Starting and running a small school in North Carolina
The most explicit of the eight — notice of intent, attendance and immunization records, grade-banded testing, and the only stated retention period in the set.
11 cited requirements · 6 dated deadlines · 20 sources · every claim as of , the oldest reading date on this page
In short
North Carolina writes its nonpublic school duties down. Both private and home schools file a notice of intent with the Division of Non-Public Education, keep annual attendance and immunization records, and test on a fixed schedule — grades 3, 6 and 9 for conventional private schools, every student every year for home schools. Test records must be available at the school's principal office for one year, which is the only explicit retention period in North Carolina nonpublic school law.
How North Carolina classifies a school like yours
This is the fork everything else hangs off. Get it wrong and every deadline below is the wrong set of deadlines.
Conventional private school
Article 39 splits nonpublic schools into Part 1 (private church schools and schools of religious charter, §§ 115C-547 to 115C-554) and Part 2 (qualified nonpublic schools, §§ 115C-555 to 115C-562). The record duties in the two parts are worded almost identically, which is why both are cited throughout.
Legally defined as a nonpublic school of the children of not more than two families or households. It elects Part 1 or Part 2 and must meet that part's requirements — with two express changes: safety and sanitation inspections are waived in a private residence, and testing becomes annual for every student.
11 requirements, grouped by what kind of duty they are. Every one links to the statute, rule or agency document it was read in, with the date it was read there.
What the statute requires
North Carolina's abuse-reporting statute states no deadline at all — and there is a second duty
Section 7B-301 says “Any person or institution who has cause to suspect” shall report, and states no deadline. Privilege is abolished as a defence under § 7B-310, and the duty reaches staff, volunteers, contractors and board members alike. There is a second, separate duty: § 14-318.6 requires any adult who knows of a violent offence, sexual offence or misdemeanour child abuse against a juvenile to report immediately to law enforcement, on top of the DSS report. Failure to report, or knowingly preventing another from reporting, is a Class 1 misdemeanour. Telling the head of school is not reporting.
Fire and health inspection guidance applies to private schools, and is waived for home schools in a residence
Both parts require nonpublic schools to submit to reasonable fire, health and safety inspections by state, county and municipal authorities, and DNPE's guidance adds: obtain a certificate of occupancy before initial occupancy, and have the local fire marshal and health department inspect the facility before classes begin and annually after. Section 115C-564 waives safety and sanitation inspection requirements where a home school operates in a private residence — do not read the private-school guidance onto a home school.
The notice of intent to operate goes to DNPE — and so does the closure
Send the Division of Non-Public Education a notice of intent to operate carrying the school's name and address and the names of its owner and chief administrator, and notify it when the school closes. For a home school, DNPE asks that the notice be sent five days before the initial opening date.
Numbers attending, numbers without required immunizations within 30 days of first attendance, and medical and religious exemption counts. NCDHHS applies this to private schools and asks for kindergarten, seventh-grade and twelfth-grade status. Separately, no child may attend any school — public, private or religious — without a certificate of immunization on file, and the parent has 30 calendar days from the first day of attendance to obtain required immunizations before the child may no longer attend.
One year, at the principal office — North Carolina's only stated retention period
Records of the grade 3, 6 and 9 standardized tests (and the grade 11 competency test) must be available at the school's principal office for one year after the testing, for annual State inspection. This binds all nonpublic schools, not only scholarship ones. Note the grade set is narrower than the Opportunity Scholarship testing duty — a school taking scholarships is doing both, on different schedules.
Not just grades 3, 6 and 9 as for conventional private schools. Section 115C-564 makes the standardized achievement testing annual for each enrolled student, covering English grammar, reading, spelling and mathematics, with results kept on file at the home school and available for annual state inspection.
Where this is unsettled: Whether the grade-11 competency test applies to home schools is not asserted here. The structure of § 115C-564 would imply it does, but neither state page states it for home schools.
The Opportunity Scholarship background check covers exactly one person
Section 115C-562.5(a)(2) requires the school to “Provide to the Authority a criminal background check conducted for the staff member with the highest decision-making authority.” One person — not all staff. This requirement is widely overstated in secondary write-ups, and schools budget for a full-staff screening they do not owe under this section.
Test performance data is due to the Authority by 15 July
Section 115C-562.5(a)(4): “Test performance data shall be submitted to the Authority by July 15 of each year.” Testing is annual for scholarship students in grades 3 and up: the Authority designates the test for grades 3 and 8, grade 11 is the ACT, and you choose a national test for the rest. You must also give each scholarship parent an annual written explanation of progress including test scores, and report graduation rates. The tuition and fee schedule filing under (a)(1) goes to the Authority through MyPortal on the same annual cycle, and is required even in a year with no scholarship students.
Where this is unsettled: Only the (a)(4) test-performance deadline was re-read verbatim on 2026-07-28. The 15 July date for the (a)(1) tuition and fee schedule comes from the 2026-07-20 research; confirm it against NCSEAA's current school instructions before treating the two as one deadline.
