The School District Review Progrram

School District Review Program:
Quick Start Guide to Reporting School District Updates

Issued
August 2015

Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) Statement:

A federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, nor shall a person be subject to a penalty for failure
to comply with a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction
Act unless that collection of information displays a current valid OMB Control Number. This
collection is voluntary. The authority for conducting this collection comes from Title 13 U.S.C,
Sections 16, 141, and 193.
The OMB Control Number for this information collection is 0607-xxxx. Public reporting for this
collection of information is estimated to be approximately 30 hours per response, including the time
for reviewing instructions, completing and reviewing the collection of information.
Comments concerning the accuracy of this burden and suggestions for reducing the burden should
be directed to: Paperwork Reduction 0607-xxxx, United States Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill
Road, Room 3K138, Washington, DC 20233. You may email comments to
[email protected]; use “Paperwork Project 0607-xxxx” as the subject.

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Table of Contents
Quick Start Guide: The Update Process in Seven Steps ...................................................................... 4
Step One: Gather information on any changes to your state’s school district boundaries since
January 1, 2014. ................................................................................................................................... 5
Step Two: Determine which counties have changes to their school districts. ..................................... 5
Step Three: Determine what types of School District changes you have and if you will report them
using the submission log or the MTPS. ............................................................................................... 5
Step Four: Find your boundary and other area changes that are reported using the MTPS. ............. 14
Step Five: Decide if you will need to add a new line for your area boundary change. ..................... 15
Step Six: Make your boundary change. See User Guide for the MTPS for information. ................. 16
Step Seven: After you have completed all of your area changes, you may review small differences
between your boundary and the Census Bureau’s boundaries following these guidelines: .............. 17

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Quick Start Guide: The Update Process in Seven Steps
We recommend that you read this guide in its entirety BEFORE starting your work.
The School District Review Program establishes the boundaries used in the income and poverty
estimates used to determine Title I funding for school districts in your state. This guide will help
you get started and most importantly, save you time by reducing unnecessary work. This guide will
briefly go over the process of deciding how to update your school district boundaries.
Your data disc includes five guideline documents (including this one) as well as the School district
inventory listings. All participants should review the Quick Start Guide and the About SDRP and
Materials you Receive Guide. Depending on the type of changes you submit, you may have to
read the User Guide for the MAF/TIGER Partnership Software (MTPS), the User Guide for
the Excel Submission Log, and/or the TIGERweb Map Viewer for Review of School Districts
Online Guide. This guide will help by telling you which Guidelines and reporting tools apply to
your state’s changes.
We will now go over how to evaluate school district changes using a step by step technique that will
save you time. Please, DO NOT just load your updated school district shapefile boundaries in the
MTPS and draw in new lines. This will be time consuming and cause more work for you, and we
may not be able to accept many of the updates.

Here is an outline of the process you should follow:
Step One: Gather information on any changes to your state’s school district boundaries since
January 1, 2014
Step Two: Determine which counties have changes to their school districts
Step Three: Determine changes to be submitted via submission log vs. MTPS and Submission
record the submission log changes.
Log Step
Step Four: Find your MTPS AREA changes (boundary changes, complex
dissolutions, complex consolidations and new school districts.)
Steps
Using
Step Five: For these area changes, decide if you need to add a line or which
MTPS
existing line to use.
Step Six: Complete your boundary for all MTPS AREA changes.
Step Seven: Work on any other minor boundary discrepancies.

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Step One: Gather information on any changes to your state’s school district
boundaries since January 1, 2014.
You may need to contact each school district and ask for their changes or for their updated maps.
We suggest you also check with other state education officials, county planners or your state data
center. They may know of good boundary sources or have the boundary data itself. The U.S. Census
Bureau’s latest school district boundary data (as of January 1, 2014) is available online using the
Census Bureau’s TIGERweb Map Viewer at: http://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerweb. This may be
the easiest way for your local school districts to review the boundaries we currently have. See the
document titled TIGERweb Map Viewer for Review of School Districts for information on
viewing boundaries online through the Census Bureau’s TIGERweb application.
If you are the state mapping coordinator for Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, West Virginia,
or the District of Columbia, you probably do not have any changes to submit for the SDRP. School
Districts in these states are all unified and county-based. Unless this has changed in your state or a
school district’s name was changed, you do not have any changes to report for the 2015-2016
SDRP. If you have no changes to report, please notify the SDRP Team with a short email to
[email protected] that your state has no changes.

