Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

ClearLaunchHQ LLC ("we," "our," or "us"), the company behind BeeCommons, is committed to protecting the privacy of teachers, students, and families who use our platform. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard information when you use BeeCommons.

We take the privacy of student data seriously and comply with applicable federal and state laws, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

2. Information We Collect

Teacher Accounts

• Name, email address, and password
• School name, grade level, and subject
• Profile preferences (avatar color, display settings)

Student & Family Information

• Student first and last name
• Guardian names, email addresses, and phone numbers
• Student portfolio photos and work samples uploaded by teachers or students
• Assignment submissions uploaded by students
• Behavior points awarded for the skill focus areas a teacher has chosen for their class. We record the points earned and the skill they were awarded for, as the teacher named it. No description, explanation, or incident detail is recorded, and this feature is off unless a teacher turns it on.

Communications

• Messages and notices sent by teachers to parents via the parent portal
• Newsletter content created by teachers

2A. Data We Do Not Collect — Scope Limitations

BeeCommons is not designed to collect, store, or process the following categories of information, and our platform contains no fields, features, or workflows intended to capture them:

• Academic records — grades, report cards, progress reports, standardized test scores, transcripts, or any other record of academic performance
• Attendance records — absences, tardies, or truancy records
• Disciplinary records — behavior incident reports, referrals, suspension or expulsion records, and behavior intervention plans
• Special education and related services — Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), 504 Plans, eligibility determinations, service minutes, evaluation reports, or any record pertaining to a student's disability status, governed by both FERPA and the IDEA confidentiality provisions at 34 C.F.R. §§ 300.610–300.627
• Language services — ELL/ESOL classification, screening results, or service placement
• Health and medical information — school nurse records, immunization histories, medication administration records, allergy and medical condition information, physical examination results, psychological and psychiatric evaluations, mental health assessments, and therapy notes
• Legal and custodial records — custody arrangements, court orders, restraining orders, or guardianship determinations
• Socioeconomic and status information — free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, and homeless (McKinney-Vento) or foster care status
• Formal conference records — documented parent/teacher conference notes maintained as part of a student's education record
• Directory information for opted-out families — a student's name, photograph, or other directory information where the family has opted out of directory disclosure

This list is illustrative rather than exhaustive. Where a record is protected by law, kept as part of a student's official education record, or would embarrass or harm a student or family if disclosed, it does not belong in BeeCommons. Use the systems your school or district maintains for that purpose.

If a teacher enters any of the above into a free-text field (such as a notice, message, or student note), that data will be stored on our servers. We strongly discourage this practice and our Terms of Service expressly prohibit it. By using BeeCommons, teachers acknowledge that the platform is not a compliant repository for such records and agree not to use it as one.

3. How We Use Information

• To provide and operate the BeeCommons platform
• To facilitate communication between teachers and families
• To display student portfolios to authorized family members
• To improve and debug the platform

We do not sell, rent, or share student data with third parties for advertising or commercial purposes.

4. Student Data & FERPA

BeeCommons acts as a "school official" under FERPA when processing student education records on behalf of teachers and schools, consistent with 34 C.F.R. § 99.31(a)(1). Student data entered into BeeCommons remains under the control of the teacher and their institution. We process student data only as directed by the teacher/school and do not use it for any other purpose.

5. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

BeeCommons is designed for use by licensed educators and the families they serve. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under the age of 13.

Student accounts on BeeCommons are created exclusively by teachers — students do not register, create profiles, or submit personal information to our platform. The only actions a student may take on BeeCommons are:

1. Portfolio uploads — a student may upload a photo or file of their completed work to their portfolio, which is visible only to their teacher and the parent or guardian designated by that teacher.
2. Assignment submissions — a student may submit a completed assignment through the platform, which is delivered only to their teacher.

In both cases, the student's account was created by their teacher, and access is controlled entirely by the teacher. BeeCommons does not use student-submitted content for any purpose other than delivering it to the teacher and designated parent.

Teachers are responsible for obtaining appropriate verifiable parental consent before creating student accounts or enabling any student-facing features. If we become aware that personal information has been collected directly from a child under 13 without appropriate consent, we will delete that information promptly. To report a concern, contact us at support@beecommons.com.

6. Data Storage & Security

All data is stored securely using Supabase (hosted on AWS infrastructure) with encryption at rest and in transit. We use Row Level Security (RLS) to ensure each teacher can only access their own data. Portfolio links use unguessable unique tokens rather than sequential IDs.

While we implement industry-standard security measures, no system is 100% secure. We encourage teachers to use strong passwords and not share their login credentials.

