School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Dobbins Elementary
Marysville Joint Unified District
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
5
Total Closure Days
5
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
0
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Schools Impacted
1
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
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Students Impacted
39
Students Impacted
42
Students Impacted
45
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
75
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
92
Students Impacted
82
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 | 6 | 1 | 6 |
| Cascade Fire 2017 | Wildfires | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| Fires & Explosions | Student Safety | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| Camp Fire 2018 | Wildfires | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Police Activity | Student Safety | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Wildfire Closures
Natural Disasters & Weather Closures
Student Safety 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camp Fire 2018 | Wildfires | 2018-19 | 2 | 39 | 2018 Wildfires - Camp Fire - Air Quality |
| Cascade Fire 2017 | Wildfires | 2017-18 | 5 | 42 | Cascade, Oregon House fire |
| Fires & Explosions | Student Safety | 2009-10 | 3 | 75 | Fire in the Dobbins area. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2007-08 | 1 | 92 | Heavy snow conditions, dangerous road conditions, and CHP closure of roads. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 5 | 45 | Inclement weather resulted in flooding, road closures, and mandatory evacuation related to Oroville Dam. |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2018-19 | 1 | 39 | PG&E power outage |
| Police Activity | Student Safety | 2006-07 | 1 | 82 | county-wide manhunt for known felon |
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.