City school district officials today plan to post an online atlas that will give parents more information about school boundary lines.

The atlas -- designed at the Visual Information Systems Center at the University of Pittsburgh -- provides information on the demographics at each school as well as maps showing the residential patterns of students who attend each school.

The atlas information is expected to be available this afternoon at: visc.sis.pitt.edu/pps.

The atlas comes at a time when the school board is considering closing or moving 16 schools to help save money. Another meeting to discuss the plan is scheduled for 6 tonight at the school administration building in Oakland.

The maps available on the atlas are similar to ones being used to help decide where students will go if some schools are closed and where students will be reassigned if school "feeder patterns" are changed.

The maps include a dot -- but not an address or other personal information -- representing where each student lives. So, looking at a map of Beltzhoover Elementary, which is on the proposed school closing list, it's easy to see that the dots -- or students -- who go there live clustered close to the school.

From the map of Colfax Elementary in Squirrel Hill, which is seeking to attract more neighbors to the school, it's obvious the current students come from a wide area.

The maps don't say why students go to a particular school. They may live in the feeder pattern, or, in some cases, they have chosen a magnet program, a special education class or an English as a second language class. But they show a pattern that can be used to ask questions.

"When more and more people get hard information, a dialogue will be set up that will be very much factually based,'' said Ken Sochats, director of the Visual Information Systems Center.

The atlas also provides information on enrollment, the capacity of each building, the percentage of boys and girls, the racial composition, school lunch participation and the proportion of students in each grade.

The atlas is a first step, and other information may be added later, according to district officials.

The atlas is an extension of Project VIPER -- Visualizing Information for Pittsburgh Public Schools Education and Research -- an information system being developed by Pitt in concert with the district.

The idea behind this atlas is similar to the state technology atlas, also developed at Pitt for the state in the late 1990s. That atlas was available on the Internet until access was restricted because of fears of its use by terrorists.