2009 - 2010 School District Review Program (Annotation Phase)

Attachment B: School District Review Program
Guidelines for Participants Using the MTPS
Verification Module

2009 - 2010

Note: Participants will not use this module until the verification phase begins in
early 2010. The Census Bureau will notify you when you should begin using this
module for verification.

Guidelines for Participants Using the MTPS
Web Viewer Verification Module
During the verification phase of the school district review program, participants will be
able to verify that their changes were uploaded correctly in the Census Bureau’s
MAF/TIGER database. (For more information about the verification phase, please see the
MTPS guidelines.) The MAF-TIGER Partnership Software (MTPS) Web Viewer allows
each state to review their school district updates in a WEB-based environment without
the need of installing additional software. Participants can access the viewer using their
web browser, in which they can evaluate their submitted changes against school districts
as they appear after upload into the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database. States will
use the viewer to verify that the Census Bureau updated submitted changes correctly.
I.
II.
III.
IV.

Access and Login Information………………………… page 3
Tools (Green Box)……………………………………....page 5
Tabs (Blue Box)………………………………………...page 13
Verifying Changes………………………………………page 22

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I. Access and Login Information
In order to login to the MTPS Viewer, go to: http://ecots1.geo.census.gov/mtpsmaps/
You should see the following screen:

To Login:
Login as SDRP Program
Participant
Participant ID: Use your
state’s two digit FIPS code.
For example, here
California logs in with the
state code 06.
User Name: Use “sdrp”
This is case sensitive.
Password: The Census
Bureau will contact you
with your password. Note:
the password is case
sensitive.

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After login, the user can select a county to review.
Click on the icon to open the county.

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II. Tools

Basic Definition of Tools (See the next pages for more details and pictures)

Zoom to whole county

Click this icon to zoom out to the entire
county

Choose a previous zoom to
display

Use this tool to choose one of the last 5
map displays and zoom to it

Zoom in

Click or draw a rectangle to zoom into an
area

Zoom out

Click or draw a rectangle to zoom out of an
area

Drag

Click and drag the map to re-adjust the
center

Get info

Click a feature to get information on it
Note: You must use this tool with selection
tab – see page 9

Measure a distance

Use this tool to draw a line between
features and click to display the distance.
Draw a polygon to display area.

Print map

Print the current map view

Email map

Email the current map view

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Zoom to Previous Extent
When you click this tool, you will be able to choose a previous map extent.
Click on the map you wish to display.

6

Measurement Tool
This tool can be used to measure distance or area
In order to measure distance, draw a line between two features. To draw a line click on
the starting point of the line and then click on the end point. You do not need to double
click.

After you click the end of the line, the line will disappear. The distance will appear in the
upper right corner of the screen.

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To measure an area, draw a polygon, clicking on each shape point. Double click to close
the polygon.

The area and length of the perimeter is displayed in the upper right corner of the screen.
Again, the lines used to create the polygon will disappear.

8

Get Info Tool
(Note: In order to use this tool, you must use it with the Selection Tab.)
To use the information tool, click the
switch to “Selection” tab.

button. After clicking this button, the view will

Once the selection tab is active, the user must select the layer from which they want
information.

Note: In order for a map layer to show when the
selection tab is active, the layer must be turned on
in the layers tab. For example, in order to select a
lake, the River, Lake, or Ocean layer must be turned
on. To turn on a layer (and make it available to get
information) click the layers tab and then click
“Show Layer” and “Show Labels” for that layer.

For more information on the
“Layers” and “Selection” tabs,
please see the instructions on pages
14 and 18 respectively.

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Select the appropriate layer for the feature.

After choosing the appropriate layer, click the feature about which you would like to get
information. In this example, Essex Pond is selected. The information will display on the
right of the screen.

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Print a Map
To print a map, the user should pan or zoom to the screen view they wish to print. The
print button will print the current screen view.

Tip for Printing Maps
Legend: The legend will automatically appear on the printed map. However, the legend
will only show the features that are turned on in the “Layers” view.

