In May, 2012, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) published approximately 300 2009–2010 school boundaries from the Public School Boundary Geodatabase (PSBG) on the School District Demographic Data System (SDDS) Map Viewer (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds). Using the previous process as a spring board, ED created a new data model for the boundaries covering the 2010–2011 through 2012–2013 school years using Esri ArcGIS 10.1 for Server and Desktop in addition to custom built Python tools. Improvements included data storage and sharing on the GeoCloud as well as replication and versioning for QA/QC purposes. Having implemented the new data model, we will reflect on work flow issues that arose and helpful tool automation. We will also discuss the future plans for the project.

1. CREATING A CLOUD BASED DATA
MODEL FOR SCHOOL BOUNDARY
COLLECTION
2013 ESRI Federal GIS Conference
Presented by Tai Phan, Andrea Conver, & Amy
Ramsdell
NCES, Sanametrix & Blue Raster
2/27/2013

2. School Boundary Geodatabase
History
 Continuation of the SABINS project
 Headed by Prof. Salvatore Saporito, The College of William & Mary
 David Van Riper, Minnesota Population Center
 www.sabinsdata.org
 First release in the SDDS Map Viewer in May 2012
 2009-2010 school boundaries for the top 350 districts

3. School Boundaries Collection
Initiative
 Collection of school attendance areas for all 13,000+ U.S. school
districts
 Combination of data collection by Census and a “group-sourced”
mapping effort
 The 2013-2014 school year will serve as a trial year
 Census Bureau is summarizing the data by school boundary

4. Contact and Data Tracking
Application
 Tracks all contact between the district and
the Census collection team
 Stores original data type (PDF, jpeg,
Shapefile, etc.)
 Records the date completed and user name
for each processing step
 Generates a variety of reports

5. Contact and Data Tracking
Application

6. School Boundary Technologies
 Using ArcSDE 10.1sp1
 CentralizedData Repository on Cloud
 Data Replication
 Using ArcGIS Server 10.1 on the Cloud
 Data visualization
 Data dissemination
 Python (Arcpy)

7. Data Model

8. Data Processing & Custom
Toolbox
 Collectboundaries
 Dissolve boundaries into a 1 to 1 format
 Associate boundaries with an unique ID
 Perform QA/QC
 Sync data to the Cloud

9. School Boundary Collection
Workflow

10. Public School Boundary Collection
and Verification Tool

11. Workflow Issues
 Working with different teams in a variety of
locations
 No shared network
 Data collection from a variety of sources
 Data collection for multiple years
 Determining what to collect
 Refactoring QA/ QC based on requirements
and deliverables

12. Conclusions
A simplified data model decreases file size and
streamlines QA/QC
 Custom tools have minimized human error,
improved overall data quality, and reduced
processing time
 Network speeds can be a hindrance when
working with SDE and data replication
 Collecting data from the source
 Using servers in the cloud increases accessibility

13. For More Information
Andrea Conver Amy Ramsdell
(202) 600-8167 (703) 842-0177
aconver@sanametrix.com aramsdell@blueraster.com