Step Two: Determine which counties have changes to their school districts.
You may know which counties have school districts with reported changes or you may need to use
the MAF/TIGER Partnership Software (MTPS) or your own Geographic Information System to
compare the Census Bureau boundaries to the boundaries sent to you by each school district to
determine if there are updates. If you do need to use the MTPS to identify your school district
changes, use the User Guide for the MTPS for instructions to load the MTPS. At this time, you
should only use the MTPS to view your updated files in comparison with the Census Bureau files.
Do not begin to make changes yet.

Step Three: Determine what types of School District changes you have and if
you will report them using the submission log or the MTPS.
There are ten types of school district changes and two methods to submit school district changes to
the Census Bureau. Table 1 below summarizes the types of changes, how to report them and where
to find information about them in the guidelines.

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Table 1: School District Changes and How to Report Them
Type of Change

Report Using

In Guidelines

Boundary Change/Boundary Correction *

MTPS

User Guide for the MTPS

Complex Consolidation *

MTPS

User Guide for the MTPS

Complex Dissolution *

MTPS

User Guide for the MTPS

Grade Range Change +

Submission Log

User Guide for the Excel
Submission Log

Level Change +

Submission Log

User Guide for the Excel
Submission Log

Name Change

Submission Log

User Guide for the Excel
Submission Log

New School District *

MTPS

User Guide for the MTPS

Pseudo School District

Call Census Bureau

About the SDRP and the Materials
You Receive

Simple Consolidation *

Submission Log

User Guide for the Excel
Submission Log

Simple Dissolution *

Submission Log

User Guide for the Excel
Submission Log

+ A Grade Range Change occurs when a school district changes the grades it covers, for example,
changing from covering 9-12 to 7-12. A Level Change occurs when a school district changes classification,
for example, changing from elementary to unified.
* See the next six pages for examples of consolidations, dissolutions, boundary changes, and a new
school district.

The following pages contain diagrams to help you understand the various types of school district
changes. Use these as a guide to determine, for example, if your consolidation is simple or complex.
This is important because you will report a simple consolidation using the submission log and a
complex consolidation using the MTPS.
The submission log is an excel file used to report certain school district changes and is located on
your MTPS data disc. The MTPS is software used to view and update school district geography.
The method (submission log or MTPS) you use to report changes will depend on the type of change
you are reporting

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At this point, you have determined what type of changes you need to report. If you have changes to
report via the submission log, refer to the User Guide for the Excel Submission Log for more
details on how to record and submit those changes. If you only have changes that use the
submission log, you are done!
If you have additional changes that need to be reported though the MTPS, please continue to step
four.

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Step Four: Find your boundary and other area changes that are reported using
the MTPS.
You may do this by looking at maps of your school districts or uploading a shapefile (or other GIS
files) into the MTPS. See User Guide for the MTPS for guidance. You may notice many
differences between the school districts in the MTPS and your shapefile or when comparing your
maps to the MTPS. Zoom to the significant changes first as shown below.
For example, look at the two areas circled in red on the top and bottom of the screenshot. Notice
how the local school district boundaries (symbolized by the pink line) differ noticeably from the
purple Census Bureau school district boundaries.
Now, look at the area circled in yellow in the middle: the two boundaries differ very slightly.
Concentrate first on the area changes like the ones circled in red. Once you have completed
reporting all of those, you can evaluate the areas where the boundaries differ very slightly like the
one circled in yellow below. This will save you time and ensure better boundaries.

