Shifts Happen: Building a Strong Foundation for School Attendance Area Boundary Redistricting

If you are a leader of a school district and boundary redistricting isn’t on your radar, it should be. Why? Shifts happen. Population shifts that is. Folks are having fewer children these days, migration patterns are changing, parents are using school choice options at increasing rates, and developers creative use of space may affect the density of the population. Even if you know that your school boundaries do not need to change or that you do not need to open or close schools right now, changes could be looming for your future. Now is the time to prepare. As the wise adage says: “hope for the best, plan for the possible.” If you build a strong foundation for school attendance area boundary redistricting, your future redistricting process will run much more smoothly.

I work with school districts across the country of all shapes, sizes, and student demographic makeups, and there are five key building blocks district leaders can put into place to establish a strong foundation before over- or underenrolled schools create a need for redistricting:

1. Equity Indicators: If providing equitable access to educational opportunities is one of your district’s core values, how is that value actualized in policy and practice and how is it measured? Creating policies defining equity, requiring equity indicator tracking, and designing tools like equity dashboards can provide district leaders, board members, and your community with valuable information for how school boundary changes can foster educational equity.
2. Data Systems: One way to reduce the cost and time of a redistricting process is ensuring student information system data is organized, has a data key (e.g., glossary), and includes information such as student demographics and participation in special programs. Maintaining historical student information is also important to monitor trends.
3. School Capacity Methodology: It’s impossible to know whether enrollment balancing is needed without a clear understanding of schools’ capacities. Districts should have a method for calculating capacities for each school along with established utilization targets and a system for tracking, updating, and reporting on capacity and utilization information.
4. Student Assignment and Choice Plan: Increasing rates of school choice are creating enrollment imbalances in some districts. For example, a school may be at 85 percent of its capacity based on the number of students zoned to attend that school, but, due to students attending from outside the boundary, is overenrolled at 105 percent. This may also cause other nearby schools to be underenrolled. Districts should have a choice plan that includes policies such as the number of students who can choose to attend a school based on the school’s capacity and the number of students zoned to attend that school.  
5. Redistricting Policy: Some states and school districts have laws, rules, and policies that guide redistricting. Policies create agreed-upon processes to determine how districts should notify the community about boundary changes and school consolidations, and what opportunities exist for the community to provide feedback. Creating these policies before a redistricting process begins ensures there is a transparent process vetted by stakeholders that provides opportunities for engagement and promotes community buy-in.

Want more information about redistricting? Visit our Attendance Boundary Analysis and Adjustment page.