Permission to Withhold Student Directory Information

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) mandates that Northshore School District, along with other educational agencies, protect the confidentiality of student education records. According to FERPA, our district must obtain consent from a student's parent or legal guardian (or the eligible student*) before disclosing education records.

However, it's important to note that FERPA includes an exception to the consent requirement. This exception allows Northshore School District to disclose directory information about your student without obtaining consent, as described in Board Policy 3250, and when there is a legitimate educational purpose for doing so. (Northshore does not release directory information for commercial or fundraising purposes.)

To ensure transparency and convenience, Northshore School District has created this form to notify you about the directory information exception. It also provides an opportunity for parents, legal guardians, or eligible students to request Northshore withhold their directory information from some or all outside organizations or to indicate they would like Northshore School District to cancel or update any prior requests to do so.

Annually, parents are informed and invited to request that their student’s directory information be withheld. While this happens in the fall through the regular start-of-school processes, families can submit the form at any time.

Student directory information may include information such as: 

• Name, address, telephone number, email address
• Photograph or audio/video depiction
• Date of birth
• Dates of attendance
• Grade level
• Major field of study
• Participation in officially recognized activities and athletic teams (which includes the weight and height of athletes)
• Honors and awards received and
• Most recent school attended

NOTE: If a parent, legal guardian, or eligible student does not specify otherwise, each student's directory information will be shared in a fair and responsible manner, following the guidelines of FERPA and the Northshore School District policy. By law we cannot withhold student directory information without your expressed permission. Once you make a request to withhold your student's directory information by law we must honor your choice unless you request otherwise. Requests to withhold student directory information will ONLY be honored from the most recent request we have on our records. If you later wish to cancel or change a previous request, return to this form and choose the option that matches your new request and resubmit this form. (You can also change your request in person at your child's school.)

This form does not cover public events where media may be present outside of school hours, such as concerts, athletic activities, fairs, etc.

*When a student turns 18 years old or graduates from high school, they become eligible to exercise the same rights under FERPA.