Overview of Hartford-area School Attendance Zone GIS shapefiles

Submitted to MAGIC, January 12, 2010

by Professor Jack Dougherty and Jesse Wanzer

Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project at Trinity College, Hartford CT

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We are sharing these GIS shapefiles that we compiled and created as part of our SmartChoices research project, so that they may be disseminated to others via the MAGIC website. Read more about the SmartChoices project at:

http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/educ/css/scintro.html

Each shapefile outlines and names a school district’s elementary, middle, and/or secondary school attendance zone boundaries, which to our knowledge are current as of Fall 2009. Our file naming system and metadata explain the source of each map. Some maps came to us as GIS shapefiles by town GIS coordinators, while we created others by digitizing paper maps, lists of street addresses by school zone, and/or editing other existing shapefiles. See metadata in each shapefile for details.

We believe that this is the most complete set of Hartford-area school attendance zone files, since there does not appear to be any centralized collection of these local school board maps by any Connecticut government agency or library.

Disclaimer: By downloading these free digital resources, the end-user assumes all responsibility for the accuracy of the product. We advise them to check directly with the school district for official details and updates.

File naming system and examples:

Avon_ElemSchZones_2004x.shp

School district = Avon

Grade level = ElemSchZones (elementary schools)

2004 = map data source year (to our knowledge, still accurate as of Fall 2009)

data source = x (created by Cities Suburbs Schools Project @ Trinity; see metadata for details)

Hartford_4SchZone_2009HtfdGIS.shp

School district = Hartford

Grade level = HPS created a single 4-zone system for all grade levels in 2008

2009 = map data source year

data source = Hartford GIS (see metadata for details)

Contents of attached folder: SchAttZones_for_MAGIC.zip

Avon

Bloomfield

Canton

East Granby

East Hartford

East Windsor

Farmington

Glastonbury

Granby

Hartford (a single 4-zone system for all grade levels)

Manchester

Newington

Simsbury

Suffield

Vernon

West Hartford

Wethersfield

Windsor

Windsor Locks

(. . .and more to come. . .)

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