Forms, Schedules, and Instructions for U.S. Tax-Exempt Returns

Instructions for Schedule E
(Form 990), Schools
(Rev. December 2024)

Section references are to the Internal Revenue Code unless
otherwise noted.

Future Developments

For the latest information about developments related to
Schedule E and its instructions, such as legislation enacted
after they were published, go to IRS.gov/Form990.

What’s New
Continuous-use form and instructions. Schedule E
(Form 990) and these instructions have been converted from
an annual revision to continuous use. Use these instructions
for tax year 2024 and subsequent years until a superseding
revision is issued.

Reminder

Rev. Proc. 2019-22, 2019-22 I.R.B. 1260, modified Rev. Proc.
75-50, 1975-2 C.B. 587, to provide a third method for a
private school to satisfy the publicity requirement in section
4.03. Accordingly, also answer “Yes” to line 3 if the
organization has publicized its racially nondiscriminatory
policy on its primary publicly accessible Internet homepage
at all times during its tax year in a manner reasonably
expected to be noticed by visitors to the homepage.

General Instructions
Purpose of Schedule

Schedule E (Form 990) is used by an organization that files
Form 990 or 990-EZ to report information on private schools.

Who Must File

An organization that answered “Yes” on Form 990, Part IV,
line 13, or Form 990-EZ, Part VI, line 48, must complete and
attach Schedule E to Form 990 or 990-EZ, as applicable.
This means the organization checked the box on Schedule A
(Form 990), Public Charity Status and Public Support, Part I,
line 2, because it’s a school.
If an organization isn’t required to file Form 990 or 990-EZ
but chooses to do so, it must file a complete return and
provide all of the information requested, including the
required schedules.
For Forms 990 and 990-EZ filers, use Part II if additional
space is needed for explanations.

Specific Instructions
Part I

Rev. Proc. 2019-22, 2019-22 I.R.B. 1260, modified Rev.
Proc. 75-50, 1975-2 C.B. 587, to provide a third method for a
private school to satisfy the requirement in section 4.03.
4.01 Organizational requirements. A school must include
a statement in its charter, bylaws, or other governing
instrument, or in a resolution of its governing body, that it has
a racially nondiscriminatory policy as to students and
therefore doesn’t discriminate against applicants and
students on the basis of race, color, and national or ethnic
origin.
4.02 Statement of policy. Every school must include a
statement of its racially nondiscriminatory policy as to
students in all its brochures and catalogues dealing with
student admissions, programs, and scholarships. A
statement substantially similar to the Notice described in
paragraph (a), subsection 1, section 4.03, below, will be
acceptable for this purpose. Further, every school must
include a reference to its racially nondiscriminatory policy in
other written advertising that it uses as a means of informing
prospective students of its programs. The following
references will be acceptable.
The (name) school admits students of any race, color, and
national or ethnic origin.
4.03 Publicity. The school must make its racially
nondiscriminatory policy known to all segments of the
general community served by the school.
1. The school must use one of the following three methods
to satisfy this requirement.
a. The school may publish a notice of its racially
nondiscriminatory policy in a newspaper of general
circulation that serves all racial segments of the
community. This publication must be repeated at
least once annually during the period of the school’s
solicitation for students or, in the absence of a
solicitation program, during the school’s registration
period. Where more than one community is served
by a school, the school may publish its notice in
those newspapers that are reasonably likely to be
read by all racial segments of the communities that it
serves. The notice must appear in a section of the
newspaper likely to be read by prospective students
and their families and it must occupy at least three
column inches. It must be captioned in at least
12-point boldface type as a notice of
nondiscriminatory policy as to students, and its text
must be printed in at least 8-point type. The following
notice will be acceptable.

Relevant parts of Rev. Proc. 75-50, 1975-2 C.B. 587, are
given below. The revenue procedure gives guidelines and
recordkeeping requirements for determining whether private
schools that are recognized as exempt from tax have racially
nondiscriminatory policies toward their students.

Dec 6, 2024

Instructions for Schedule E (Form 990) (Rev. 12-2024) Catalog Number 94964H
Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service www.irs.gov

Notice of Nondiscriminatory Policy as to Students
The (name) school admits students of any race, color,
national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges,
programs, and activities generally accorded or made available
to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis
of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its
educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and
loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered
programs.

