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Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

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Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

#1

Post by steelcityamir »

I wrote a tool in Python that finds the school district associated with any given street address in the United States.

Here’s how it works:

An address corresponds to a single point on the map. The U.S Census Bureau has a geocoder that converts an address to latitude and longitude coordinates.

School district boundaries can be represented as polygons on the map. The National Center for Education Statistics (NECS) has geographic data on school district boundaries.

Once we determine which polygon the point resides in, we know the school district.

Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US
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Re: Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

#2

Post by notwhereyouare »

This might help with a project i've been toying with. obviously US focused, but parse all the school calendars I could find and then query the dataset for like "when is the best time I could go XYZ and see as few school kids as possible"

would look at schools in the area and look at all the calendars and show the time where the majority of schools are in session

Re: Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

#4

Post by akgfab »

Nice work! This doesn’t hold for all school districts. Some, like New Orleans post Katrina, became all-charter districts such that each school essentially operated as its own district. Other districts serve only elementary school students (as opposed to “Unified” districts). Just heads up that there are edge cases.

Re: Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

#7

Post by jmuguy »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #6

As someone not from the US, does this mean you don't get to choose the high school you go to and it is only determined by your address regardless of where you friends go, etc.?

If you're attending public school for the most part - no, you'll be assigned to a school. There are a lot of exceptions though, merit based schools you can elect to attend, lottery based systems. And of course your parents are free to pay for private school.

This system does come with issues though, like parents lying about their address to get their kids into a "better" school.

Re: Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

#8

Post by beefman »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #6

As someone not from the US, does this mean you don't get to choose the high school you go to and it is only determined by your address regardless of where you friends go, etc.?

Correct. School assignment at all levels of public school in the U.S. is determined by residence address, with the exception of the magnet and charter school systems,[1][2] which are application-based. There are also private schools.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_...

Re: Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

#9

Post by SushiHippie »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #6

As someone not from the US, does this mean you don't get to choose the high school you go to and it is only determined by your address regardless of where you friends go, etc.?

In Germany, we have something similar but only for Elementary Schools (1st - 4th grade).

After that, you are mostly free to choose, which school you want to attend.

Re: Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

#10

Post by lhamil64 »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #6

As someone not from the US, does this mean you don't get to choose the high school you go to and it is only determined by your address regardless of where you friends go, etc.?

Also, about the "regardless of where your friends go" part, I'd say most people meet their friends in school. I guess if they moved and had to change schools that would suck but I can't think of anyone that happened to personally (other than friends who moved far away, like to another state). And the school district is often a very key factor when people with kids are looking for housing.
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