School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Salmon Creek School - A Charter
Harmony Union Elementary District
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
6
Total Closure Days
5
Total Closure Days
2
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
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
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
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
0
Students Impacted
191
Students Impacted
197
Students Impacted
177
Students Impacted
161
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
159
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 Wine Country Fires | Wildfires | 6 | 1 | 6 |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 6 | 1 | 6 |
| Camp Fire 2018 | Wildfires | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Gas Leak | Infrastructure | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Facilities Issues | 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 |
|---|
Reason | Category | School Year | Total Closure Days | Enrollment | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camp Fire 2018 | Wildfires | 2018-19 | 2 | 191 | 2018 Wildfires - Camp Fire - Air Quality |
| Facilities Issues | Infrastructure | 2010-11 | 1 | 159 | Mechanical breakdown in the districts sanitary water system, the school site was without water for the school day. No drinking water, no operable restroom facilities and the inablility to prepare lunches. |
| Gas Leak | Infrastructure | 2015-16 | 1 | 161 | Propane gas in classrooms |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2015-16 | 1 | 161 | Severe weather conditions and predictions of more storms to come. Power outages, numerous road closures and flooding. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 2 | 177 | Severe weather conditions, road closures and power outages |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 3 | 177 | Severe winter storm. Power outages, road closures due to flooding. |
| 2017 Wine Country Fires | Wildfires | 2017-18 | 6 | 197 | Sonoma Wildfires-State of Emergency |
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.