How Would I Even Know If My School District Boundaries Are Correct?

Ben Norris

Purpose

• The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the U.S. Census Bureau’s School District Review Program (SDRP) and the importance of partaking in this yearly task.

​

• During this presentation, I will explain how I completed this task for two of the school districts that I support. I will then show how I expanded this process to be able to review boundary lines for all public school districts in the CNYRIC region.

​

Link For Today’s Materials

• All materials related to today’s presentation (with the exception of the final prototype) can be found by clicking this link: July 2026 DATAG Presentation

What is the SDRP?

• The School District Review Program is a National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) sponsored program that is conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau.

​

• The U.S. Census Bureau sends State Education Departments the maps they have on local school districts and asks them to annotate where changes need to be made. The State Education Department then has to confirm that any changes to the maps made by the Census Bureau were done correctly.

​

• Why It’s Important: The federal government uses the Census Bureau’s boundary maps to determine estimates on the number of children between the ages of 5 and 17 that are living in poverty. These estimates are then used to determine Title I allocations for each school district in each state.

So What Happens?

A Lightbulb Moment

• When I previously worked on using the U.S. Census Bureau’s Geocoder to find district of residence codes based on home addresses, I would occasionally find some results that were not correct (usually between neighboring school districts).
• What does the Census Bureau base its geocoding results off of? Its own school district maps!
• This means that the school district map that the Census Bureau has on your school district is wrong!

BUT HOW DO YOU FIX IT?

First Attempt

• On my first go at this, I referred to the “Property Assessment Data from Local Assessment Rolls” file from data.ny.gov. I made sure to filter for the most current roll year, as well as the school district name.
• The columns containing Grid Coordinates East and Grid Coordinates North were “surveyor speak” for latitude and longitude. To convert them, I had to use the National Geodetic Survey Coordinate Conversion and Transformation Tool and then merge the latitudes and longitudes into the CSV file of parcels.
• I then mapped the parcels using with Microsoft Power BI Desktop, which I will show later.

Good, But Not Great

• While data.ny.gov is a good resource for parcel data, and Power BI has the right capabilities for mapping parcels, this process was not the most ideal for mapping multiple school districts.
• Not every county uses the same surveying methods, which can lead to skewed mapping results
• A better resource for parcel data is the NYS Tax Parcel Centroid Points from the NYS GIS Clearinghouse. It is still based on property assessment data, but the x and y coordinates are standardized.

Round Two

Almost There!

• While this map does give us what we need, the “noise” makes it difficult to find the parcels that should be examined further.
• I looked to see if there were any free software packages that could help me whittle my tax parcels so that I could map only the ones outside the Census Bureau’s boundaries.
• With the help of RStudio and QGIS, I learned that it can be done!

Third Time’s the Charm!

• Instructions (with Syntax)

• Power BI Map

Things to Note

• You will need to make any boundary revisions on the TIGERMap website.
• You will likely have to examine parcels from each county’s GIS department to support your TIGERMap work.
• You will need to have a copy of the assessment roll showing that the properties in question are in your school district.
• You will need the approval of the affected Superintendent(s) before submitting to NYSED.

My Wish List

• Put the formal school district names in the GIS file so that it matches with the Census Bureau.
• Be able to download the CSV file of parcel data more easily from the NYS GIS Clearinghouse website.
• You should not need neighboring superintendent(s) approval when submitting boundary changes. They should not be able to disagree with what the assessment roll states.

Thank You!