STEP 2- Classify & Appraise

LEA specific series retentions may differ from Archives'

SCENARIO- You have disposed of most of the items that aren't records, so now you've arrived at step 2... It's time to classify. How do we begin to classify records? There are like 1300 different educational retention schedules.

We’ve curated all of the existing educational schedules into an organized model based on industry best practices, and systems in place in other states. We call it the RAMP, or Records Appraisal & Management Program. In it, you’ll find a comprehensive, organized list of all of the potential records an educational agency would use, the disposition schedule and other useful tools to help you stay organized and compliant. Some of you just inherited this new record management task, and you don’t know where to begin. I’m sure you have some anxiety. And some of you have been working in records and you’re looking for ways to streamline your workflow. That’s exactly why we started this project. We’ve put together some exercises on the following pages to support your use of the RAMP model. Together, we can increase confidence that the state’s education records are being classified, retained, and disposed of correctly. You’ll never have to worry about that back-storage room again.

Classify- Items that are not disposed of, need to be classified. This is the process of determining what type of record it is.

Appraisal- Once we know what type of record it is, we appraise it's value. Based on this value, we determine how long to retain the record.

Retention Schedule- The amount of time we hang on to a type of record. This time is determined by either State Archives, or maybe your LEA decided to create their own schedule.

Dispose- Once a record's retention schedule is up, they need to be destroyed.

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