A new GIS data engine has come along - SABINS (School Attendance Boundary Information System) and seems much like the incredibly rich dataset at NHGIS (National Historical GIS). Tell your Education department members or others on campus who study school systems, student walking distances, and demographic variables within the public schools. I haven't tried using the SABINS site but I used the very similar NHGIS site and wrote about it in the past (here). From the email announcement:
The College of William & Mary and the Minnesota Population Center are pleased to announce the launch of the new School Attendance Boundary Information System (SABINS) website. SABINS is a project funded by the National Science Foundation to assemble, harmonize, and disseminate GIS data for grade-specific school attendance boundaries embedded within school districts throughout the United States. In addition to GIS data for school attendance boundaries, SABINS also provides:
- Census data tabulated for the school attendance boundaries
- Crosswalk tables that link school attendance boundaries to data from the U.S. Department of Education's Common Core of Data
When users visit the SABINS website, they will find:
- A front page providing access to crosswalk tables, FAQs, user guides and data documentation
- A data extract system where they can:
- download Census data for multiple grade levels in one extract,
- download GIS data for multiple grade levels in one extract, and
- constrain or expand data searches by specifying any combination of topics or datasets.
