Most US school districts draw "attendance boundaries" to define catchment areas that assign students to schools near their homes, often recapitulating neighborhood demographic segregation in schools. Focusing on elementary schools, we ask: how much might we reduce school segregation by redrawing attendance boundaries? Combining parent preference data with methods from combinatorial optimization, we simulate alternative boundaries for 98 US school districts serving over 3 million elementary-aged students, minimizing White/non-White segregation while mitigating changes to travel times and school sizes. Across districts, we observe a median 14% relative decrease in segregation, which we estimate would require approximately 20\% of students to switch schools and, surprisingly, a slight reduction in travel times. We release a public dashboard depicting these alternative boundaries (https://www.schooldiversity.org/) and invite both school boards and their constituents to evaluate their viability. Our results show the possibility of greater integration without significant disruptions for families.

翻译：美国大多数学区划定“入学边界”以定义招生范围，将学生分配至家庭附近的学校，这往往导致学校重现社区的种族隔离现象。聚焦小学阶段，我们探究：重新划分入学边界能在多大程度上减少学校隔离？通过将家长偏好数据与组合优化方法相结合，我们为覆盖超过300万小学生的98个美国学区模拟了替代性边界方案，旨在最小化白人与非白人群体间的隔离，同时控制通勤时间与学校规模的变化。跨学区分析显示，隔离程度中位数相对降低14%，这要求约20%的学生转校，且令人意外的是，通勤时间略有缩短。我们发布了一个公开仪表板展示这些替代性边界（https://www.schooldiversity.org/），邀请学校董事会及其利益相关方评估其可行性。研究结果表明，在不显著干扰家庭生活的前提下，实现更高程度的融合是可能的。