School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
Tamalpais High
Tamalpais Union High District
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
2
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
2
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
2
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
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
1,584
Students Impacted
1,527
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
1,321
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
1,116
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
1,147
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
1,065
Overall Closures
| Reason | Category | Total Closure Days | Schools Impacted | Average Closure Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facilities Issues | Infrastructure | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Outbreak & Quarantine | Student Safety | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| 2017 Wine Country Fires | Wildfires | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Pineapple Express | Natural Disasters & Weather | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outbreak & Quarantine | Student Safety | 2008-09 | 2 | 1116 | H1N1 Flu |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 2 | 1527 | Hazardous weather resulting in impassable roads |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2002-03 | 1 | 1065 | Loss of power - safety hazard |
| Pineapple Express | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2014-15 | 1 | 1321 | Pineapple Express - severe weather |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2002-03 | 1 | 1065 | Power outage - safety hazard |
| Facilities Issues | Infrastructure | 2005-06 | 3 | 1147 | Unhealthy levels of spore concentrations (Penicillium/Aspergillus) in Building G |
| 2017 Wine Country Fires | Wildfires | 2017-18 | 1 | 1584 | Wildfire resulting in hazardous air quality |
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.