In order to display the desired layers, turn on layers in the “Layers” view before selecting
a map view to print. The user should select any layer they wish to appear in the map
view. See page 14 for more information on layers.

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Email a Map
The email button will capture the current map view just like the print button. It is
therefore important for users to “turn on” the layers they wish to display on the map.
When the user clicks the email button, the following screen will prompt the user for email
information. It is not possible to email more than one map at a time.

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III. Tabs

Legend

Click the Legend tab to display the symbols for the map’s layers and a graphic
scale of the map.
Note: the legend will only contain features that are visible at the current scale. Some
features are scale dependent and therefore you may have to zoom in further to view
them. See the next section, “Layers,” for more information on the viewable layers and
the scale at which they can be viewed.
In the legend on this screen, there are school district boundaries and participant school
district boundaries (P). The school district boundaries reflect boundaries that appear in
the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database. The participant school district boundaries
show the changes that were submitted by the participant.

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Layers
The user should use the layers tab to control the features they wish to display and label.
Users can turn layers on and off by using the boxes associated with a layer.

Users can also use the menu at the
bottom of the screen to turn on all
layers, turn off or hide all layers, and
turn on changes for a type of district.

Note: Each layer has a scale
dependency and cannot be viewed at
scales smaller than the ratio scale
listed next to the layer. The user
cannot adjust the scale at which the
layer can be viewed.
Note: The user will need to click “Redraw Map” after turning a layer on or off for
the map to display those layers.

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Dataview
The Dataview tab is useful for zooming into a specific school district or seeing a
complete list of a certain feature or entity type.

For example, the
user can select
Unified School
District in order to
see a list of unified
school districts and
their characteristics
and to choose a
district to zoom to.

The entities in the layer (in this case, unified school districts) are displayed.
The user can see their attributes of them and choose a district to zoom to.

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When the user clicks on the icon, the MTPS viewer will zoom to that geography.

When the layer has a long list of features or entities, it may be helpful to search for a
specific one. The user can enter attribute information such as school district name or LEA
code to search for a school district, for example.
Note: The search is case sensitive. The first letter of a school district name is capitalized
but the names are no longer in all caps (as they are in this screen).

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Searching for “PACIFIC UNION ELEMENTARY” displays the school distict for the
user to zoom to.

Note: Once the user has used the dataview tab to select a particular school district or
feature, they may use the get info tool to get more information about the school district.
Click on the get info tool and click the school district to get information about it as shown
here.

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Selection
. Users should use the selection tab to
The selection tab is used with the get info tool
choose an “active” selection layer so that they may get information about the features in
that layer. The get info tool will only get information about features that are in the current
layer in the selection tab.
For example, the user may select “Unified School Dist” as the active selection layer.
Note: In order to choose a layer as the active layer, the layer must be turned on in the
layers tab. (For more information on the layers tab, see page 14.)

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After choosing the “active” map layer, the user should click on the get info tool

Click on a unified school district to get information about it. The selected feature will be
highlighted in orange.

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Note: The map displays the change to “Mattole Unified” but the user cannot use the get
info tool to select the changes area. In order to use the get info tool on only the changes
area, the user must change the active map layer to “Unified School Dist – P”

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Changes
The changes tab allows the user to view changes by layer (unified school district, line
changes, etc.) The user can zoom to each change to verify that the Census Bureau’s
MAF/TIGER database incorporated the submitted changes correctly.
In order to view a change, the user must first select a layer.

All of the submitted changes for that layer will be listed the same way features and
geography type are listed in the dataview tab. The user can zoom to a change by clicking
on it.
Note: The user can also see a list of changes by using the dataview tab and choosing a
layer with “P” after it. For example, the layer “Elementary School Dist – P” will list the
changes made to elementary school districts.

