By Audience: K-12 School Officials

The resources on this page are intended for staff and educators of public K-12 schools and school districts.  Resources found here typically address FERPA and how it applies to the various day-to-day operations of public schools at the administrative level.  Guidance is also provided for specific situations that occur only in the K-12 setting.

Guidance

Model Notice for Directory Information (En Español)

This document is a template notice for notifying parents and eligible students (students over 18 years of age or attending a school beyond the high school level) about the type of information from student’s education records, designated by a School District as “directory information,” that schools may disclose without consent, unless advised to the contrary.  This version is the Spanish translation.

Best Practices

W 2 Phishing Scam

Important Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance highlighting ongoing phishing attacks against K-12 schools and school districts. These attacks are targeting HR and critical business functions within organizations to access the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from the W-2 forms of employees and, in some cases, extracting fraudulent payments from their victims. This document contains a summary of the attacks, tactics of the attackers, potential ramifications and links to the official IRS guidance.

Letters

Rescinded: August 2020 - Cover letter to the Department’s annual notices to SEAs and LEAs

Rescinded: August 2020

The Department of Education (Department) is required to notify annually each State educational agency (SEA) and each local educational agency (LEA) of its obligations, as a recipient of Department funds, under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA).  This is the cover letter to the Department’s annual notices to SEAs and LEAs.