In the past three years, Santa Barbara Unified School District schools have closed more than once because of weather conditions. A prolonged heat advisory has been placed over Santa Barbara County for Mar. 12-19. Heat waves, like the one we are currently experiencing, impact students’ learning, according to DPHS Biology Teacher, Maycee Ballew.
“You pack 30 people into a room at 2 p.m., and everybody is really hot,” Ballew said. “It is really hard to focus on academic content when everybody’s just blazing hot inside, and it makes it really hard to have an academic environment.”
Heat rarely results in full school closures as specific heat indexes are required to take into account temperature and humidity at different points in the city. Using that and the district regulation code, it may be necessary for schools to close. With heat-related issues, it’s more common for SBUSD schools to close midway through the day than to be cancelled for a full day.
“If there’s any type of emergency situation,” SBUSD Chief of Operations Steve Venz said. “We are allowed to close the schools for the safety of our students and staff.”
Apart from heat advisories, school closures can be used due to rain, even if Santa Barbara County does not usually receive large amounts of rain. In January 2023, SBUSD schools, including Dos Pueblos High School, were dismissed during the third period due to heavy rain and remained closed the following day.
“It rained really hard, and there were the emergency responders saying we need to send people off the roads that day,” Principal Bill Woodard said. “We don’t want people driving because it could be really bad, and streets would be flooded, and it was a danger. So we canceled school that day.”
DPHS school administrative staff have “middle management” power over the closure of their schools. In times when preventative measures need to be taken, Venz notifies all of the district’s schools. However, Venz doesn’t make that decision by himself, but rather through an extensive amount of information and collaboration with other agencies.
“There was a point where the Sheriff’s Department, the county supervisors, and all of the safety leaders were involved with it, including the head of the chief, the fire chief for the county, as well as the fire chief for the city, same with the police chief for the city,” Venz said. “Everyone’s involved. They’re giving us all of the direction and information regarding the weather, the prediction in terms of how bad it will get.”
Once the decision to close the school is made, many factors are considered. Assuring schools can be reopened when the conditions improve and that students have a way of commuting home is as much of a consideration as safely closing the schools.
Additionally, DPHS athletes also face challenges when the weather impacts practices and games.
“If it rained so much, then we couldn’t practice,” said Alma Besave (11), a varsity girls’ soccer player. “We’d have to figure out how to change our practices and do something different.”
During winter sports, rain often leads to canceled practices. According to Besave, heat waves, by contrast, don’t lead to cancelled practices as often, but require more physical effort from the athletes. During summer flag football practices, she described having to tackle the “tiring” heat and “fighting through it.”
This year in February, Santa Barbara received over four inches of rain, and Woodard said he remembered students asking him to cancel school.
“It’s not up to me, but I think if there’s anything that would be unsafe or potentially dangerous for students and families on campus that [SBUSD] would do it,” Woodard said.
So far, weather conditions have not caused SBUSD schools to close during the 2025-26 school year.
Edited 3/17/26 Date correction
