School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Arena Elementary
Arena Union Elementary District
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
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
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Students Impacted
238
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
254
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
261
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
265
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
226
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Overall Closures
Reason | Category | Total Closure Days | Schools Impacted | Average Closure Days |
|---|
Reason | Category | Total Closure Days | Schools Impacted | Average Closure Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| Pineapple Express | Natural Disasters & Weather | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Natural Disasters & Weather Closures
Infrastructure Closures
Reported Incidents
Nature of Emergency descriptions are included as they were detailed in records from the California Department of Education and may contain grammatical errors and inconsistencies.
Reason | Category | School Year | Total Closure Days | Enrollment | Description |
|---|
Reason | Category | School Year | Total Closure Days | Enrollment | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 1 | 254 | Inclement weather resulted in flooding, power outages, road closures, and closure of the Garcia River Bridge. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 2 | 254 | Inclement weather resulted in power outages, road closures, and flooding. |
| Pineapple Express | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2014-15 | 1 | 261 | Pineapple Express - Winter Storm |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2012-13 | 1 | 265 | Power outage due to car accident hitting guy wire |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2018-19 | 1 | 238 | Severe weather conditions |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2009-10 | 1 | 226 | Weather related flooding and power outages. |
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.