Skip to contents

Fetch Utah school directory data

Source: R/fetch_directory.R
fetch_directory.Rd

Downloads and processes school directory data from the Utah State Board of Education's CACTUS system and district directory. This includes all public schools and districts with contact information, administrator names, and school characteristics.

Usage

fetch_directory(end_year = NULL, tidy = TRUE, use_cache = TRUE)

Arguments

end_year

Currently unused. The directory data represents current schools and is updated regularly. Included for API consistency with other fetch functions.

tidy

If TRUE (default), returns data in a standardized format with consistent column names. If FALSE, returns raw column names from CACTUS.

use_cache

If TRUE (default), uses locally cached data when available. Set to FALSE to force re-download from USBE.

Value

A tibble with school directory data. Columns include:

  • state_district_id: District number from CACTUS

  • state_school_id: School number from CACTUS

  • district_name: District/LEA name

  • school_name: School name

  • entity_type: Education type (e.g., "Regular Public", "Charter")

  • school_category: School category (e.g., "Elementary", "High")

  • grades_served: Grade range (e.g., "K-6")

  • address: Street address

  • city: City

  • state: State (always "UT")

  • zip: ZIP code

  • phone: Phone number

  • principal_name: School principal name

  • principal_email: School principal email

  • superintendent_name: District superintendent name

  • superintendent_email: District superintendent email

  • website: School website URL

  • is_charter: Charter school indicator

  • is_private: Private school indicator

  • county_name: County (not available from CACTUS, set to NA)

  • latitude: Geographic latitude

  • longitude: Geographic longitude

Details

The directory data is downloaded from two USBE sources:

  1. School-level data from the CACTUS (Comprehensive Administration of Credentials for Teachers in Utah Schools) API, which provides school names, addresses, principals, grades, and charter status.

  2. District superintendent data from the USBE School Districts page, which provides superintendent names and email addresses.

These two sources are joined by district name to produce a combined directory with both school-level and district-level administrator info.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Get school directory data
dir_data <- fetch_directory()

# Get raw format (original CACTUS column names)
dir_raw <- fetch_directory(tidy = FALSE)

# Force fresh download (ignore cache)
dir_fresh <- fetch_directory(use_cache = FALSE)

# Filter to active schools only
library(dplyr)
active_schools <- dir_data |>
  filter(!is_closed)

# Find all schools in a district
alpine_schools <- dir_data |>
  filter(grepl("Alpine", district_name))
} # }