Seventy scholarship students triggers a CPA review — and the statute sets no deadline for it
Section 115C-562.5(a)(6) requires a financial review by a certified public accountant for each school year in which the school enrols 70 or more students receiving scholarship grants, on an AICPA-recognised basis by an NC-licensed CPA. The statute sets no due date. The 120-days-after-fiscal-year-end rule circulating for this is NCSEAA administrative guidance, so treat it as an agency deadline that can move without legislation.
Above 25 scholarship students in any grade, your aggregate results become a public record
Section 115C-562.5(c) binds a nonpublic school enrolling more than 25 students in any grade whose tuition and fees are paid in whole or in part with a scholarship grant: provide and retain information on student test performance. Aggregate performance for grades 3, 8 and 11 is reported and is itself a public record; data for all other grades is retained. Test performance data must be retained under (c)(2), but no period is stated.
Close mid-year without telling DNPE and the owner cannot open another school
Section 115C-562.5(e): a scholarship school that terminates operation during its regular schedule and fails to report the closure date to the Division within 14 days, or fails to return funds owed, makes any other nonpublic school opened by the same owner or chief administrator ineligible for scholarship grants until the Authority is satisfied the repayment obligation is met. The disqualification follows the person, not the entity.
Where this is unsettled: The 10-school-day withdrawal submission in MyPortal and the 30-calendar-day refund are NCSEAA administrative rules, not statute.
Any NEW school opened by the same owner or chief administrator is ineligible for scholarship grants until the Authority is satisfied the repayment obligation is met.
The school-choice money, and what taking it costs you
North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship
What it pays
A sliding percentage of the average State per pupil allocation for average daily membership in the prior fiscal year, by household income: up to 100% at or below the federal free-or-reduced-price-lunch income threshold; up to 90% between that threshold and 200% of it; up to 60% between 200% and 450% of it; and up to 45% for all students regardless of income. No grant may exceed 100% of the average State per pupil allocation, and none may exceed the school's required tuition and fees.
Administered by the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority. Schools transact with the Authority through MyPortal: the tuition and fee schedule, test performance data, withdrawals, and the DNPE annual report all move through it. Note the split between statute and agency practice — several of the timings schools work to (the 120-day CPA review window, the 10-school-day withdrawal submission, the 30-calendar-day refund) are NCSEAA administrative rules that can change without legislation.
What a school must be before it can take any
A criminal background check for the staff member with the highest decision-making authority — that one person, not all staff. Annual testing of scholarship students in grades 3 and up, an annual written progress explanation to each scholarship parent, graduation-rate reporting, and the DNPE annual report between 1 September and 30 April. A CPA financial review in any year the school enrols 70 or more scholarship students. Aggregate test reporting above 25 scholarship students in any grade.
Duties commonly assumed to reach private schools in North Carolinathat, read in the source, do not. Knowing what you don't have to do is worth as much as the list of what you do.
Missing-child record flagging is public-school-only in North Carolina. Section 115C-403 puts the duty on “the superintendent of a local school administrative unit” for children enrolled in a school of that unit, and sits in Article 29, the public-school records article. Parts 1 and 2 contain no flagging provision, and § 115C-565 says a complying school is not subject to other education law except immunization. The practical effect for a nonpublic school is inbound: a public unit's flag can surface when you request a transferring student's records.
Safety and sanitation inspection requirements are waived where a home school operates in a private residence. The state's fire and health inspection instruction appears on the private school guidance page and must not be read onto home schools.
The research behind this page recorded what it could not confirm as carefully as what it could. None of the following is a claim that no requirement exists — it is a statement that no primary source for one was read.
Open questions
Whether home schools must file the 1 November annual immunization report. The statute says “the school,” and the state reporting page names public and private schools but not home schools.
Any retention period for attendance records in either mode. The statutes command that records be made and maintained but state no number of years. Do not assume one.
Any retention period for immunization records. The statute requires records on file for all children attending, with a transfer-copy duty, but specifies no term.
Whether the grade-11 competency test applies to home schools.
Records escrow or student record transfer on school closure — no North Carolina source was found imposing this on nonpublic or home schools, which is notable given the 14-day closure reporting duty that does exist for scholarship schools.
Zoning
Not covered. This research is state statute and administrative rule only, and zoning for a small school is a municipal question — a use classification, an occupancy threshold and a conditional-use process, all set by city ordinance. Rather than extrapolate, we have left it out. Ask your city's planning department which use classification applies to a school of your size in your building.
How to read what is here
The Opportunity Scholarship provisions were re-read verbatim on 2026-07-28 on ncleg.gov. NCSEAA's own school-facing pages returned HTTP 403 to automated fetching that day, so the current-year award table was not read directly — the percentages above come from § 115C-562.2 rather than from a published table.
Several timings schools treat as deadlines are NCSEAA administrative guidance rather than statute, and are labelled as such above. Agency deadlines move; statutory ones need a bill.
Sources
Every source cited on this page, with the date it was last read. Four hosts used here — codes.findlaw.com, law.justia.com, k12.ncseaa.edu and azed.gov — refuse automated requests but open normally in a browser.
8 states are covered so far, chosen on search demand and school-choice programme size. The other 42are not, and we would rather leave a gap than publish a page we haven't researched.