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Enrollment Forms Every Small School Needs (and What Goes on Them)

Aug 11, 2026

Every small school runs on the same short stack of paperwork. Before a student sets foot in your classroom, you need five school enrollment forms: an application, an enrollment agreement, an emergency contact form, a media release, and a health information form. Get those five right and you have the roster, the money terms, the safety net, and the permissions you need to run the year. Get them wrong and you'll spend September chasing missing signatures and phone numbers at pickup.

This guide walks through each form field by field, tells you what to leave off, and ends with a copy-paste checklist you can hand to whoever builds your forms.

The five forms, and what each one is for

Think of the set as four jobs. The application decides who's a fit. The enrollment agreement locks in the commitment and the tuition terms. The emergency contact and health forms keep a child safe when something goes wrong. The media release tells you whose face you can put on your website.

You don't need more than these five to open a school year. You can always add program-specific forms later, like a field-trip permission slip or a technology-use policy, but the core set below is what every family fills out.

If you only enroll a handful of students, you don't need special software for any of this. A Google Form or a printed PDF works fine. The forms start to matter more as a system once you're re-collecting them every year and can't remember who signed what. (If you're still figuring out the shape of your program, our guide to starting a microschool covers the wider setup.)

The application form

The application is the top of your funnel, so keep it short. Every extra field costs you a few families who start and never finish. Collect just enough to decide whether to move forward and to open a file.

What goes on a student registration form for a private school:

• Student's legal name, preferred name, and date of birth
• Grade or program they're applying for, and the term they want to start
• Parent and guardian names, relationship to the student, email, and phone
• Home address
• Current or previous school
• How the family heard about you
• One open question: why this school, or what they're hoping for

That last question does more work than it looks. It tells you whether a family understands what you offer before you spend time on a tour.

The enrollment agreement

Once you accept a student, the enrollment agreement is where the family actually commits. This is the closest thing to a contract in the set, so the names and terms need to be exact.

What goes on it:

• Student and family names, matching the application
• The program, grade, and term being enrolled in
• Tuition amount, any registration or activity fees, and the payment schedule
• Deposit amount and due date
• The plan the family is choosing (pay in full, monthly, or a custom installment plan)
• Your withdrawal and refund policy, with a line acknowledging they've read it
• Signature and date from the responsible adult in the family

The agreement is also where enrollment quietly becomes billing. When the tuition terms live on the signed form, you're not re-explaining the number in October. For how to make that money actually arrive without weekly reminders, see collecting tuition without chasing parents.

Refund and contract terms touch state law, so treat any template as a starting point, not gospel. More on that below.

The emergency contact form

This is the form you'll physically grab when something goes wrong, so it should be the easiest one to pull up. A good school emergency contact form assumes the parents can't be reached and answers "who else, and what do we do."

What goes on it:

• Two or more emergency contacts besides the parents: name, relationship, phone
• The list of adults authorized to pick the child up
• Primary physician's name and phone
• Preferred hospital
• A line consenting to emergency medical treatment if you can't reach a parent

Keep this one current. An emergency contact form from two years ago with a disconnected number is worse than useless, because it tells you you're covered when you're not. Re-confirm it every enrollment season.

The media release form

The media release tells you whose photo, name, or work you're allowed to show in public: on your website, your social accounts, a flyer, or a local news story.

What goes on it:

• Separate yes/no consent for each channel you actually use (website, social media, print, press)
• A clear way to opt out of everything
• Signature and date

Default to asking per child, and honor the opt-outs in whatever workflow you use to post photos. Some families decline for custody or safety reasons that are none of your business, and the fix is simple: know before you post. One overlooked "no" on a class photo is the kind of mistake that costs real trust.

The health and medical information form

This form keeps a child safe day to day. Collect what your staff will actually act on, and no more.

What goes on it:

• Allergies, how severe, and whether the child carries an epi-pen
• Medications taken during school hours, plus written authorization to administer them
• Chronic conditions a teacher should know about (asthma, seizures, diabetes)
• Dietary restrictions
• Immunization records or your state's exemption form

Immunization rules in particular vary widely by state, including which exemptions you're allowed to accept and what you must keep on file. Don't copy another school's health form and assume it fits yours.

