School District Review Program, Verification Phase

Attachment B: School District Review Program
Guidelines for Using the WebViewer Module
and Downloading Shapefiles for Verification

2011-2012

Paperwork Reduction Project
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that reviewing and providing the SDRP verification
information will take most respondents approximately 1-4 hours to complete, depending
on the number of changes submitted during the annotation phase. This includes the
time needed to read the instructions, assemble materials, organize and review the
information, and report and verify any needed changes. Please send comments
regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information,
including suggestions for reducing this burden to:
Paperwork Project 0607-0795
U.S. Census Bureau 4600 Silver Hill Road Room 3K138
Washington, DC 20233
Or you may e-mail comments to:
paperwork@census.gov
Note: use “Paperwork Project 0607-0795” as the subject.
Please include a copy of your message addressed to:
geo.school.list@census.gov

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Guidelines for Using the WebViewer Module
and Downloading Shapefiles for Verification
During the verification phase of the school district review program, participants will be
able to verify that their changes were uploaded correctly into the Census Bureau’s
geographic database, MAF/TIGER database (MTDB). The MAF/TIGER Participant
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 and see school district boundaries after
their requested changes were made in the MTDB. Participants can verify that the Census
Bureau updated submitted changes correctly, and notify the Census Bureau where
additional changes need to be made.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

MTPS Web Viewer Access and Login Information…………....page 3
MTPS Web Viewer Tools (Green Box below)..……………......page 5
MTPS Web Viewer Tabs (Blue Box below).…….………..…...page 13
Verifying Changes (Examples using MTPS Web Viewer)…….page 22
Downloading Shapefiles for Verification……………………....page 32
Tips for Reviewing Changes using Shapefiles...…………….....page 35
Verification Examples with Shapefiles………………………....page 36
Reviewing Changes in MTPS and Submitting New Changes….page 42

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I. 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.

3

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

You will see the county map display (see page 2.)

4

II. Tools

Below are the basic definitions of tools available in the toolbar. See the following pages
for more details and pictures.

County-wide Zoom

Zoom out to the entire county

Choose a previous zoom to
display

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

Draw a line between features and click to
display the distance. Draw a polygon to
display area measurements

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
To measure distance, click on the tool to activate it and draw a line between two features.

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. 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: You must use this tool 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.

9

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. The information about the feature will display
on the right of the screen.

10

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.

11

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
The WebViewer organizes many of its functions within a series of tabs, displayed below.
Legend

Click the Legend tab to display the symbols for the maps 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 MTDB 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 check boxes associated with a layer.

Users can also use the menu at the
bottom of the screen to turn on all
layers, turn off 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.

14

Dataview

The Dataview tab is useful for zooming to a specific school district or seeing a complete
list of certain features.

For example, the
user can select
“Unified School
District” from the
dropdown dataview
menu in order to see
a list of unified
school districts and
their characteristics,
and to choose a
district to zoom to.
The features in the layer (in this case, unified school districts) are displayed.
The user can see their attributes such as LEA code, the high grade in the grade range, ect.

15

When the user clicks on this icon, the MTPS viewer will display or zoom to that feature.

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

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For example, searching for “PACIFIC UNION ELEMENTARY” displays the feature 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

The selection tab is used with the get info tool
. Users should use the selection tab to
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 active 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.

19

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
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 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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Bookmarks

The bookmarks tab creates and controls “bookmarks” which are saved map views.

IV. Verifying Changes
The MTPS Viewer only allows participants to view what is in the MTDB and the changes
submitted during the delineation phase of the project. If updates to the shapefiles are
necessary, you must download shapefiles from our partnership shapefile download site.
(See page 32.) Of course, if there are only a couple of 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. Please see the next section, section V.
Participants should carefully check the changes to ensure that the Census Bureau data
reflects the desired changes. The following examples will show correctly updated
changes and changes that were not incorporated into the MTDB database.
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
Ms. Pat Ream (301) 763-9042
Mr. Ian Millett (301) 763-9038
Ms. Lyndsey Richmond (301) 763-1114

•

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

22

Create New School District
(In this example, changes submitted by the participant were not correctly
incorporated in the Census Bureau 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) 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 database. Contact the school district
personal at the Census Bureau to inform them of the problem.

24

Create New School District
(In this example, the reported changes were correctly
incorporated into the Census Bureau’s 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.

25

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 MTDB 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 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
the 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.
The change area in 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.

27

It is easiest to see the current school district boundaries (the Census Bureau MTDB
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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Simple Dissolution and Simple Consolidation
The term simple dissolution refers to the situation where one or more existing school
districts are entirely absorbed by one other existing school district. A new school district
is not created. The name and LEA code of the receiving school district is retained.
The term simple consolidation refers to the situation where two or more school districts
merge to create a NEW school district with a new name and new LEA code, with no
additional boundary changes/corrections. There is no change in the overall boundaries of
the former school districts.

