School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Cobb Mountain Elementary
Middletown Unified District
Total Closure Days
7
Total Closure Days
6
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
15
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
2
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
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
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Students Impacted
147
Students Impacted
131
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
150
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
179
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
194
Students Impacted
193
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
209
Overall Closures
| Reason | Category | Total Closure Days | Schools Impacted | Average Closure Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Valley Fire 2015 | Wildfires | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 9 | 1 | 9 |
| 2017 Wine Country Fires | Wildfires | 6 | 1 | 6 |
| Rocky Fire 2015 | Wildfires | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| Camp Fire 2018 | Wildfires | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Wildfire Closures
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camp Fire 2018 | Wildfires | 2018-19 | 4 | 147 | 2018 Wildfires - Camp Fire - Air Quality |
| 2017 Wine Country Fires | Wildfires | 2017-18 | 6 | 131 | Lake, Napa and Sonoma county fires/unhealthy air quality |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2002-03 | 1 | 209 | Power outage |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2018-19 | 3 | 147 | Power outage - weather |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2007-08 | 2 | 179 | Road closures due to ice and snow. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2005-06 | 2 | 194 | Snow Storm - All Schools: 01/02/06, Cobb Mountain Elementary: 01/02/06 & 03/03/06. Mat.Decrease: Middleton Middle and High Schools |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2004-05 | 2 | 193 | Snow storm |
| Valley Fire 2015 | Wildfires | 2015-16 | 10 | 150 | Wildfire |
| Rocky Fire 2015 | Wildfires | 2015-16 | 5 | 150 | Wildfires |
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.