This polygon files contains 2015-2016 school-year data delineating school attendance boundaries. These data were collected and processed as part of the School Attendance Boundary Survey (SABS) project which was funded by NCES to create geography delineating school attendance boundaries. Original source information that was used to create these boundary files were collected were collected over a web-based self-reporting system, through e-mail, and mailed paper maps. The web application provided instructions and assistance to users via a user guide, a frequently asked questions document, and instructional videos. Boundaries supplied outside of the online reporting system typically fell into one of six categories: a digital geographic file, such as a shapefile or KML file; digital image files, such as jpegs and pdfs; narrative descriptions; an interactive web map; Excel or pdf address lists; and paper maps. 2015 TIGER/line features (that consist of streets, hydrography, railways, etc.) were used to digitize school attendance boundaries and was the primary source of information used to digitize analog information. This practice works well as most school attendance boundaries align with streets, railways, water bodies and similar line features included in the 2015 TIGER/line "edges" files. In those few cases in which a portion of a school attendance boundary serves both sides of a street contractor staff used Esri’s Imagery base map to estimate the property lines of parcels. The data digitized from analog maps and verbal descriptions do not conform to cadastral data (and many of the original GIS files created by school districts do not conform with cadastral or parcel data).

The SABS 2015-2016 file uses the WGS 1984 Web Mercator Auxiliary Sphere coordinate system.

Additional information about SABS can be found on the EDGE website.

The SABS dataset is intended for research purposes only and reflects a single snapshot in time. School boundaries frequently change from year to year. To verify legal descriptions of boundaries, users must contact the school district directly.

All information contained in this file is in the public domain. Data users are advised to review NCES program documentation and feature class metadata to understand the limitations and appropriate use of these data.