Friendship School Closings Today — Live Status & Delays (DC)

Are Friendship schools closed today? Check live status below — updated every 10 minutes.

Live status monitored for Friendship Public Charter School, District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS), and Arlington Public Schools (APS).

How Friendship School Closures Are Announced

Friendship Public Charter School (FPCS) is a single citywide charter LEA — rather than a boundary-based district, it operates nine campuses across DC’s Wards 5, 7, and 8 that families apply to through the city’s unified My School DC lottery. Closure and delay decisions are posted on Friendship’s official site at friendshipschools.org and pushed to registered families through its PowerSchool parent portal. Because Friendship’s campuses sit inside the same city as DCPS, its closing decisions typically track the same regional weather call DCPS and the district’s other charter LEAs are making — but each network’s board makes its own official determination, so it’s worth confirming Friendship’s own notice rather than assuming it automatically matches DCPS.

Local television also picks up DC-area closures quickly once districts post them. NBC4 Washington (WRC) publishes a running list at nbcwashington.com/weather/school-closings, and FOX 5 DC (WTTG) maintains one at fox5dc.com/closings; WUSA9 and ABC7 typically carry the same information during early-morning broadcasts. In practice, DC-area closure decisions are usually announced the evening before a storm when the forecast is clear-cut, or by roughly 5 AM the morning of when conditions are uncertain overnight.

Weather Risks That Trigger DC-Area School Closures

• Winter storms (snow): Accumulating snow during the morning commute is the single most common cause of DC-area closures and delays, especially when several inches fall overnight before plows and buses can clear routes.
• Ice storms and freezing rain: A thin glaze of ice on sidewalks, steps, and bus routes is often treated as more dangerous than an equivalent depth of snow, since black ice is harder for drivers and pedestrians to see coming.
• Extreme cold and wind chill: When wind chill drops low enough to make waiting at bus stops or walking to school genuinely hazardous, districts may delay start times or close rather than expose students to prolonged exposure.
• Tropical storm and hurricane remnants: The remnants of Atlantic hurricanes and tropical systems occasionally track through the DC area in late summer and fall, bringing heavy rain and flash flooding rather than wind damage.
• Flash flooding: Intense summer thunderstorms can overwhelm DC’s aging stormwater system quickly, flooding underpasses and low-lying roads used by school buses even when the storm itself is brief.

Frequently Asked Questions

How early does Friendship Public Charter School announce school closures?

Friendship generally posts a closure or delay decision on its website and PowerSchool portal by early morning on the day in question, and often the evening before when a storm’s timing is predictable. Because its decision usually tracks the broader DC-area weather call that DCPS and other citywide systems are also making, families sometimes see the citywide expectation on TV before Friendship’s own official notice goes out — this page checks Friendship’s own status directly rather than assuming it matches DCPS automatically.

What’s the difference between a closure and a delay at Friendship?

A closure means no school for students that day at any Friendship campus. A delay means a later start time — Friendship shifts its bell schedule (normally 7:45 AM) back by a set number of hours rather than cancelling the day outright, typically used when roads are expected to clear by mid-morning.

Does Friendship close all its campuses at once, or can individual schools close separately?

Because Friendship’s nine campuses are spread across several DC wards rather than concentrated in one neighborhood, it’s possible — though uncommon for weather — for road conditions to differ enough between, say, a Ward 5 campus and a Ward 8 campus that the network could issue a campus-specific notice. Check the individual campus status shown on this page rather than assuming a single citywide answer covers every location.

Which DC-area TV stations report school closings?

NBC4 Washington (WRC), FOX 5 DC (WTTG), WUSA9 (CBS), and ABC7 (WJLA) are the four stations most DC-area families check first. This page monitors all four alongside Friendship’s own official site, so you don’t need to check multiple sources yourself.

How often is this page updated?

Status checks run automatically every 15 minutes under normal conditions, and every 5 minutes during active winter storm alerts, so you get the fastest available update without needing to check multiple sites yourself.

Does a DCPS closure automatically mean Friendship is closed too?

Not automatically. DCPS and Friendship are separate local education agencies with separate governing boards, and each makes its own official closure call — even though both serve the same city and are usually responding to the same forecast. In practice the two are aligned on almost all snow days, but treat a DCPS announcement as a strong signal rather than a confirmed answer for Friendship specifically, and check Friendship’s own status directly.

School Roster

Friendship Public Charter School (FPCS)

Elementary & Middle Schools (PK3–8)

• Friendship Armstrong Elementary & Middle
• Friendship Blow Pierce Elementary & Middle
• Friendship Chamberlain Elementary & Middle
• Friendship Ideal Elementary & Middle
• Friendship Southeast Elementary & Middle
• Friendship Woodridge International Elementary & Middle
• Friendship Online Academy

High Schools

• Friendship Collegiate Academy & Collegiate Online
• Friendship Technology Preparatory High

District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS)

DCPS operates 117 schools citywide — the most prominent are listed below; see the full DCPS school directory for the complete list.

High Schools

• Jackson-Reed High School
• Anacostia High School
• Ballou High School
• Dunbar High School
• Eastern High School
• Roosevelt High School
• Cardozo Education Campus
• H.D. Woodson High School

Middle Schools

• Ida B. Wells Middle School
• Deal Middle School
• Hardy Middle School
• Kelly Miller Middle School
• MacFarland Middle School
• Jefferson Middle School Academy

Elementary Schools

• Amidon-Bowen Elementary School
• Bancroft Elementary School
• Hyde-Addison Elementary School
• J.O. Wilson Elementary School
• Janney Elementary School
• Aiton Elementary School

Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS)

PGCPS operates 200+ schools across Prince George’s County, MD — the most prominent are listed below; see pgcps.org for the complete list.

High Schools

• High Point High School
• Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School
• Bowie High School
• Largo High School
• Suitland High School

Middle Schools

• Accokeek Academy

Arlington Public Schools (APS)

High Schools

• Wakefield High School
• Washington-Liberty High School
• Yorktown High School
• Arlington Tech

Middle Schools

• Gunston Middle School
• Swanson Middle School
• Williamsburg Middle School