attendance Accounting Office at AttendanceAccounting@cde.ca.gov.

For questions on operating a high-quality AR program, contact the Educational Options Office at EOO@cde.ca.gov.

Expanded Learning Programs

Additional ELO-P FAQs can be found on the CDE’s Expanded Learning Opportunities Program web page at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/ex/elopinfo.asp.

For questions on ELO-P, contact the Expanded Learning Division at ExpandedLearning@cde.ca.gov.