Certified July 20, 2026
The California Department of Education certified the 2026–27 Advance Principal Apportionment pursuant to Education Code Section 41330. Statewide total: $59,090,514,758 — up 15.5% from the 2025–26 P-2 total of $51.18 billion.
What Is the Advance Apportionment?
The Advance is the first of four apportionment certifications CDE issues each fiscal year (Advance → P-1 → P-2 → Annual). It sets each district, charter school, and county office of education's monthly state aid payments for July 2026 through January 2027 — before any 2026–27 attendance or local data exists yet.
To do that, CDE doesn't measure anything new. It takes each LEA's 2025–26 P-2 funding — the most recent complete certification — and runs it through statewide adjustment factors set by the 2026–27 Budget Act: a 2.87% cost-of-living adjustment, a $2.357 billion increase to the special education base rate, a re-estimated Education Protection Account share, and several program-specific rate changes.
The result is a reasonable placeholder, not a fresh measurement. CDE's own certification letter is explicit about this: the Advance "should not be used by LEAs for budgeting." Real attendance and local data get folded in starting at the 2026–27 First Principal Apportionment (P-1), certified in February 2027.
Where Advance Fits in the Yearly Cycle
| Certification | Certified By | Based On | Establishes Payments For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advance ← we're here | July 20 (2026–27: July 20, 2026) | Prior year (2025–26 P-2) data, statewide-adjusted | Monthly state aid payments, July – January |
| P-1 (supersedes Advance) | February 20, 2027 | Current year P-1 data reported to CDE | Monthly state aid payments, February – May |
| P-2 (supersedes P-1) | ~June 2027 | Current year P-2 data reported to CDE | Final state aid payment for the fiscal year in June |
| Annual (AN) (supersedes P-2) | February 2028 | Current year Annual data reported to CDE | Final recomputation; recertified up to three more times |
Statewide Notable Changes: 2026–27 Advance vs. 2025–26 P-2
Computed directly from CDE's official summary files — pasummary2627advance.xlsx and pasummary25p2.xlsx — summed across all California LEAs.
| Program | 2025–26 P-2 | 2026–27 Advance | $ Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LCFF State Aid (A-1+A-2+A-3) | $39,293,799,668 | $44,703,974,999 | ▲ $5,410,175,331 | ▲ 13.8% |
| EPA Entitlement (C-1) | $14,717,715,064 | $12,504,262,847 | ▼ ($2,213,452,217) | ▼ 15.0% |
| Special Education — AB 602 (A-9) | $4,572,720,152 | $6,999,976,000 | ▲ $2,427,255,848 | ▲ 53.1% |
| Special Education — Total (A-9…A-12) | $5,385,971,000 | $7,819,255,999 | ▲ $2,433,284,999 | ▲ 45.2% |
| Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (A-13) | $4,601,827,000 | $4,665,410,000 | ▲ $63,583,000 | ▲ 1.4% |
| Home-to-School Transportation (A-16) | $933,943,771 | $933,943,771 | — $0 | flat |
| Prop 28: Arts & Music (A-17) | $1,044,955,442 | $1,061,776,996 | ▲ $16,821,554 | ▲ 1.6% |
| Other State Aid (A-15) | $22,656,208 | $28,495,387 | ▲ $5,839,179 | ▲ 25.8% |
| B-1 — Total Principal Apportionment | $51,176,959,271 | $59,090,514,758 | ▲ $7,913,555,487 | ▲ 15.5% |
| D-1 — LCFF State Aid + EPA | $54,011,514,732 | $57,208,237,846 | ▲ $3,196,723,114 | ▲ 5.9% |
What's driving the biggest moves:
LCFF State Aid is up 13.8% ($5.41B) — mostly the 2.87% statutory COLA plus a 1.44% base-grant rate adjustment (EC §42238.022) applied on top of 2025–26 P-2 funding.
EPA is down 15.0% ($2.21B) even though total funding rose — EPA is a fixed statewide pool (~$12.5B for 2026–27) split by formula, and as LCFF entitlements grow faster than the EPA pool, EPA's offset share shrinks and LCFF state aid absorbs more of the total. This is the flip side of the large EPA increase in 2025–26 P-2 that this site flagged in July.
Special education jumped 45.2% ($2.43B), driven almost entirely by AB 602 (+53.1%, +$2.43B) — the 2026–27 Budget Act raised the AB 602 base funding rate to $1,340 per unit, a $2.357 billion increase on its own.
Home-to-School Transportation is exactly flat. CDE's letter says the Advance simply carries forward each LEA's 2025–26 P-2 transportation reimbursement unchanged; the real 2026–27 HTST amount won't be set until P-2 next June.
What the Advance Doesn't Tell You Yet
Your district's real 2026–27 attendance isn't reflected. Every LEA's Advance ADA is simply its 2025–26 P-2 Funded ADA carried forward — that's why the district report's ADA row shows 0% change for every district right now. Actual 2026–27 attendance won't appear until P-1.
The LCFF Equity Multiplier isn't funded yet. Eligibility depends on a stability-rate report CDE won't publish until December 2026, so this program is entirely absent from Advance and will first appear at P-1.
Child Nutrition programs aren't part of this data at all. School meal programs are administered separately by CDE's Nutrition Services Division, not through the Principal Apportionment — they don't appear in this file or in this site's district report.
Look up any California school district's full line-item Advance vs. P-2 comparison, with every A-1 through A-24 funding component.
Search Your District →