School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Capistrano Unified
Orange County, CA
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
58
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
122
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
58
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
2
Schools Impacted
61
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
3
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
50,504
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
1,330
Students Impacted
52,359
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
2,830
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Overall Closures
| Reason | Category | Total Closure Days | Schools Impacted | Average Closure Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 122 | 61 | 2 |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 58 | 58 | 1 |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| Fires & Explosions | Student Safety | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Facilities Issues | Infrastructure | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Wildfire Closures
Natural Disasters & Weather Closures
Student Safety Closures
Infrastructure Closures
Schools in district
Methodology and Data
In California, school districts that close schools for emergencies can request that the California Department of Education protect their attendance-based funding. Such requests, known as Form J-13A waivers, must list the closed schools, dates, number of lost days and reasons for the emergency. Using the California Public Records Act, CalMatters compiled the 17 years of these requests on file with the department to build a school-site level database of reported school closures.
Closure days were defined as one lost day of instruction at a single public school site. School that did not report any closures or where enrollment could not be verified were omitted.
School districts self-report their closure information to state education authorities, who hand-enter it into a database for internal use. For this reason, it may contain errors and inconsistencies. Because the state does not specify a deadline for requesting J-13A waivers, some districts submitted multiple school closure incidents on a single request, or submitted multiple requests for a single incident. In these cases, CalMatters manually cleaned and sorted the data.
If you have any questions about the database, discover any errors or have interest in downloading the data, please email ricardo@calmatters.org. Read more about our data in our full methodology.