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Step Five: Decide if you will need to add a new line for your area boundary
change.
Here is an example to show how to decide whether or not you need to add a new line for your new
boundary:

Example: You need to move the boundary of the school district (shown in purple) to
Horseshoe Road, near the orange line. Your shapefile, the orange line, shows the new
boundary to be updated. Should you use Horseshoe Road as the boundary or add a line
following your orange shapefile and use that new line as the boundary?
Consider the following questions in this order: (see the flowchart on the last page)
1) Which feature (in this case, road) should the school district boundary follow?
Your file should have details about the boundary, such as road name. If your files
show the boundary on Horseshoe Road, then you should use the road as it appears in
the Census Bureau’s shapefile in the MTPS, even if the road is spatially “off.” If
you’re not sure what feature the boundary should follow or your files do not show
Horseshoe Road as the boundary, move on to number two below.
2) Are there housing units between your boundary and the nearest feature? In this
case, are there housing units between your shapefile line, in orange, and Horseshoe
Road? If yes, you should add a line following your shapefile but read Appendix A of
the User Guide for the MTPS for more guidance. Use imagery to help you
determine if there are housing units. (Imagery is available in the MTPS; see page 18
of the User Guide for the MTPS.) If there are no housing units, move on to number
three below.

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3) Is the difference significant? This will depend on the geography of the area in
question, but in general, differences of less than 30-40 feet are not significant when
housing units are not present. Accordingly, if your boundary is less than 30 feet
from Horseshoe Road, use Horseshoe Road as the boundary. If the distance is greater
than 30 feet, add your own line to use as the boundary. In very remote areas with
sparse population, a difference of 60-75 feet is not significant.
If your answers led you to add a line, add a line before moving on to step six. If not,
move onto step six directly. See page Appendix A of the User Guide for the MTPS for
information on how to correctly add a line. The Census Bureau will NOT make any feature
(such as a road) modifications through the SDRP.

Step Six: Make your boundary change. See User Guide for the MTPS for
information.
Repeat Steps four through six for every AREA change including boundary changes,
complex consolidations, complex dissolutions, and new school districts.

After you have completed all of the area changes for your counties, you may have time to work on
minor boundary corrections. See the next page for step seven and information on how to correct
small differences between the Census Bureau’s boundary files and your own.

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Step Seven: After you have completed all of your area changes, you may review
small differences between your boundary and the Census Bureau’s boundaries
following these guidelines:

Example: While reviewing
your file for changes, you
notice the Census Bureau
boundary (in purple)
does not quite match your
boundary (in orange).
Does this mean you should
submit this as a boundary
correction?

Consider the following
questions in this order:
1) Which feature (in this
case, road) should the school district boundary follow? Your file should have details
about the boundary, such as road name. If your files show the boundary on Center Road,
then you should leave the Census Bureau boundary as it is, even if the road is spatially “off”
in comparison to your boundary. (For more information, see Appendix A of the User Guide
for the MTPS.) If you’re not sure what feature the boundary should follow or your files do
not show Center Road as the boundary, move on to number two below.
2) Are there housing units between your boundary and the Census Bureau boundary? In
this case, are there housing units between your shapefile line (in orange) and Center Road?
If yes, you should submit a change to the Census Bureau but read Appendix A of the User
Guide for the MTPS for more guidance. If there are no housing units, move on to number
three below.
3) Is the difference significant? This will depend on the geography of the area in question, but
in general, differences of less than 30-40 feet are not significant when housing units are not
present. Accordingly, if your boundary is less than 30 feet from Center Road, do not make
any updates to the boundary. If the distance is greater than 30 feet, you will need to add your
own line. In very remote areas with sparse population, a difference of 60-75 feet is not
significant.

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Decision Chart: Do you need to add a new line for your boundary?

Start
1
Do your records show the school district
boundary on a road or feature (example:
river) or on another boundary such as an
incorporated place?

yes

Find that same road or
feature or other boundary in
the MTPS and use it as the
school district boundary

no or unsure

2
Are there housing units between the
school district boundary from your
records and the nearest Census Bureau
road or feature?

yes

Add a new line

no or unsure

3

yes

Add a new line

no

Use the nearest
Census Bureau road or
feature for the new
school district
boundary.

Is the difference significant? For most
areas, is there more than 30 feet between
your boundary and the nearest Census
Bureau feature? (75 feet in very remote
areas)

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