The same empty seat hits a Texas budget this year and a California budget in full three years later

The count that gets paid

A school district's state funding starts with a count of students, and states disagree about which count. The Education Commission of the States compared the methods in 2021 and named six states that fund on average daily attendance, the count of students actually in seats each day: California, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. Twenty-three states counted enrollment or average daily membership instead, both counts of students on the rolls. Mississippi has since left the attendance column; HB 4130 of 2024 moved it to net enrollment effective fiscal year 2026. The two largest attendance-funded states are California and Texas.

In both states, an empty seat eventually costs the district the funding attached to it. The two statutes disagree about when. Texas adjusts the money inside the school year. California pays on the best of three years of history, so the loss phases in over the three years that follow.

What the statutes say a day is worth

California Education Code 46200 withholds 0.0056 of a district's apportionment, the state's payment of formula funding, for each day of instruction offered short of 180. One divided by 180 is 0.0056 at the fourth decimal, so the statute itself prices a single instructional day. The California Department of Education's adjusted base grants for 2026-27 are $13,296 per unit of average daily attendance for grades 9-12 and $11,811 for transitional kindergarten through grade 3. Dividing by the statute's 180 days puts a funded high school student-day at $73.87 and an early-grade day at $65.62. Both per-day figures are computed.

Texas pays districts a basic allotment, the base amount per unit of average daily attendance, and HB 2, passed in 2025, sets it at $6,215 for fiscal 2026, written into Texas Education Code 48.051(a) and 48.2561(b) as $6,160 plus a $55 guaranteed yield increment adjustment. Texas law sets the school year in minutes, 75,600 of them under TEC 25.081(a), and the state's attendance accounting handbook works its illustrations on a 180-day calendar. On that calendar the basic allotment comes to $34.53 per student per day, computed, and it is a floor, because the weighted program allotments ride on the same attendance count.

A student who misses 10 percent of the year, the standard line for chronic absence, carries a computed annual price in both statutes: a California high school loses $1,329.60 in base grant and a Texas district loses $621.50.

The Texas clock runs inside the year

Texas tightened its clock in 2025. Texas Education Code 48.266(b-1), added by HB 2, directs the commissioner of education to adjust funding determinations to reflect current-year estimates of a district's enrollment and average daily attendance, "based on attendance reporting for each six-week interval." A district that loses attendance in October is looking at an adjusted estimate by winter. The cushion is one year deep. Under TEC 48.005(b)(2), a district whose attendance declines 2 percent or more may be funded on up to 98 percent of its prior-year actual attendance, and only for that year.

The size of what the clock is pricing sits in the state's own ledger. The Texas Education Agency's Summary of Finances for 2025-26 covers 1,243 districts and charter schools. Summed across the file, refined average daily attendance is 4,974,973.95 against total enrollment of 5,430,866. Texas districts convert 91.61 percent of enrollment into funded attendance, a computed ratio. The gap is 455,892 student-equivalents, worth $2.83 billion in basic allotment alone, also computed. The ratio is a yield, and it runs below the true share of students in seats, because refined attendance excludes ineligible attendance and counts half-day prekindergarten at 0.5.

The same arithmetic runs district by district. In the file, Houston Independent School District converts 89.5 percent of enrollment into funded attendance and Dallas Independent School District converts 89.3 percent. The basic allotment prices those two gaps at $109.1 million and $89.1 million. All of these are ratios of two counts in a public state file, computed the same way as the statewide figure. One percentage point of statewide attendance comes to about $309 million in basic allotment, again computed from the same file.

The California clock runs on three years

California's formula pays on attendance too, behind a hold-harmless, a provision that keeps paying a district on an older and higher count. Education Code 42238.05(a)(1), as amended by SB 153 in June 2024, funds a district on "the second principal apportionment regular average daily attendance for the current fiscal year, or the prior fiscal year if the prior fiscal year total is greater, or the average of the three most recent prior fiscal years, if the three-year average total is greater than both the current fiscal year and prior fiscal year."

The legislature considered the alternative and declined it. SB 830 of the 2021-22 session would have added funding computed on average daily membership, a count of enrolled students. It passed the Senate 28-5 in May 2022 and died in the Assembly that November. California kept attendance as the currency and adopted the three-year averaging instead.

Follow a decline that starts this fall and holds. In year one the district is paid on last year's higher count and loses nothing. In year two the three-year average still contains two good years, so one third of the loss arrives. Two thirds of it arrives in year three. The full loss lands in year four, three years after the seats emptied, when no pre-decline year remains inside the average.

In March of that first year, the chief business officer of a midsized California district closes the second interim report, the midyear budget update the state requires of every district. Attendance is down. The certification still balances. The funded count on it is last year's, because the statute pays on the higher number, so nothing in the current-year column moves. The loss sits two tabs over in the multiyear projection, dated two and three fiscal years out. In June the board approves a balanced budget and the projection rides along in the packet as an attachment. By the time its last column comes due, the seniors whose absences sit inside it will be two years past graduation.

