School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Big Bear Elementary
Bear Valley Unified District
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
5
Total Closure Days
2
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
3
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
4
Total Closure Days
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
300
Students Impacted
254
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
421
Students Impacted
449
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
527
Students Impacted
570
Students Impacted
0
Overall Closures
| Reason | Category | Total Closure Days | Schools Impacted | Average Closure Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| 2003 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| 2007 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| Summit Fire 2015 | Wildfires | 2 | 1 | 2 |
Wildfire Closures
Natural Disasters & Weather 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 2003-04 | 4 | 570 | "Old Fire", wild fire resulting in mandatory evacuation of the community |
| 2007 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 2007-08 | 2 | 449 | 2007 southern California fires |
| 2007 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 2007-08 | 1 | 449 | 2007 southern California fires |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2008-09 | 3 | 421 | Extreme winter weather with heavy snow. |
| Summit Fire 2015 | Wildfires | 2015-16 | 2 | 254 | Summit Fire |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2004-05 | 2 | 527 | The winter storms damaged school facilities and caused transportation hazard. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 5 | 300 | Heavy snow and unsafe road conditions, State of Emergency |
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.