Address

Address: School Directory Public Portal and Management Portal

The School Directory collects an LEA’s address in three distinct formats:

• Physical address
• Mailing address
• Shipping address

While all three addresses can be the same, in the event that they are not, here are the distinctions between each type of address:

1. Physical Address: This refers to the address of the physical building that a school/LEA utilizes. If your school is a virtual school, you will still need to provide an address to a physical location where school operations occur. If you are a large school district, you may elect to list your primary district office as *the* physical address for the district/LEA. This address cannot be a P.O. Box. This address can be the same as the Mailing Address.

   1. NOTE: It is especially vital for multi-district schools (Choice, Charter, Consortium...) to input their physical address, the address of their physical buildings. This is what allows DPI to recognize the different city of each school within a multi-district school agency.

2. Mailing Address: This refers to the location where mail (daily paper post) is obtained (picked up from and delivered to) for your school/LEA. A common example of paper post sent from your school/LEA would be student report cards. For outbound mail sent by your school/LEA, this address would be used as the ‘Return Address’. Mailing addresses are often associated with billing addresses. This address cannot be a P.O. Box. It can also be the same as the Physical address.

3. Shipping Address: Very similar to the Mailing address, Shipping address refers to the location where deliveries occur, which can be the receiving of daily post. However, a shipping address often-times refers to large deliveries, such as school furniture, or perhaps a new stove that is needed for the school cafeteria. Cost of shipping is determined based on the Ship Address. This address can be the same as the Physical address and the Mail address.

The component parts of each of the address types listed above are as follows:

• Prefix (plaza, building name, etc): Prefix is an optional field; a street address is often sufficient. However, if you are filling in this field, provide the known name of the building associated with the address type. This is the name the building is known by, such as ‘School District of Smithville District Offices.’ It can also be a name given to a building, such the ‘GEF 3’ Building, utilized by the DPI in Madison, WI. It could also refer to a specific building when multiple buildings share an address, for example, ‘Building A’ of an address that also has a Building B and Building C.
• Location: Location is an optional field; a street address is often sufficient. If your location is in an area that may be difficult to locate (e.g., a dense downtown area or in a remote rural location), you could use this field to add further details about where to go on a certain property, such as room number, a suite, or an apartment number.
• Street: The street address refers to the alpha-numeric characters of a physical building on a street. This is what most people think of when referring to the term “address.” A simple example of a street address is: 123 Main Street. It may be important in urban locations to include the directionality of a street, as there may be an address for 123 East Wisconsin Avenue and an address for 123 West Wisconsin Avenue in the same municipality. Some rural or suburban locations may have addresses that include ‘rural routes’ or lat/long indicators on building numbers, such as: N101W12301 Milwaukee Street.
• City: Use the name of the city assigned to your address as provided by the United States Post Office. This is important when addresses are located in a county, outside of city limits, or when an address is physically located in one municipality but assigned to a different municipality for postal delivery purposes.
• State: School Directory defaults this field to WI - Wisconsin.
• Zip Code: Use the five-digit postal code assigned by the United States Post Office for the address.
• Zip +4: The ‘+4’ of a zipcode is an optional field. The +4 identifies a geographic segment with a given five-digit zip code (e.g., a city block or an apartment complex).