b. The school may use the broadcast media to publicize
its racially nondiscriminatory policy if this use makes
such nondiscriminatory policy known to all segments
of the general community the school serves. If this
method is chosen, the school must provide
documentation that the means by which this policy
was communicated to all segments of the general
community was reasonably expected to be effective.
In this case, appropriate documentation would
include copies of the tapes or script used and
records showing that there was an adequate number
of announcements, that they were made during
hours when the announcements were likely to be
communicated to all segments of the general
community, that they were of sufficient duration to
convey the message clearly, and that they were
broadcast on radio or television stations likely to be
listened to by substantial numbers of members of all
racial segments of the general community.
Announcements must be made during the period of
the school’s solicitation for students or, in the
absence of a solicitation program, during the school’s
registration period.
c. The school may display a notice of its racially
nondiscriminatory policy on its primary publicly
accessible Internet homepage at all times during its
tax year (excluding temporary outages due to
website maintenance or technical problems) in a
manner reasonably expected to be noticed by
visitors to the homepage. The notice used to satisfy
the publicity requirement under 1(a), above, is
acceptable. A publicly accessible homepage is one
that does not require a visitor to input information,
such as an email address or a username and
password, to access the homepage. Factors to be
considered in determining whether a notice is
reasonably expected to be noticed by visitors to the
homepage include the size, color, and graphic
treatment of the notice in relation to other parts of the
homepage, whether the notice is unavoidable,
whether other parts of the homepage distract
attention from the notice, and whether the notice is
visible without a visitor having to do anything other
than simple scrolling on the homepage. A link on the
homepage to another page where the notice
appears, or a notice that appears in a carousel or
only by selecting a dropdown or by hover
(mouseover) is not acceptable. If a school does not
have its own website, but it has webpages contained
in a website, the school must display a notice of its
racially nondiscriminatory policy on its primary
landing page within the website in a manner that
satisfies all other requirements of this subsection 1(c)
to use this publication method.
2

Communication of a racially nondiscriminatory policy
as to students by a school to leaders of racial groups
as the sole means of publicity generally won’t be
considered effective to make the policy known to all
segments of the community.
2. The requirements of subsection 1, section 4.03, won’t
apply when one of the following paragraphs applies.
a. If, for the preceding 3 years, the enrollment of a
parochial or other church-related school consists of
students at least 75% of whom are members of the
sponsoring religious denomination or unit, the school
may make known its racially nondiscriminatory policy
in whatever newspapers or circulars the religious
denomination or unit utilizes in the communities from
which the students are drawn. These newspapers
and circulars may be those distributed by a particular
religious denomination or unit or by an association
that represents a number of religious organizations of
the same denomination. If, however, the school
advertises in newspapers of general circulation in the
community or communities from which its students
are drawn and paragraphs (b) and (c) of this
subsection aren’t applicable to it, then it must comply
with paragraph (a), subsection 1, section 4.03.
b. If a school customarily draws a substantial
percentage of its students nationwide, worldwide, or
from a large geographic section or sections of the
United States and follows a racially
nondiscriminatory policy as to students, the publicity
requirement may be satisfied by complying with
section 4.02, earlier. Such a school may demonstrate
that it follows a racially nondiscriminatory policy
within the meaning of the preceding sentence either
by showing that it currently enrolls students of racial
minority groups in meaningful numbers or, when
minority students are not enrolled in meaningful
numbers, that its promotional activities and recruiting
efforts in each geographic area were reasonably
designed to inform students of all racial segments in
the general communities within the area of the
availability of the school. The question whether a
school satisfies the preceding sentence will be
determined on the basis of the facts and
circumstances of each case.
c. If a school customarily draws its students from local
communities and follows a racially nondiscriminatory
policy as to students, the publicity requirement may
be satisfied by complying with section 4.02, earlier.
Such a school may demonstrate that it follows a
racially nondiscriminatory policy within the meaning
of the preceding sentence by showing that it
currently enrolls students of racial minority groups in
meaningful numbers. The question whether a school
satisfies the preceding sentence will be determined
on the basis of the facts and circumstances of each
case. One of the facts and circumstances that the
IRS will consider is whether the school’s promotional
activities and recruiting efforts in each area were
reasonably designed to inform students of all racial
segments in the general communities within the area
of the availability of the school. The IRS recognizes
that the failure by a school drawing its students from
local communities to enroll racial minority group
students may not necessarily indicate the absence of
Instructions for Schedule E (Form 990) (Rev. 12-2024)

