This layer serves as the authoritative geographic data source for California's K-12 public school locations during the 2020-21 academic year. Schools are mapped as point locations and assigned coordinates based on the physical address of the school facility. The school records are enriched with additional demographic and performance variables from the California Department of Education's data collections. These data elements can be visualized and examined geographically to uncover patterns, solve problems and inform education policy decisions.

The schools in this file represent a subset of all records contained in the CDE's public school directory database. This subset is restricted to K-12 public schools that were open in October 2020 to coincide with the official 2020-21 student enrollment counts collected on Fall Census Day in 2020 (first Wednesday in October). This layer also excludes nonpublic nonsectarian schools and district office schools.

The CDE's California School Directory provides school location other basic school characteristics found in the layer's attribute table. The school enrollment, demographic and program data are collected by the CDE through the California Longitudinal Achievement System (CALPADS) and can be accessed as publicly downloadable files from the Data & Statistics web page on the CDE website.

Schools are assigned X, Y coordinates using a quality controlled geocoding and validation process to optimize positional accuracy. Most schools are mapped to the school structure or centroid of the school property parcel and are individually verified using aerial imagery or assessor's parcels databases. Schools are assigned various geographic area values based on their mapped locations including state and federal legislative district identifiers and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) locale codes.