The money to fund your school’s budget is a combination of federal, state and local funds. To increase local funding, you can ask for more money from the mayor, supervisors, or the taxpayers through increased taxes, levies, and bond appropriations.

Your state funding is most likely one of two basic formulas – membership or attendance. Membership formulas fund schools by sending to the school district a set amount that varies year to year, based on revenues, election promises, new formulas, etc. For example, if your district received $7,200 for each student registered that would be membership funding. The other way, Average Daily Attendance (ADA) used in California, Texas, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Idaho and Kentucky is to take that $7,200 and divide it up into 180 pieces, or $40 a day for every day of school in an average 180 day school year. Miss a day of school, the school system just left $40 on the table. Miss a lot of school, and it really starts to add up.

Of course, your school district might not be in an ADA funding state, but attendance is still important to your school’s budget. Federal Impact Aid uses your district’s Attendance Ratio in its calculation of how much to send your school district. It is a complicated formula with more money if the parent lives on Indian lands than one that works in a Federal office building in town. But there is no question that simply increasing attendance will increase funding. The Department of Education Impact Aid office has an online calculator. Try it and see how much more you would be entitled to with improved attendance.