CBEDS Frequently Asked Questions

LEAs use the CBEDS-ORA, a web-based application, to submit the CDIF, SIF, and DOCS data.

The CBEDS Online Reporting Application[https://www3.cde.ca.gov/opuscbeds/login.aspx] is available via the CDE CBEDS [https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/index.asp] web page (under the CBEDS-ORA heading). A CDE issued user name and password are needed to log into the application.

User names and passwords for CBEDS-ORA are sent to CBEDS coordinators, district superintendents, and charter administrators in July. If you did not receive your logon information, please email the CBEDS/CDS Support Office at cbeds@cde.ca.gov. Only authorized personnel will be given logon information.

CBEDS training is available via the CDE CBEDS[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/index.asp] web page under the “Training” heading. The training includes a general overview of CBEDS and instructions on submitting CDIF, SIF, and DOCS data to the CDE. The training is a video consisting of Microsoft PowerPoint with voice-over narration, and lasts approximately forty minutes.

The CBEDS Administrative Manual is available on the CDE CBEDS[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/index.asp] web page under the "Instructional Resources" heading.

In order to fulfill state reporting requirements, as specified in California Education Code (EC) Section 41850.1(c), the CDE will be collecting the required non-fiscal home-to-school transportation data via the CBEDS data collection. This data will be collected on the CDIF and will be required of all school districts and COEs providing pupil transportation services and that receive an apportionment pursuant to EC Section 41850.1.

The CBEDS-ORA file layout has changed since last year. The CDE will be collecting the required non-fiscal home-to-school transportation data via the CBEDS data collection. Therefore, this element has been added to the file layout.

Charter schools may choose to report their CBEDS data to the CDE via one of the options listed below. The charter school’s funding type does not affect the charter school’s reporting choice.

1. The charter school reports CBEDS data independent of its authorizing agency and directly to the CDE.
   The independently reporting charter school completes the SIF, and not a CDIF or DOCS. Estimated teacher hires data are reported on the SIF.
2. The charter school’s authorizing agency reports the charter school’s data to the CDE.
   The authorizing agency reports all applicable information about their charter schools on the CDIF, and submits an SIF for the charter school.

CBEDS data are to be reported for all public schools maintained by county offices of education (COEs) and school districts that are, or will be, open and providing instruction to students on or before Information Day, October 2, 2024. CBEDS data are not to be reported for preschools, adult education centers, regional occupation centers/programs, private schools, children's centers, or after-school programs.

If you have a school that meets the reporting requirements for CBEDS and does not have a CDS code, you will need to work with your LEA's CDS Coordinator to request a CDS code by completing the Application for a CDS Code[https://www3.cde.ca.gov/opuscds/appcdscode/]. Follow the online application instructions to submit supporting documents such as board minutes showing approval of the formation and establishment of the school. Please review the CDE’s Definition of a School[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/si/ds/dos.asp] to ensure that proposed new schools meet the requirements for obtaining a CDS code. Once a CDS code is assigned to your school, you may report CBEDS data for the school through the CBEDS-ORA.

Only the types of schools for which the CDE expects to receive CBEDS data are included on the List of Expected Schools. If you have a school that you feel should be on the List of Expected Schools, please contact CDE CBEDS staff.

To notify the CDE of a temporarily non-operational school or a school that does not have students enrolled as of Information Day, use the List of Expected Schools, which is available from the Main Menu within CBEDS-ORA. Contact your LEA's CALPADS Administrator to confirm that no student enrollments were reported on the CALPADS Operational Data Store (ODS) Report 1.1 on Information Day. Print out the List of Expected Schools, and indicate the school that is temporarily non-operational by providing an effective date and a brief reason for the school not operating. Have your district superintendent sign the list and e-mail the signed copy to the CBEDS/CDS Support Office at cbeds@cde.ca.gov. Once your list is received and processed, you will be relieved from having to report current year data for the school.

All changes to the List of Expected Schools, except to notify the CDE of a temporarily non-operational school, must be submitted through the OPUS-CDS[https://www3.cde.ca.gov/opuscds/default.aspx] application by your LEA’s CDS coordinator. The CDS coordinator’s contact information for your LEA is included on the CBEDS List of Expected Schools which is available within CBEDS-ORA[https://www3.cde.ca.gov/opuscbeds/login.aspx].

No. Please do not submit the back-up copies for the CDIF, SIF or DOCS.

First, note that any modifications to already-submitted data must be done prior to the final due date or within the amendment window. To modify your CBEDS data: Log in to the CBEDS-ORA, decertify your data by attempting to edit the data, make the modification(s), and resubmit your data.