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 MTDB database. Since simple
dissolutions and simple consolidations are completed in the changes log and not in the
MTPS, they will not show in the changes layer but the school district layer will reflect the
changes.

In order to verify a simple dissolution or simple consolidation, look at the MTDB layer,
the school district layer without the “P” after it. Verify that the name of the school district
is correct. For a simple dissolution, the boundary for 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 districts with its new name.

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Complex Dissolution Example
(In this example, the changes were correctly incorporated into MTDB)
The term complex dissolution refers to the situation where a single school district is
dissolved and its area is split between two or more other existing school districts, with or
without additional boundary changes/corrections. A new school district is not created,
and the names and LEA codes of the receiving school districts are retained.
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.

Notice that the two school districts being dissolved into Mundelein Elementary School
District are labeled “Mundelein Elementary School District” because that is the name of
the school district receiving the area and “H” because H is the code for complex
dissolution.

30

With the changes layer and elementary school district layer turned on, the user can see
the former boundaries, noted by an “H” in parenthesis after the district name. 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.

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”.

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V. Downloading Shapefiles for Verification
Downloading shapefiles to verify your changes is not necessary but is an option in
addition to reviewing your changes in the MTPS Web Viewer. It is required if you need
to use the MTPS to submit corrections to school district boundaries that you discovered
during your verification review. The following sections will provide guidelines for
reviewing your changes in MTPS or ESRI’s ArcMap software using the downloaded
shapefiles. You may also view the shapefiles in other Geographic Information System
(GIS) software packages that display shapefiles.
1. To download shapefiles, you will need to go to the following webpage:
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/pvs/PVS_main.html
2. Click the School District Review Program (SDRP)

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3. Select your state and the county you want to download.

4. You have three options of data to download:
All available data
This will give you the school district layers for the county as well as the
state and other layers such as water, incorporated place and county
subdivisions. If you need to submit edits in the MTPS, you will need to
use this option.
All School Districts
With this option you will only get school districts for the county.
All Lines
This option gives you all lines in MTDB database for the county.
It may be simpler to just download the school district layers to do your review. In the
event that you need to submit changes, download all available data. Or, if you have a lot
of counties to review, you may want to download all available data for one county which
will give you the statewide school district layers. You could use the state-wide school
district layer for your review and then download all available data on the counties that
you need to edit in the MTPS.

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After you choose which files to download, save the files on your computer.

You may review the files in ArcMap, MTPS or other GIS software that recognizes
shapefiles.

Please see Section VI if you wish to use ArcMap to view the shapefile and
Section VII if you plan to use the MTPS.
Section VII also covers how to make corrections in the MTPS.
You must use the MTPS to make corrections
that you plan to submit back to the Census Bureau

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VI. Tips for reviewing changes in ArcMap and Other GIS Software Packages
Using other shapefiles for reference
You may want to bring in your own reference shapefile to help in the review of the
school districts shapefiles.
You cannot download the changes shapefile you submitted to the Census Bureau but you
can view them in the MTPS viewer or retrieve them from the SDRP submission you sent
to the Census Bureau. To do this, open the zip file you submitted and add the
COMPLETE file for the applicable layer (such as unified) to ArcMap. This layer
represents the county as you submitted it (including your changes) to the Census Bureau
in fall 2011.
Differences between your reference shapefile and the Census Bureau shapefile
In MTDB, the Census Bureau’s geographic database, the Census Bureau maintains a
feature to feature relationship. This means that a school district boundary should always
follow the feature that bounds it, even if that feature appears spatially displaced in
comparison to your own shapefile of the feature.
For example, Springfield school district follows Main Street for its northern boarder.
Your shapefile has Main Street about 8 feet north of where Census Bureau shapefiles
show Main Street. While your location of Main Street may indeed be more spatially
accurate, it is very important that Springfield school district follow the feature that
bounds it, in this example Main Street, in MTDB. Do not move the boundary of
Springfield school district to where your shapefile has Main Street. Population will be
tabulated according to the features in MTDB and therefore it is important your school
district boundaries follow the Census Bureau’s features.
Many school districts follow non-visible boundaries such as section lines. While the
Census Bureau does not have section lines in MTDB, many features such as roads follow
section lines. Section lines and other non-visible lines should maintain a relationship with
other MTDB features. For example, if a non-visible boundary is halfway between two
roads or other section lines, that boundary should be halfway between the roads or
section lines as they appear in the MTDB database.
Please keep this feature to feature relationship in mind when reviewing your school
district boundaries. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Please see the examples on the next page.

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VII. Verification Examples
Example I
You may encounter differences between the changes you submitted (or your own school
district shapefile) and the shapefiles you downloaded (which represent MTDB).

