Important Data Update

The University of Iowa Geography Department has been working with the Iowa Department of Educationand the US Census in an effort to create an updated statewide school district layer.

School districts are important to all kinds of groups for attendance questions, revenue sources, demographic characteristics, and endless other questions.  But because counties maintain districts along property lines and the census maintains boundaries along census blocks, inconsistencies often appear.  The image below shows county and state district lines off by 1/4 mile in some areas.

To solve some of these errors this collaborative project collected locally defined school districts from about 1/3 of Iowa counties.  The county data was then incorporated into state and federal boundary layers so Iowa's students are better accounted for. 

Once the metadata is written the data will be available for download.