CALPADS Update Flash #325

To:           Local Educational Agency (LEA) Representatives

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

Date:       June 02, 2026

Subject:  CALPADS Update FLASH #325

Business Rule Change to Homeless Program Records

Background and reason for change

Identifying children and youth experiencing homelessness is an important first step to ensure that these students have equal access to the same free, appropriate public education, as provided to other children and youth. The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (McKinney-Vento Act) and California Education Code (EC) require that LEAs ensure that children and youth experiencing homelessness are identified by school personnel through outreach and coordination activities with other entities and agencies (42 United States Code [U.S.C.] § 11432[g][6][A][i]; EC Section 48851.5).

In keeping with longstanding best practice, Assembly Bill (AB) 2375 (Chapter 912, Statutes of 2022) was enacted, requiring all California Local Educational Agencies (LEAs)—defined as county offices of education (COEs), school districts, and charter schools—to administer a housing questionnaire to families, at least annually (EC Section 48851[b]) for purposes of identifying homeless children and youth, and unaccompanied youth. Furthermore, LEAs are required to annually report this data to the CDE through the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS).

To support LEAs in their efforts, as required by EC Section 48852.5(g), the CDE has posted:

• Best practices for identifying and obtaining accurate data on all homeless children, youths, and unaccompanied youths enrolled in schools of the LEA. The information can be found on the CDE Homeless Education web page at https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/hs/
• A model housing questionnaire for families to complete each year. The model housing questionnaire can be downloaded at  https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/hs/cy/documents/housingquestionnaire.pdf

Additional resources are provided under “Resources” at the end of this Flash.

Consistent with programmatic requirements and practice, beginning in the 2025−26 CALPADS End-of-Year (EOY) 1 submission, LEAs will be required to close CALPADS homeless program records for all students at the end of the school year. LEAs should then upload new CALPADS homeless program records based on the annual Housing Questionnaire administered for the 2026−27 school year. This process will help ensure that the homeless program data in CALPADS reflects the most current information obtained from the annual Housing Questionnaire administered by LEAs.

Homeless data used for reporting and federal funding for homeless

The information that families provide on the annual Housing Questionnaire should be populated in LEA student information systems (SIS) and uploaded to CALPADS on the Student Program (SPRG) file at the beginning of each school year. LEAs should update these data throughout the year as circumstances change for families. LEAs certify cumulative homeless data as part of the EOY 1 submission. Aggregate counts of homeless students by dwelling type are reported on DataQuest and through EDFacts to meet federal reporting requirements. Additionally, the total count of homeless students is used to determine how much federal funding California receives.

New validations requiring annual closing of homeless program records

Table 1 in this document displays two new Certification Data Discrepancies (CDDs) that are now in effect for the 2025−26 CALPADS EOY 1 submission to ensure that homeless program records are closed annually. In addition, two new validations that trigger on input will be implemented after July 1, 2026 to ensure that any historical updates to Homeless Education Program records have appropriate end dates.

The two CDDs that require the Reporting LEA to close all open homeless records for students enrolled in that LEA during the current academic year are: 

• SPRG0746E1 requires LEAs to close out homeless records that have start dates in the current academic year (2025–26). This validation will trigger when a homeless record has a Membership Start Date on or after 7/1/2025 and the Membership End Date is either missing or not within the same academic year. LEAs are expected to ensure that any homeless program record started in 2025–26 is end-dated no later than June 30, 2026.

• SPRG0747E1 requires LEAs to end-date prior academic year homeless program records as of June 30, 2025, or earlier. Although these records were not required to be closed during the same academic year in which they began, they must be closed before a new 2025–26 homeless program record is created for the same student at the same LEA.

CALPADS will close all remaining open homeless program records after the close of the 2025–26 EOY 1 submission.

On a one-time basis, CALPADS will close out open homeless records with start dates in a prior Academic Year for students who, in 2025−26, were not enrolled at all, or were not enrolled at the LEA that originally submitted the open homeless record. After the close of the 2025−26 EOY 1 submission, the CDE will close these records with an Education Program Membership End Date of June 30, 2025. If these students re-enroll at a school in the LEA in future Academic Years and are determined by the LEA to be homeless through the administration of a subsequent annual Housing Questionnaire, the LEA will submit a new homeless program record for these students for the applicable Academic Year.

Table 1: New Homeless Program Record Validations

Updates to Homeless Dwelling Type Code definitions to better align with homeless questionnaire

The names and definitions of the four CALPADS Homeless Dwelling Type codes are also being updated to better align with the housing options provided on the Housing Questionnaire. There are no changes to the codes themselves, and the updates to the code names and definitions do not constitute new dwelling types. The changes are detailed in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Updates to Homeless Dwelling Type Code Names and Definitions

Reminder for District and County Homeless Liaisons to Review 2025−26 EOY 1 Homeless Counts

It is critical that both school districts and COEs ensure that their homeless liaisons have access to the detailed, student-level report, Report 5.5 - Homeless Students Enrolled - Student List, in CALPADS. Access to these reports will enable homeless liaisons to review the reports to ensure that the homeless students they are serving are identified correctly in the local student information system and in CALPADS.

For both the county and district homeless liaison to view Report 5.5 - Homeless Students Enrolled - Student List, each must be assigned the EOY Report role. For county homeless liaisons to view Report 5.5, the LEA CALPADS Administrator must add the county homeless liaison to their organization and assign the EOY Report role. This will allow the county homeless liaison to view Report 5.5. If you do not know who your district or county homeless liaison is, a list of homeless liaisons can be accessed from the CDE Homeless Education web page at https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/hs/.

Additionally, all COE homeless liaisons are reminded that they may view C/A Report 5.4 - Homeless Students Enrolled throughout the entire submission window, even before the LEA has certified any data. This enables the COE to monitor homeless counts for each LEA within the county throughout the submission window.

Resources

General Homeless Education Information – CDE Homeless Education web page: https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/hs/

Homeless Program Data – CDE Homeless Youth in California Schools web page: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sg/homelessyouth.asp

For Homeless Innovative Programs best practices and toolkits – CDE Homeless Innovative Program Toolkits web page: https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/hs/hiptoolkits.asp

Model housing questionnaire: https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/hs/cy/documents/housingquestionnaire.pdf

National Center for Homeless Education. (2021). Determining Eligibility for McKinney-Vento Rights and Services: https://nche.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/det_elig.pdf

National Center for Homeless Education – Unaccompanied Youth Eligibility Flowchart: https://nche.ed.gov/tag/flowchart/