2011-2012 School District Boundary Review Program (SDRP)

Attachment H:
Review Your School District Boundaries Online
Using American FactFinder and Reference Maps

Attachment H: Review Your School District Boundaries Online

2011-2012

2011-2012 SCHOOL DISTRICT REVIEW PROGRAM
REVIEW YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT BOUNDARIES ONLINE
USING AMERICAN FACTFINDER AND REFERENCE MAPS

Table of Contents
Purpose.......................................................................................................................................3
Review School District Boundaries in American FactFinder
Locate your school district by name search ...................................................................4
Locate your school district by address search..............................................................10
Review Your Boundaries Using School District Reference Maps ..........................................11

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Purpose
These instructions for reviewing school district boundaries using the American
FactFinder (AFF) and School District Reference Maps (2010 Census) are being provided
so that participants in states that have chosen the digital update option, and therefore
receive school district boundary shapefiles, will have a method by which local education
officials can review their current Census Bureau school district boundaries online.
After using the reference maps or AFF to review their school district boundaries, local
education officials can print maps or capture screen images of the areas where their
boundaries need to be updated, annotate the changes and forward them to their state
mapping coordinator. AFF and the reference maps allow viewing, at street level detail,
features such as roads, waterways, and county and place boundaries.
We ask that local education officials be provided with these instructions, which can be
obtained from the 2011-2012 School District Review Program website
(www.census.gov/geo/www/schdist/sch_dist.html) under the Annotation Program
Materials hyperlink.

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Locate your school district using the Geography Name search
For our example, we will search by name to locate Bishop Joint Union High School
District in California and display a map of the school district.
1. Go to the Census Bureau’s website.

2. Click on American FactFinder on the
left-hand side of the page.

3. Click on factfinder2.census.gov
to use the New American FactFinder

4. Start your search on the Main page of
FactFinder.

5. Click on Geographies on the left-hand side
of the main page to open the Select Geographies
overlay window.

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6. The gray-bordered Select Geographies search overlay
opens and sits on top of your Search Results. You can
use the Geography Name text search or Geography
Filter Options to select your geographies.

7. At the Name tab and under Geography Filter Options,
check the Show all summary levels checkbox. A summary
level is a geographic level for which data are reported.
Summary levels range from very large reporting units such
as "State" to much smaller reporting units such as "Census
Tract".

8. Narrow your search to a specific state
by clicking on Within State.

9. Click on your state (California, for this example) to narrow the search to your state, or
your search result may contain school districts in other states with the same name as
the one you want.
10. Your selection Within State should now be
listed in Your Geography Filters box. (If
you want to select a different state, click on
the red “X” to remove the current state.)
11. Type the name of the school district you
want to find (Bishop Joint Union High
School District in California, for this
example), then click Go.

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TIP
You can increase the number of results that display on each page from 25 to 50, or 75.

12. Geography Results returned 20 possible matches to the partial name entered
“Bishop Joint Union” which now appears in Your Geography Filters box. As you
scroll down the page you will see multiple results for your search where parts of the
school district are located within other types of geography such as Congressional
District, State Senate District, or Voting District followed by the single record for the
whole school district within the state. (If you want to enter a different school district
name, click on the red “X” next to the name you entered to remove the current name.)

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13. Change the sort direction for Geography Type so FactFinder lists the single record
for the whole school district within the state first, followed by the multiple school
district parts. Click on the arrows next to Geography Type.

Changing the sort direction for Geography Type moves the desired search result
“Bishop Joint Union High School District” to the top of the list, followed by the
multiple school district parts.

14. Click on the name of the desired school district to select it for display in the Map
window.

TIP
Do not select the “duplicate” search result appearing in ALL UPPERCASE text.

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15. On the Select Geographies screen, click on the Map tab to view a map of your
whole school district. This is how the map will be displayed at first. Use the zoom in
and out and pan tools at the top of the map window to get a closer look at your
selected school district.

16. Click on the Boundaries and Features tabs to add boundaries and labels for 2010
Census geography such as school districts, and features such as rivers and roads.
These features are pre-selected. Click UPDATE at the bottom of the Display
Boundaries and Features screen to refresh the map.

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TIP
Note that several features, such as roads, are viewable only at certain zoom levels.
Use the tools at the top of the map window to increase or decrease the zoom,
move around the map, and get information about a feature on the map.
You can also print a hardcopy of the area displayed in the map window.

