Abstract
IntroductionWe describe characteristics of unplanned school closures (USCs) in the United States over two consecutive academic years during a non-pandemic period to provide context for implementation of school closures during a pandemic.MethodsFrom August 1, 2011 through June 30, 2013, daily systematic internet searches were conducted for publicly announced USCs lasting ≥1 day. The reason for closure and the closure dates were recorded. Information on school characteristics was obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics.ResultsDuring the two-year study period, 20,723 USCs were identified affecting 27,066,426 students. Common causes of closure included weather (79%), natural disasters (14%), and problems with school buildings or utilities (4%). Only 771 (4%) USCs lasted ≥4 school days. Illness was the cause of 212 (1%) USCs; of these, 126 (59%) were related to respiratory illnesses and showed seasonal variation with peaks in February 2012 and January 2013.ConclusionsUSCs are common events resulting in missed school days for millions of students. Illness causes few USCs compared with weather and natural disasters. Few communities have experience with prolonged closures for illness.
Highlights
We describe characteristics of unplanned school closures (USCs) in the United States over two consecutive academic years during a non-pandemic period to provide context for implementation of school closures during a pandemic
During the second wave of the influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 pandemic in the United States, which coincided with the start of the 2009–2010 school year, 812 school closure events were reported to a national surveillance system developed to monitor pandemic-related closure events from direct reports, state monitoring systems, and media scans and online searches [9]
Closure events were matched to 58,330 schools, of which 52,918 (91%) were public schools, 4,607 (8%) were private schools, and 805 (1%) were USCs that did not match to schools in the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) database but were assumed to affect at least one school
Summary
We describe characteristics of unplanned school closures (USCs) in the United States over two consecutive academic years during a non-pandemic period to provide context for implementation of school closures during a pandemic. During the second wave of the influenza A(H1N1)pdm pandemic in the United States, which coincided with the start of the 2009–2010 school year, 812 school closure events were reported to a national surveillance system developed to monitor pandemic-related closure events from direct reports, state monitoring systems, and media scans and online searches [9]. This surveillance system provided important situational awareness with regard to pandemic-related school dismissals, including the geographic distribution, the number of school days missed, and the number of students affected by dismissal events
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