These county (or county equivalent)-based reference maps show and label the unified, secondary, and elementary school districts as delineated by the state participants of the School District Review Program. These maps also show and label federal and state American Indian reservations, Alaska Native Regional Corporations, states (or state equivalents), counties, county subdivisions (in states where they function as governmental units), and places. Additionally, these maps display a base feature network including roads, railroads, and water bodies. These features are labeled as scale permits. The scale and map sheet configuration of the maps is optimized to keep the number of map sheets for each county to a minimum. Each county will be covered by one or more parent map sheets at a single scale. Inset map sheets at larger scales may be created where there are clusters of school districts that cannot be identified at the parent map scale. An index map showing the sheet configuration is created for all counties requiring more than one parent map sheet. The map sheet size is 36 by 32 inches.

Each county's map is accompanied by a School District to Map Sheet (SD2MS) relationship file. This semicolon-delimited text file contains a record for each school district wholly or partially within the county and a list of all the map sheets where that school district appears. In addition to the school district type and the 7-character full code, each record includes the component state and school district codes, as well as the school district name and all the county codes where that school district appears.

A catalog file including the file name, entity name, and total number of map sheets is provided in the directory for each state. The map file (PDF) and associated text files are in county-based directories.

Map Viewing Tips: These maps were designed to be viewed with Adobe Reader (version 6 or later), which is available free from Adobe. These maps are large and use complex symbology, such as wave pattern fill for water bodies. If a browser opens them in another PDF reader, the screen display may not accurately reproduce the map. For best viewing in Adobe Reader, uncheck the “Enhance thin lines” option, found under the Edit tab: Preferences > Category: Page Display > Rendering section.