Digital Privacy in D127

Digital Privacy in D127

The District’s privacy standards are established in accordance with applicable federal and state law and Board policy, and are intended to reflect the District’s mission and values. These guiding concepts are intended to provide direction about many elements of the District’s practice, including the educational value of instructional technology, the primacy of children’s safety, and the importance of family rights.

The District utilizes filters and firewalls to prevent students from accessing harmful information on the Internet as well as to protect the privacy of student information.

The District also uses a tool provided by a third party, Education Framework, to determine whether websites, software, or apps are safe to use as part of instructional programming. Education Framework offers a student data privacy manager, EdPrivacy, which applies a scoring system to rate the privacy measures in place for a particular website, software or app. Based on the rating issued by EdPrivacy and other available information, the District decides if that particular website, software or app has adequate privacy measures to protect student data. If the privacy measures are found adequate, the District will approve the website, software or app for use by staff, students and/or parents. In some circumstances, the website, software or app will be only be approved for use in a limited manner, or only approved for use by staff members.

As described above, EdPrivacy uses a privacy quality scoring system based on 5 main components:

  1. Data privacy – what information is collected from students and what are the purposes for collecting that student data;

  2. Data deletion - the ability of parents/guardians to review and/or delete personal information collected from their children;

  3. Data security - whether data transferred over the Internet is encrypted and whether there are security policies and procedures that are reasonably designed to protect personal student information against risks, such as unauthorized access or unintended or inappropriate destruction, modification, or disclosure;

  4. Data integrity - whether student data is backed up on a regular schedule

  5. Data retention - whether there is a data retention policy stating that data will only be retained for as long as it serves an educational purpose.

The District ultimately decides whether or not to use the particular website, software or app based on the privacy quality score by provided by EdPrivacy and any other relevant information. Other relevant information may include consideration about the group of individuals who will be using the website, software or app, the manner in which the website, software or app will be deployed, and the intended reasons for use.

Directory Information

The school may release certain directory information regarding students, except that a student’s parent(s)/guardian(s) may prohibit the student’s directory information. Directory information is limited to:

  • Name

  • Address

  • Grade level

  • Birth date and place

  • Parent(s)/guardian(s)’ names, addresses, electronic mail addresses, and telephone numbers

  • Photographs, videos, or digital images used for informational or news-related purposes (whether by a media outlet or by the school) of a student participating in school or schoolsponsored activities, organizations, and athletics that have appeared in school publications, such as yearbooks, newspapers, or sorting or fine arts programs

  • Academic awards, degrees and honors

  • Information in relation to school-sponsored activities, organizations, and athletics

  • Major field of study

  • Period of attendance in school

Parent Information

Parents play a key role in overseeing the online safety of their children. ConnectSafely, a nonprofit dedicated to educating users of connected technology about  safety, privacy, security and digital wellness, developed a series of parent guides to help parents navigate the digital world with their children.