17. To begin a new search, return to the Name tab and Your Geography Filters. Make
sure the Geography Filter Option “Show all summary levels” is still checked.
•

To search for a new school district in the same state, clear your old search
by clicking on the red “X” next to the name of the school district from
your old search. Type the name of the new school district to be located
and click Go.

•

To search for a new school district in a new state, click on “Clear all
filters” to remove the current state and school district. Click Within
State and select a new state. Type the name of the new school district in
the search box and click Go.

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Locate your school district using the Geography Address search
For this example, we will use an address within the Foster Elementary School District
in Rhode Island to display a map of the school district.
1. From the Main page of American FactFinder, click on Geographies to open the
Select Geographies overlay window.
2. At the Select Geographies: Name tab and under
Geography Filter Options, check the Show all
summary levels checkbox.
3. Narrow your search to a specific state by clicking
on Geography Filter Options: Within State.
Select your state (Rhode Island, for this example).
4. Click on the Select Geographies: Address tab and type the address to locate (for this
example, 160 Foster Center Road, Foster, Rhode Island, 02825). Click Go. Address
search returns all geographies, including elementary and secondary, or unified school
districts containing the address you entered.
5. Click on the desired Foster Elementary School District to add it to “Your
Selections”. In this example, the results show that “160 Foster Center Road” is
within Foster Elementary School District and Foster-Glocester Regional School
District.
18. Click on the Map tab to display
a map of the desired school
district.
19. Click on the Boundaries and
Features tabs to add boundaries
and labels for 2010 Census
geography, and features such as
schools, roads, and rivers to the
map of your school district.

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Reviewing School District Boundaries using 2010 Census Reference Maps
These School District Reference Maps (2010 Census) show and label the unified,
secondary, and elementary school districts as delineated by the state participants during
the 2009-2010 School District Review Program. These county-based maps also show the
boundaries and names of American Indian reservations, states, counties, and places.
Additionally, these maps display a base feature network including roads and water
bodies. Major highways and selected water bodies are labeled. Each county is covered by
one or more parent map sheets at a single scale. Inset map sheets at larger scales were
created where there are clusters of school districts that cannot be identified at the parent
map scale. An index map showing the sheet configuration is included for all counties
requiring more than one parent map sheet. For the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii,
Maryland, Nevada, and West Virginia, where school districts are coextensive with
counties, a state-based map identifying the counties and corresponding school districts
was produced.
Each set of county-based school district reference maps is accompanied by a School
District to Map Sheet relationship file. These semi-colon delimited text files include a
record for each school district within the county or state, consisting of the type, code, and
name of the district, and a list of all map sheet numbers on which that school district
appears.

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For this example, we will search for Corbin Independent School District in Kentucky
and locate maps of the counties the school district covers. These maps are county-based,
so your school district will appear on one map sheet for each county the school district
covers.
1. If you already know the counties your school district covers, continue to step 5.
If you don’t know which counties your school district covers, there is a listing of
school districts by county, for your state, on the Census Bureau’s School District
Review Program (SDRP) webpage which will help you.
2. Go to the 2011-2012 School District Review Program Materials webpage:

3. Under Finding the Materials You Need, click on
the hyperlink for your state. Click on “Files” when
the new window appears. Each state has a separate
page where its SDRP program materials are located.

4. Click on the “County Coverage” text file.

TIP
The County Coverage File (see Attachment F for record layout) contains two sets
of records: one set - lower half of the list - sorted by school district (arranged to
show the county or counties in which a school district is located) and the other set
- top half - sorted by county (arranged to show the school districts that are located
in each county.) Each set includes a separate record for each unique school
district/county combination.
Search the sort by school district in the lower half of the list and find the name of
your school district down the right-hand side of the list. Corbin Independent
School District has two district/county combinations with Knox and Whitley
counties.

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5. To search the School District Reference Maps (2010 Census) go to the Census
Bureau’s Reference Map webpage:

6. Click on the state name to select your state (for this example, Kentucky) and
scroll through the list of counties until you find Knox and Whitley.

7. Click on the county name, to view the files
for the county you selected.
8. Click on the filename with the Adobe PDF
extension to open the county-based map for
that county.
9. Use the tools at the top of the map window in your Adobe Reader or Adobe
Acrobat to increase or decrease the zoom, move around the map, or print a hard
copy of the area displayed in the map window.

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