School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Palmdale Learning Plaza
Palmdale Elementary District
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
0
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
4
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Schools Impacted
0
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
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
831
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
891
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
890
Students Impacted
894
Students Impacted
840
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
696
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 | 7 | 1 | 7 |
| Facilities Issues | Infrastructure | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Police Activity | Student Safety | 1 | 1 | 1 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2002-03 | 1 | 696 | Inclement weather -flooding |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2008-09 | 3 | 891 | Inclement weather caused road closures. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2004-05 | 2 | 840 | Inclement weather flooding |
| Police Activity | Student Safety | 2008-09 | 1 | 891 | Police car in pursuit lost control of vehicle and rolled destroying the school site's water main. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2010-11 | 1 | 831 | Unsafe driving conditions due to inclement weather. Severe storm. |
| Facilities Issues | Infrastructure | 2005-06 | 1 | 894 | Water services to school shut off, repairs failed twice during the repair period school had to be closed for additional repairs into school day. |
| Facilities Issues | Infrastructure | 2006-07 | 1 | 890 | extreme freezing temps, water pipes broke and caused flooding in large sections of the schools. These are 2 of 18 schools that had damage. All other schools were made habitabler by Tuesday morning. |
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.