Privacy

Kentfield School District Privacy Policy

This policy establishes how we will handle information we learn about you from your visit to our site. Please be assured that the privacy of our visitors is of utmost importance to us. We collect no personally identifiable information about you when you visit our site unless you choose to provide that information to us. The specific practices outlined in this privacy statement apply to web sites maintained by or on behalf of the Kentfield School District.

Automatic Collections

For each web browser request ("HTTP request") recieved, we collect and store in our log files only the following information:

• the date and time
• the originating IP address
• the type of browser and operating system used (if provided by the browser)
• the address of the web page (URL) being requested
• the URL of the referring page (if provided by the browser)
• the completion status of the request
• the login ("username") of the user, if the user was logged in to view a protected part of the site

How the Information is Used

We use the information that we collect to measure the number of visitors to the different areas of our sites, and to help us make our sites more useful to visitors. This includes analyzing these logs periodically to determine the traffic through our servers, the number of pages served, and the level of demand for pages and topics of interest.

How Long is the Information Retained

The logs may be preserved indefinitely and used at any time and in any way necessary to prevent security breaches and to insure the integrity of the data on our servers.

Interaction with Children

Kentfield School District web sites do not collect personally identifiable information from child visitors. The District complies with all the requirements of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 ("COPPA"). COPPA requires that web site operators never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting verifiable parental consent.

In accordance with COPPA, the Kentfield School District does not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13. We recommend that no student in the District, nor any family member under the age of 15, submit any personally identifiable information to our site. In the event that the District determines that a user of this site is under the age of 13, we will not maintain or use his or her personally identifiable information.

To ensure children's privacy, we urge parents and guardians to spend time online with their children to become familiar with the types of content available on the Internet. Control tools are available on the Internet from online services and software manufacturers to help create a safer environment for children.

For additional information on protecting children's privacy and your rights under COPPA, visit the Kidz Privacy (sic) page at the Federal Trade Commission web site.

Privacy of Student and Family Information

The District complies with all the requirements of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 ("FERPA"). FERPA gives parents certain rights with respect to their children's education records. These rights transfer to the student, or former student, who has reached the age of eighteen or is attending any school beyond the high school level. Students and former students to whom the rights have transferred are called "eligible students."

A brief summary of parents' rights under FERPA:

• Parents and eligible students have the right to inspect and review all of the student's education records maintained by the school.
• Parents and eligible students have the right to request that a school correct records believed to be inaccurate or misleading.
• Generally, the school must have written permission from the parent or eligible student before releasing any information from a student's record. However, the law allows schools to disclose records, without consent, to some parties, such as transferring schools, courts, health and law enforcement officials. Schools may also disclose, without consent, "directory" type information such as a student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendances. However, schools must tell parents and eligible students about directory information and allow parents or eligible students a reasonable amount of time to request that the school not disclose directory information about them.
• Schools must notify parents and eligible students of their rights under FERPA annually.

On occasion, the Kentfield School District does share directory information about students and their families with authorized personnel of the Kentfield Schools Foundation, for use in compiling the annual phone book and for use in the Foundation's fundraising efforts. The District will never share this directory information with other third parties, such as sports organizations, after-school programs, etc., or with the general public.

For complete information about your rights under FERPA, please visit the FERPA page at the US Department of Education web site.

Privacy of Student Health Information

No student health information is collected or disseminated on any publicly accessible web page operated by the Kentfield School District. Protection of student health information, such as immunization records, by schools is generally covered by FERPA rather than the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA"), the federal act that governs the protection of health records by health care providers. For a discussion of the differences between FERPA and HIPAA, see this article from the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools.

Cookies

The Kentfield School District does not use "persistent cookies" or any other persistent tracking methods to collect personally identifiable information about visitors to its web sites.

Cookies are small files that web servers place on a user's hard drive. They can serve several functions:

• They allow the web site to identify you as a previous visitor each time you access a site.
• They track what information you view at a site (important to commercial sites trying to determine your buying preferences).
• In the more advanced cases they track your movements through many web sites but not the whole web.
• Businesses and institutions may use them for customer convenience to allow them to produce a list of items to buy and pay for them all at one time and to garner information about what individuals are buying at their sites.
• Advertisers use them to determine the effectiveness of their marketing and offer insights into consumer preferences and tastes by collecting data from manyweb sites.
• They can be used to help a web site tailor screens for each customer's preference.

To protect your privacy, be sure to close your browser completely after you have finished conducting business with a web site that does use cookies. Closing your browser will generally destroy all non-persistent "cookies" attached to the web sites you visited. If you are concerned about the potential use of the information gathered from your computer by cookies, you can set your browser to prompt you before it accepts a cookie. Most Internet browsers have settings that let you identify and/or reject cookies.

Personal Information via Forms

Some of our sites provide forms allowing visitors to submit search engine queries, questionnaires, feedback, or other information. Some of these forms may request personally identifiable information (e.g., name, address, email address) for specific purposes, such as when the submitter is requesting a personal response, registering for a conference, or subscribing to a mailing list. All information submitted by visitors is voluntary.

We may store non-personally identifiable information we collect (such as search engine queries and anonymous survey responses) indefinitely to help us better understand and meet the needs of our visitors. We may share non-personally identifiable information with others, including the public, in aggregated form (for instance, in a list of our most popular search engine queries), in partial or edited form (such as in a report summarizing responses to a questionnaire), or verbatim (for example, in a complete listing of survey responses).

Before collecting personally identifiable information, we will prominently disclose:

• why we are requesting the information;
• how it will be used;
• how long it may be retained; and
• under what conditions, and with whom, it may be shared.

Consent to Information Collection and Sharing

Generally, the District will not share any personally identifiable information you give us with any other government agencies, private organization, or the public, except with your consent, as required by law, or as otherwise explained in this Privacy Policy. By pressing the "submit" button, each visitor constitutes consent to use the information for purposes stated in this policy.

How Email is Handled

By sending us an electronic mail ("email") message, you may be sending us personally-identifying information. In these cases, we may retain the information as long as necessary to respond to your request or otherwise resolve the subject matter of your email. Please be aware that email is not necessarily secure from interception or misdirection. For your own protection you may wish to communicate sensitive information using a method other than email.

Information Protection

Regardless of the information being transmitted to the District, we will protect all such information consistent with applicable law including, but not limited to, COPPA and FERPA.

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, the District's computer systems employ software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage to the information on our Web sites. Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.

Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits.

The Kentfield School District may share information received from its web sites with law enforcement agencies. For example, if a breach of our IT security protections were to occur, the information collected by our servers and staff could be shared with appropriate law enforcement officials.