Geography

The scope of the 2011-2012 School District Review Program (SDRP) is for state officials to review the Census Bureau's 2009-2010 school district information and to provide the Census Bureau with updates and corrections to the school district names and Federal Local Education Agency (LEA) identification numbers, school district boundaries, and the grade ranges for which a school district is financially responsible.

The 2011-2012 SDRP encompasses only Type 1 and Type 2 school districts as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Type 1 is a local school district that is not a component of a supervisory union, and Type 2 is a local school district component of a supervisory union sharing a superintendent and administrative services with other local school districts.

The U.S. Census Bureau creates special tabulations of decennial census data by school district geography. These tabulations provide detailed demographic characteristics of the nation's public school systems and offer one of the largest single sources of children's demographic characteristics currently available. Information is distributed through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) .

The School District Review Program (SDRP), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau every two years, is of vital importance for each state's allocation under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Public Law (P.L.) 107-110. The school district information obtained through this program, along with the 2010 Census population data, survey data, current population estimates, federal tax information, and tabulations of administrative records data, are used in forming the Census Bureau's estimates of the number of children aged 5 through 17 in low-income families for each school district. These estimates of the number of children in low-income families residing within each school district are the basis of the Title I allocation for each school district.

The SDRP consists of two phases – the Annotation Phase and the Verification Phase. In the Annotation Phase, the Census Bureau provides state officials with materials containing the most current school district boundaries and information for their state. This data is reviewed and any changes in the school district boundaries or attributes are reported to the Census Bureau. The Verification Phase is when state officials review the results of any changes submitted, after the Census Bureau has incorporated those changes into the Master Address Files (MAF)/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) System (MAF/TIGER) database.

• June 2011 - National Center for Education Statistics letter is sent to Title I coordinators asking for designation of a school district mapping coordinator for each state and the District of Columbia.
• August 2011 - Mailout of program instructions and annotation materials to designated state school district mapping coordinators begins.
• November 2011 - Deadline for requesting paper copies of school district maps.
• December 2011 - Deadline for submitting school district changes during the annotation phase. We strongly encourage our partners to submit changes as soon as possible rather than waiting until this deadline. If your state is submitting a large number of changes, please send them on a flow basis rather than waiting to send the entire state.
• January 2012 – Review of verification materials begins.
• February 2012 – Deadline for submitting school district changes during the verification phase.
• November 2012 - Release of preliminary estimates based on the updated school district geographic framework.

PLEASE NOTE:  For our digital partners the Census Bureau released updated school district boundaries submitted during the 2009-2010 SDRP in our 2010 TIGER/Line shapefile product in November 2010. These shapefiles can be found on our TIGER/Line shapefile page. In addition, our non-digital participants can view their updated school district boundaries by using the 2010 Census school district reference maps found under the Census Reference Maps heading or in the American FactFinder by following these instructions.

 

To download School District verification materials, please select the state or state equivalent below that you would like to download shapefiles for. If a state is not listed, it indicates no school district changes were received from the state.

Select a State Arizona Arkansas California Connecticut Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Maine Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New York North Dakota Ohio Pennsylvania South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Wisconsin Wyoming

Please click on the links below to view the presentations given at our August 2011 training sessions:

• Webinar I [PDF]
  An online introductory presentation given on August 4th to state mapping coordinators about the program and viewing school district maps online.
  
• Webinar II [PDF]
  An online in-depth presentation given on August 31st to state mapping coordinators about reporting different types of changes and how to complete updates in the MAF/TIGER Partnership Software (MTPS) and Q&A.

For a video of the webinars, please email us at School District Review Program.

For more information on related topics, see:

• Population and poverty estimates by school district geography, or contact the Population Division of the Census Bureau at 301-763-3193.

• Finance data for elementary and secondary public school systems, or contact the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau at (800) 622-6193.

• Decennial census data by school district geography, or contact the Population Division of the U.S. Census Bureau at 301-763-2464.

Local Officials, please contact the following State Mapping Coordinators:

2011-2012 Mapping Coordinators [MS Word] [Text]

State Officials, please contact us via:

Phone:  (301) 763-1099

E-mail: School District Review Program