‘New normal’ at these California schools: Wildfire, blackout days built into calendar
A Northern California school district is adapting to years of deadly fires in the state — and predictions of a fiery future — by adding extra days to its schedule in case wildfires, smoke or blackouts force fall classes to be canceled.
“We’re having to deal with a new normal,” Joe Schunk, a Napa Valley Unified School District trustee, said Thursday before the education board voted unanimously to designate three days on the calendar for make-up classes to be held if needed, the Napa Valley Register reports. “I’ve raised the concern (before) about smoke days and shutoff days, and that’s the unfortunate new normal that’s affecting our cities and our schools.”
This week’s vote in the county north of San Francisco Bay came as district officials expressed a need to “account for such emergencies in a time of growing fire danger to ensure full repayment by California for disaster-triggered closures,” the Register reported, adding that Wine Country fires and Camp Fire smoke pollution closed schools for weeks in recent years.
EdSource reported that in October 2019, “more than a thousand schools were closed for multiple days, robbing students of education hours and leaving school districts worried about losing state funds, which are based on student attendance.”
District assistant superintendent Dana Page told the board in November — when the district had delayed unveiling its calendar for the coming year — that “we’re looking for some ways to build in some cushion for disruptions,” the Register reported previously.
The three days that Napa Valley students will enjoy as possible breaks in the coming school year (if they’re not needed to make up for classes canceled by fall emergencies) are April 5 and 30, as well as May 28, a copy of the district’s 2020-2021 student calendar shows.
According to California Department of Education guidelines for handling public safety power shutoffs, if a school district “anticipates a school closure for any reason in advance, they should plan ahead by adding the number of days they foresee needing to close.”
Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the power company serving Northern California, shut off electricity to large swaths of the region in the fall, telling customers that the risk equipment could spark disastrous blazes amid dry, windy conditions was too high. Those shutoffs shuttered Napa schools for several days in October, the Register reported.
State officials advise local education agencies to “examine the last five fiscal years to help establish a case for the number of days that school may reasonably be expected to be closed due to extraordinary events or conditions … (a) school should foresee the need to close and build in emergency days to their school calendar in order to compensate for the foreseeable loss of instructional time.”
Other school districts have also floated changes to their calendars.
“We have to learn from these three years and adjust accordingly such that the impact is not so great to our students, staff and families,” said Diann Kitamura, superintendent of Santa Rosa City Schools, the largest Sonoma County district, the Press Democrat reported in December. “We might have to look at calendars.”
This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 2:06 PM with the headline "‘New normal’ at these California schools: Wildfire, blackout days built into calendar."
