On March 17, Central New York students were sent home to continue their schooling over the Internet. Although this was safer for students, teachers, staff, and parents, there were many residents in the city of Syracuse with children who had limited access to Internet and/or computer devices, the new tools that would be used to continue education. In order to better understand the impacts of switching to remote learning and to identify potential target areas for deployment of resources, the Syracuse City School District (SCSD) and the city of Syracuse worked together to map student locations along with access to Internet and computers.
Through coordination and data sharing, the SCSD provided the city with addresses of students, which were then aggregated to count the number of students within each census tract. This data was merged with census data regarding access to the Internet and access to a computer device (question S2801).
The data was mapped using ArcGIS online to determine census tracts with high concentration of students and a low percent of the census tract with access to Internet or to computer devices. Additionally, poverty rates are included in the pop-ups for each census tract to determine if the census tracts with the lowest percent of Internet and computer access also have a high poverty rate.
SCSD student concentration with Internet Connectivity: https://syr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/69d6751dab2349b79645ca8ff4415c32
SCSD student concentration with Computer Device access: https://syr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/c30f13d6c60344b7a19b28493820b92b
In these maps, we identified areas with the highest concentration of students and highest percent without Internet and highest percent without computer devices - dark brown in the maps above. These census tracts are the ones that could be targeted for deployment of resources and/or additional help. Census tracts that are orange have a high percentage of the population without Internet or without computer devices, but a low number of students. Blue census tracts have a large number of students, but low percent of population without Internet or without computer devices.
These maps helped inform where to target to help improve access to online learning materials. Census tracts that could be targeted were Census Tracts 6 and 39.
As schools reopen, access to these technologies are an important consideration for what type of model will be used and what resources will be needed for the new school year. Continuing to monitor access to online learning tools will be important to maintain education.
Conclusion
The pandemic has changed the way we live and work in both small and large aspects of our lives. As communities around the globe work to reopen and recover, here in Syracuse we hope to do that in the most data informed way possible. Whether providing new services necessitated by COVID-19, ensuring consistent delivery of essential services, or tracking financial capabilities, our city government looks to data as a check to guarantee we are serving the public from a well-informed position. This has been true throughout PAUSE, remains true throughout reopen, and will continue well after recovery. Information is a key tool in our toolbox, and it is important to us that it is made available to all those that it impacts. We hope the data we’ve shared above was informative and useful. We plan to share more in the future and look forward to continuing to engage through transparency in data.
