This polygon files contains 2015-2016 school-year data delineating school attendance boundaries. These data were collected and processed as part of the School Attendance Boundary Survey (SABS) project which was funded by NCES to create geography delineating school attendance boundaries. Original source information that was used to create these boundary files were collected over a web-based self-reporting system, through e-mail, and mailed paper maps. The web application provided instructions and assistance to users via a user guide, a frequently asked questions document, and instructional videos. Boundaries supplied outside of the online reporting system typically fell into one of six categories: a digital geographic file, such as a shapefile or KML file; digital image files, such as jpegs and pdfs; narrative descriptions; an interactive web map; Excel or pdf address lists; and paper maps. 2013 TIGER/line features (that consist of streets, hydrography, railways, etc.) were used to digitize school attendance boundaries and was the primary source of information used to digitize analog information. This practice works well as most school attendance boundaries align with streets, railways, water bodies and similar line features included in the 2015 TIGER/line "edges" files. In those few cases in which a portion of a school attendance boundary serves both sides of a street contractor staff used Esri s Imagery base map to estimate the property lines of parcels. The data digitized from analog maps and verbal descriptions do not conform to cadastral data (and many of the original GIS files created by school districts do not conform with cadastral or parcel data). The following Florida schoold districts did not participate in the 2015-2016 School Attendance Boundary Survey and, therefore, are not represented in this dataset: Bradford, Gadsden, Hardee, Jackson, Levy, Monroe, Nassau, Okaloosa, Okeechobee, Suwannee. This dataset serves as an update to the layer nces_sabs_2014.
The School Attendance Boundary Survey (SABS) Geodatabase is designed to improve the quality and accessibility of educational geography and tabular data to school personnel, researchers, and policy makers. A primary goal is to integrate diverse spatial information delineating school attendance boundaries into a single, uniform, digital GIS database that will result in an original, geographically rich data set. Every school catchment area has a uniform data structure and a unique identification number that associates it with the appropriate school. This standardized identifying information will allow users to analyze thousands of geographic features collected and distributed by NCES-saving individual researchers the necessity of collecting and organizing these data in a piece-meal fashion. By providing the public with a mapping system that contains detailed boundary information on all public schools across the nation, it will become possible for school personnel, researchers, and policy makers to examine relationships between schools in the same district or across the nation. Using this information can raise awareness of the number of students in areas hit by natural disasters and could aid relief and planning efforts by the Department of Homeland Security.
Suggested Citation: Geverdt, D., (2018). School Attendance Boundary Survey (SABS) File Documentation: 2015-16 (NCES 2018-099). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved [date] from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch. Review SABS File Documentation for further information: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/docs/EDGE_SABS_2015_2016_TECHDOC.pdf
publication date
The SABS dataset is intended for research purposes only and reflects a single snapshot in time. School boundaries frequently change from year to year. To verify legal descriptions of boundaries, users must contact the school district directly.
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National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the U.S. Census Bureau, Sanametrix, and Blue Raster
GeoPlan relied on the integrity of the attribute information within the original data.
A union was performed to align boundaries between school levels, but in some cases the distance between boundaries was too large to move without confirmation from the district. School feeder 'slivers' remain in these areas.
The map only includes information provided by the district. Every effort was made to ensure that all populated areas were covered by school boundaries, but in some instances 'Unassigned' polygons cover populated Census blocks.
This data is provided 'as is' and its horizontal positional accuracy has not been verified by GeoPlan
This data is provided 'as is' and its vertical positional accuracy has not been verified by GeoPlan
Spatial and Attribute Information
Project into processing geodatabase.
Merge School Level Feature Classes: Merged all applicable school level feature classes, such as primary, middle, and high, into a new single feature class.
Fuzzy Join by Level: Uses fuzzy string comparison to append a field from the Join Feature Class to the Target Feature Class. Candidates for the match are limited by a where class.
Verify School Completeness by District: This tool uses the NCESSCH attribute to check for duplicate IDs, valid IDs, and it checks for missing schools.
