FERPA Shredding for New Hampshire Schools and Daycares

Every June your front office fills up with the year’s accumulated paper. Cumulative folders, IEP drafts, nurse logs, attendance reports, lunch program forms, behavior incident reports, registration packets, fingerprint cards for staff and a stack of permission slips no one has the heart to throw in the recycle bin. Some records belong in storage for another year. Some are past their retention window and need to be destroyed. None belong in the dumpster behind the cafeteria.

FERPA, HIPAA and New Hampshire RSA 189:66 all touch the records a school or daycare handles. Improper destruction is a violation. NewHampshireDocumentShredding.com has served Southern New Hampshire schools, preschools, daycares, after-school programs and tutoring centers since 2007. Zero data breaches. BBB A+ rated. Certificate of Destruction with every job. Call 📞 978-636-0301 or book online.

Why school records destruction is its own compliance challenge

Schools and childcare programs hold one of the most sensitive document mixes of any organization. A typical elementary school file room contains identifiable student information, special education records, medical information, attendance data, custody paperwork, photographs, social security numbers for staff and minors, fingerprint cards, free and reduced lunch applications and disciplinary records. Each category falls under at least one federal or state privacy law.

FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) governs education records of any student who has attended your school. HIPAA covers health information collected by school health offices or by daycare programs licensed for medical care. New Hampshire RSA 189:66 sets state-level student information protection rules, including a notification requirement when a breach affects student data. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act covers data on children under 13. Daycare licensing rules under NH Child Care Licensing add another layer. Title I, Head Start and federal program records have their own retention schedules.

What schools and daycares need to shred

Retention rules vary by document type. The list below covers the records most often included in an annual school or daycare purge. Confirm specific timelines with your district policy, your state department of education and your federal program requirements.

Student records and special education

Health, daycare, staff and administrative

Three FERPA-compliant service options

The right service tier depends on volume and where the records sit when you are ready to destroy them. Most schools mix and match tiers across the year. Daycares often choose drop-off for ongoing small batches and add an off-site pickup for the annual purge.

Option 1: Drop-off at our Tewksbury, MA facility

Walk in during open hours with one or more banker boxes. No appointment required. Your records go to the destruction bin, you walk out with a Certificate of Destruction the same day. Drop-off pricing is $0.99 per pound. Most daycares and small private schools handle quarterly purges this way. The drive from Nashua, Salem, Pelham, Hampton, Hudson, Hampstead and Plaistow is short and direct. See our drop-off shredding service page.

Option 2: Off-site shredding by appointment

For larger volumes we arrive at your school or daycare in a locked vehicle, collect the boxes under chain of custody and destroy them at our Tewksbury facility. Off-site shredding is the most common choice for public school district purges, charter schools and licensed daycare centers running an annual end-of-year cleanout. Pricing is by weight plus a $129.95 transportation fee, a $14.95 HIPAA service fee and a $17.95 Plant Environment fee. Schedule on our off-site shredding services page.

Option 3: Witnessed shredding

Witnessed shredding is the right choice for records where a school administrator wants to watch destruction happen in real time. Common use cases include disciplinary records, custody-related paperwork, special education files for transferred students and any record where a school board policy requires a supervisory witness. You bring the records to our Tewksbury facility at the scheduled appointment, watch the cross-cut shredder reduce them to confetti and leave with a signed Certificate of Destruction. Pricing is $1.99 per pound. Read more on our witnessed shredding service page.

Pricing snapshot for schools and daycares

End-of-year school purge: a six-step plan

The week after graduation is when school front offices fill with destruction-ready paper. The plan below works for any K-12 school and adapts for daycare and preschool calendars. Build it into your June or July work calendar and the purge stays manageable.

• Pull your district retention schedule. Confirm which record types are eligible for destruction this year. Cumulative folders, special education records and health records each carry different retention windows.
• Walk the file room with two banker boxes. Sort into “destroy now” and “needs more review” piles. Review pile gets handled by the appropriate department head before destruction.
• Box and label. Number each banker box and keep a brief contents log (record type and date range only, no student names). Store the log in your compliance binder.
• Schedule destruction. Drop-off for small batches, off-site for larger purges. Call 978-636-0301 or book online.
• Hand off and verify. The bonded operator signs the chain-of-custody form on pickup. Certificates are issued same day for drop-off, within two business days for off-site.
• File the certificate. Store the Certificate of Destruction with your contents log in the district compliance archive. Both documents become part of your audit trail.

FERPA, HIPAA and NH state law: where they overlap

Most school administrators know FERPA. Fewer know that the school nurse office records often fall under HIPAA as well. New Hampshire layers additional requirements through RSA 189:66 and Child Care Licensing rules for licensed daycares. Here is the working summary.

FERPA basics for destruction

FERPA protects education records of any student who has attended your school. Destruction must be authorized by your retention policy. Parents must be notified before destruction of records that may be needed for educational decisions. The destruction method must render records unreadable. Cross-cut to BNBA A+ is the accepted commercial standard.

HIPAA in school health offices

School health records that are part of the education record are generally treated as FERPA records. Records from a school-based health center operated by a separate covered entity may fall under HIPAA. The practical destruction result is similar: cross-cut shredding to BNBA A+ with a Certificate of Destruction satisfies both. See our HIPAA overview for NH businesses.

NH RSA 189:66 and daycare licensing

RSA 189:66 covers protection of student personally identifiable information and requires notification when a breach occurs. Improper destruction is treated as a security incident that triggers the notification process. Licensed daycares carry their own retention requirements under NH Child Care Licensing rules. Documented destruction by a BNBA A+ vendor with a Certificate of Destruction is the cleanest way to close the destruction event for both.

Two scenarios and the right tier for each

The K-8 school in Derry running an end-of-year purge

You are the front office administrator at a 600-student K-8 school. The week after graduation, the district retention policy says you destroy cumulative folders for students who left five years ago, IEP drafts past the IDEA window and old nurse logs from prior years. The volume is twenty to thirty banker boxes. Drop-off would take three or four trips. The right tier is off-site shredding by appointment. We arrive on a scheduled morning, the boxes are loaded into a locked vehicle in under thirty minutes and destruction happens at our Tewksbury facility. The Certificate of Destruction arrives in the business office within two business days.

The licensed daycare in Salem closing out enrollment paperwork

You run a licensed daycare center in Salem with sixty enrolled children. Each summer you purge old enrollment paperwork for families who left two or more years ago, plus daily sign-in sheets past the licensing retention window. The volume is three to five boxes. The right tier is drop-off at our Tewksbury location. Total cost runs around $90 to $150. You walk out with a Certificate of Destruction the same day, file it with your licensing records and your year is closed.

Who we serve

Public school districts, charter schools, private K-12 schools, licensed daycare centers, Head Start programs, after-school programs and tutoring centers across Southern New Hampshire. For city-specific information, see Nashua, Manchester, Salem, Derry, Londonderry and Portsmouth.

Frequently Asked Questions