Schools and Education Law §2-d

A school or district signs a data privacy agreement with us first. Under it we act as a school official with a legitimate educational interest, as FERPA allows, and as a third-party contractor under Education Law §2-d. The school then consents on behalf of its families: consent is recorded against each class with a server-side timestamp and the role of the consenting party, and it is checked every time a card, a remembered device or a knock tries to open Archie. Revoking it signs the class’s children out and stops every one of those doors until consent is given again; nothing is deleted by revoking, and a replacement card stops the old one at once.

New York Education Law §2-d gives every parent of a public-school student these rights, and we publish them here as the law asks a contractor to do.

1. 1A student’s personally identifiable information cannot be sold or released for any commercial purpose.
2. 2Parents have the right to inspect and review the complete contents of their child’s education record.
3. 3State and federal laws protect the confidentiality of personally identifiable information, and safeguards associated with industry standards and best practices — including encryption, firewalls and password protection — must be in place when data is stored or transferred.
4. 4A complete list of all student data elements collected by the State is available for public review at nysed.gov/data-privacy-security, or by writing to the Office of Information and Reporting Services, New York State Education Department, Room 865 EBA, 89 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12234.
5. 5Parents have the right to have complaints about possible breaches of student data addressed. Complaints should be directed to the school district’s data protection officer, or to the Chief Privacy Officer, New York State Education Department, 89 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12234, privacy@nysed.gov.
6. 6Parents have the right to be notified, in accordance with the law, if a breach or unauthorised release of their child’s personally identifiable information occurs.

Part 121 asks a contractor to say, for each agreement, how student data is used, who may see it, what happens when the agreement ends, how a parent can challenge a record, where the data is kept and how it is protected. For Archie the answers are the same for every school, because they are how the system is built:

The purpose

Student data is used for the exclusive purpose of providing Archie and the course to the school’s students, and for nothing else.

Who sees it

Our service providers — Amazon Web Services, Anthropic and Google — are bound in writing to the same limits we are, and receive data only in the state the child privacy notice describes. No one else receives a student’s data.

When it ends

When the agreement ends, or when the school asks, every student record is deleted from every table, the deletion is verified and logged, and the school is told it is done.

Challenging accuracy

A parent or eligible student can challenge the accuracy of a record through the school, and the school can correct it with us.

Where it is kept

In our own Amazon Web Services account, in a single United States region, encrypted where it is stored and while it travels, in a database with no public address.

How it is protected

Our security practices align with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, as Part 121 requires: encryption at rest and in transit, each school separated inside the database itself, every change reviewed and tested before release, and a record of every hint request kept as evidence for three years.

A child: an explorer card. No email, no password, no name — the learner record has no field for one. If a child’s real name has to map to their progress, that mapping lives in the school’s system, or encrypted in the teacher’s own browser with a passphrase only she holds, and never with us in a form we can read.

A teacher: a professional identity through the school’s own Google account, so we never see a password, and the planning notes and labels they choose to write in the portal, which are scrubbed of personal details before any of them leave our servers. A teacher differentiates for the diverse learners in their class in the portal’s own terms — a reading-level band, a home language, the supports the school has planned — and the child privacy notice lists exactly what those categories are and where they go.

If a student’s information were ever reached by someone who should not have reached it, we would tell the school without unreasonable delay and within the time Part 121 sets, so that the school can notify families as the law requires, and we would tell the New York State Education Department. The record of every hint request, kept for three years, is what would let us say exactly what was and was not involved.

The schools page states our FERPA posture in plain language, and the child privacy notice covers what is held about a child. A district that needs the specifics — encryption configuration, the list of service providers and the test evidence behind each statement — asks for the evidence pack from the schools page, or writes to hello@bbplayland.com. This page is effective from 19 October 2026.