About the Map

This map was developed through the cooperative efforts of several nonprofit groups serving the California Community Colleges (CCC). Spearheaded by the CCC System Office, the Foundation for California Community Colleges (FCCC), and the Research and Planning (RP) Group for California Community Colleges, the group quickly expanded to include many other partners from throughout the CCC system, forming the initial membership of the CCC Geographic Information System (GIS) Collaborative.

The map is being used to answer questions important to the mission of the California Community Colleges, including questions about regional demographics and population growth, election histories and bond election planning, enrollment forecasting, enrollment patterns of neighboring districts, traffic and public transit impacts to students and colleges, workforce development, facilities planning and maintenance, etc.

Initially, written legal descriptions were collected for the college districts and used to create draft maps for each of the 72 districts.  The team of analysts creating the maps included mainly district institutional researchers, faculty, students, and representatives of nonprofits serving the CCC system.  Regular team meetings were held to refine approaches and standards for developing maps.

A team website was created to host an online document library, track project status, and share draft map images.  As the full set of draft maps was being completed, a computer server was purchased to host the GIS maps, including an interactive, web-based map of the state's community college districts.  This server now hosts the final maps, and college data sets are being added continually.  The interactive maps can be accessed through the Collaborative’s website.

To create a single map layer from these 72 draft maps, several small gaps and overlaps of neighboring districts had to be resolved.  Much of the work to integrate the maps was completed by a single researcher, Jesus Garcia, on contract to the CCC GIS Collaborative.  The full set of maps was validated by a team of Collaborative members in accordance with mapping standards developed by the team.  First, the legal boundaries were compared sequentially to census layers, water features, and county boundaries to ensure that adjacent districts did not overlap.  Then, voter precincts were used to resolve gaps, slivers, and other edge issues within district boundaries.  Finally, any remaining edge issues were resolved by applying current (May 2008) K-12 school district boundary layers to keep the K-12 boundaries intact within their respective community college district.

Great care was taken to ensure the accuracy of these maps, but, pending adoption of each district boundary map by the authorized counties, these maps are neither official nor legal.  They are intended for broad use to support the mission of the California Community College system, but users should verify actual data and exercise their own professional judgment when interpreting any outcomes.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Gail Hobbs at Pierce College and her students, Matt Zebrowski and Ron Green, for prototyping the approach for developing district boundary layers from written legal descriptions.

Thanks to Marc Beam with the Research and Planning (RP) Group for California Community Colleges and Terrence Willet with California Partnership for Achieving Student Success (Cal-PASS)  for both conceiving of the idea of a statewide 72-district map and for managing key functions throughout the entire mapping project.

Thanks to Tracie Callahan with the Foundation for California Community Colleges and Channing Yong and Tyler Johnstone with the California Community Colleges System Office for spending many hours collecting written legal descriptions for the 72 college districts.

Special thanks to district researchers John Azzaro (San Joaquin Delta College), Terrence Willett, Craig Davis (Sacramento City College), Bernardo Alejandre (CSU Bakersfield), Michael Jackson (Cal-PASS affiliate), Nedra Root (Rio Hondo College), and Susan Welsh (Antelope Valley) and her student Jeff Steinberg.  Together, this group established mapping and metadata standards and used written legal descriptions to create the 72 draft district maps.

The website was created by Curtis Eidson and Tracie Callahan and continues to be hosted at the Foundation for California Community Colleges.

The GIS server was purchased with funds provided by the California Community Colleges System Office, managed by Catherine McKenzie, with fiscal services provided by the California Community Colleges Technology Center at Butte College in Oroville, Calif.  The GIS server is hosted by San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, Calif., with support from Lee Belarmino and John Azzaro.

The integration of the draft maps into a single statewide map was a major undertaking by a small team of Collaborative members.  In particular, Jesus Garcia, on contract to the Collaborative, performed the majority of map integration.  Marc Beam spearheaded the development of comprehensive metadata for the final map.  Thanks to Warren Roberts, GIS instructor at Rio Hondo College, for assistance with final map clean up.

The overall effort is under the leadership and sponsorship of Patrick Perry, Vice Chancellor of Technology, Research, and Information Systems at the System Office.  The program is planned and managed by John Roach, Director of Systems Analysis and Research at the Foundation for California Community Colleges.