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IV. Verifying Changes
The MTPS Viewer only allows participants to view the changes submitted during the
annotation phase of the project. If updates to the shapefiles are necessary, you must
download shapefiles from our partnership shapefile download site. Of course, if there are
only a couple corrections needed, please feel free to contact us directly and we’ll zoom to
the same area in the map viewer to see the update(s) that we missed.
Although only one participant per state may login to the viewer at a time, the Census
Bureau geography staff can login to any state at the same time as participants. If a user
has questions about verifying changes or sees a problem, he or she can review the
changes with Census Bureau geography staff over the phone. Additionally, school district
shapefiles will be available. We will contact mapping coordinators with more information
on the verification phase of the program, including how to download shapefiles, in early
2010.
Contact Information:
We encourage you to contact any of the following Census Bureau geographic staff with
any questions about verifying your changes:
•
•
•
•

Ms. Colleen Joyce (301) 763-5890
Mr. Ian Millett (301) 763-9038
Ms. Pat Ream (301) 763-9042
Ms. Lyndsey Abel (301) 763-1114

•

E-mail: geo.school.list@census.gov

Participants should carefully check the changes to ensure that the Census Bureau’s
MAF/TIGER database reflects the desired changes. The following examples will show
correctly updated changes and changes that were not incorporated into the MAF/TIGER
database.

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Create New School District
(In this example, changes submitted by the participant were not correctly
incorporated into the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database.)
The changes submitted by the participant: create new school district Goodfellows
Secondary as shown below.

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This screen shows the same map extent with the changes layer turned off. The secondary
school district layer (in red on the previous page) does not reflect the submitted changes.
The new school district, Goodfellows Secondary does not display in the secondary school
district layer, which means that it is not in the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database.
Contact the school district personnel at the Census Bureau to inform them of the problem.

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Create New School District
(In this example, the reported changes were correctly
incorporated into the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database.)
The participant submitted changes to create a new unified school district (Lake Unified
School District). The boundary of the new school district can be displayed by turning on
the “Unified School District –P” layer alone or with the “Unified School District” layer.

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With only the “Unified School District” layer turned on, Lake Unified School District
shows as its own unified school district. Remember, the school district layer (without the
“P”) reflects the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database. Therefore, this new school
district was successfully uploaded.

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Boundary Change
(In this example, the boundary changes were not correctly
incorporated into the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database)
In this boundary change, Waukegan Community
Unit Unified School District was supposed to
gain area from North Chicago Unified School
District. The highlighted area shows the area of
boundary change submitted by the participant.
The highlighted change area in a boundary
change will always display the name of the
school district receiving the area. This
example lists Waukegan Community Unit
Unified School District which means that the
participant submitted a boundary change where
Waukegan Community Unit Unified School
District would receive this area.

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It is easiest to see the current school district boundaries (the Census Bureau’s
MAF/TIGER database after participant changes have been incorporated) with the
changes layer turned off. The unified school district layer here shows that the area of
North Chicago Unified School District (blue box) that was supposed to move to
Waukegan Community Unit Unified School District did not complete the boundary
change. The participant should contact the Census Bureau to report the problem.

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Complex Dissolution
(In this example, the changes were correctly incorporated
into the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database)
In this example, the areas of two elementary school districts were dissolved into another
district, Mundelein Elementary School District. “A” and “B” were dissolved into
Mundelein.

With the changes layer and elementary school district layer turned on, the user can see
the former boundaries. There is a record for each of the dissolved school districts in the
changes dataview. The records display the name of the school district it is dissolving into.

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The elementary school district layer shows schools districts “A” and “B” successfully
dissolved into Mundelein Elementary School District because its boundaries include the
changes area from districts “A” and “B”.

Simple Dissolution and Simple Consolidation
Simple dissolutions and simple consolidations will not show in the changes dataview
and will not display in the changes layer. However, the changes submitted will be
reflected in the appropriate school districts layer. For example, the elementary school
district layer will display the final elementary school districts after any simple dissolution
or consolidation changes were incorporated into the MAF/TIGER database. For a simple
dissolution, the boundary of the school district receiving the dissolved school district
should incorporate the dissolved school district. The same is true for simple
consolidations. The outer boundary of a simple consolidation will show the combined
school district with its new name. Since simple dissolutions and simple consolidations are
completed in the submission log and not in the MTPS, they will not show in the changes
layer but the school district layer will reflect the changes.

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