More to come on this, but if you have any authority over state education funding, now would be an excellent time to abandon ADA (Average Daily Attendance) forever.

LAUSD is the most extreme example of why ADA puts districts with the most vulnerable students at the greatest funding disadvantage:

18-19 Enrollment: 607K
18-19 ADA: 453K

So that's 154K enrolled students for which LAUSD is not receiving funding - about $1.7B per year.

LAUSD also has 477K students qualifying for Free or Reduced Price lunch in 18-19 (that's right... FRPL students > ADA)

Research shows that low-income students have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism *and* require more wraparound services.

Higher need, less money

A few reasons why economic status can impact attendance?

- Housing instability
- Complex/difficult transportation to school
- Additional responsibilities to care for young siblings, etc
- No access to W/D to clean uniforms
- Limited access to healthcare if sick

To name a FEW.

"But schools/districts should only pay for butts in seats"

So just clean 75% of schools; order 75% of textbooks; hire 75% of teachers; pay 75% of bus drivers; adhere to 75% of SpEd regs; buy 75% of devices; pay 75% of heating bills...

...and hope those 155K kids never show up?

Unit economics of schools don't work like that:

If Student A shows up on Monday but not Tuesday
and Student B shows up on Tuesday but not Monday...

We still need books, rostering, schedules, teachers, IEPs, buses, parent engagement, curricular licenses, etc for Students A & B.

Heaven help us if they both show up on Wednesday! We will need desks for both of them! And appropriate class-size ratios! And lunch! And counselors!

School resources cannot be turned on/off like light switches. Most education costs are driven by enrollment, not attendance.

Virtual instruction models will make ADA even MORE inequitable because of the layered inequities of digital divide & access to high-speed internet. Now we're going to deprive schools of funding because Ss can't get online? In reality, they need MORE $$$ for hotspots & devices.

U.S. companies have laid telecom infrastructure around the planet and across oceans and yet our country doesn't have the political will to give a 3rd grader basic free internet access to do their homework. Let's not further penalize schools for our failure to provide the BASICS.

To bring things full circle w/ my pension debt rant the other day... take away another ~$0.15 per $1 for pension debt:

$0.85 available for OpEx
75% of enrolled Ss funded

That’s ~$0.64 on the dollar. Think about that in the context of per-pupil funding. They’re stretching $$$.