How do I find an FAA waiver contact for a school launch?

The people you want are at the nearest ARTCC, which is the Air Route Traffic Control Center. Not the regional office, not the local tower. Towers only handle the airspace right around an airport, and your grass strip probably isn't towered anyway. The center controls the enroute airspace over your field, and they're the ones who will issue a NOTAM for your launch. The FAA website has a facility locator, or just search the name of your state plus ARTCC and you'll find the center's phone number. When you call, ask for the operations supervisor or the traffic management person and tell them you're doing amateur rocketry under Part 101 Subpart D. They deal with this stuff way more than you'd think and will ussually walk you through it. Timing-wise, don't sweat the May date too much, but start the conversation now. The formal notification has to be at least 24 hours before you fly, but for a first-time event with 20 rockets I'd call weeks ahead anyway. You want to confirm the right facility, nail down your launch window, and find out if there's anything weird about your airspace, like a nearby airport with instrument approaches or a restricted area. Also expect them to ask for coordinates, max expected altitude, and contact info for someone on site that day. Have that stuff written down before you call. One thing to figure out before you dial: are you doing notification or do you actually need a waiver? If every rocket stays under the altitudes and distances in Part 101, notification is all you need and it's basicly a phone call. H and I motors on school rockets will genrally stay under 1,500 feet if the kits are built stock, and notification covers that. If kids are going to try altitude hogs, or if the center tells you your airspace needs it, that's when waiver territory starts, and the process gets heavier. Honest suggestion though: see if there's a NAR section or Tripoli prefecture within driving distance. Running 20 flights for a middle school group under an existing club waiver is a much easier day, and you'll have experienced people around for motor handling and range safety. Plenty of clubs love hosting school groups. But if the grass strip is your only option, the ARTCC call is genuinely not a big deal once you've made it the first time.

Been running club launches since the 80s and one thing I'll add: if you do end up needing a waiver instead of just notification, the written request has to go in at least 45 days ahead. Back then we mailed a paper application to the center and waited on a letter. Now it's email, but the lead time is the same, so if your airspace guy hints you'll need one, get that paperwork moving this month. We used to fax our launch schedule over the morning of and get a phone call back. Kids these days have it easy.

Gonna push back on the claim that stock H and I kits stay under 1,500 feet. They relly don't. A typical H on a mid-weight airframe blows right past 2,000 feet, sometimes closer to 3,000. I've watched plenty of L1 cert flights disappear from view on a clear day. So plan on the waiver, not just the phone-call notification. That changes your timeline too, since the paperwork needs way more lead time than a day or two. My advice: get the sim files for the actual motors the kids are flying and take real numbers to the FAA when you call.

Agree with the suggestion to tag along with an existing club waiver. Our club hosts a couple scout troops every spring and it makes the whole day easier for the adults too. The kids get a safety briefing, someone else is watching the pads, and the teachers just get to enjoy watching their rockets fly. We also let them help with range setup, which they weirdly love. Worth calling a few nearby sections now because spring weekends fill up fast once the weather turns.

Update: called the ARTCC like the first reply said and actually got a real person who took my info, so that part is solved. Problem now is timing. Our launch is the first Saturday of May and the 45-day waiver window mentioned above has basically allready closed. If I ask a local club about flying under their existing waiver, is that something they can usually arrange on short notice, or do they need to add us to paperwork weeks out too?