2013-2014 School District Review Program

Attachment E: School District Review Program
Special Situations: Parcels, Shorelines and Pseudos

Attachment E: Special Situations

2013-2014

This guide has three sections: Defining Small Land Parcels, Defining Shorelines, and
Pseudo School Districts. Please read the section(s) you think it might apply to your state.

Defining Small Land Parcels
Sometimes it is necessary to put an individual house in a different school district than the
school district by which it is surrounded. It is important to do this correctly, or the Census
Bureau may code your house to the wrong school district. Please read the following and
call us if you have questions.
Three important principles to remember:
1. The parcel should include the entire driveway.
2. You must attach the parcel to the road on which the house has its address. The
Census Bureau “attaches” a housing unit to an address on a road. In order to
ensure that the data from a household is associated with the correct school district
(or any particular geographic area), the road where the address is located must be
part of the parcel.
3. This boundary is only for statistical purposes and does not indicate property or
ownership. Therefore, it is fine to draw the boundary outside of the property
boundaries shown on your records, as long as there is no nearby housing.
Below is an example of the incorrect way to place a house in a different school district.
Your records may only show a small parcel, but you will need to evaluate the parcel and
decide if you need to adjust it and possibly expand it.

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This screenshot below shows an example of how to define a school district for a single
house more accurately. The boundary consists of extra distance around the house and
portion of the street near the driveway. Remember, especially in an area with sparse
housing, it is better to expand the parcel than accurately represent property. As long as
expanding the parcel will not come close to another house or driveway, you should make
the parcel large enough to cover the house, driveway, and portion of the street where the
driveway connects to the street.
We cannot guarantee we have completely spatially accurate locations for all housing
units. Buffering the parcel, where possible, helps to ensure the housing unit won’t be
inadvertently coded to the wrong school district.

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Shorelines with School District Not Defined in Water
The Census Bureau’s geographic database covers the entire United States including the
ocean coastline, the Great Lakes, and large unpopulated areas. Some states have areas of
their state (large water bodies such as the Great Lakes or large National Parks) in which
they do not have a school district and use “School District Not Defined” to cover the
area. The following provides some guidelines on determining boundaries for “School
District Not Defined” for water.
If your school district follows the shoreline, we strongly advise you to define school
districts into the water, buffering the shoreline. This will ensure the best boundaries for
your Title I estimates. The shoreline can be a difficult boundary to define because it is
often represented differently between different sources and because the Census Bureau is
often reshaping the shoreline to be more accurate. This can result in population counted
in “School District Not Defined” when you use the shoreline as the boundary. We
strongly encourage you to add a buffer of water to your costal school districts to ensure
that the school district receives a complete count and therefore correct Title I funding.
Your records may show the shoreline as the school district boundary, but you do not need
to follow the boundary exactly in this case because Census Bureau boundaries are only
for data collection purposes. It is best to evaluate your boundary to determine if the
shoreline is the best boundary between the school district and the area of “School District
Not Defined”.
Look at the imagery below. The orange line represents both the shoreline and school
district boundary in the Census Bureau database, and the blue dashed lines represent the
“School District Not Defined” area. The orange shoreline boundary poorly represents the
school district boundary. It consists of housing in “School District Not Defined” and
water and if you leave the boundaries unmodified, it could alter your Title I estimates.
This example shows a shoreline that is a difficult boundary to follow. The Census Bureau
would like you to “buffer” an area of water around the school district boundary.

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For example, here is a school district following the shoreline, and it has “School District
Not Defined” for the water.
There are many lines already in the Census Bureau database that parallel the shoreline for
the Great Lakes, Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, and Pacific Ocean. You can use these
lines for your school district boundary, and it is a simple operation using the
MAF/TIGER Partnership Software to move the shoreline boundary further out into the
water.

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We recommend that you move the boundary off the shoreline, as shown here, and out
into the water. This ensures that all areas of land are well within an actual school district
rather than having “School District Not Defined” so close to the land and housing.

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However, we strongly recommend adding a buffer if you do choose to use the shoreline
for your school district boundary. Moreover, please do not include inlets, deltas, or
canals like the one shown below.

Here is the recommended way (if you do choose to use the shoreline as your
boundary rather than adding a “buffer”):

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Pseudo School Districts
This section applies to states that have pseudo school districts.
In order to create accurate tabulations to support Title I funding allocations, the Census
Bureau creates a pseudo school district for each school district that is financially
responsible for providing education for one set of grades in one geographic area and also
financially responsible for a different set of grades in a different geographic area. For
example, a school district that is financially responsible for grades K-12 in one area is
also financially responsible for grades 9-12 in a different area where it shares financial
responsibility with an elementary school district. The pseudo district is always associated
with a regular district so that the regular district is given “credit” for the additional
financial responsibility.
In this example, the Science Hill Independent School District has very few children in
grades 9-12, so those children attend school in the Pulaski County School District.
Pulaski County School District is financially responsible for educating children in grades
9-12 who live in the Science Hill Independent School District and Pulaski County School
District is also financially responsible for educating children in grade ranges K-12 within
Pulaski County, outside of the Science Hill Independent School District. Therefore, the
Census Bureau created the pseudo district “Pulaski County School District for Science
Hill” using the same boundaries as the Science Hill Independent School District and
assigned grades 9-12 to “Pulaski County School District for Science Hill”. The Science
Hill Independent School District is assigned grades K-8 while the Pulaski County School
District maintains its grades K-12.

Pulaski County, Kentucky

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These pseudo districts are identified in the Inventory and Grade Range file by a flag with
a value of "A." In addition, the Census Bureau assigns them a pseudo Federal LEA ID
number and a school district name that is slightly different than the official name of the
school district.
They appear in the School District Inventory and Grade Range Listing 1 as:
State

LEA

21
21
21

04950
21002
05220

Grade Range
PK
09
PK

Flag

12
12
08

A

Name of School District
PULASKI COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT
PULASKI COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT FOR SCIENCE HILL ISD
SCIENCE HILL INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT

When submitting a pseudo school district, please provide the following information:
•
•
•

Official School District Name and Federal LEA ID number
Alternate Grade Range
Service area of Alternate Grade Range

Currently, the Census Bureau has defined pseudo school districts in California, Georgia,
Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and
Vermont.
If you think that you have school districts that fit the above description, please
contact the School District Review Program staff at 301.763.1099:

1

•
•
•
•

Ian Millett
Pat Ream
Nathan Jones
Ryan Short

•

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

Refer to Attachment D for supplementary text file data dictionary and record layout information.

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