School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Mountain High
Rim of the World Unified District
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
14
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
6
Total Closure Days
13
Total Closure Days
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
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
55
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
46
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
143
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
142
Students Impacted
144
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
143
Students Impacted
108
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 14 | 1 | 14 |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 13 | 1 | 13 |
| 2003 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 13 | 1 | 13 |
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 |
|---|
Reason | Category | School Year | Total Closure Days | Enrollment | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2004-05 | 1 | 143 | Extreme weather conditions and power outages |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 1 | 46 | Hazardous road conditions (6 built in snow days, this was 1 extra day that was not built in) |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2012-13 | 1 | 143 | Hazardous road conditions and snow accumulation. Built in 7 snow days, this is for an eighth snow day. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2018-19 | 3 | 55 | Impassable Roads due to Snow Accumulation |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2004-05 | 5 | 143 | Severe rainstorms causing flooding, mudslides, roads blocked due to debris flow and damage to roads. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2008-09 | 2 | 142 | Severe weather, heavy snowfall. |
| 2003 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 2003-04 | 13 | 108 | Wildfires during period of 10/25/03 - 11/4/03 |
| 2007 Southern California Fires | Wildfires | 2007-08 | 14 | 144 | wildfires - mandatory evacuations |
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.