By prioritizing existing boundaries and neighborhoods rather than race, ethnicity, or socioeconomics in zoning criteria, school districts can create attendance boundaries that reinforce segregation patterns stemming from decades of discriminatory policies. The resulting school segregation can have lasting effects. Research shows that education inequity can negatively affect test scores, graduation rates, and even adult income and life expectancy for students of color.

These data highlight attendance boundaries separating two schools in which there is at least a 25 percentage-point difference in the representation of Black or Hispanic students and residents and in the representation of white residents. Simply put, for boundaries to meet our definition, the share of Black and Hispanic students must vary substantially between the two schools, and the shares of Black, Hispanic, and white residents must vary substantially both near the boundary and within the entire school zone. Many of these boundaries, like the one between John Lewis and Ashford Park, are within one district, so these data can help district officials who care about integration understand where they can make small changes to produce large effects. Other boundaries are jurisdictional, crossing multiple school districts. In those cases, local and state officials could use these data to reconsider school systems at a macro level or better target underlying housing policies that have created segregated communities.

How can school officials and policymakers address segregated attendance boundaries?

For school officials and policymakers invested in integrating public schools, rezoning can offer an avenue to address the most unequal boundaries, but the inextricable links between school and neighborhood segregation can pose a seemingly insurmountable barrier. Hans Williams, the director of planning for the Dekalb County School District, believes school zoning is primarily a geographic process, and until that changes, “school boundaries will only be as diverse as the communities they’re serving.”

Although addressing housing segregation is necessary to create integrated neighborhoods and schools, policymakers and school officials have the tools to work around community segregation to address school segregation through rezoning. In places with these unequal boundaries, school district officials can make small changes without disrupting an entire school system and, as a result, can make a big difference in students’ lives.

Of course, sometimes it might be necessary to disrupt—or at least reevaluate—an entire school system. Considering demographic data in this process could remedy unequal boundaries and create more integrated school districts.

Over the past few years, the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) district has undertaken a larger systemwide redesign to integrate schools. To do so, officials commissioned a district analysis (PDF), receiving feedback from more than 10,000 families. Like all rezoning decisions, MPS considered facility capacity, enrollment trends, transportation barriers, and other factors, but it prioritized increasing equity.

“The first thing you have to do is acknowledge that our systems are racist,” said Eric Moore, MPS’s senior accountability, equity, and research officer. “The achievement gap is just a failure of our school systems being able to address the needs of students of color and low-income students, so the work has to be grounded in reality.”

As a result of its analysis, MPS redesigned its attendance boundaries and its school choice system, investing more into the community schools where students are zoned. Through the redesign, MPS expects to reduce its number of racially identifiable schools (defined as schools where more than 86 percent of students are students of color) from 21 schools to 10.

“We were backwards. We were investing in choice, and a lot of parents would leave schools that they didn’t feel met their needs,” said Moore. “You can’t just change boundaries. You also have to show folks that you’re taking those savings and investing in better schools.”

The Minneapolis redesign did not receive significant pushback from families, according to Moore, but rezoning plans often do face negative feedback, especially from those who have benefited from the system. Some parents say they’re worried that rezoning could lead to decreased home values, even though there is little evidence of real estate depreciation during localized school rezoning, and others point to fears of longer bus rides and broken-up neighborhoods.

These concerns—often rooted in racism and classism—are compounded by broader systemic inequities in education, housing, and social services. Families, both privileged and not, have learned to navigate a broken system to create the best situation for themselves. As a result, they have little faith that the system can fix itself, according to Moore.

By using rezoning to address unequal boundaries, school officials will likely invite negative feedback from families who have grown accustomed to the existing system. But rezoning, whether as part of a larger redesign or for a single school boundary pair, offers school districts an effective tool to address the most unequal boundaries.

Recently, Dekalb County has undertaken its own systemwide analysis to look at facilities across the district to see what capacity and rezoning needs may arise over the next 10 years. In terms of reducing segregation in Dekalb County schools, Williams said the comprehensive analysis is “a really good next step.”

But redrawing school boundaries will not be part of the analysis, and if any rezoning needs arise, boundary changes will have to adhere to the rezoning criteria. And that means, under current district rules, they can’t consider race.