California’s Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELO-P) funds before- and after-school, summer, and intersession care for TK-6 students at participating LEAs. Since the 2025-26 school year, every LEA in the program must report ELO-P enrollment and attendance data to the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) via the LEAP extract (Local Educational Agency Programs). The LEAP file uses program code 194 and captures two items per student: whether a signed registration form is on file and the number of program days attended.
A skipped or incomplete LEAP submission can block your district’s end-of-year certification. For 2026-27, certain errors that ran as warnings in the first year become blockers your team must resolve before the certification window closes. This guide covers the operational steps, the submission process from data setup through certification, and the errors that hold up LEAs most often.
ELO-P and CALPADS Changes for 2026-27
Preparing for CALPADS submission in 2026-27 means tracking changes on two fronts.
The first change is on the CALPADS side: validations that were warnings during the 2025-26 EOY 1 cycle become fatal in 2026-27. A participating LEA that submits no LEAP records, or a LEAP file with an invalid reporting LEA, cannot certify year-end unless the issue is resolved before the window closes. Programs with clean 2025-26 submissions won’t be affected; those that skipped submission or had unresolved errors should start fresh under the new deadline.
The second change is eligibility: the UPP threshold for Rate 1 fell from 75% to 55%, bringing more LEAs under Rate 1 obligations. These LEAs must offer service to all classroom-based TK-6 students who request it, so affected districts may see different CALPADS enrollment figures this year. For 2026–27, ELO-P equipment costing $1,500 or more must be inventoried starting January 1, 2026, and LEAs must annually declare at the board level whether they will operate ELO-P.
What Your Program Records Need to Support CALPADS Submission
CALPADS captures enrollment and days attended, but behind those two data points lies a set of operational records your program must maintain.
Enrollment: it starts with the registration form
For CALPADS purposes, enrollment begins the moment a signed registration form exists on file, regardless of whether the student ever attended a session. That definition matters because the LEAP file requires a record for every enrolled student, including students with zero attendance. If your registration process is inconsistent across sites, or forms go missing, your LEAP file will have gaps.
The nine-hour day requirement and the 30-day non-instructional minimum are separate from CALPADS data fields, but they’re why timestamped records matter. CALPADS only asks how many days a student attended. An audit, on the other hand, may ask whether those days actually met the nine-hour combined requirement. Sign-in and sign-out logs with exact times let your team answer that question. A date-only attendance record satisfies the CALPADS day count but leaves you without audit documentation for the nine-hour requirement.
Attendance: what counts as a program day
For CALPADS, any attendance on a given calendar date counts as one program day. Five minutes counts the same as a full afternoon. A before- and after-school session on the same day still counts as one day. Your internal tracking can capture all of that detail (and should), but the number reported to CALPADS is a simple day count per student.
Non-instructional days (summer, intersession, and extended school year days) count toward both the state’s 30-day requirement and your students’ CALPADS day totals. Each of those days requires the same sign-in and sign-out records as a regular program day.
Documentation your team needs to maintain for audit
Beyond enrollment and attendance, these records need to be in order:
Board-approved program plan. Addresses 11 quality elements, posted publicly within 30 days of approval, updated at least every three years.
Cost-sharing records. If ELO-P funds are shared with ASES, 21st CCLC, or Title I, the calculation method must be documented.
Inventory records. Items purchased with ELO-P funds at $1,500 or more, effective January 1, 2026.
Staffing ratios (10:1 for TK/K, 20:1 for grades 1-6) are an operational requirement. An auditor will use staffing logs and schedules to verify compliance with these ratios.
For the full list of ELO-P compliance requirements and audit penalties, see Compliance Rules and Requirements for the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELO-P).
How to Submit CALPADS Data for ELO-P
The LEAP file is an LEA-level extract. All ELO-P enrollment and attendance data rolls up to the LEA and is submitted as a single file covering July 1 through June 30.
The LEAP submission in 5 steps
Step 1: Confirm Your Enrollment Records
Before generating any extract, verify that every student with a signed registration form is included in your system with program code 194. This includes students who enrolled but never attended a single session. Omitting these students is the most common LEAP error and will become a fatal validation error in 2026-27.
Run a cross-check between your program registration records and the students in your student information system (SIS). Look for students in your physical registration records who are missing from the SIS, or students flagged with code 194 in the SIS who have no corresponding paper file.
Step 2: Set Up Program Code 194
In your SIS, ELO-P, ASES, and 21st Century Community Learning Centers participants all share the same Education Program Code: 194. Each program record must include valid start and end dates within the July 1 to June 30 academic year. Each student must also have an active enrollment record at an LEA school during the reporting year. Students the program served without an active LEA school enrollment should not appear in the LEAP file. If they do, they trigger a fatal LEAP0737E1 error.
