Student Assignment then looks at school attendance areas, or nodes, the blocks the school system uses to build a school's population. We have about 700 nodes in the county. A node is a geographic area that contains a subdivision, or a part of a subdivision. Sometimes it's as small as an apartment complex and sometimes it includes 100 acres. It has an identifiable boundary.
Nodes have certain characteristics.
When I start with a school and put a group of nodes together, then I can have a profile of what that school is going to look like. You try to make some rhyme or reason out of it. You try to look at transportation patterns. You try to look at taking half a subdivision, what would happen if you take the other half. A key student assignment factor now is the 2003 Goal.