Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

• Account information — your name, email, and password (stored only as a secure hash).
• School records your school enters — student names, grade levels, attendance, grades, assessments, discipline notes, health/emergency details, documents your school uploads (e.g., transcripts), and family contact information.
• Student photographs — onlyif your school chooses to add them. A photo is optional for every student, is uploaded by school staff, and can be removed at any time. See “Student photographs” below.
• Basic usage data — logs needed to keep the Service secure and reliable.
• Payment records — if your school turns on tuition payments, we record the amount, date, and status of each payment for your ledger. Card numbers and bank details go only to Stripe and never touch our servers.

We deliberately do not collect Social Security numbers, bank accounts, or card numbers.

2. How we use it

Only to provide the Service to your school: displaying your records to your authorized users, generating reports/transcripts you request, sending service emails (like password resets), and keeping the platform secure. We do not sell or rent personal information — ever, and we do not use student data for advertising.

3. Children’s privacy

Homebook is a school system, so nearly everything in it concerns a child. Two different things matter here, and we treat them differently: records about a child, and accounts used by a child.

Records about a child

Student records are entered and controlled by the school (or the parent, for a homeschool), which acts as the data controller. Families can view records only through a private access link their school shares.

Accounts used by a child

A school may choose to give its students their own sign-in so they can see their own work. Where a school turns this on:

• The school creates the account. A student cannot sign themselves up, and there is no public registration for students.
• A student can only look. They see their own record, their own grades and their own attendance — nothing else. They cannot see another child, message anyone, or submit, change or delete anything.
• The school decides who gets one and can remove it at any time.

Children under 13

Where a school gives a sign-in to a student under 13, the school authorizes that account on behalf of the parent, for the school’s own educational purpose — the arrangement United States federal rules (COPPA) provide for schools. We ask a child for nothing: the only information involved is the school-issued email address the school already holds. Student data is neverused for advertising, profiling, or any purpose other than running the school’s own records, and we never sell it.

A parent who wants their child’s sign-in removed should ask their school, which can remove it immediately. You may also contact us at sam@gethomebook.comand we will act on the school’s instruction.

Student photographs

A school may add a photo to a student’s profile so teachers and substitutes can match a name to a face and confirm they are releasing a child to the right adult. Because a photograph of a child is the most sensitive thing we hold, it is handled under stricter rules than anything else in Homebook:

• Optional, always. No photo is ever required, and a school or family can ask for one to be removed at any time — it is deleted, not hidden.
• Never public. Photos are stored in private storage. They are never published on a website, never shown on a shared front-desk or kiosk screen, and never given a public link. Each viewing uses a short-lived link that expires, so a photo cannot be forwarded or indexed by a search engine.
• Only the people who already know the child.A photo can be reached only by that school’s office staff, the teachers assigned to that student, and that student’s own approved family. No other family at the school can see it, and no other school on Homebook can ever reach it.
• Uploaded by school staff, not by families, so the school keeps control of what is on a student’s record.
• Never used to train anything, never sold, never used for advertising, and never used for facial recognition or any other biometric identification.
• Printed materials are the school’s responsibility. Homebook can print student cards that include a photo and the emergency and health details staff need in an emergency. Once printed, those pages are a paper record in the school’s hands — schools should treat them as confidential student records and store or destroy them accordingly.

Schools should follow their own photo-consent practice and any applicable state or federal requirements (for example, FERPA) before adding student photographs.

4. Who can see your data

• Every school’s data is isolated at the database level — no other school on Homebook can ever see it.
• Within your school, access follows the roles your admins assign (staff vs. family access links).
• Our team accesses school data only when needed to support you or keep the Service running, never for any other purpose.

5. Service providers we rely on

6. Security

Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-256). Passwords are hashed. Uploaded documents live in private storage and are served only through short-lived, signed links. School isolation is enforced by database row-level security. No system is perfectly secure, but our core defense is simple: we hold as little sensitive data as possible.

7. Retention, export & deletion

We keep your school’s data for as long as your account is active. You may export your data (CSV) at any time. If you close your account, you may request an export for up to 30 days, after which data is permanently deleted. You can also ask us to delete specific records at any time.

8. If something goes wrong

If we ever discover a breach affecting your school’s personal information, we will notify you promptly with what happened, what data was involved, and what we’re doing about it, as required by applicable law.

9. Changes & contact

If we make material changes to this policy, we’ll post the update here with a new effective date. Questions or requests: sam@gethomebook.com.

Terms of Service