Arizona Public Schools

How districts are drawn here. Arizona has separate elementary and secondary school districts whose territories overlap. To keep the map readable, it shows unified districts plus elementary districts — together they tile the state exactly, with no gaps and no overlaps. The 15 secondary districts are not drawn, because they sit on top of the elementary districts rather than beside them. Data joined to this map follows the same rule.

A note about charter schools. Charter schools enroll about 21% of Arizona’s public-school students, and they are not represented on this map. In Arizona most charters are authorized by the State Board for Charter Schools rather than by school districts: they operate outside the district system, are usually their own local education agency, and often enroll students across district lines. So this map describes Arizona’s geographic district system — not its whole public-school population. That distinction matters here more than in most states, and it will matter for every data layer built on top of this map.