WHY GO THE GIS ROUTE? DRIVING THE INDUSTRY SINCE 1991
ages and grades, among other demographic information. “You can draw an attendance area for a school and the program indicates how many students live in that attendance area,” he said. “We are able to draw a lot of attendance boundaries and level them out so every school is at optimum capacity. No wasted space in one school and crowding in another. Tose areas are where this software has really been helpful. It’s really nice to be able to give parents a six-month lead time that their attendance area is changing.” Denver Public Schools Senior Analyst Jim
Looney said a GIS system assists the district in coordinating what he called a “robust” choice process: Students are allowed to choose the school they wish to attend the following year. “We start with geo-coding each student’s
location by creating the address and finding out where each student’s house is located,” he said. “Students fill out a form and indicate up to five choices for the school they’d like to attend the following year. Te big part GIS plays in this is defining what the student’s resident school is.” Looney noted that GIS also gives them the
ability to map out residential development around town by type and develop long-term forecasting models five to 10 years out by res- idental parcels in Denver. Tis has given DPS the ability to see and articulate facility and programmatic needs to the broader communi- ty. Te result: DPS just passed a $467 million bond, of which $190 million is allocated for new facilities and facility expansion to support long-term growth needs. “We determine facility needs, residential
growth and demographic changes, such as maturation of a district or an increase in younger residents,” Looney said. He added that GIS mapping helps the dis-
trict improve at providing core services closer to where students live. For example, through GIS, the district improved services to stu- dents with special needs. Working with the Student Services Department, “we were able to identify where these students are coming from and compared that data to where special needs programs were being offered,” Looney said.“By usual spatial analysis and density maps, we are able to identify areas where special needs students tend to live.”
The main reason districts are using
GIS system-wide, not just in transpor- tation, is cost savings, wrote Kerry Somerville, the director of business development of U.S. Computing Inc., in STN last November. “Optimizing bus routes using a GIS
system offers immediate savings to the district,” he said in an Analysis column. “Most often it will offset the cost of the system within the first year. Safety is also priceless, and GIS allows you to question scenarios. Are the bus stops in safe locations? Who are the students on the bus? Where is the bus at every moment? Is live tracking an option? Are there sexual predators who live near the stops? These are just a few uses of GIS in transportation.” Visit the November 2012 digital edition at
www.stnonline.com/go/1t to read more about what GIS can do for school districts.
STOP
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