How we handle student data,
whoever brought it here.

What this is, and why it exists separately

Teachers reach OrganizeClass two ways. Some arrive individually and confirm they are school personnel. Others arrive because their district signed a data privacy agreement with us.

The obligations below are the same either way. We wrote them down separately so that a teacher who arrives on their own is not relying on our good intentions, and so a school can read exactly what we owe them before anyone signs anything. This addendum is part of the Terms of Service for anyone who turns real student names on.

Which document wins

In order of precedence, highest first:

1. A signed district data privacy agreement, for the schools it covers.
2. This Student Data Addendum.
3. The Terms of Service.

So a district that signs never gets less than what is written here, and a teacher without a district agreement is still covered by all of it.

What counts as student data

Anything a teacher enters that identifies a student, or that is attached to an identified student: first and last name, grade level, a district student ID where one applies, assessment scores and performance levels, free-text observation notes, and evidence files such as photos, documents, and voice notes.

This is the same category the law calls personally identifiable information from education records under FERPA (34 C.F.R. § 99) and covered information under Oregon's student privacy law (ORS 336.184).

What we will never do with it

• Sell, rent, or trade student data
• Use it for targeted advertising, on or off the service
• Build a profile of a student for any purpose other than the teaching the teacher is doing
• Use it to train artificial intelligence or machine-learning models
• Disclose it to anyone outside the subprocessors we use to run the service, each of which is contractually held to these same restrictions

We may use data that has been stripped of identifiers, and cannot reasonably be traced back to a student, to understand how the product is used and to improve it.

Who it belongs to

The school or district. Not us, and not the individual teacher who typed it in. We hold student data to provide the service and for no other reason.

This matters most when a teacher leaves. Their account is theirs and moves with them; the student data they entered belongs to the institution those students attend, and the section below is how the institution gets it back or gets it deleted.

Deletion and export, on request

A school or district may ask us to export or delete the student data its teachers hold, whether or not it has signed an agreement with us, and whether or not it knew its teachers were using OrganizeClass. Email privacy@organizeclass.com from an address at the institution's domain. We act within 30 days and confirm when it is done.

Deleting student data does not delete the teacher's account or their own work product. Where we can preserve the gradebook by removing identifiers instead of deleting records, we will offer that first, because it leaves the teacher's scoring history intact while the identities are gone.

Teachers can delete their own students and classes at any time from inside the product, and export at any time.

Security

Student names, notes, and student IDs are encrypted at rest with keys held in a managed key service, separately from the database that stores them. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Access to production systems is limited to people who need it, requires multi-factor authentication, and every administrative session is recorded.

If student data is exposed in a security incident, we will tell the affected institution without undue delay and no later than 72 hours after we confirm it, along with what happened, what data was involved, and what we are doing about it.

Teachers who arrive on their own

When a teacher turns real names on by confirming they are school personnel, they are telling us they work for an institution and are permitted to use OrganizeClass with its students' data. We rely on that. We do not independently verify it, and we say so plainly rather than implying a district relationship we do not have.

That confirmation is between the teacher and us. It does not make us a school official under FERPA on the district's behalf, and it does not substitute for the district's own approval. Only the district can give us that footing, by signing the data privacy agreement.

If a district tells us its teachers should not be using OrganizeClass, we will honor that over the teacher's confirmation.

Changes

If we change this addendum in a way that reduces what we owe you, every teacher who confirmed they are school personnel is asked to review and confirm again before real names keep working. We record which version each teacher accepted and when.

Contact

Privacy questions, deletion requests, and district agreements: privacy@organizeclass.com.