a racially nondiscriminatory policy as to students
when there are relatively few or no such students in
these communities. Actual enrollment is, however, a
meaningful indication of a racially nondiscriminatory
policy in a community in which a public school or
schools became subject to a desegregation order of
a federal court or otherwise expressly became
obligated to implement a desegregation plan under
the terms of any written contract or other
commitment to which any federal agency was a
party.
The IRS encourages schools to satisfy the publicity
requirement by the methods described in subsection 1,
section 4.03, regardless of whether a school considers itself
within subsection 2, because it believes these methods to be
the most effective to make known a school’s racially
nondiscriminatory policy. It’s each school’s responsibility to
determine whether paragraph (a), (b), or (c), subsection 2,
applies to it. On audit, a school must be prepared to
demonstrate that the failure to publish its racially
nondiscriminatory policy in accordance with subsection 1,
section 4.03, was justified by the application to it of
paragraph (a), (b), or (c), subsection 2. Further, a school
must be prepared to demonstrate that it has publicly
disavowed or repudiated any statements purported to have
been made on its behalf (after November 6, 1975) that are
contrary to its publicity of a racially nondiscriminatory policy
as to students, to the extent that the school or its principal
official were aware of such statements.
4.04 Facilities and programs. A school must be able to
show that all of its programs and facilities are operated in a
racially nondiscriminatory manner.
4.05 Scholarship and loan programs. As a general rule,
all scholarship or other comparable benefits available for use
at any school must be offered on a racially nondiscriminatory
basis. Their availability on this basis must be known
throughout the general community being served by the
school and should be referred to in the publicity required by
this section in order for that school to be considered racially
nondiscriminatory as to students. Scholarships and loans
that are made pursuant to financial assistance programs
favoring members of one or more racial minority groups that
are designed to promote a school’s racially nondiscriminatory
policy won’t adversely affect the school’s exempt status.
Financial assistance programs favoring members of one
or more racial groups that don’t significantly derogate from
the school’s racially nondiscriminatory policy similarly won’t
adversely affect the school’s exempt status.
4.06 Certification. An individual authorized to take official
action on behalf of a school that claims to be racially
nondiscriminatory as to students is required to certify
annually, under penalties of perjury, that to the best of his or
her knowledge and belief, the school has satisfied the
applicable requirements of sections 4.01 through 4.05, Rev.
Proc. 75-50, 1975-2 C.B. 587, as modified by Rev. Proc.
2019-22, 2019-22 I.R.B. 1260. This certification is line 7,
Schedule E.
4.07 Faculty and staff. The existence of a racially
discriminatory policy for employment of faculty and
administrative staff is indicative of a racially discriminatory
policy as to students. On the other hand, the absence of
racial discrimination in employment of faculty and
administrative staff is indicative of a racially
nondiscriminatory policy as to students.
Instructions for Schedule E (Form 990) (Rev. 12-2024)

7.01 Specific records. Except as provided in section 7.03,
each exempt private school must maintain for a minimum
period of 3 years, beginning with the year after the year of
compilation or acquisition, the following records for the use of
the IRS on proper request.
1. Records indicating the racial composition of the student
body, faculty, and administrative staff for each academic
year.
2. Records sufficient to document that scholarship and
other financial assistance is awarded on a racially
nondiscriminatory basis.
3. Copies of all brochures, catalogues, and advertising
dealing with student admissions, programs, and
scholarships. Schools advertising nationally or in a large
geographic segment or segments of the United States
need only maintain a record sufficient to indicate when
and in which publications their advertisements were
placed.
4. Copies of all materials used by or on behalf of the school
to solicit contributions.
7.02 Limitation.
1. For purposes of section 7.01, the racial composition of
the student body, faculty, and administrative staff may be
an estimate based on the best information readily
available to the school, without requiring student
applicants, students, faculty, or administrative staff to
submit information to the school that the school
otherwise doesn’t require. For each academic year,
however, a record of the method by which racial
composition is determined must be maintained.
2. The IRS doesn’t require that a school release personally
identifiable records or personal information contained
therein except in accordance with the requirements of
the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974,
20 U.S.C. section 1232g (1974). Similarly, the IRS
doesn’t require a school to keep records, the
maintenance of which is prohibited under state or federal
law.
7.03 Exceptions. The records described in section 7.01
need not be independently maintained for IRS use if:
1. Substantially the same information that each of these
records would provide has been included in a report or
reports filed in accordance with law with an agency or
agencies of federal, state, or local government, and this
information is current within 1 year; and
2. The school maintains copies of these reports from which
this information is readily obtainable. Records described
in section 7.01 providing information not included in
reports filed with an agency or agencies must be
maintained by the school for IRS use.
7.04 Failure to maintain records. Failure to maintain or to
produce, upon the proper request, the required records and
information will create a presumption that the organization
has failed to comply with these guidelines.

Part II. Supplemental Information

Use Part II to provide the narrative explanations required, if
applicable, to supplement responses to Part I, lines 3, 4d, 5h,
6b, and 7. Part II may also be used to supplement other
responses to questions on Schedule E (Form 990). In Part II,
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identify the specific line number that each response supports,
in the order in which those lines appear on Schedule E (Form
990). Part II can be duplicated if more space is needed.

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Instructions for Schedule E (Form 990) (Rev. 12-2024)