Assign, Dissolve, Append, and Join: Brings together the feature class that contains the school attribute details and updates them with their most current boundaries. The Dissolve operation is used to extract each level of school boundaries and transforms them into a multipart polygon. Next, the extracted features are merged through the Append operation. Since the Dissolve operation will remove the attributes of the data, a Join operation is performed as the last step to restore these attributes by joining the merged features with the original multipart school feature class.
Union, Clip, Union, and Multipart to Singlepart: Unions all levels of school boundaries together, then clips them to their district boundary. The final step unions the clipped boundaries to the district boundary.
Add Required Fields: Automatically copied attributes from fields provided by the school district into SABS schema. This tool also added and populated SrcLvel and LEAID.Unnecessary fields were deleted during this step
Geometry Tolerance Check: Compares dissolved school boundaries with the Census School District Boundary and identifies non-identical areas greater than the default minimum tolerance of 0.001 meters.
Add Boundary IDs: Calculates the BdyID field to ncessch +01, then +02 for the second boundary of the same school, +03 for the third boundary, etc. Tool will also populate: contactID- 999999 updateDate- now() stAbbrev- two character limit boundary_complete- Y/N
Spatial Check for Missing Grades: This tool uses the CCD and a single district feature class to find geographic areas that are not covered by a specific grade range.
The GeoPlan Center took the following steps during the QA/QC process: - Downloaded the dataset from NCES on 8/27/2018 using this link: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/edge/sabs (original dataset in shapefile format and in the WGS 1984 geographic coordinate system). - Only features in Florida were desired, so a Select By Attribute was run and features with the STABBREV field equal to FL were selected. These features were exported to a new layer. - Dataset projected into the FGDL Albers HPGN projection using WGS_1984_(ITRF00)_To_NAD_1983 + NAD_1983_To_HARN_Florida. - DESCRIPT field added based on the SCHNAM field. - FGDLAQDATE field added based on the date the dataset was downloaded from source. - The longest record for each field was found and field character lengths were shortened to the appropriate shortest length possible. - Uppercased fields and appropriate records in the dataset. - Layer name changed from SABS_1516.shp to nces_sabs_2016.shp.
Dataset copied.
Internal feature number.
ESRI
School name as it was provided by the school district.
District
12 character unique national ID.
CCD
School name from the CCD.
CCD
Unique district national ID.
CCD
Low grade; PK through 12
CCD
High grade; KG through 12
CCD
District de facto status.
District
Yes
District
No
District
State abbreviation
CCD
School open enrollment status.
District
No
District
Yes
District
Feature geometry.
Esri
Identifies schools with boundaries that differ by grade.
District
No
District
Yes
District
GeoPlan added field based on SCHNAM
GeoPlan
GeoPlan added field based on date data was acquired from source
GeoPlan
Unique ID added by GeoPlan
GeoPlan
Area in meters
GeoPlan
Perimeter in meters
GeoPlan
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The Florida Geographic Data Library is a collection of Geospatial Data compiled by the University of Florida GeoPlan Center with support from the Florida Department of Transportation. GIS data available in FGDL is collected from various state, federal, and other agencies (data sources) who are data stewards, producers, or publishers. The data available in FGDL may not be the most current version of the data offered by the data source. University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no guarantees about the currentness of the data and suggests that data users check with the data source to see if more recent versions of the data exist. Furthermore, the GIS data available in the FGDL are provided 'as is'. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no warranties, guaranties or representations as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of the data provided by the data sources. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no representations or warranties about the quality or suitability of the materials, either expressly or implied, including but not limited to any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center shall not be liable for any damages suffered as a result of using, modifying, contributing or distributing the materials. A note about data scale: Scale is an important factor in data usage. Certain scale datasets are not suitable for some project, analysis, or modeling purposes. Please be sure you are using the best available data. 1:24000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the county level. 1:24000 data should NOT be used for high accuracy base mapping such as property parcel boundaries. 1:100000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the multi-county or regional level. 1:125000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the regional or state level or larger. Vector datasets with no defined scale or accuracy should be considered suspect. Make sure you are familiar with your data before using it for projects or analysis. Every effort has been made to supply the user with data documentation. For additional information, see the References section and the Data Source Contact section of this documentation. For more information regarding scale and accuracy, see our webpage at: http://geoplan.ufl.edu/education.html
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