Summary
Planned power shutoffs in California meant to reduce wildfire risk have brought a new set of bills for schools—dark classrooms, disrupted instruction and financial penalties tied to student attendance, according to reporting on Riverside County districts. In one winter episode, teachers at Orange Vista High School in Val Verde Unified School District rushed students into a line after Southern California Edison cut power in parts of Riverside County to prevent equipment from sparking a fire, leaving lessons ended and anxious parents waiting.
The disruptions have repeated. A month later, Orange Vista again lost power days after the Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed parts of Los Angeles County. Orange Vista was among at least five Riverside County school districts that reported closures during winter high winds in 2024 and 2025, with local officials saying the impacts land hardest in economically disadvantaged districts where families depend on services delivered through schools.
California regulators authorize the approach. Since 2012, the California Public Utilities Commission has authorized investor-owned utilities such as Edison to cut power during severe weather events to lower the risk of wildfires, with the commission reviewing each outage. Utilities can face penalties—Edison did in this case—if they do not notify ratepayers properly or meet other standards, and the utility has said shutoffs are necessary to save lives and protect communities.
Edison spokesperson Jeff Monford said the utility’s goal is safety and continuity. “Our mission really is to keep the power on when it is safe to do so,” Monford said. After one outage, the Val Verde Unified School District redirected $500,000 from the school facilities budget to buy battery storage units intended to help Orange Vista High keep the lights on during future shutoffs. Still, district officials said hardening the power system itself may be a better use of limited funds. Garrick Owen, the district’s assistant superintendent, said he would prefer grid upgrades to emergency backups. “If I had a magic wand, would I spend all the money to harden our schools against power outages, or would I spend it to harden the actual infrastructure of the power lines to not have the power outages?” Owen said.
State funding rules tied to attendance can amplify the disruption. Because state funding to schools is based in part on student attendance, emergency events that lead to closures—or reduce attendance—create a financial risk even when districts believe the disruptions are unavoidable. Schools can file waiver requests with the state Department of Education to protect funding, and during the 2024-25 school year, administrators across Riverside County sought that protection after winter wind events and smoke from nearby fires created problems.
Eight school districts told CalMatters that they filed waiver requests with the state Department of Education in December 2024 and January 2025. Three districts—Nuview Union, Perris Elementary and Perris Union High—reported closures for at least one day each. Three others—Banning Unified, Beaumont Unified and Jurupa Unified—reported material decreases in attendance on high wind days, and two districts, San Jacinto Unified and Val Verde, reported both closures and low attendance days. According to the Val Verde district, three schools there lost a total of 13 days of instruction because of the wind events, and Val Verde officials said they also saw lower attendance in September 2024 when smoke from the Bridge, Line and Airport fires spread to the region.
School leaders said the harm goes beyond missed learning time. Orange Vista High principal LaKrecia Graham said administrators initially tried to keep classes running after buying floodlights following the chaotic day in December, but when the next outage happened and parents picked up children out of concern, the district closed anyway. “It disrupts a lot of things and it puts people in a panic that I don’t think is necessary,” Graham said. Other principals described safety and basic-services risks when classrooms lose electricity, including dangers navigating dark rooms and interruptions to access to water, heaters and air conditioning, along with the loss of the school as a community hub for families who rely on school meals, supervision and support services.
Utilities must weigh harms and benefits before turning off power, and they must provide notice and resources for residents and schools, the reporting said. In Riverside County, school officials and teachers said delayed notice during winter wind events made preparation difficult. At Orange Vista High, Graham said notice arrived for a potential outage but earlier than staff expected. Paula Ford, assistant superintendent of business services at Jurupa Unified School District, said “actually, we would receive a notice that the power was down maybe an hour after the power was already down.”
The regulatory consequences have already followed at the utility level. After January shutoffs darkened Riverside County schools, the California Public Utilities Commission fined Southern California Edison $7.8 million for violating notification requirements, and the commission spokesperson, Terrie Prosper, said the agency was still investigating Edison’s handling of the December shutoffs. Prosper said utilities commission staff is closely monitoring Edison’s work to reduce power shutoffs, adding, “We understand that PSPS events can be disruptive for schools. However, these actions are taken out of serious wildfire concerns. California has experienced devastating wildfires in recent years that have destroyed communities, closed schools for extended periods, and placed lives at risk.”
Critics said the evaluation may not capture the downstream impacts on students and families. Melissa Kasnitz, legal director for the Center for Accessible Technology, said Edison and other utilities have used time and money analyzing wildfire risk, but not assessing the consequences of turning off people’s power. “They put a lot of time and effort and money, which I do not begrudge at all, into the analytics of fire risk to calculate the risk of a wildfire actually starting in certain weather conditions,” Kasnitz said. “What they have not done is put any fraction of effort into evaluating the risk of what happens when you turn people’s power off.”
Edison has said it plans notifications when possible and provides support to districts affected by shutoffs. Monford said notifications for planned public safety power shutoffs take place three days in advance when possible, but “in some instances, we are unable to send advanced notifications due to emergent weather,” and “This was especially the case last winter, when we had extraordinarily new wind events.” Monford also said the utility lends power generators to schools most affected by outages and hopes to expand to lending battery storage systems, and Edison invited some districts, including Jurupa Unified and San Jacinto School District, to daily emergency coordination calls.
For districts, officials said generators and storage still leave a persistent gap between worst-case events and what they can afford. In Jurupa Valley, Peralta Elementary School was able to keep its doors open with lighting and climate controls running, after Jurupa Unified spent more than $364,000 on two generators and after Edison loaned another generator through a pilot program because the school sits in a high fire risk area surrounded by brush. Even with that support, officials said hidden costs remain when parents decide to keep children home, reducing attendance-based funding. “Because we stayed open … we’re actually impacted more heavily than schools that close,” Ford said.
Val Verde officials said battery storage may help during a planned outage but does not address broader scenarios. Owen said the district’s newly installed storage units will help keep lights on during the next planned outage, but he said, “we don’t have a plan for that” if a blackout affects multiple schools over multiple days. He said equipping every school with generators would require millions of dollars and would likely exceed what the district can fund. “It’s one of those numbers I don’t need to know, because there’s not gonna be that funding,” Owen said.
State education officials said rule changes could require legislation. Michelle Hatfield, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said changes to rules for how schools handle planned outages—and proposals to fund schools by enrollment rather than by attendance—would require legislation. In the meantime, districts say they are being asked to carry costs from emergencies they cannot control, while families face the disruption of a school day that can be shortened—or canceled—by planned power shutoffs.
Natasha Uzcátegui-Liggett contributed reporting.