The post-COVID attendance trap that costs RVSD real money
This is one of the smaller technical pieces of why RVSD’s budget is structurally pressured, but it’s the kind of detail that makes the bigger picture make more sense. California’s school-funding formula pays per Average Daily Attendance (ADA), not per enrolled student. Post-COVID, attendance patterns at virtually every California district shifted, and a multi-point drop in the ADA-to-enrollment ratio translates into hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost annual state aid.
For RVSD, that loss is real and ongoing.
What ADA actually measures
Enrollment is a headcount: how many students are registered at the district as of a particular date.
Average Daily Attendance is the average number of students physically present across the school year. If 100 students are enrolled and they all attend every day, ADA = 100. If 100 students are enrolled and the average daily attendance is 95, ADA = 95.
The ratio of ADA to enrollment is the attendance rate. A district with 95% attendance has 5% of its enrollment absent on a typical day — sick, on vacation, in dental appointments, on family travel.
How LCFF uses ADA
The Local Control Funding Formula pays districts based on ADA, not enrollment. Specifically, the funded ADA each year is the higher of:
- Current-year P-2 ADA
- Prior-year P-2 ADA
- Average of the prior three years’ P-2 ADA
This “hold harmless” provision was designed to cushion districts against sharp single-year ADA drops, but it doesn’t help districts whose attendance has been trending downward over multiple years. Eventually the prior-three-year average catches up to the new lower number.
RVSD’s attendance history
Per the district’s adopted 2025-26 budget:[1]
| Year | ADA-to-enrollment ratio |
|---|---|
| Pre-COVID (typical) | 95–96% |
| 2022-23 | 92.3% |
| 2023-24 | 94.2% |
The pre-COVID attendance rate was strong. Then COVID changed everything: families became more comfortable keeping kids home for mild colds, vacation patterns shifted, sick-day norms loosened. RVSD’s attendance rate dropped to 92.3% in 2022-23 — about three points below the pre-COVID baseline.
By 2023-24, the rate had recovered partway to 94.2%, but hasn’t fully returned to the pre-COVID 95–96% level. It’s a national pattern, not specific to RVSD; nearly every California district saw similar drops, and most have only partially recovered.
What that costs
The math is straightforward. RVSD has roughly 1,743 enrolled students in 2025-26.[2]
- Pre-COVID 96% attendance → ~1,673 ADA
- 2023-24 94.2% attendance → ~1,640 ADA
- 2022-23 92.3% attendance → ~1,609 ADA
The difference between the pre-COVID baseline and the 2023-24 actual is ~33 ADA. At LCFF base-grant rates of approximately $11,800 per ADA (averaged across RVSD’s K-8 grade-span mix), that’s about $390,000 per year in lost state aid.
The hold-harmless provision protects RVSD against the single-year drop, but the multi-year average drags down the funded ADA over time. By the third year of sustained sub-95% attendance, the district loses approximately the full effect.
This is roughly the cost of one classroom teacher per year. Or about 10% of the total parcel-tax revenue. From normal kids being normally absent at the new normal rate.
Why this is a structural pressure (not a temporary blip)
Three reasons the post-COVID attendance pattern is unlikely to fully reverse:
1. Family norms have shifted. Parents who would have sent a kid to school with a runny nose pre-2020 now keep them home. That norm shift seems durable; surveys of parents consistently show higher comfort with sick-day decisions post-COVID.
2. Vacation flexibility has increased. With more parents working remotely, family travel during the school year is more common. Schools see attendance dips around long weekends and during weeks adjacent to school holidays that wouldn’t have appeared in 2018.
3. Public health policies favor staying home. Schools have actively encouraged sick students to stay home; the public-health framing post-COVID has been “if you’re sick, don’t come.” That’s the right framing for community health, but it lowers ADA.
This isn’t a moral judgment about parents or schools. It’s a description of how attendance patterns have changed and don’t appear to be reverting.
Why ADA-based funding is bad policy in this context
The pre-COVID ADA-based formula made some sense as an incentive: districts had a reason to actively manage attendance. Post-COVID, ADA-based funding effectively penalizes districts financially for normal kid sickness and the public-health behaviors we want families to follow.
There’s been some movement at the state level to shift toward enrollment-based funding for some categories, but the LCFF base grant remains ADA-based. Until that changes, every California district eats the gap between pre-COVID and post-COVID attendance norms.
How the parcel tax fills the hole
The new revenue from Measure H — about $3.8M per year — is enough to cover:
- The structural deficit ($3M+ in deficit spending)
- Plus the ongoing post-COVID ADA loss (~$390K)
- Plus enrollment-related fixed-cost pressure
- Plus modest catch-up on teacher compensation
Without Measure H, the district has to absorb all of those simultaneously through cuts. The contingency plan does exactly that: Tier 2 cuts elementary PE and electives, Tier 3 closes elementary schools and cuts TK/K to half-days. Each tier reduces program breadth to compensate for revenue the district can’t recover.
What this means for your vote
The ADA-to-enrollment trap is one of those technical pieces of school finance that doesn’t make for good campaign material but explains a meaningful share of why RVSD’s deficit is structural rather than temporary. Sacramento isn’t going to fix the formula. The post-COVID attendance pattern isn’t reverting. The parcel tax is what compensates.
That’s why we recommend a Yes vote on Measure H.