How to Read Your Community Report

What the report is, and what it is not

You type one address. The report draws a ring around it (5 miles by default, or a 15-minute drive-time area if you switch) and fills in four layers:

• Census demographics. School-age children, income, housing, and growth around the site, from the U.S. Census.
• Nearby schools. The public, charter, and private schools already serving these families, with enrollment.
• Community organizations and places to know. Churches, libraries, daycares, and community centers to learn from: what neighbors value, and how your school can help.
• Local zoning office. A link to the city or county zoning office, so you can ask whether school use is permitted before you commit.

Under those sit the site flags (flood zone, Opportunity Zone, New Markets Tax Credit tract, USDA rural eligibility, road traffic) and, once you have a free account, the written brief: bullet points, each tied to one of the public datasets named in the report's Data Sources card. Without an account you can run one lookup per browser session; a free account adds more lookups, the written brief, and the community organizations list.

What it is: a description of who is nearby today and what already serves them, drawn from public data you can check yourself.

What it is not: an enrollment forecast, a zoning answer, a code answer, or a judgment on whether your budget works. Every one of those depends on your program, your relationships with families, and local decisions no dataset holds. The report hands you better questions. The sections below say which questions each part answers.

Population: what the children count can tell you

The demographics layer comes from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, at census-tract level, summed for the ring. The report names the vintage it used. The headline is the count of school-age children, ages 5 to 17, living in the ring. The radius cards and age bands underneath also count ages 3 and 4, so they cover ages 3 to 17: 3 and 4, 5 to 11, 12 to 14, and 15 to 17. That is why the radius card reads higher than the headline. Every children figure carries its age range; compare figures with the same range. Income, housing, race, and educational attainment sit beside it, with a trend between two ACS vintages and a 2030 extrapolation the report labels as an estimate.

What it can tell you

• Scale. Whether the age band your grades serve numbers in the hundreds or the thousands within reach of this address. A K-5 program reads the 5-to-11 band; a middle school reads 12 to 14.
• Direction. Whether the count of children is rising or falling between the two vintages. A falling count is not a stop sign, but it is a question for the district and for families.
• Questions about the families. Household income, SNAP participation, and housing tenure describe the area, not any one family. They suggest questions about transport, before- and after-care, tuition or scholarships, and Title I context. They do not show what families spend or want; ask them.

What it cannot establish

• How many of those children would enroll with you. Thousands of children in a ring where every seat is spoken for is a different market from a few hundred with none.
• Where inside the ring they live. A ring sums tracts, and two neighborhoods a mile apart can look nothing alike. Open the map and look at the tracts.
• How far families will travel. The ring is a circle, not a catchment. Drive-time mode is closer to how families move, and still a guess until you ask them.
• Precision. ACS 5-year figures are survey estimates with margins of error, and the smaller the tract the wider the margin. Read a count of 4,200 as "about four thousand."

Nearby schools and enrolled seats

The schools layer lists the public, charter, and private schools in the ring, from the NCES Common Core of Data (public and charter, with enrollment) and the NCES Private School Universe Survey (private schools, which report no enrollment there). The Map tab's headline strip puts the children count next to the seats enrolled in nearby public and charter schools. The enrollment momentum card shows whether those schools gained or lost students against the prior year, and the brief's EXISTING SCHOOL LANDSCAPE section reads the list for you.

What it can tell you

• What families already have. How many schools, of which kinds, at which grade spans, and how big each one is.
• Movement. Which schools grew or shrank year over year, and by how much. Three schools losing students together is worth a phone call.
• Nothing, when a layer fails. If the schools layer comes back partial or fails to load, the report says so and offers a retry. An empty or failed layer never means there are no schools; retry before you read the count.
• What is not listed. No Montessori, no dual-language program, no middle school within the ring. A missing type is a fact about the list, not proof families want one. Ask them.

