School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Big Valley Elementary
Big Valley Joint Unified District
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
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
2
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Students Impacted
61
Students Impacted
65
Students Impacted
66
Students Impacted
78
Students Impacted
83
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
94
Students Impacted
110
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
84
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
107
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
111
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 | 8 | 1 | 8 |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| Threat of Violence | Student Safety | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Pineapple Express | Natural Disasters & Weather | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Other Reasons | Other | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Natural Disasters & Weather Closures
Student Safety Closures
Infrastructure Closures
Other 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2008-09 | 1 | 84 | A problem at the PG&E Powerhouse caused a power outage before school started and was not due to be fixed until after 12:30 PM. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2012-13 | 1 | 94 | Heavy snow |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2005-06 | 2 | 107 | Heavy snowstorm and power outage. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2018-19 | 1 | 61 | Impassable roads - weather |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 1 | 66 | Inclement weather resulted in flooding and road closures. |
| Pineapple Express | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2014-15 | 1 | 83 | Pineapple Express - power outage due to winter storm. |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2011-12 | 1 | 110 | Power Outage |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 1 | 66 | Power failure due to inclement weather |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2015-16 | 1 | 78 | Power outage |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2015-16 | 1 | 78 | Power outage |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 1 | 66 | Power outage, severe winter storm; impassable roads. |
| Other Reasons | Other | 2014-15 | 1 | 83 | School employee passed away unexpectedly in an auto accident on December 4, 2014. The amount of employees who requested bereavement leave outweighed the availability of substitute employees. |
| Threat of Violence | Student Safety | 2017-18 | 1 | 65 | Threat |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2002-03 | 1 | 111 | Winter Storm |
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.