How Do the Emergency School Closure Make-up Days Work?

Due to the frequency of school closures and the emergence of public safety power shutdowns (PSPS), each school district has been tasked to build in emergency days. As such, this calendar contains a one-week spring break and a potential one-week recess. The recess can be utilized to make up for lost school days in case of any unforeseen closures such as public safety power shutoffs. This means that some or all PCS schools may end up in session during that week.

How the One-week Recess Days will be Utilized

No later than the first week of March of 2021, the District will review the number of schools that had to close due to an emergency between August of 2020 and March of 2021. If any schools had to close, these days will be made up during the recess week. If any school has more than five missed days (the number we were tasked with incorporating into our calendar), the District would be eligible to request a waiver from the State for any additional missed days.

Example scenario for the 2020-21 School Year

You will notice the recess days listed on the calendar (black outline) below:

Hypothetical Example Scenario

During the 2020-21 school year, all Petaluma City Schools had to close due to air quality for two days. In addition, Kenilworth Jr. High had to close for an additional two days due to a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) - no other schools were affected in the PSPS.

In this scenario, the District would announce the specific recess days that would be utilized to make up for these lost days. For all schools (except Kenilworth), the two (2) Emergency School Closure make-up days would be made up on April 8th and 9th for all schools. Thus, all schools (except Kenilworth) would be closed for Spring Break (March 29 - April 2), plus Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the recess week (April 5-7). All schools (except Kenilworth) would resume school on April 8th to make up for the two (2) Emergency School Closure make-up days.

For Kenilworth, school would be closed for Spring Break (March 29 - April 2), plus Monday, April 5th. Kenilworth would resume school on April 6th to make up for the four (4) Emergency School Closure make-up days.

Final Thoughts and Lessons Learned

By building in Emergency School Closure make-up days, we are ensuring that teachers and students do not lose out on instructional time and that our last day of school and high school graduation dates do not change. As a committee, we discussed and intend to implement modifications to future calendar committee processes (such as a community calendar forum and/or survey and a more robust accordion process) that we believe will allow for greater participation and stakeholder feedback.