Did California Quietly End ‘Butts In Seats’ School Funding? What This Means For Parents and Teachers
The library at my elementary school smells like old crayons and leftover microwave popcorn from the after-school art club, and last October’s staff meeting smelled like that plus the styrofoam coffee one of the paras set down too hard, leaving a brown ring right through the printed agenda. Our principal was going over the end of year budget adjustment, and when she got to attendance funding, Ms. Lopez, a second-year 2nd grade teacher, leaned forward and asked the question we’d all been whispering about for months: “Wait, so we actually don’t get our funding based just on how many butts are in seats every day anymore?”
I’ve taught 4th grade in a small suburban district outside Sacramento for 12 years, so I’ve watched “butts in seats” funding rule every part of our job for most of my career. When I started, 90% of our district’s per-student funding came from average daily attendance, or ADA. Every tardy, every half-day absence, every sick day added up. We had a monthly attendance review where we’d go down a list of every kid with more than two absences that semester, and we were required to send warning letters to parents, even when we knew every absence was for a legitimate medical reason.
Mia, one of my students this year, lives with her grandma who relies on Medi-Cal for all their medical care. The only allergy clinic that takes her insurance is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesdays, so Mia gets picked up an hour early every week for her shots. Two years ago, that added up to 18 early dismissals in one school year, and the district automatically sent grandma a truancy warning. She called me after school that day, voice shaky, and said, “I don’t skip school on purpose. I just can’t choose between her being able to breathe and your school getting money.” That’s when I started paying attention to how the funding rules were hurting the people we’re supposed to be helping.
What we learned at that October meeting is that California hasn’t exactly put an end to attendance-based funding overnight, but it has quietly scaled back the “butts in seats” model more than most parents or even many teachers realize. Pre-pandemic, nearly all district funding was tied directly to daily attendance. Now, after a series of bill changes starting in 2021, most funding is tied to your fall enrollment count, and only about 15% is adjusted for actual attendance. It’s a quiet shift—no press conferences, no big mailers sent home to parents—so most people I talk to haven’t heard it’s happening.
This changes almost everything for everyday families. For years, I’ve had parents tell me they dragged their kid to school with a 101 fever, or skipped a needed specialist appointment because they didn’t want to hurt the school’s funding. That’s just not necessary anymore, at least in most districts. The concrete rule of thumb I tell parents now: If your kid is sick, keep them home. If you have a medical appointment or family commitment that can’t be rescheduled on a weekend, don’t stress about it tanking the school budget. You still need to report the absence to the front office for safety and record-keeping, but it won’t cut funding the way it used to.
It’s changed how we do attendance too, in small, tangible ways. Our attendance team rewrote the whole process this year. Instead of sending an automatic truancy warning after five absences, regardless of the reason, we now send a short check-in first. For Mia, instead of a warning letter this year, we sent a note that said, “We know you have weekly appointments. Let us know if you want homework sent home ahead of time, or if a 10 a.m. drop-off works better for your schedule. We can adjust.” No guilt, no pressure, just support. That’s a small change, but it makes a huge difference for families who are already stretched thin.
That said, this transition isn’t perfect, and it’s not equal across the state. The state is only giving transition aid to districts to make up for the shift for the next few years, and poorer districts that have higher rates of chronic absenteeism still feel a lot of the old pressure. I went to a regional teacher meetup last month, and a 1st grade teacher from a low-income district 20 minutes away told me they still track every tardy and pressure parents to get kids to school on time, because their budget can’t absorb even a small dip in attendance. The shift hasn’t reached everyone yet.
Also, it’s important to say this doesn’t mean attendance doesn’t matter for kids. We still care if a kid is missing a lot of school, because we know that consistent time in class helps them learn and build connections with their classmates. The difference is, now we get to focus on why kids are missing school, instead of panicking about how it will pay for our art supplies. Instead of blaming parents, we can ask what they need.
Last week, Mia woke up with a mild asthma flare-up, and grandma texted me first thing to say she’d be keeping her home, apologized for the last-minute absence. I texted back, “No rush at all—get her feeling better. I’ll leave her folder of work by the front door for you to pick up whenever.” No making grandma feel guilty, no me staying after school updating attendance spreadsheets worried about our budget. It’s just the way it should be. We don’t know yet if the state will make the shift permanent, or if they’ll extend transition aid to the districts that need it most. But for right now, this small, quiet change has taken a lot of unnecessary weight off our shoulders.
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