Community-Engaged School District Design: A Stream-Based Approach

School district design decisions are a crucial part of public education systems, and operations research has played an important role in informing such decisions since the landmark United States Supreme Court decision on school desegregation in 1954. Design processes today place significant importance on comprehensive community engagement to create equitable and effective enrollment policies reflective of community needs and values. In “Community-Engaged School District Design: A Stream-Based Approach,” Ozel, Smilowitz, and Goldstein revisit the school district design problem with a focus on codesigning with community partners. The authors introduce a new compact formulation that makes multiple interrelated assignment decisions simultaneously with composite decision variables, called “streams.” This formulation is computationally efficient and easily reconfigurable for evolving problem specifications that are endemic to community codesign. These features were essential in the district redesign process in an Illinois public school district, described in the paper, allowing the community to iteratively develop proposals to address inequities in access to education and improve the student assignment process.