Public School Buildings in Minnesota

This data set represents footprints of buildings that primarily serve as sites for delivering non-charter, K-12 public education in Minnesota. The goal is to discretely and uniquely identify specific buildings, designated by specific street addresses, that house one or more active public school programs. More specifically, school programs classified as elementary, middle, junior high, senior high, or secondary, delivered by independent, common, or special school districts.<br/><br/>In contrast to MDE's annually updated school program locations data set that uniquely identifies specific programs, when a single building houses multiple programs, this data set will have just one record. For example, a single building might house a district office, an ECFE program, an elementary program, and a middle school program. In this case, the name assigned will be for the "highest classification" - in other words, the middle school program. This is often an oversimplified name for the building, but it is more complete than relying on incomplete building names from OpenStreetMap (OSM).<br/><br/>The intended purpose of this data set is for geospatial software users who require basic details (building name and address) on locations of buildings that are primarily used for public education, but also are frequently used for other community needs. It covers most, but not alll active public school program locations (see Completeness section). It does not include charter schools, private schools, or buildings delivering non-K12 educational programs, such as early childhood centers delivering pre-K programs.