Student Data Privacy
Students and families need to know that the Burlington School District is making every effort at protecting privacy rights and adhering to the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act guidelines (FERPA) for all students as well as COPPA (Childrens’ Online Privacy Protection Act) for those students under the age of 13.
The district understands that teachers are facilitating instruction with new methods and will provide best practice guidance for distance learning while adhering to federal laws and guidelines for all students.
While there are many new tools offering their services for free during this time of extended closure, it benefits us all to first evaluate these tools for the following:
to know if they are appropriate and accessible for our age of students,
if the tool connects directly to our teaching and learning objectives,
and if use of the tool could compromise student data privacy.
Burlington School District is a Google for Education district and we are supported by a Google Admin and other certified Google Educators. This allows us to better assist our teachers and staff with a common set of tools for both synchronous and asynchronous learning. We have no recourse or ability to support the many free and newly available tools.
Students in grades 6-12 have their BSD issued 1:1 chromebooks available at home during school closure. Elementary level families in grades K-5 that have identified or been identified as in need of a chromebook have received chromebooks for use during closure.
District issued chromebooks for elementary and middle level students are filtered and monitored by the use of a software called GoGuardian. Linked here is additional information about how the GoGuardian system uses data, and how it applies to students. Further questions are encouraged, and can be sent to privacy@goguardian.com.
For summary videos of the above federal laws and related topics, please visit: http://archive.ikeepsafe.org/privacyeducation/teacher/
Google for Education Privacy and Security Center:
https://edu.google.com/why-google/privacy-security