What it cannot establish

• Capacity or waitlists. Enrollment is how many students a school has, not how many it could take. A school at 400 might have room for 100 more or a waitlist of 100. Ask.
• Why a school is shrinking. Families leaving the area and families choosing other schools look identical in the number and point to opposite plans.
• Quality or satisfaction. The report carries no ratings. State report cards and families do.
• What a gap means. Resident children and enrolled seats measure different things: who lives in the ring, and who attends its public and charter schools. More children than enrolled seats is not unmet demand. Private school enrollment is not counted, homeschooling is not counted, and children bused out of the ring are not counted. Treat the gap as a question for the district's enrollment office.

Community organizations and places to know: two kinds of pins

The organizations layer (unlocked with a free account) plots places from a commercial directory, Foursquare, in two groups. The first group is organizations you can walk into and learn from: ask what neighbors value, and how your school could help. Shared space and family outreach can come later, once you are known:

• Churches: Congregations know their neighbors and often run family programs. Ask what families here value, and how a school could help. Space and announcements can come later.
• Libraries: Free, trusted, and often the first stop for families with questions. Ask librarians what families ask for, then about community boards and event space.
• Daycares: Directors hear what parents of young children worry about. Ask what parents ask them about school, then whether a parent session would help.
• Preschools: Their families face the kindergarten choice soon. Ask the director what parents want to know, and whether a parent meeting would help them.
• Nursery schools: The same families a year or two earlier. Introduce your school early, and ask what the staff hear from parents.
• Community Centers: A hub for family programs, and sometimes shared space. Ask what programs neighbors rely on, and how a school could help, before you ask about rooms.
• Parks: A public place where neighbors gather. Ask the parks office about community events and permit rules.
• Elementary schools: After-school programs often run here. Ask the principal what families here need after school, and whether sharing space is ever possible.
• Youth organizations: Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCAs, 4-H, and FFA already serve local young people, after school and in summer. Ask what the young people they serve need, and where a school could help.
• Museums: Field trips, school memberships, and programs built for students. Ask about school programs, and what local schools already use.
• Dance studios: Arts classes for children, often after school. Ask the owner which families they serve, and about teaching at your school.
• Coding programs: Coding camps and classes, such as Code Ninjas, that sometimes teach on site. Ask about enrichment classes or a summer camp run at your school.

The second group is context, not contacts. A shop, a pediatric office, or a tutoring center shows that a business chose this area. It is not proof of what families spend, how they live, or what education they want. Treat each as a guess to check with people:

• Pediatric offices: Context only. A cluster may reflect where families live, or just where offices rent. Treat it as a guess to check with families, not a count of children. Use the Census figures for that.
• Tutoring centers: Context only. A tutoring center shows a business chose this area, not what families want or pay for. Ask families what help their children get after school, and why. Do not read it as demand.
• Grocery stores: Context only. Some neighbors may shop here; the listing does not say who. Treat it as a guess about daily routines to check with families, not a partner to approach.
• Discount stores: Context only. A store location does not show what local families spend. Ask families about costs that matter to them. Do not read spending habits from a store.

What it can tell you: the first draft of a list of people to learn from, and, later, the hosts most likely to have weekday space (churches and community centers above all; see Finding Space for Your Microschool, and School Space Outreach for how to ask a host).

What it cannot establish: whether any of them will take your call, has space, or holds a certificate of occupancy that covers weekday school use. Listings come from a directory, so some have moved or closed, and some places are missing. An empty category means the directory listed none, not that none exist. Ring ahead, and keep the list as a working document you correct as you go. Plan your next community conversation walks through the first call.