Superintendents and charter school administrators will be notified if LEAs are late in submitting their CBEDS data. Since CBEDS data are collected in order to meet federal and state reporting mandates, it is important for LEAs to meet designated reporting deadlines to allow the CDE time to review, verify, and analyze data prior to releasing and providing data to federal and state officials. If data are not received prior to the CDE release of data, data will be omitted, which may impact funding, policy decision making, and may result in skewed or inaccurate data that LEAs may then be asked to justify.

No. The CDIF is only completed by districts and county offices of education. Independently reporting charter schools only report data on the SIF.

No. Only report the FTE of employees assigned to the county or district office on the CDIF. Do not use the CDIF to report the total number of classified staff reported at each of your school sites.

Note: Regional occupational center/programs (ROC/Ps), preschool, child care, or adult education classified employees are not to be included in your CBEDS counts.

The district where the employees are physically working should report the staff, so your district should report the groundskeeper as “Other Classified Staff.”

No. Do not include estimated hires for your independently reporting charter schools (IRCs) in your district's count of estimated teacher hires on the CDIF. IRCs will report their estimated teacher hires data on their SIF.

No, the Average Daily Riders should be less than or equal to the total Riders by Demographics. The Average Daily Riders is how many students get home-to-school transportation services on average each day, while the total Riders by Demographics is how many students received home-to-school transportation services in the entire school year.

Effective July 10, 2023, Education Code Section 41850.1, requires the California Department of Education to annually collect transportation data from each local educational agency (LEA) providing pupil transportation services and that receives transportation apportionments. It specifically requires the demographic characteristics of pupils transported to be collected. Therefore, LEAs shall report the demographics of the students receiving transportation services. If a student’s ethnicity or racial designation is unknown, you may report the student under the Two or More Races category.

Yes, per Education Code Section 41850 (d), the following types of special education transportation shall be included:

• The transportation of severely disabled special day class pupils, and orthopedically impaired pupils who require a vehicle with a wheelchair lift, who received transportation in the prior fiscal year, as specified in their individualized education program.
• A vehicle that was used to transport special education pupils.

The total will be calculated once you save the data you just entered.

The Home-to-School transportation data shall be reported for the prior year, 2023–24.

Home-to-school transportation services do not only consist of transportation that is provided by the district. Services may be provided through other means, such as the purchase of transit passes or payments to parents in-lieu of transportation. A complete list of home-to-school transportation modes is available in the CBEDS Glossary tab-section D[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/gicdif.asp].

Charter schools do not receive transportation funding, therefore data for charter schools should not be included in the district’s transportation data.

Blank SIFs (as well as the CDIF) are available from the CDE CBEDS[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/index.asp] web page and may be printed from the Reports Menu within CBEDS-ORA.

Report the staff member in the "Two or More Races, Not Hispanic" column.

The racial designation entitled "Two or More Races, not Hispanic" is aligned with the federal standards for collecting and reporting multiple races. This is not a designation that should be used for the local collection of race data from individuals, but should be used to report aggregate data of more than one race. You may also include staff in this category if they did not report a race or ethnicity.

Please note: You are not to include staff in this category if they reported their ethnicity as Hispanic or Latino and also reported one or more races. These staff should be reported in the “Hispanic or Latino or Any Race” category.

If a classified staff position is vacant and/or the regular staff member is on a leave of absence on Information Day but will return on or prior to October 31, then report the regular staff. If the regular classified staff will not return until after October 31, then report the substitute instead.

The definition of full time should be determined locally and may vary from agency to agency. If your county or district does not have a definition for full-time, for CBEDS purposes, staff who work 30 hours or more per week shall be considered full-time.

Take the number of hours the employee works each day (5.75) and divide it by the number of full-time hours (8). The result is .71875. Since you are to report to two decimal places, the FTE would be .72.

The person must be employed by, paid by, or contracted with the district to be reported on CBEDS.

Yes. Report all classified staff regardless of their assignment. However, do not report the classified staff employed in a regional ROC/P, preschool, child care, or adult education center.

Yes, long-term substitutes should be included in your CBEDS report.

Report the FTE for each assignment (e.g., “.50 FTE paraprofessional” and “.50 office/clerical”).

Report the FTE at each school site to which he/she is assigned. In other words, if a half-time employee works at two school sites, the employee's FTE is reported as .25 at each site.

Classified staff are to be reported at the site where they are assigned to provide services. If a district assigned staff member is physically located at a school site, but is not providing any services to that school site, they would be reported at the district office, not the school. For example, if you have staff that support a district run program, but the staff are housed at a school because there is no room at the district office location to house these staff, the staff would be reported at the district office and not the school where they are physically located.

