The School District Review Progrram

Dear:

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) sponsors the School District Review Program (SDRP), which enables the U.S. Census Bureau to create special tabulations of Decennial Census data by school district geography. The demographic data produced by the Census Bureau for the NCES and related to each school district 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.

The enclosed materials provide information, instructions, data DVD, and software DVD for responding to the 2015-2016 SDRP conducted by the Census Bureau.

The data DVD contains a full set of school district and other geographic entity boundary shapefiles for your state. It also includes a folder, “SDRP_Guidelines,” which contains data files that list information about the Census Bureau’s current 2013-2014 school district files. For selected states, there is also a list of school districts that are coextensive or maintain a geographic relationship with other legal areas such as counties, cities, towns, and townships. The instructions to assist you in completing the updates are included in this folder. The file Readme.txt on the data DVD contains a complete list of needed materials.

The Census Bureau requests that you review all the information contained in the instructions and the data files included on your data DVD and provide updates and corrections to:

• School district names;

• Federal Local Education Agency codes;

• Grade ranges for allocating children if two school districts occupy the same area;

• Counties in which school districts are located;

• Relationships where school districts are coextensive with other legal areas;
  such as counties, cities, towns, and townships.

The Census Bureau will place the shapefiles, data files, and instructions on the Census Bureau website where they can be viewed and downloaded. The URL for the School District page is:

http://www.census.gov/geo/partnerships/sdrp.html

The second DVD contains the MAF/TIGER Partnership Software_v5.11 (MTPS). The MTPS is software developed by the Census Bureau that provides the ability to review and update school district boundaries. Additional Geographic Information System software is not required to use the MTPS. The MTPS application includes computer based training tutorials that the Census Bureau strongly encourages participants to review before attempting any updates within the MTPS. The Census Bureau requests that participants use the MTPS application to:

1. Review the Census Bureau’s representation of your school district boundaries against your current boundaries.

2. Make updates to your school district boundaries.

The Census Bureau requests that the school district information you submit reflect the 2015-2016 school districts as they exist or will exist on January 1, 2016. The Census Bureau is prepared to accept your updates as soon as possible and request that participants submit all school district changes no later than December 31, 2015.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact the SDRP team. They can be contacted by telephone at 301-763-1099 or by e-mail at:

[email protected]

The Census Bureau looks forward to working with you to ensure the successful completion of the 2015-2016 SDRP and thanks you in advance for your participation.

Sincerely,

Timothy F. Trainor

Chief, Geography Division

Enclosures:

2015-2016 School District Review Program Digital State Data DVD

Census Bureau MAF/TIGER Partnership Software version 5.11

Quick Start Guide to Reporting School District Updates

cc: State Title I Coordinator

census.gov