Wikipedia:Schools/March 2007

Schools are frequently important to their communities, and are often the subject of the sort of reliable published sources that are needed to complete an article. Wikipedia articles about schools should show that there is sufficient coverage of that school to allow for the creation of a complete article.

A school may be best handled in a separate article if it is the main subject of multiple reliable independent non-trivial    published works.  If it is not, then it is likely that sufficient information to expand the article does not yet exist, and any verifiable information might best be merged and redirected to an article about the locality or school district in which the school resides.

A school may meet the criterion of being the principal subject of multiple reliable independent non-trivial published works in several ways:


 * 1) The school has been the focus of multiple non-trivial  published works whose source is independent of the school itself.  This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, magazine articles, television documentaries,  and reports by consumer watchdog organizations.
 * 2) The school has gained national recognition for its curriculum or program of instruction, or for its success at the national level in extracurricular activities such as art or athletics. For example, the school has been recognized with a notable national award, has won a science competition at the national level, or its athletic teams hold a nationwide record.  Or, the school has gained recognition at the regional level on more than one occasion or in multiple such areas.
 * 3) The school has gained national recognition by virtue of its architecture or history. For example, the buildings used by some English schools have been classified by English Heritage as listed buildings and are included on the Images of England website, while some American schools are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Many schools have published histories. Details will be found in one of the online catalogues such as Worldcat or, for UK schools, COPAC.

Articles about schools that do not meet the above criteria may be unexpandable save for demographic data. Such articles may be merged into an article about their parent community. However, this is not an excuse to turn community articles into directory listings. See Places of local interest for more suggestions for dealing with such articles. In general, even when a merger is non-optimal, it is preferable to make redirects out of small stubs and not delete the history, rather than to delete the articles.

In addition, Wikipedia is neither a directory nor a phonebook. Articles should not list upcoming events, phone numbers, schedules, etc.