School Districts
ABC Unified
Anywhere County, CA
West Point Elementary
Calaveras Unified District
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
3
Total Closure Days
1
Total Closure Days
7
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
0
Total Closure Days
2
Total Closure Days
3
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
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
1
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
0
Schools Impacted
1
Students Impacted
108
Students Impacted
92
Students Impacted
88
Students Impacted
93
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
97
Students Impacted
107
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
0
Students Impacted
159
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 | 8 | 1 | 8 |
| Butte Fire 2015 | Wildfires | 7 | 1 | 7 |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Protests | Other | 2 | 1 | 2 |
Wildfire Closures
Natural Disasters & Weather Closures
Infrastructure Closures
Other 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Butte Fire 2015 | Wildfires | 2015-16 | 7 | 93 | Butte Fire |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2016-17 | 1 | 88 | Closure and Material decrease due to impassable roads and inclement weather. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2010-11 | 2 | 97 | Extremely heavy snowfall and impassable roads at very low elevation. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2009-10 | 1 | 107 | Heavy snowfall and impassable roads. |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2017-18 | 1 | 92 | Impassable Roads due to Inclement Weather |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2018-19 | 1 | 108 | PG&E power outage |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2018-19 | 1 | 108 | Power outage and road closure due to weather |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2009-10 | 1 | 107 | Power outage due to heavy snow. Road impassable. |
| Power Outage | Infrastructure | 2009-10 | 1 | 107 | Power outages at schools and communitites |
| Protests | Other | 2017-18 | 2 | 92 | Teacher strike |
| Inclement Weather | Natural Disasters & Weather | 2002-03 | 1 | 159 | widespread power outage due to snow storm |
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.