clearAMS / Pricing
Free for every California school district.
Start free. Stay free if it's enough.
The free tier is the product, not a trial: everything a district needs to file a compliant plan for every school this year. The compliance tier is for districts that want the whole three-year cycle and the audit record behind it.
Any size · every school · no time limit
A compliant plan for every school, for the current year — everything a district needs to meet the requirement, and nothing to buy to get there.
- Guided plan builder for every school
- Allocation ceiling and 80/20 guardrails, enforced as you type
- Review, revisions, line comments and SSC formalization
- Your district's own space, roles and approved list
- Your district's own Google sign-in client, if you want IT to own the consent screen
- Onboarding help from a person — we check your roster and allocations against CDE with you, and walk your principals through a first plan
- The current year only — prior and future years are not open
- Under 500 students? Every year of the cycle, the plan document and the SSC deck are free too
- Carryover, forecasting and cross-year reconciliation
- Allowability coaching and suggested wording
- Supply categories and cost estimates written for you
- Bundled-line breakdowns on larger lines
- Plan document of record and branded SSC deck
- Level II support — after onboarding, free-tier questions are answered by the guidance in the app and our documentation, not by a person
No district minimum · a ceiling set as a share of your own allocation · small enough and there is no invoice at all
Everything in Free, plus the years connecting — which is where Prop 28 audit risk actually lives.
- All three years of the cycle — the spend window Prop 28 actually measures you against, not one year at a time
- Carryover and cross-year reconciliation — what was allocated, what was spent, and which year's money paid for it
- Allowability coaching and suggested wording — a line flagged before it is filed, and language that survives review
- Supply lines written for you — type "art supplies, $8,000" and the coach recommends the material categories a reviewer expects, then splits your $8,000 across them as suggested wording. One click to use it; the split always adds up to your figure
- Bundled-line breakdowns — a line above the itemization threshold is asked to show how the total divides across what it names, with the rewritten line ready to paste
- Plan document of record and branded SSC deck — generated from the plan, and filed as a PDF record copy at each approval
- Level II support — a person who can open your actual account: reproduce the problem against your plans, correct a record, explain a verdict on a specific line, recover a plan from backup
One agreement, many districts
For a county office of education covering its districts, or a consortium buying together.
- One agreement across participating districts, each in its own separate space
- Volume terms, priced below the sum of what the districts would pay separately
- Onboarding and training for county staff
- Invoicing, security review and procurement handled once
Founding districts
Three years at the rate you start on
Prop 28 measures you over a three-year spend window. So does this: start your first paid term by June 30, 2027 and your rates are held for your first three full fiscal years, whatever the published price does in the meantime — or our then-current published rates, whichever produces the lower fee. Renew twice and the third year is free.
Billed one fiscal year at a time, one purchase order per year — no multi-year encumbrance, and nothing for your business office to object to. The credit is earned by renewing, not paid up front, and it is written into the Terms (§5.6), not just this page. If you can spend one-time funds and would rather prepay, we will take it that way instead; ask.
Questions
Is the free tier really free?
Yes. Any California school district, county office of education or state special school can build, review and file a compliant plan for every one of its schools for the current year, at no cost, with no trial period and no size limit. An LEA under 500 students also gets every year of the cycle, the plan document and the SSC deck free. It is not a demo: the allocation ceiling and 80/20 rule are enforced on the server for free districts exactly as for paying ones, and your district gets its own space, roles and approved list. You pay only if you choose the compliance tier for the full three-year cycle and its audit record.
What the free tier does not include is the intelligence coaching. The line-by-line allowability check, and the wording it writes for you to use, come only with the compliance tier. A free district gets the rules enforced, not the coach. You can try the coaching in a practice district before you decide.
Which budget does the compliance tier come out of?
That is your district’s decision, made by your business office. clearAMS is built and priced as district administrative software, not as a Prop 28 expenditure, and we don’t advise on how to code it (Terms of Service § 5.3).
How is the compliance tier priced?
By school level, for each school receiving an allocation: one rate for elementary schools, a higher one for middle schools, and a higher one again for high schools and for a single school serving K–12. Continuation, alternative and SpEd preschool sites are billed at the elementary rate; district offices are not billed at all. The annual fee is the sum of those rates. There is no district minimum, and the fee is never more than a fixed fraction of one percent of your Arts & Music in Schools allocation as certified by the CDE — that limit is a maximum only, and it never raises a fee. Where the total comes to less than the minimum invoice, there is no charge and no invoice at all for that term. Rates withheld — the rate card is in Terms of Service § 5.2, and if you tell us your school count we will send the exact figure.
How are charter schools handled?
A charter school that is its own LEA is billed at the charter rate for its site, whatever grades it serves — that rate replaces the school-level rate rather than adding to it, so a charter serving K–12 is billed once. Whether a school is a charter is taken from the CDE's public school directory, not from anything the district tells us. Then the minimum invoice decides the tier: a charter school large enough to be invoiced contracts on the compliance tier, and one whose fee falls below the minimum is a free-tier LEA like any other. The affordability limit does most of the deciding there, so a majority of funded charter LEAs land on the free side of the line. A charter authorized by, and operated as part of, a district that is itself the LEA is not affected at all: that district contracts like any other and keeps the free tier, even though its charter sites are billed at the charter rate. Terms of Service § 5.1 states the rule and why it is drawn this way; figures withheld here.
When does a term start and end?
Every term ends on June 30, so one purchase order covers one fiscal year. If you start partway through the year, the first term is prorated by month: starting in January, for example, you pay six twelfths of the annual price. Renewals run July 1 to June 30, each one a new purchase order — nothing auto-renews and nothing is charged without a PO.
What happens to our plans if a contract ends?
Nothing is deleted. The district drops to the free tier: the compliance tooling is withheld, but data isn't. Your plans, approval records and previously generated record copies stay readable and keep their status. The multi-year view is compliance-tier tooling, so it stops applying — the years behind it are kept, and come back the moment a term does.
Plan free.
Document every dollar.
Set your district up on the free tier today. When you want the three-year record, tell us your school count and we'll send the exact number and what your business office needs to raise a PO.