We've gone through this before and are going through it right now. Our school provides class lists, period. They collect their information from parents, and we run a membership drive every year and it's the information on the membership form that goes into the directory, at a parent's discretion. If they don't want anything other than their child's name and homeroom listed, that's all we print. This year we included a "publish" and "do not publish" for the cell phone and email information. We still want email addresses so we can send our newsletter via email, but many people wouldn't want it published so we give them the option. Same thing with cell phone numbers, they might want us to have it so we can reach them if they serve on a committee or whatever, but they'd rather not give it out to the whole school, just select friends.
Public records are another thing, IMO. I can go to my town and buy mailing labels for all homeowners and they'll charge me about $50. That doesn't give me accurate names of the residents (if the property is a rental, for example), nor does it include phone numbers, ages, anything like that. I daresay if my sons' school gave out as much info as one reply mentioned, I'd be livid -- but again I know it does happen and that's why my multiply-disabled 17-year-old is getting offers to sign up for the Army, SAT prep programs, colleges, etc. He's not going to any of those, but someone somewhere thought his age made him eligible. It's foolishness and a waste of someone's money.
OneandOnly - that may be the policy within your district, but it's not true across the board. FERPA and state law defines what is considered public information. Subject to your own district's published guidelines, personal information - as defined by FERPA as being directory information - is absolutely available to pretty much anyone who asks for it.
As the PTO, you are only allowed general info on students - classroom lists with the names of students and their teachers. If the family is a PTO family and they have provided you (on one of your forms) their names, addresses and phone numbers, then you can collect that. However, you cannot get the school listing from the school.
The PTO must collect their own data for their directory or to mail out communications. You could provide the school with all the stuffed envelopes and they could mail them for you at your expense, but they can't give you personal information.
Send home communications such as that via backpack mail. (All teachers send home the flyer with the children) There's no cost to the PTO and it still gets home.
Our middle school PTO mails home newsletters three times per year. We are given student names and addresses on sheets of mailing labels which we stick right on to the newsletter. Here's the catch though - we have to stick the labels on in the school so that no one copies the addresses for future use. IMO, this is not something worth arguing over since the info is still getting home. If your principal can be convinced to do something similar, hopefully a compromise will be reached.
So from a compliance point of view, you'll have federal law (FERPA), then your state law, then district policy. I think most states just adopt the federal version in whole. Your district policy should be published in something routinely handed out to all student families -probably the handbook. Then administratively, they probably have an internal policy on who is allowed to give out the information. (That's the one that frequently gets bent.)
Also - when you talk to your principal, please keep in mind he may not deliberately be blocking you. Teachers/principals no longer have the luxury of merely teaching. There are tax rules, law suits, employment issues, privacy concerns...the list goes on an on. They can't be an expert at everything, but they sure can be held responsible for everything. So try to approach it that you are trying to help, not "Gotcha - you are WRONG!".
Thank you so much for all of your tips and information, I really appreciate it.
And JB what you said confirms what I had been thinking...I actually want to send the stuf in the mail so that the parents will get them...Many times the kids forget to give the noices to the parents...and also teachers forget to send the notices home, and this gets to be a problem especially when you are short on time.
