Methods

The purposes of this product are to:

  1. highlight attempted and successful school district secessions that have occurred since the year 2000.
  2. analyze state law regarding school district secessions.


SECESSION IDENTIFICATION
Sources

  • Internet research: Using internet search engines, we found news articles, meeting minutes, legislation and other pertinent material used to establish and verify our list of school district secessions.

  • School districts’ years of reported data and boundary changes: Variables describing the years for which a school district reported data and the status of school district boundary changes were used to identify districts that have opened since 2000. This information came from the Common Core of Data. This list was used as an aid in identifying secession districts as described below.

  • Communication with state officials: In some cases, communication with state officials provided confirmation or identification of past or ongoing secessions.

Methodology

Identification of secession districts.

To identify a list of school districts that attempted to secede, successfully or unsuccessfully, since 2000, several techniques were employed.

  1. We searched the internet for news stories, meeting minutes, legislation and any other pertinent material about attempted or successful school district secessions in order to establish an initial list of school district secessions. Secessions were included if the district, resident groups, or the state legislature had begun the process for school district secession in that state.

    1. In states where there are both elementary school districts and secondary school districts, elementary school districts that seek to leave their high school district by forming a unified were included as secessions.

    2. Attempts to facilitate a school district secession through the state legislature were included only if the bill(s) were sponsored by representatives from the district in question.

    3. Proposals to leave one school district for transfer to another school district were not included. Similarly, dissolution of an existing school district into other existing neighboring districts were not included.

  2. We then added to this list by utilizing CCD data to identify newly formed districts that may have been created through secession.

    1. We started by creating a list of districts where the first year of reported data in the CCD was 2000 or later, or where the district was identified as new or newly re-opened after a period of closure in any year after 2000. This was based on the “start of year status” measure in CCD, which classifies school district border changes since the prior year.

    2. From this list, we excluded charter districts, special education districts, vocational school districts, correctional facilities, state-run districts, and other types of non-traditional school districts.

    3. This list was then used as the basis for a second round of internet searching to distinguish between new districts that were the result of secession and those that arose through some other means such as consolidation or state-level reorganization.

  3. Additional knowledge about ongoing or completed school district secessions was gained through communications with state officials during research on state laws regarding school district secession.

Classification of secession districts

Secessions were classified as being either successful (seceded), ongoing, inactive or defeated using a combination of internet research and data checks with the CCD. To confirm successful secessions that occurred prior to the 2016-17 school year (the most recent year of CCD data), data checks were performed to confirm that seceded districts were present in the CCD data. In all cases, including more recent secessions, success was confirmed using news articles and state and local department of education websites.

Secessions were considered “ongoing” if internet research suggested that the community attempting to secede is still actively discussing the proposal and/or moving through the formal secession procedures in their state. A secession is classified as “inactive” if the secession was discussed by a community in the past, but there is no evidence that they entered into the formal procedures.

Secessions were considered “defeated” if there was evidence that a community began the formal procedures necessary for secession and were unable to gain approval at some stage of this process (be it signature gather, voter approval, etc.).

SECESSION DISTRICT DEMOGRAPHICS
Sources

  • District-level total school-age population and poverty rates: school district-level data on poverty rates among relevant school-age children in 2016 come from the Census, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE).

  • Municipality-level total school-age population and poverty rates: The total number of school-age children (ages 5-17) and school-age poverty rate estimates for municipalities are derived from the US Census, American Community Survey (ACS).

  • School district enrollments and racial composition: School district enrollment characteristics from the 2015-16 school year come from the US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD).

  • Municipality-level school-age racial composition: The estimated percent of school-aged children within a municipality that are white is calculated using data from the US Census, American Community Survey (ACS).

  • Median property value income: School district and municipality median owner-occupied property value and median household income for the 2015-16 school year come from the US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE).

  • School district revenues: Revenues from state and local sources for the 2015-16 school year come from the Census, Annual Survey of School System Finances (F33).

Methodology

Figures are derived from the school district- and municipality-level data sources described above. Further details about these figures are presented below.

School-age population and poverty. Most figures describing the school-age population and school-age poverty rate in a school district are derived from the US Census, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. There are two exceptions: 1) Gardendale and 2) East and West Yuma.

Since Gardendale’s secession was only approved in the spring of 2017, school district-level data does not exist for this community. In this instance, school-age population and poverty rate come from municipality-level Census, ACS figures. The court-ordered boundary for this district aligns with the municipal boundary of the town of Gardendale so these figures should be accurate at the school district-level as well.

School-age population and poverty rate figures in the year 2000 for the school districts of East and West Yuma are derived from the 2000 Decennial Census.

Percent nonwhite calculations. Most figures describing the proportion of school districts’ enrollments that are nonwhite were calculated using data on districts’ total enrollments and enrollments of white students from NCES, CCD. The one exception is: Gardendale.

Since Gardendale’s secession was only approved in the spring of 2017, school district-level data does not exist for this community. In this instance, the percent nonwhite is calculated on the entire school-age population (not public school enrollments as is used for the other school districts) and comes from municipality-level Census, ACS figures.

Median owner-occupied property values. Most figures on median owner-occupied property values are derived from Census, ACS school district-level data. There are three exceptions: 1) the Shelby County, TN secessions, 2) Gardendale, and 3) East and West Yuma.

For the six districts that seceded from Shelby County, Tennessee, as well as Gardendale in Alabama, data is not yet available in school district-level datasets through ACS. In these cases, municipality-level data were used, however, the boundaries for these districts align with the municipal boundaries of the towns so these figures should be accurate at the school district-level as well.

Property value figures in the year 2000 for the school districts of East and West Yuma are derived from the 2000 Decennial Census.

State and local revenue calculations. Where included, figures describing districts’ per-pupil state and local revenues were calculated using revenue and enrollment figures from the F33 survey administered by the US Census as a part of the Annual Survey of School System Finances. The following subtractions were made from total state and local revenues for each school district:

  1. Because it can contribute to large fluctuations in district revenues from year to year, we exclude revenue for capital from the calculation of state revenues.

  2. Similarly, we exclude money generated from the sale of property from local revenues, because it too can contribute to large fluctuations in revenues.

  3. In just under 2,000 districts, revenues received by local school districts include monies that are passed through to charter schools that are not a part of the local school district but are instead operated by charter local education agencies (charter LEAs). This artificially inflates the revenues in these local school districts, because they include money for students educated outside of the district who are not counted in enrollment totals. To address this, we subtract from state and local revenues a proportional share (based on the percent of each districts’ revenues that come from local, state, and federal sources) of the total amount of money sent to outside charter LEAs—an expenditure category included in the F33 survey.

  4. In Arkansas, large portions of districts’ revenues that should be considered local are categorized as state revenues. The value of this misattribution for each district is described in the F33 documentation as C24, Census state, NCES local revenue. Before analysis, the value of C24 is subtracted from state revenues and added to local revenues for the state of Arkansas.

  5. In Texas, many districts report exorbitantly high per-pupil revenues. This is in part because of the policy and procedures for recapturing and redistributing local revenues raised by property-wealthy districts in the state. In the F33 survey, recapture is reported as expenditure code L12. Because these monies are included in the state revenue for other, receiving districts, we subtract a districts’ L12 expenditures from their local revenues for the state of Texas.

See the F33 Survey Documentation and File Layout for state-specific notes relation to education finance data.