California FAQ
Q: How are Reporting Segments Generated for use in CA Attendance Reporting?
CA Education Code:
School districts are required by Education Code Section 37201 to ensure that all grades are maintained for an equal length of time, as measured in annual instructional minutes (not calendar school days). This is not a condition of apportionment, but non-compliance could subject a school agency to a civil lawsuit claim. This law exists to ensure all students within a district are equally served. It is permissible to have a single district-wide calendar or a calendar for each school site, or a combination of both.
School days should include holidays and exclude weekends; a school week is five days, Monday through Friday.
A school month is 20 days or four weeks of five days each, including legal holidays and non-school days, but excluding weekend makeup classes (Education Code Section 37201).
The school year begins July 1 (Education Code Section 37200) and ends on the last day of June. LEAs must apply and obtain a waiver from CDE to extend the school year beyond July 1. 55% of ADA must have occurred by the P-2 cut-off period as a condition of being granted a waiver. Once approved, school days that overlap into July are counted towards the statutory school year requirements. Apportionment funding, however, is based on the average daily attendance (through P-2 or Annual), which occurs July 1 through June 30.
PowerSchool Logic
The reporting segments that are presented on the CA attendance reports use logic that looks at the school calendar and finds the first in-session day, and the first month/segment starts on the Monday of that week.
EX:
At school A, the first in-session day of the school year was on August 25th 2021, which was a Wednesday.
Using the state’s rules:
Segment 1= 8/23/2021 - 9/17/2021
Segment 2= 9/20/2021 - 10/15/2021
Segment 3= 10/18/21 - 11/12/ 2021
Segment 4= 11/15/21 - 12/10/2021
Important notes:
The first reporting segment will start on the Monday of the first week in your school calendar, regardless of whether the school is in session. Adding extra days to the start of your school year can impact how the end dates for your apportionment periods are calculated by the state. See the "CA Education Code section" (above) for additional details.
The values defined under School > Reporting Segments are not used by CA attendance reports.
If a district wishes to override the reporting segments that are auto-generated and displayed in reports:
The district must create a support ticket to have a flag set in the database to allow the user-defined reporting segments to override the segments that are auto-generated by the system using the state's rules.
The district must agree to take full responsibility for how these user-defined reporting segments impact their P2 end date or the overall apportionment allocated by the state based on this setup
The impact of Winter Break Exclusion Weeks
Districts are allowed to exclude 1 or 2 weeks in the winter (before April 15) from their calendar for attendance reporting purposes (Education Code Section 37201). The weeks selected will impact the end date of the P2 reporting period, which may have a positive effect on their ADA calculations for the year. See the "CA Education Code" section (above) for additional details.
Customers define the Winter Break Exclusion weeks in PowerSchool by navigating to “Start Page > School Setup > Winter Break Exclusion Weeks” and selecting one or two consecutive weeks to be excluded. This setting must be defined for each school, as appropriate.
Once the Winter Break Exclusion weeks are defined, the reporting segment logic will consider these weeks when calculating the start and end of reporting segments that fall during or after the selected Exclusion weeks.
EX: …..continuing from segment 4, above:
Segment 5 - 12/13/21 - 1/7/2022 - UNLESS they exclude 1 or 2 weeks in DEC
If they exclude 1 week, the end date of segment 5 is pushed out to 1/14/2022
2 weeks of winter break exclusion would mean that segment 5 does not end until 1/21/2022
As a result:
Segment 6 would start on either 1/17 or 1/24, depending on whether 1 or 2 weeks were set to be excluded.
This logic continues until the end of June or the last week of school, whichever comes first.
Q: How are student losses calculated at the end of a reporting segment?
A: Per California state requirements, students with an exit date of the last day of the reporting segment will appear as losses in the next reporting segment in the following reports: CA Attendance Summary by Grade, Monthly Student Attendance, and Gains and Losses. Students cannot show as a loss in the current reporting segment, as they were still actively enrolled on the last day. Losses are counted starting on the next in-session day, which falls in the next reporting segment.
For example:
Reporting Segment 1: 09/04/2017 - 09/29/2017
Reporting Segment 2: 10/02/2017 - 10/27/2017
Sample student, Bill Smith, has an exit date of 09/30/2017, which means the student's last active day of enrollment was 09/29/2017.
This student cannot show as a loss on 09/29/2017 as he is still actively enrolled on that day, nor can he show as a loss on 09/30/2017 or 10/01/2017, as those are not in-session days. Thus, the student will not appear as a loss until the next in-session day - 10/02/2017 - which falls into Reporting Segment 2.
Q: How can I make sure my summer graduates are counted for the correct cohort?
If a student fulfilled their final graduation requirements over the summer OR fulfills all missing requirements on or before August 15 of their original cohort year, the following options wil ensure that the student counts toward their original cohort year:
Option 1:
Create an enrollment record in the new school year that meets the following requirements
The enrollment record should be a single-day enrollment
The exit date for this enrollment must be on or before August 15th.
Option 2:
Edit the student's enrollment record for the previous school year to reflect their updated graduation status, then upload the updated record to CALPADS
Q: We allow students to attend Saturday School to make up for absences. How do I set up and record attendance in PowerSchool so that I can reclaim the ADA and still meet STAS requirements for tracking Chronic Absenteeism?
A: The following configuration allows the correct value to be reported in the STAS extract (for Chronic Absenteeism) while still reclaiming the ADA when a 'makeup' session has been attended.
Create a new attendance code for Excused absences for which the student made up in a Saturday School or other makeup session:
Code: Enter a value that means something to you and that your staff will also understand - Example: SE (for Saturday Excused)
Presence status: Present
This attendance code is considered in ADA calculations: Select this checkbox
This attendance code counts toward membership: Select this checkbox
CALPADS Attendance Category: (EX) Excused, Non-Suspension
Create another new attendance code for Unexcused absences for which the student made up in a Saturday School or other makeup session:
Code: Enter a value that means something to you and that your staff will also understand - Example: SU (for Saturday Unexcused)
Presence status: Present
This attendance code is considered in ADA calculations: Select this checkbox
This attendance code counts toward membership: Select this checkbox
CALPADS Attendance Category: (UX) Unexcused, Non-Suspension
Sample workflow:
Mary is absent from school on December 12, 2018. This absence is determined to be Unexcused.
On December 12, an attendance clerk marks Mary as Absent using an attendance code mapped to the CALPADS code: (UX) Unexcused, Non-Suspension.
On a Saturday in January 2019, Mary attends a Saturday school session to make up one day's worth of attendance (ADA).
The next Monday, an attendance clerk sees that Mary attended a makeup session and edits the attendance code set for December 12, 2018, using the newly created code that counts as Present, but is mapped to the CALPADS code: (UX) Unexcused, Non-Suspension.
Q: Do I need to complete my CALPADS EOY submissions before running the PowerSchool End of Year process?
A: No. All CA state reports have been designed to deliver accurate results both before and after EOY has been run.
Additional Notes:
After running the PowerSchool EOY process, it is important to make sure you have the correct school year selected before running any of your state reports and to use a reporting data range that falls within the selected school year.
Q: How do I generate CA transcripts for students in the Graduated Students school?
The CA Transcript will not work as expected once a student has been rolled over to the Graduated Students school. To run this report successfully for a graduated student, navigate to the school the student attended before graduation and search for the student using the *as_of parameter. Once you have selected the student in this manner, the CA Transcript will produce the expected results. If you are not familiar with this search parameter, contact PowerSchool support for assistance.