LEAs are no longer required to request a waiver from the State Board of Education in order to operate K programs and TK programs for different lengths of time, whether at the same school site or a different school site within the district. Pursuant to Education Code Section 37202 , you may submit data reflecting different lengths of K and TK programs.

Since your school does not actually provide the K or TK services and you send your students to another school for these services, on CBEDS you would report that your school does not offer a K or TK program. The school that provides the service would report that they offer a K or TK program on CBEDS by indicating the appropriate length of their K or TK program.

LEAs must offer TK and K classes to all age-eligible children to attend. It is appropriate, however, if an LEA has a K program at one school and offers a TK program at another school, as long as the students are being served within their district. Charter schools that offer a K program, however, must also offer a TK program.

Since independent study, and other similar courses, are equivalent to classroom-based courses, when determining full-day or part-day kindergarten programs you are to consider the instructional minutes that are equivalent to a classroom-based course, rather than the one or so hours per week that you physically meet with the student.

Yes, all schools must complete this section. Please select “None” for each school in your district that does not offer a kindergarten or transitional kindergarten program.

Only check "traditional" in part 1.

In part 1, check "traditional" and "single-track." In part 2, check the appropriate single-track, year-round calendar.

In part 3, report the first day of school for the earliest track and the last day of school for the latest track.

No. The DOCS is only completed by districts participating in the DOC program. Charter schools are not considered a district for purposes of the DOC program. For more information on DOCS, please refer to the DOCS[https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/eo//dc/] web page.

Your district’s CBEDS coordinator should be able to look up your CBEDS DOC submission status using the CBEDS ORA. If you need assistance finding out who your CBEDS Coordinator is, of if they are unavailable, you may email the following CDE Offices for assistance: CBEDS at cbeds@cde.ca.gov or DOC at districtofchoice@cde.ca.gov.

Per statute, DOC data are due to the CDS on October 15. Districts may make corrections to their CBEDS DOC data through the CBEDS amendment window.

Only include DOC transfers who transferred into the district in the current year.

Districts are to include information about all DOC transfer requests they receive for the current year in the CBEDS report. This includes requests for students who may have moved prior to the start of the school year.

If the students were enrolled in the district on October 15, you should include them in your DOC CBEDS reports. If the students had exited from the district prior to October 15, do not include them in your CBEDS DOC reports.

When reporting the count of students receiving transportation services, only count the students participating in the DOC program.

No, sections B and C only need to be completed if your district provided transportation services for DOC transfer students.

CBEDS-ORA is a web application used by authorized CBEDS LEA coordinators to report appropriate CDIF, SIF and DOCS data to the CDE. It also allows users to update coordinator contact information, and it contains a list of schools that are expected to submit CBEDS data.

Each system (CALPADSand the CBEDS-ORA) is used to report different types of data. CALPADS is a statewide longitudinal education data system used by LEAs to report student-level and staff-level data. CALPADS houses student-level enrollment, demographic, program, and assessment data for evaluation and research use, as well as course enrollment, course completion, and staff assignments.

CBEDS-ORA is the system used by LEAs to report aggregate data. Data reported through CBEDS-ORA include non-student data, such as aggregate counts of classified staff, estimated number of teacher hires, kindergarten program types, and school educational calendar type.

LEA representatives (CBEDS coordinators) use a web browser to navigate to the CBEDS-ORA[https://www3.cde.ca.gov/opuscbeds/login.aspx] logon page. Users then log on using their unique user name and password, which are issued by the CDE. After all data have been entered into CBEDS-ORA, coordinators must certify the data.

For instructions on how to use CBEDS-ORA, please refer to the CBEDS-ORA Quick Guide[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/oraquickguide.asp]. CBEDS training is also available via the CDE CBEDS[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/] web page.

The CDE provides a file upload option for LEAs. However, once the file is uploaded, you must still go through the process of certifying your data. Files must be in the specified format for CBEDS-ORA in order for data to be uploaded. You may view the CBEDS File Import Specifications 2024-CDIF and SIF[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/documents/oralayout2024.docx] (DOCX) from the CDE CBEDS[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/index.asp] web page or within CBEDS-ORA[https://www3.cde.ca.gov/opuscbeds/login.aspx].

Yes, data may be exported into a tab-delimited text file. The option to export data is available through the Advanced Features option from the Main Menu.

Additional resources on CBEDS-ORA are available on the CDE CBEDS[https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/dc/cb/index.asp] web page.