The yellow area below represents the area to be changed in a boundary correction. The
area will move from the grey school district to purple school district.

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The boundaries below represent the school districts as submitted by the participant, after
the purple district annexed area from the grey district. You can see the entire county with
the changes you made by opening the zip file you sent to the Census Bureau. Bring the
shapefile SDRP__UNSD_COMPLETE into ArcMap.

37

Here is the same shapefile with the actual boundary in MTDB, downloaded from the
Census Bureau website, represented by the green line. As you can see, the green MTDB
boundary does not perfectly follow the boundary the participant submitted.

Some things to keep in mind if you encounter this:
Is the boundary following the correct feature? The school district boundaries should
follow MTDB features. If your school district boundary is following the wrong MTDB
feature, for example, the wrong road, please contact the Census Bureau geography staff.
In the upload process, we may have moved your boundary to a close (within 30 feet)
MTDB feature. If we placed the boundary on the wrong feature or you have questions,
please contact us.
Are there housing units between the two boundaries? If there are, please contact the
Census Bureau about the difference. We will work with you to correct the boundary so
that the housing units are tabulated in the correct school district.
Is the difference significant? This will depend on the geography of the area in question,
but in general, differences of less than 30 feet do not affect population counts. In very
remote areas with sparse populations, a difference of 60-75 feet is likely not significant
for population tabulation. If you feel the difference will affect population counts for the
school districts, please contact us.

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Example II
In this example, the participant requested to move the boundary of the red school district
from the current boundary of the road to about 50 ft north of the road.
The purple line represents the new boundary as requested by the participant.
The black boundary line represents the road (old boundary)

In this example, Census Bureau geographers chose not to move the boundary as
requested. The new boundary would not include any new housing units and we could not
discern any reason move the boundary parallel to the road.
If a school district boundary follows a feature, such as a road, it is important to use
the MTDB road as the boundary, even if you think that feature is spatially
inaccurate in MTDB. Your shapefiles may have the road slightly north of where the
Census Bureau has it but the school district should follow the feature in MTDB that
bounds it rather than where your records show it spatially. This will ensure correct
population counts during tabulation. If you have any questions about this, please contact
us.

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Example III
This example is relevant in situations where neighborhoods or single houses attend a
different school district than the surrounding or adjacent school district.

If you need to place a house or a group of houses in a different school district than the
surrounding school district, it is important to parcel the area to the road. For example, the
pink area represents the parcel to be assigned to a school district other than the
surrounding area as requested by the participant. The green line represents the road.
Again, since the Census Bureau maintains a feature to feature relationship in MTDB, it is
important that the boundary use the road in this case, assuming that by using the road, no
housing units would be allocated to the wrong school district.

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During the upload process, the Census Bureau geographers moved the boundary of the
parcel to use the road (green line) as the southern boundary. You may encounter similar
situations with your boundary changes. If you do not agree with the changes please do
not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to discuss the situation with you to ensure
that the housing units are tabulated in the correct school district.

Area added to parcel by geography staff

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VIII. Reviewing Changes in MTPS and Submitting New Changes
1. If your computer does not have the MTPS on it already, you will need to install it using
the program disk mailed to you in August 2011.
2. Next, open your C: drive and rename the folder “MTPSData” to “MTPSData_old” or
something else to signify your previous work.
3. Create a folder on your C: drive called “MTPSData”
4. Place the following files from your MTPSData_old folder into your MTPSData folder:
SetupFile_SDRP.xml
MTPS1.txt
5. Download the partnership shapfiles (all available layers) as instructed on page 32. In
order to review changes in the MTPS, you must download “all available data.” This
ensures you have the latest Census Bureau shapefiles with the latest updates to MTDB,
the geographic database.
6. Open the zip file and place all of the contents into the “MTPSData” folder.
7. Open the MTPS and open your county by clicking School District > Pick a County.
After the county is imported, open the county. You can now review the school district
boundaries from MTDB and submit changes as necessary.
8. During your review, please keep in mind the examples in section VII.
9. If you need to add a shapefile to view in the MTPS, please follow these steps:
1. Put the shapefile into your MTPSData folder on your C: drive.
2. Click on the layers button located on the toolbar

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3. Click on “Add Layer”
and browse to your
shapefile. You can
change the
symbolization of the
shapefile by clicking
here. If you encounter
problems, please contact
us.

10. If you need to submit changes, use the MTPS just as you did to submit your original
changes. Refer to the MTPS manual, Attachment A of the participant guidelines you
received in August 2011, as necessary. Please do not hesitate to call us if you have any
questions.
11. Be sure to name your submission appropriately to differentiate it from your original
submission. We suggest you name it with the state county code underscore “V” for
verification. For example, 99123_V.

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