As CHCCS evaluates potential school closures, the district has established criteria that include “Inconvenience or Hardship” and “Anticipated Enrollment.” Understanding the demographic profile of each school’s surrounding community is essential to applying these criteria fairly.
This page presents a data-driven demographic analysis using Census data, drive-time modeling, and dot-density mapping — examining socioeconomic status, racial/ethnic composition, age distribution, and real estate trends across school communities.
All data and methodology are open. This analysis uses the same Census-based framework applied equally to all 11 CHCCS elementary schools.
Each CHCCS elementary school has an attendance zone — a geographic boundary drawn by CHCCS. Students living inside a zone are assigned to that school.
These boundaries were designed for enrollment management, not to follow natural travel patterns or community boundaries. They are periodically redrawn — and will be redrawn after any closure.
The map shows all 11 attendance zones with colored fills and school locations.
A more policy-relevant way to assign territory: nearest school by driving time, computed via Dijkstra shortest-path on the OpenStreetMap road network. These maps are drawn entirely through a computing process — no manual boundary-drawing is involved.
Drive-time zones answer: “If every family drove to the closest school, which school would serve this location?” Since any closure triggers rezoning, drive-time zones better predict where displaced students would go.
The map now shows drive-time zones instead of attendance zones. Notice that Seawell’s drive-time zone is compact due to the local road network. Some concave pocket neighborhoods on the zone’s edges have simpler, quicker access to Morris Grove and McDougle Elementary on the west, and Estes Hills Elementary on the east.
As a district-wide magnet school, Glenwood’s programs serve students from across the district rather than a specific neighborhood. Because this analysis focuses on neighborhood-level demographics, Glenwood is not directly comparable and is set aside from the focal comparison going forward.
Making direct comparisons between two schools — each with its own history, strengths, and deeply committed community — is inherently difficult. We approach this comparison with respect for both Ephesus Elementary and Seawell Elementary, and for the families they serve.
The map highlights their drive-time zones as solid borders (red for Ephesus, blue for Seawell) with their attendance zones shown as dashed overlays for comparison.
Notice how the zones differ: Seawell’s attendance zone extends into areas that are actually closer to other schools by driving time — a large zone, but sparsely populated in its outer reaches.
This analysis considers both attendance and drive-time zones to limit bias introduced by CHCCS-drawn attendance boundaries.
This analysis uses ACS Census data — the American Community Survey’s 5-year estimates — aggregated by drive-time zone to evaluate CHCCS’s closure criteria:
Census data reflects the demographics of the community surrounding each school, which may differ from current attendance zone demographics. This distinction matters: Seawell’s current student body includes the district-wide LEAP (Launching Equity through Achievement and Potential) program whose students may present a very different demographic makeup from the surrounding community. Census data captures who lives near the school, regardless of enrollment programs.
How many people in economic hardship live nearest to each school?
The bar charts show people below 185% poverty (the Free/Reduced-price Lunch threshold — 185% of the federal poverty level is the standard definition of “low income” used in federal programs) for all 11 schools. The left panel uses nearest-drive zones; the right uses official attendance zones.
We lead with counts rather than percentages because we care about real human impact. A school zone with a high poverty rate but few residents may affect fewer families than a zone with a moderate rate but many more people.
Seawell’s zone shows meaningful economic vulnerability.
Zooming into the Seawell drive-time zone (solid blue border) with its attendance zone shown as a dashed overlay.
Affordable housing units shown on the map are from the Town of Chapel Hill’s affordable housing inventory (2025). These are income-restricted units categorized by AMI (Area Median Income) — the midpoint household income for the region, used by HUD to set eligibility thresholds for housing assistance programs (e.g., 0–30% AMI = extremely low income, 30–60% AMI = very low income).
In contrast, Ephesus has a much larger drive zone which indicates that it is not only more accessible to a larger population but also that there are fewer adjacent schools.
Now the Ephesus drive-time zone (solid red border) with its attendance zone as dashed overlay.
Both schools are optimally situated to potentially serve communities with economic need. In absolute terms, more economically vulnerable residents live within the Ephesus zone:
Under CHCCS’s “Inconvenience or Hardship” criterion, Ephesus’s geographic positioning places it closer to more people overall, more people in poverty, and more affordable-housing residents, suggesting greater potential hardship from closure.
Each dot represents one person from the 2020 Census, placed randomly within their Census block (constrained to residential parcels). Six race/ethnicity categories:
The full district contains approximately 95,000 dots. Patterns of residential segregation are visible at this scale.
How many minority residents live nearest to each school?
The bar charts show minority residents (non-White) for all 11 schools — drive-time zones on the left, attendance zones on the right. Counts, not percentages.
Notably, Ephesus has a higher minority population overall, and nearly twice the Hispanic population of Seawell.
The Board’s “Anticipated Enrollment” criterion depends on where young children live today. The map shows block groups colored by % children ages 0–4 (under-5 population as share of total population).
Darker colors indicate higher concentrations of very young children who will enter elementary school in coming years. Both school zone outlines are shown for reference.
Since this is Census data from 2024, these children would be entering or in elementary school in 2029. Therefore, this information matters more than data on children ages 5–9.
The bar charts show young children (ages 0–4) by school zone — drive-time zones on the left, attendance zones on the right. Counts, not percentages.
School enrollment depends on where families move. MLS home sales data (2023–2025) reveals which zones attract the most new residents.
Declining CHCCS enrollment is partly driven by housing costs. When median home prices exceed what young families can afford, zones lose the demographic pipeline that sustains enrollment.
The Town of Chapel Hill’s Active Development page lists 29 planned residential developments within the CHCCS district, representing thousands of new housing units. Each circle is colored by expected unit count:
The SAPFOTAC 2025 Annual Report (certified June 3, 2025) provides a complementary view: 21 future residential projects with projected student yields — how many elementary, middle, and high school students each development is expected to generate.
Return to the homepage for interactive maps and full methodology guides.