The following provides an overview of the data sources and methodology in this chapter. Please see the specific downloadable files for more details about the specific data and methodologies used.
Public School Facilities: The unit of analysis in this chapter are the buildings that DCPS and public charters operate their schools in. Some facilities house more than one school and some schools are dispersed across multiple facilities. Colocated facilities are those that house two different Local Education Agencies (LEAs) (for instance, two different public charter LEAs, or DCPS and a public charter LEA). School facility addresses were verified with District of Columbia Public Schools and the DC Public Charter School Board. School facility addresses were geocoded by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer with all District-appropriate neighborhood geographies included.
Facility Enrollment: DME related the school-level OSSE Audited Enrollment, SY2013-14 through SY2023-24, to individual facilities based on grades served. In instances where multiple facilities served the same school’s grade configurations enrollment was based on enrollment splits provided by DC PCSB when available or was divided proportional to their facility capacity in cases where that information was not available. The following audited enrollment business rules were applied to the audited enrollment files for SY2017-18 through SY2023-24: 1) The universe of DCPS students include audited UPSFF residents + Non-resident tuition paying + Residency unverified and 2) The universe of public charter students include audited UPSFF residents.
Programmatic capacity: SY2022-23 and SY2023-24 capacities for DCPS facilities use the methodology developed for the Master Facilities Plan 2023. Facility programmatic capacity was provided by DCPS before SY2022-23 and from the individual public charter LEAs, which was collected by the DC PCSB. These capacities reflect the maximum number of students that can be housed in each school facility given the schools’ existing educational programs, class size, and staffing. Programmatic capacities can be revised by the LEAs to reflect new class sizes or classroom configurations in existing facility space or reflect new facilities or new modernizations. While included in the downloadable dataset, portables (or temporary classrooms) are not used when calculating total capacity, utilization and unfilled seats. Capacity and unfilled seats for SY2021-22 may not be directly comparable to capacity in previous years due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; some public charter LEAs may have reported a lower capacity for their facilities that was in line with social distancing guidelines.
Starting in SY2021-22, a new methodology was applied to capacity: capacity was split across grade bands (typical PK-5, 6-8, and 9-12 grade bands) proportional to their 1-year enrollment projections. This methodology was applied to SY2013-14 through SY2020-21 as part of the SY2022-23 update.