The GIS system allows Planners and school district administrators the ability to make more efficient and effective decisions regarding district planning

How we use GIS for School Facility Planning

Attendance Boundaries, enrollment and growth

GIS is used in the Planning Department to assist with determining attendance boundary changes. The demographics of our school district are constantly in flux. From the long period of tremendous growth to the current shifting of student populations within the county due in part to trends in foreclosures in the housing market. These inevitable shifts in countywide demographics mean dealing with district wide changes in total enrollment in addition the geographic enrollment shifts planners must also meet the state mandates of concurrency and class size reduction for capacity in each school. These variables require that school district planners and demographers wrestle with necessary adjustments within the district, such as individual school facilities and attendance boundaries. GIS is an invaluable tool used to help guide planning decision making, reporting for tasks that reflect the ever-changing make-up of schools, including:

• Creating maps of school facilities with various characteristics
• Geocoding students by residential location and mapping their attributes
• Designing attendance boundaries and performing other redistricting functions
• Analyzing school facility capacities and needs, and community development
• Relating demographics and facilities to other district departments and functions

Providing potential new school site analysis

The GIS in the Planning Department is also used to assist with determining where new schools need to be built based on population projections. Once the geographic area has been identified where the growth will occur, GIS staff adds on the parcel layer and aerial photography to the GIS system and can assist Real Estate with determining where vacant parcels of sufficient size to accommodate a school are located. GIS study area maps are then generated to assist the acquisition process.

Disaster Recovery

The GIS section has created a layer of schools identified as shelters and staff works with the county emergency operations center to make sure this data is up to date so that both agencies are prepared in the event of a disaster. (See map catalog link for hurricane maps)

Immediately after a hurricane the Facilities Management Division’s number one priority is getting schools up and running as quickly as possible. To assist in this effort the GIS system has been used to map out the various damage at different schools, and provide quick visual guides to assist efforts.

School Center and Public Support

The Planning Department has recently developed a state of the art GIS address look up website to assist school center personnel, businesses and the public at large to look up schools and public officials for any address in Palm Beach County. Click on the “Find My School’ button above to enter this cool website.

School District GIS involvement in countywide projects to benefit both students and the community

The GIS section of the Planning Department is often involved in with the school districts participation of countywide activities such as the pilot wireless project. The GIS system was used to determine the optimum location and recipients for the county initiative to assist in narrowing the digital divide.

Another GIS study involved acquiring data from Health and Human Services and including this data into the GIS system to determine where the greatest concentrations of teen pregnancies were occurring. By analyzing and mapping this data school district administrators could quickly determine where new programs could be placed to best serve the communities needs.

GIS Support for Academic Endeavors

An effort has been underway to implement this emerging technology (GIS) into our K-12 school curriculum. The recently approved GIS Project Charter includes members from many departments spanning both the operational and academic sides of the district to develop academic programs which include GIS for students. Planning department GIS staff provided a workshop in the summer of 2007 and Ms. Susan Oyer (Social Studies teacher at Boca Raton Community Middle School) has successfully incorporated GIS into her curriculum this past year with excellent results. Read more about this success story on the “GIS in Schools” page link above.