Extracting state-level school information in a GIS - Latest

School Boundaries Product Guide
Product type
Data
Portfolio
Enrich
Product family
Enrich Boundaries > Community Boundaries
Product
Schools > School Boundaries
Version
Latest
ft:locale
en-US
Product name
School Boundaries
ft:title
School Boundaries Product Guide
Copyright
2025
First publish date
2010
ft:lastEdition
2025-06-27
ft:lastPublication
2025-06-27T10:26:53.518000

School districts

The following layers are used in extracting state-level information about school districts:

  • School District Objects
  • School District Primary Attributes
  • School Point Primary Attributes
  • School Points Census table
  1. Join school district objects to school district primary attributes using the object ID (OBJ_ID).
  2. Join the results from Step 1 to the point primary attributes using the NCES district ID (NCES_DISID).
  3. Join the results from Step 2 to the point census table using OBJ_ID.
  4. Complete the selection of districts with the state attribute from the census table.

Shortcut: The first two characters of the NCES_DISID value are the state FIPS code. Using a substring of this ID should allow one to pull out the school district features for a given state.

School attendance zones

The following layers are used to extract state-level information about school attendance zones:

  • School Attendance Zone Objects
  • School Attendance Zone Primary Attributes
  • School Point Primary Attributes
  • School Point Census Table
  1. Join school attendance zone objects to school attendance zone primary attributes using the object ID (OBJ_ID).
  2. Join the results from Step 1 to the school point primary attributes table using the NCES school ID (NCES_SCHID).
  3. Join the results from Step 2 to the point census table using the object ID (OBJ_ID).
  4. Complete the selection of attendance zones with the state attribute from the census table.

Shortcut: The first two characters of the NCES_DISID value are the state FIPS code. Using a substring of this ID should allow one to pull out the school attendance zone features for a given state.

The following layers are used to extract state-level information about school points:

  • School Point Objects
  • School Point Census Table
  1. Join the school point objects to the school points census table using the object ID (OBJ_ID).
  2. Complete the selection of attendance zones with the state attribute from the census table.
Note: Attribute fields for each layer may be joined as needed or desired.