Attendance Accounting Procedures and Guidelines

Schools are responsible for tracking and accounting for all student absences for compulsory attendance reasons.  An accurate accounting is important. Business Services is responsible for coordinating attendance accounting at the District level.  

There are about 3,200 students enrolled in the Cabrillo Unified School District. The daily rate of attendance is a calculation of the enrollment on each day divided by the number of students who actually attended on that day. Better attendance rates mean greater student success and more money for our district, which you will recall, is experiencing declining enrollment.

Every dollar counts in being able to deliver the quality programs that we want for our students. Cabrillo Unified School District receives its funding from the State of California based on a formula that is calculated using the number of students that attend school in our District. This number is often referred to as ADA -- which stands for Average Daily Attendance. To receive money from the State, it is not enough to just be enrolled in the schools, but the students must actually be present in class.

Since we know that student success is tied to regular attendance and we know that State funding is tied to regular attendance, we know that having every student in school every day needs to be our goal.

Many of our students’ absences can be attributed to reasons other than illness. Some of those reasons include:

• Extended long weekends or breaks
• Traveling
• Non-CUSD operated sports, arts and other events or tournaments

Additionally, what you may not know about attendance is that the State does not count excused absences in the ADA for funding purposes. If a student is absent for any reason, we do not get funding for that student for that day.

By providing information about the importance of regular attendance, we hope that families will take a fresh look at their child(ren)’s attendance habits and begin to understand the impact that missing even one day can have on their education and on the District, as a whole.