Site conditions, traffic, and funding flags

These are flags, each from a federal map or program, and each with a named office that can confirm it:

• Flood zone (FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer). A Special Flood Hazard Area means lenders will expect flood insurance and heavy rain can close family routes. An insurance broker prices it; the report cannot.
• Opportunity Zone (Treasury and IRS). A designation that can matter to an investor or developer partner. It changes nothing about whether a school may operate there.
• New Markets Tax Credit tract (CDFI Fund). Says the tract qualifies for a financing program. A lender or community development financial institution says whether a project like yours can use it.
• USDA Community Facilities (rural). Estimated from ring population; the USDA Rural Development office confirms eligibility.
• Traffic. Road classification from OpenStreetMap with estimated daily traffic ranges. Enough to tell an arterial from a side street; not a traffic study, and not a drop-off plan.
• Free and reduced-price lunch and SNAP. The average FRL share across nearby schools and the SNAP share of households, shown as factual community context about the families a mission-driven school may want to serve. They do not make an area Title I eligible. Title I is decided school by school, by the share of a school's own students from low-income families, and schoolwide programs generally start at 40%. A low share means Title I is unlikely to be a large source of funding unless you recruit from higher-need neighborhoods. Whoever administers Title I in your state says what the figures mean for a new school.

The written brief

With a free account the report closes with a brief, written by an AI model from the same data, in six fixed sections: who lives here, families this school could serve, the existing school landscape, community organizations and places to know, site conditions, and questions to investigate before committing. Each bullet opens with a short takeaway and ends with the dataset it came from. Two of the sections are actions (the organizations to learn from and the questions); the rest are findings.

This brief is the one piece of the report written by AI inside Space. It is separate from the AI Prompt Guides, which are prompts you copy into your own AI assistant to read your own lease or loan offer.

Three rules govern the brief. It cites only the data in the report, so a bullet with no source is a bullet to distrust. It does not forecast enrollment or judge zoning, code, or whether your budget works. And it is a summary: if a bullet surprises you, go to the card it points at and read the number yourself.

A worked example

The numbers below are made up to show the method; run your own address for real ones. A founder planning a K-5 school of 120 students looks up an address on the east side of a mid-size city, 5-mile ring.

Read together, the report gives facts and questions: thousands of children in the age band, a school landscape in motion, income figures that raise a question about tuition, and organizations to learn from. It does not say the school will fill, what families want, that a school may operate on the parcel, or that the budget works. Those are the next conversations: families and neighbors, the district, and the planning desk.

Questions for family interviews

Nothing in the report replaces twenty conversations with families and neighbors in the ring. Meet them through the organizations you get to know (a daycare parent night, a library program, a congregation), and aim for families across the tracts, not one block. Ask open questions, write down the words they use, and listen for what the report could not see.

1. Where do your children go to school now, and how did you choose it?
2. What do you like about it? What would make you consider a change?
3. How do your children get to school each day, and how long does it take?
4. What hours do you need: before care, after care, summers?
5. Have you ever been on a waitlist for a school here? Which one, and what happened?
6. Do you know families who moved away, or who drive out of the neighborhood for school? Why?
7. What is missing for families here: a grade span, a language, a program, a kind of school?
8. If a new school opened at this address, what would you want to know before you visited?
9. What could you pay toward tuition, if anything, and what help would you need (a scholarship, a state program, a sliding scale)?
10. Who do you trust for advice about schools: a church, a pediatrician, another parent, a community center?
11. Would you join a group of founding families, and may we follow up?

Tally the answers against the report. If families name a waitlist the enrollment data could not show, you have learned something. If nobody in twenty interviews would travel to the address, the ring was the wrong shape.

What to investigate next

The report's own QUESTIONS TO INVESTIGATE section and next-steps card are built from what it found at your address. In rough order:

1. Take the address to the planning desk. Ask the city or county whether a school is a permitted use on the parcel, and what parking, drop-off, and occupancy rules apply. The report links the zoning office; Zoning, Building Code, and Local Approvals lists the questions.
2. Call the district enrollment office about the schools that moved, and read the state report cards for the rest.
3. Ask about any flag with the office that owns it, including Flood Zone X: an insurance professional for flood, a CDFI for NMTC, USDA Rural Development for Community Facilities.
4. Run the family interviews above and write up what changed in your picture. Plan your next community conversation shows how to capture what you hear, with permission.
5. Visit at pickup time, then save the site and run two or three more addresses so you compare neighborhoods rather than fall for the first one.
6. Size the space in the Space Calculator for the grade span the interviews supported, and carry the number into the Site Selection Checklist.