School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Comptche Elementary
Mendocino Unified District
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
4
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
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
1
Students Impacted
17
Students Impacted
13
Students Impacted
14
Students Impacted
20
Students Impacted
17
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
15
Students Impacted
18
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
26
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
30
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 | 9 | 1 | 9 |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 6 | 1 | 6 |
| Pineapple Express | Natural Disasters & Weather | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Tsunami | Natural Disasters & Weather | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Facilities Issues | 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 | 2 | 14 | Electrical power and internet outage caused by storm |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2010-11 | 1 | 15 | Heavy constant rain over several days caused mud slides and erosion of the Comptche-Ukiah Road. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 1 | 14 | Inclement weather resulted in power outage. |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2002-03 | 3 | 30 | Loss of electricity (11/8/02, 12/16/02, 12/17/02) |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2007-08 | 1 | 26 | Loss of electricity due to storm of wind, snow, and rain |
| Pineapple Express | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2014-15 | 1 | 17 | Pineapple Express - Winter Storm |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2007-08 | 1 | 26 | Power outage |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2017-18 | 1 | 13 | Power outage - other |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2015-16 | 1 | 20 | Power outage due to severe weater. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2009-10 | 1 | 18 | Power outage due to storm |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2014-15 | 2 | 17 | Storm caused power outages and blocked roadways |
| Tsunami | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2010-11 | 1 | 15 | Tsunami resulting from March 10, 2011 earthquake in Japan. |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2018-19 | 1 | 17 | power outage - other (unplanned PG&E power outage) |
| Facilities Issues | Infrastructure | 2002-03 | 1 | 30 | water main break (12/20/02) |
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.