This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.
A few weeks ago, the School District quietly released a new feature on its website that staff members should have been shouting about from the rooftops. It’s School Finder, a map that has neighborhood school catchment areas clearly labeled.
For a long time, this information has languished in PDFs on each school’s individual profile page on the District’s website. Now you can easily search by location and find out what schools serve that address, rather than needing to know the school first. The site even prompts you to share your location to make it easier to get started navigating the map.
I’ve run into so many people who want to have this information in an accessible way so they can create maps that make it easier to learn about how catchments relate to other neighborhood data points. This opening-up of information is a great step toward tying catchment area info with data available from other resources like OpenDataPhilly.
Seeing these catchment areas in vivid color, does anything jump out at you? Any info you’d like to see connected with these maps?