Did California Quietly End ‘Butts In Seats’ School Funding? What This Means For Parents And Teachers
The plastic folding table between me and Lila’s mom still had crumbs from morning snack when she leaned forward and asked the question I’ve gotten three times in the last month of parent-teacher conferences. “I’ve been sending her in even when she says she can’t breathe from panic because I thought if she misses too much, the school loses funding for her counselor. Now you’re saying her counselor’s hours are cut anyway?”
I didn’t have a clear answer for her right then, so after the conference I walked down to the main office to talk to Ms. Rita, our principal of 22 years. She was mid-budget spreadsheet, her laptop covered in peeling stickers from 10 years of PTA fundraisers and a 2023 field day. She sighed and pulled up the line item that explained everything.
For as long as anyone can remember, California public school funding was based on average daily attendance—what everyone calls “butts in seats.” Every time a kid missed a day, the district lost a little bit of funding. For our 400-student elementary school, that added up to tens of thousands of dollars a year, enough to cut a part-time position or two. Pre-pandemic, I had to send a truancy letter to a family whose third grader missed 12 days for leukemia treatments, because district policy required it. We all hated it, but we thought we had no choice. If we didn’t push attendance, we lost money everyone needed.
When the pandemic hit, and kids were learning from home and missing lots of days for quarantine, the state switched to funding based on fall enrollment instead of daily attendance as a temporary fix. Then in 2022, they made that change permanent, and almost no one outside of budget offices noticed. It was buried in a 1,000-page budget bill, no press releases went to parent groups, no announcements were made at back-to-school night. So the short answer is: yes, California did quietly quit funding by butts in seats—for the most part.
For parents, the biggest immediate shift is that you don’t have to send your kid to school sick, or stressed out of their mind, just to protect school funding. I used to drag my own 7th grader, who has persistent asthma, to school when his peak flow was still 60% because I didn’t want to cost the district money. Last semester, he missed four days with a bad bronchitis flare, I got no calls, no truancy notes, and the district didn’t lose a cent of state funding for his absences. That’s a huge weight off for parents of kids with chronic illness, anxiety, or any other condition that means occasional missed days.
But it’s not that simple. State funding is enrollment-based now, but most federal grants and some local funding streams still tie money to daily attendance. And a lot of administrators and office staff are still on auto-pilot from the old system. They still nag parents about absences, they still threaten truancy, not because they need to for funding, but because that’s how they’ve always done it.
That’s where the small, practical steps come in. If your kid needs to stay home for a physical or mental health day, just ask the front office one question: “Does this excused absence impact the school’s state funding?” Nine times out of ten, the answer will be no. You don’t have to risk getting the whole classroom sick just to check a box. If you’re a teacher, check with your admin about the current funding rules before you start sending out those absence reminders mid-year. I shared a one-page summary of the new rules with my grade level team a few months back, and three of us stopped sending those awkward nagging texts to parents of kids with chronic illness or anxiety. It took 10 minutes of research, and it made a dozen families’ lives easier.
If you’re noticing that your school still has program cuts even though enrollment is up, ask your school board if they’re still budgeting under the old rules. A lot of districts built in years of austerity for expected funding dips from absences, and they haven’t adjusted that to the new system. They’re holding onto extra funding instead of hiring more support staff, just out of habit.
That’s not to say the change is all good. Small rural districts that see a lot of family moves after the fall enrollment count lose out, because they don’t get extra funding for kids who enroll late. Ms. Rita told me our own district lost about 2% of our state funding this year because 32 new students enrolled after the October count, but we still had to hire two new part-time teachers to cover them. That’s why Lila’s counselor had to split her time between two schools this year, instead of being full-time at ours. The state doesn’t lose money over absences anymore, but the new count system has its own gaps.
Last week, I saw Lila leaving the counselor’s office after her 30-minute session, laughing with a friend from fifth grade. She’s still missing one day a week on average when her anxiety gets bad, and we don’t bug her mom about it anymore. That’s the quiet difference the change made. Before, even if the counselor had been full-time, we would have lost enough funding from Lila’s absences to cut her position entirely. Now she gets half the time she did before, but she still gets time, and she doesn’t have to push through a panic attack just to keep it.
No one threw a parade when the funding changed. No one sent a glossy flyer to every house explaining what it meant for your kid. It’s a messy, quiet shift, with gaps that still haven’t been fixed. For now, it’s one less thing for parents to stress about when your kid needs a day off. That’s enough for most of us, for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Did California Quietly End ‘Butts In Seats’ School Funding