Attendance recovery has nearly stalled

Both clocks are being fed by absence levels that have settled well above the old baseline. The most continuous national series is Nat Malkus's at the American Enterprise Institute, built from state education agency reporting across 45 states and published June 30, 2026. Chronic absence, defined as missing 10 percent or more of the school year, ran at about 15 percent before the pandemic, a level the report gives only as a rough figure. It peaked at 28.3 percent in 2021-22. It has eased since, to 25.7 percent, then 23.5, then 22.6 in 2024-25, and the report tallies the annual improvement as 2.7 percentage points, then 2.1, then just under 1.

Children in kindergarten through grade 3 entered school entirely after the pandemic, and in the report's 2025 grade-level data they are as chronically absent as the older students who lived through the closures. Malkus reads that pattern as a change in the norms around attendance. Eighteen states adopted a goal of halving 2022 absenteeism by 2027, and only 29 percent of students are in districts on pace to hit it, down from 34 percent a year earlier.

Only one of the two superintendents can see it

A Texas superintendent budgeting for next year works from attendance reported at six-week intervals and from an estimate the commissioner has already adjusted. A California superintendent looking at the same attendance chart holds a budget that balances on last year's count, and the loss waits in the out-years of the multiyear projection. For both of them, the day already has a price, computed from each state's published rates: $73.87 for a high school student in California and $34.53 for a student in Texas.

Methodology

Here is every computed figure in this piece, with its arithmetic. Anything labeled "computed" in the prose or the figure specs traces to one of these lines.

• $73.87 per California high school student-day: $13,296 (grades 9-12 adjusted base grant per unit of average daily attendance, CDE Principal Apportionment rates, 2026-27) ÷ 180 days = $73.87. The 180-day divisor is the day count priced by Education Code 46200, which withholds 0.0056 of the apportionment per day short of 180; 1 ÷ 180 = 0.00556, which rounds to the statute's 0.0056.
• $65.62 per California TK-3 student-day: $11,811 ÷ 180 = $65.62.
• $62.12 per California grades 7-8 student-day: $11,181 ÷ 180 = $62.12.
• $60.33 per California grades 4-6 student-day: $10,860 ÷ 180 = $60.33.
• $34.53 per Texas student-day: $6,215 (fiscal 2026 basic allotment, written in HB 2 as $6,160 plus the $55 guaranteed yield increment adjustment in TEC 48.2561(b)) ÷ 180 days = $34.53. Texas sets its school year at 75,600 minutes under TEC 25.081(a); the 180-day calendar is the illustration TEA's own attendance accounting materials use, and this piece uses it the same way.
• $1,329.60 per chronically absent California high school student: $13,296 × 0.10 = $1,329.60 in base grant, at the 10 percent absence line.
• $621.50 per chronically absent Texas student: $6,215 × 0.10 = $621.50 in basic allotment.
• 91.61 percent Texas attendance yield: 4,974,973.95 (statewide refined average daily attendance) ÷ 5,430,866 (statewide total enrollment) = 91.61 percent. Both totals summed across all 1,243 local education agencies in TEA's Summary of Finances FY2025-2026, Run ID 47136. Refined average daily attendance excludes ineligible attendance and counts half-day prekindergarten at 0.5, so the ratio is a yield, and it runs below the true share of students in seats.
• 455,892 student-equivalents: 5,430,866 − 4,974,973.95 = 455,892.05, rounded to 455,892.
• $2.83 billion statewide gap: 455,892.05 × $6,215 ≈ $2.833 billion. Computed from unrounded per-district values in the TEA file, the figure is $2,833,369,103.
• $309.2 million per point of statewide attendance: 4,974,973.95 × 0.01 × $6,215 = $309,194,631.
• Houston and Dallas Independent School District rows: the same two operations (district refined average daily attendance ÷ district enrollment; the gap × $6,215) applied to each district's row in the same TEA file, yielding 89.5 percent and $109.1 million for Houston Independent School District and 89.3 percent and $89.1 million for Dallas Independent School District.
• Figure 1 illustration: 100 units of average daily attendance lost. Texas annual loss: 100 × $6,215 = $621,500; the six in-year steps are $621,500 ÷ 6 = $103,583. California full annual loss: 100 × $13,296 = $1,329,600 at the grades 9-12 rate. Phase-in under the three-year-average election in EC 42238.05(a)(1): year one $0 (paid on prior year); year two one third ($443,200), because the three-year average still contains two pre-decline years; year three two thirds ($886,400); year four the full $1,329,600. Rates are held constant across the four illustrated years; actual rates change annually with cost-of-living adjustments.
• Absenteeism improvement annotations: the report's own year-over-year tallies are 2.7 percentage points, then 2.1, then just under 1; the plotted rates (28.3, 25.7, 23.5, 22.6) are rounded to one decimal in the source.

Two source links carry a caveat. The URLs for Texas Education Code chapters 48 and 25 were verified to resolve; the statutes site renders chapter text in-browser via script, so the text could not be machine-checked on the returned document.