Average daily attendance: emergencies: major safety hazard

Schools can preserve state funding when safety threats materially reduce attendance. The change recognizes fire agencies' authority to identify urgent hazards, including wildfire-related risks.

What the law does ​

• Allows a local fire agency to determine that a major safety hazard is imminent.
• Treats an attendance decline caused by that determination as eligible for emergency average-daily-attendance relief.
• Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to estimate and credit the attendance a school district, county office of education, or charter school likely would have had without the emergency.
• Takes effect immediately as an urgency law.

Who it affects ​

• School districts, county offices of education, and charter schools with materially reduced attendance.
• Pupils whose schools close or lose attendance because of an imminent major safety hazard.
• Local fire agencies and local law-enforcement agencies making hazard determinations.

Context ​

The law adds local fire agencies to an existing emergency-attendance rule that already covered hazards identified by local law enforcement.