What to leave off

Every field you collect is something you now have to store and protect. A quiet, common practice among careful schools is to collect less than they legally could. Things most small schools leave off their enrollment forms:

• Social Security numbers. You almost never need one to enroll a K-12 student, and a paper form is a bad place to keep one.
• Bank account or card numbers on a form. Take payments through a secure processor, not a text field someone can screenshot.
• Immigration status. It's not required to enroll a child, and collecting it invites problems you don't want.
• More medical detail than staff will use. If no one will read it, don't ask for it.
• Family income, unless you actually run a financial-aid process. If you do, keep those documents separate from the general enrollment file and locked down.

None of this is legal advice. It's just the habit of not holding sensitive data you have no use for.

A note on record-keeping

How long you have to keep these records, which health documents are mandatory, and how you're allowed to store them all vary by state. Record-keeping and immunization requirements vary by state, so verify the specifics with your state's department of education before you finalize your forms or your retention schedule. Official state sources are the right place for the exact rules; a blog post isn't.

The copy-paste school enrollment forms checklist

Here's the whole set as a checklist you can drop into a doc, a form builder, or a printout. Copy it verbatim and delete what doesn't apply to your school.

# Enrollment forms checklist

## 1. Application form
- [ ] Student legal name, preferred name, date of birth
- [ ] Grade/program applying for + desired start term
- [ ] Parent/guardian names, relationship, email, phone
- [ ] Home address
- [ ] Current or previous school
- [ ] How the family heard about us
- [ ] One open question (why this school / goals)

## 2. Enrollment agreement
- [ ] Student and family names (match application)
- [ ] Program, grade, term enrolling in
- [ ] Tuition amount + fees
- [ ] Payment schedule and plan chosen
- [ ] Deposit amount and due date
- [ ] Withdrawal/refund policy + acknowledgment line
- [ ] Signature and date (responsible adult)

## 3. Emergency contact form
- [ ] Two+ emergency contacts: name, relationship, phone
- [ ] Authorized pickup list
- [ ] Primary physician name + phone
- [ ] Preferred hospital
- [ ] Emergency medical treatment consent

## 4. Media release form
- [ ] Consent per channel (website, social, print, press)
- [ ] Opt-out-of-everything option
- [ ] Signature and date

## 5. Health & medical information form
- [ ] Allergies + severity + epi-pen?
- [ ] Medications at school + authorization to administer
- [ ] Chronic conditions
- [ ] Dietary restrictions
- [ ] Immunization records or state exemption form

## Leave off
- [ ] Social Security numbers
- [ ] Raw bank/card numbers
- [ ] Immigration status
- [ ] Unused medical detail
- [ ] Income (unless running financial aid — store separately)

Once the forms are in, the last step is telling families what happens next. A short, warm confirmation beats silence every time. See welcome emails to new school families for scripts you can reuse.

A note on tools: TeachHero, our product, includes a forms builder that turns this exact set into online forms families complete from a phone, so nothing lives in a filing cabinet. But if you're enrolling ten students by hand, a printed packet is perfectly fine. Use the checklist above and skip the software until re-collecting forms every year becomes the real chore.

Frequently asked questions

What forms do I need to enroll a student in a small private school?

Five cover almost every small school: an application, an enrollment agreement, an emergency contact form, a media release, and a health and medical information form. Together they give you the student's record, the tuition commitment, safety information, and permission to use photos. You can add program-specific forms, like a field-trip slip, as needed.

What should be on a school emergency contact form?

At least two emergency contacts besides the parents (name, relationship, phone), a list of adults authorized for pickup, the child's physician and preferred hospital, and consent to seek emergency medical treatment if parents can't be reached. Re-confirm it every year, because an out-of-date contact is worse than none.

Should enrollment forms be paper or online?

Either works. Paper is fine for a handful of students; online forms save time once you're re-collecting the same paperwork every enrollment season and want signatures, reminders, and a record you can search. Choose based on how often you're chasing the same information, not on what feels modern.

What information should schools not collect on enrollment forms?

Most small schools leave off Social Security numbers, raw bank or card numbers, and immigration status, and they avoid collecting more medical or financial detail than staff will actually use. The rule of thumb: collect what you'll act on, because everything else is just data you have to protect.

The bottom line

Enrollment paperwork feels bigger than it is. It's five forms: application, agreement, emergency contact, media release, and health. Build each one to do its single job, leave off the sensitive data you'll never use, and confirm your state's record-keeping rules before the year starts. Do that once and you can reuse the set every enrollment season instead of rebuilding it from memory.

TeachHero handles school enrollment forms as part of one platform for running a small school: build your application, agreement, emergency, media, and health forms, collect them online, and roll them into your roster and billing automatically. See how enrollment works, try it free, or book a demo.