This is a failed proposal.

Consensus for its implementation was not established within a reasonable period of time. If you want to revive discussion, please use the talk page or initiate a thread at the village pump.

See also the longer summary of arguments.

Current proposal for schools[edit]

A poll was held on this proposal, which failed to show a consensus in favour or against it. This poll has been archived, and can be found at Wikipedia talk:Schools/Archive 5#Summary, proposal. The following is a copy of the proposal:

If a school article is verifiable and meets one or more of the following criteria, it should be kept:

It has 3 or more full and complete sentences of verifiable, factual information that is not published solely by the school itself, or already included/better located on a district or city wiki article (ie: phone book information does not count toward the sentence total, that includes city, address, district, or phone number(s)). Such information can be included in the article but will not count toward the sentence total.
It has one or more interwiki links (e.g. another version already exists in another language)
It has one or more PD/GFDL/free pictures

If it meets none of these criteria, but is still verifiable, it should be merged into the appropriate district (or other higher-level article such as city or education in that city or region, if private), preserving all relevant content, and be redirected.

Summary of arguments[edit]

See also the longer summary of arguments.

Rules of thumb

We've seen the arguments for and against schools plenty of times, and there is no point in arguing them over and over again on AfD. Therefore, several users have developed these rules of thumb. This is not any kind of policy or guideline, but it is hoped that people see this as a good idea and voluntarily abide by it.

Think twice before nominating schools. In the six weeks following 22 April, 2005, some seventy school articles nominated for deletion were discussed and the discussions were closed. Not a single one of them was deleted. If you feel a school article to be inappropriate, consider being bold and merging it, leaving a redirect in place, and explain the merge in the edit summary. Check the edit history first though, if it's been recently created or modified please discuss it first, or use a ((merge)) tag.
Consider listing the article on Schoolwatch. The Schoolwatch page is monitored by a number of people who believe strongly that Wikipedia should include school articles and are willing to work on them to bring them up to standards. Out of respect for this group it is appropriate to list articles here for a while before nominating them for deletion.
Do not unmerge or split out school stubs, unless you simultaneously expand the school article with verifiable information, so that it's no longer a stub.
Post any arguments for or against schools on Wikipedia:Schools/Arguments, so that we have a record of all points.

Notability

It is tempting for some people to set a bar of notability for schools, such as by age, size or press coverage. However, any such criteria have proven to be controversial. Thus, some people believe the only fitting criterion is how much verifiable, NPOV information can be found on the school. Others believe that schools are inherently "notable" and that Wikipedia should cover each and every one of them since it's not made of paper.

Verifiability

Information in Wikipedia must be verifiable. School articles are no exception.
These articles should have a good amount of verifiable information, with a format agreed upon at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools. Although there are many examples of articles that have been produced through organic growth from stubs, substantial articles are less controversial than stubs.

Merging

Stub articles may be given a tag leading to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools, which explains what is desirable. If, after a certain amount of time, the article has not shown clear signs of growth through editing, it could be merged, and then un-merged if later expanded.
Short, uninformative school articles may be merged by someone being bold. This might be a better idea to try than listing a school for deletion.
Consider issues raised in Wikipedia:Schools/Arguments#Merge and Wikipedia:Schools/Arguments#Don't Merge before proceeding.

Article naming[edit]

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools).

Suggestions for creating pages on school districts and schools[edit]

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools#Structure

First, mention the school districts or local education authorities, or similar organizations in the municipality on the municipality's article. Remember, one school may affect multiple municipalities, and district boundaries are often very different than municipality boundaries.
Create an article on the school district and work on individual schools as subsections within the school district article. Be careful not to comingle school-specific data, such as notable alumni, from different schools together, so that information isn't lost, and spinning off articles later is still possible. Be careful to gather all the relevant verifiable information first, and don't assume all school districts are the same. The district article should not simply be a stub, or just a directory listing, but be truly informative about the district.
You may create redirects to the school district article in the name of schools. This will increase the likelihood of an accidental wikilink and make the school district article easier to find by those wishing to add information about a particular school (or to read about it). If a school name is a common one, create a disambiguation page. Also, do not make the assumption all schools have districts, or is in a particular district (even its its within that district's physical boundaries). The only way of knowing what district a school applies to, is to check with the district (e.g. their web site usually).
If enough information is included on an individual school, use good judgement to break it out to its own pages.
It seems likely that compiling 'enough' information is easier for a high school (or school with a large enrollment) than for a primary school or even a kindergarten. Also, you can check the backlinks (using "What links here") and a Google local search, to see how many references to the school exist in other articles. The more references (if relevant), especially prominent ones, the more likely the school article would be found by others, and of interest to others.
It is not a good idea to list the name of all the teachers at a school. If you want to list the name of the principal, that will generally withstand the editing process, but a complete list of teachers and what subjects they teach will generally be deleted out of privacy and vanity concerns. In other words, Wikipedia is not your school's web page.