Step 3: Record Your Attendance Days
Field 26.09 captures the number of program days each student attended, as an integer from 0 to 300. Any attendance at all on a calendar day counts as one day. Five minutes of participation counts the same as a full afternoon. A before-school and after-school block on the same day still counts as one day.
Students who enrolled but never attended report 0 in Field 26.09. Leaving the field blank or omitting those students entirely causes errors that block certification.
Step 4: Generate and Validate the LEAP Extract
Most SIS platforms pull the LEAP extract from the EOY tab in the CALPADS section. Before submitting, run a local validation to catch the most common issues:
- Students missing a valid SSID
- Students flagged with code 194 who have no program record
- Overlapping program date ranges
- Participation day totals that don’t match your attendance records
- Students with no active LEA enrollment during the year
Compare the extract against your own program roster. The number of students in the file should match the number with signed registration forms. The day counts should be consistent with your attendance logs.
Step 5: Submit and Certify Report 19.1
Upload the LEAP file to CALPADS during the EOY 1 submission window, which opens in May and closes with an amendment window on July 31. After submission, certify Report 19.1 (Expanded Learning Program Participants: Count). Report 19.2 lists the individual students and serves as the backup detail. LEAs that do not participate in any expanded learning program must still open Report 19.1 to confirm no data exists.
Common ELO-P CALPADS Submission Errors
Reporting only students who attended
The LEAP file requires all enrolled students, not just those who participated. A student whose family signed a registration form but never attended a single session still needs a record in the LEAP file with a 0 in Field 26.09.
LEAP0737E1: No matching LEA enrollment
This error appears when a student in the LEAP file has no corresponding enrollment record at an LEA school for the academic year. Students served only by the program, without a school enrollment record, should not be in the file. Contact ExpandedLearning@cde.ca.gov if you have students who don’t fit the standard enrollment categories.
LEAP0735: Invalid day count
Field 26.09 must contain an integer between 0 and 300. Blanks, decimals, or values over 300 fail this validation. Students with no attendance receive 0 in Field 26.09.
LEAP0736: Day count without code 194
Field 26.09 can only be populated for students reported under program code 194. A record with a day count but a different or missing program code triggers this fatal error.
CERT177: Participating LEA with no LEAP records
If your LEA has an ELO-P program but submits no LEAP records, CALPADS flags it. This validation is fatal in 2026-27, meaning it will block end-of-year certification. CALPADS Update Flash #305 documents this change.
Students served at off-site locations
Programs that operate at locations other than a student’s home school sometimes miss those students in the extract. The LEAP file is LEA-level, so it covers all sites. Make sure your data collection process captures attendance from every site in the same system.
How Attendance Tracking Affects Your ELO-P CALPADS Submission
The LEAP file only asks for a day count, but getting to that number accurately depends entirely on how your program collects attendance across the year.
Programs working from paper sign-in sheets face a consolidation step before EOY: someone has to convert handwritten logs into day counts, site by site, student by student, for the full July 1 to June 30 year. That step takes significant time and introduces errors. A student signed in on a sheet that was never transferred to the SIS becomes a missing day in the LEAP extract with no easy way to recover it after the fact.
Programs that track attendance digitally, with sessions logged as they happen, don’t have a consolidation step. The day counts are already in the system when the submission window opens.
The minimum your system needs to support CALPADS submission is a record per student per program day confirming attendance occurred. For audit purposes, you also need timestamps showing arrival and departure to document the nine-hour day requirement. If your current setup produces a date but no time, you’re covered for CALPADS but exposed on audit.
How AfterSchool HQ Supports ELO-P Programs
AfterSchool HQ syncs overnight with your student information system, including Aeries and PowerSchool. Enrollment data flows in automatically, and attendance flows back, keeping your SIS current without exports. CALPADS records use the same data staff capture daily.
Staff record attendance digitally at every site via QR code, kiosk, or manual roster. Each session logs arrival and departure times, meeting CALPADS day-count and nine-hour audit documentation requirements.
Because all attendance flows into one platform, program coordinators don’t spend weeks before the EOY window reconciling paper logs from multiple sites. Staff can pull attendance by student, by site, or by date range without assembling it from scattered sources.
For programs managing multiple sites, role-based access keeps data clean: site coordinators work within their own records, while program directors see the full picture across locations. AiRA, AfterSchool HQ’s AI reporting assistant, and Grafana-powered dashboards give leadership visibility into participation and attendance patterns throughout the year, so the EOY window doesn’t arrive as a surprise.
Ready to Stop Rebuilding Your Attendance Data Before Every Submission?
AfterSchool HQ
If your team is still pulling together sign-in sheets from multiple sites before the CALPADS window opens, there’s a better way to set up the year.
Book a quick demo, and we’ll show you how AfterSchool HQ keeps your ELO-P data organized from day one, so the submission window becomes a review rather than a last-minute rebuild.
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