7. Data Retention

We keep student data only as long as it is useful to the teacher who entered it. Holding less student information for less time is deliberate, and the following deletions happen automatically and permanently:

A student's record does not follow them from one year to the next. It belongs to one teacher's classroom. When a student moves on to a new classroom, their next teacher sets up their own roster, and nothing is carried over, linked, or handed across. There is no cumulative profile of a child that grows year after year, and we never build one.

• Student portfolio photos are permanently deleted when a teacher starts a new school year using Fresh Start. They are not archived, and cannot be recovered afterwards. Teachers are told this before confirming.
• Archived class years — students, guardians, lesson plans, and newsletters saved at Fresh Start — remain readable by the teacher for two years, then are permanently deleted.
• Newsletters are kept through the school year they were sent in and permanently deleted in the following summer.
• Files belonging to deleted students are removed automatically, so nothing lingers in storage after the record it belonged to is gone.

Lesson plans are never deleted on a schedule. They are the teacher's own work, they carry forward from year to year, and Fresh Start does not remove them. The only circumstance in which they are deleted is described below.

Dormant accounts

If nobody signs in to an account for two years, we delete the account and everything in it — including lesson plans. We email the teacher 30 days beforehand, and simply signing in cancels the deletion and resets the two-year clock.

Teachers may also delete student records, portfolio items, messages, and newsletters themselves at any time, and may export their data from Settings before any of the above takes effect. Upon account deletion we remove associated data within 30 days.

8. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate BeeCommons:

• Supabase — database and authentication (supabase.com/privacy)
• Vercel — hosting and deployment (vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy)
• Resend — transactional email (resend.com/legal/privacy-policy)
• Anthropic — the AI that drafts newsletters, lesson plans, and posts, and reads an uploaded roster file, described in Section 8B (anthropic.com/legal/privacy)
• Pexels and Unsplash — stock image search for newsletters and page banners (pexels.com/privacy-policy, unsplash.com/privacy)
• Google Translate — optional page translation on the parent portal only, described in Section 8A (policies.google.com/privacy)

8A. Optional Page Translation (Parent Portal Only)

The parent portal includes an optional language selector, powered by Google Translate, that allows a parent or guardian to view the portal in a language other than English. This feature is available only on the parent portal. It is not present in the teacher application or the student portal.

The portal is displayed in English by default. No translation occurs, and no information is sent to Google, unless a parent affirmatively selects another language.

When a parent selects a language, please be aware of the following:

• The text displayed on the page is transmitted to Google's translation servers in order to be translated and returned. This is how the translation service functions.
• The text sent may include any content visible on the page at that time — for example, the student's name, the teacher's name and class name, messages and notices from the teacher, assignment titles and descriptions, calendar events, and newsletter content.
• This information is processed by Google under Google's privacy policy and terms, not ours. We do not control how Google handles, retains, or uses text submitted to its translation service.
• Uploaded photographs and files are not translated and are not sent to Google as part of this feature.

A parent may stop using the feature at any time by selecting English from the same language selector, which turns translation off and returns the portal to its original text.

Because this feature involves sending page content to a third party, teachers and schools should consider it when deciding what information to place in the parent portal. This reinforces the scope limitations described in Section 2A: the portal should not be used to convey grades, disciplinary records, special education records, or health information.

8B. AI Assistance (Teacher Application Only)

Several features use an AI service provided by Anthropic to reduce the amount of writing and re-typing a teacher has to do. These features exist only in the teacher application. Neither the parent portal nor the student portal sends anything to this service, and no parent or student action triggers it.

In almost every case, what is sent is the teacher's own material, not student information:

• Newsletter drafting — your lesson plans and calendar events for the surrounding weeks, so the draft can describe what the class did and what is coming up. Student names are not sent.
• Lesson plan drafting and import — the lesson content you write, or the planning document you upload.
• Class page and social posts — the text you are asking it to write or rework.

The exception: importing a roster

When you import a class roster from a spreadsheet, the AI is used to work out which column is which, because every school's export is laid out differently. To do that, the column headings and the first three rows of the file are sent to Anthropic. Those rows contain real information — typically student names, guardian names, guardian email addresses, and phone numbers.

This is the only feature that sends student or family information to the AI service. It happens once, at the moment you import, and only for the file you chose to upload. The remainder of the roster is matched on your own server using the column mapping that comes back.

Anthropic processes this data as our service provider, under its own privacy policy and terms. Anthropic states that it does not use data submitted through its business API to train its models. We do not send student data to any other AI service.

If you would prefer that no roster information leave our servers, you can add students manually instead of importing a file. The rest of the platform works the same way either way.

9. Your Rights

Teachers and parents may request access to, correction of, or deletion of personal data by contacting us. Parents who wish to review or request deletion of their child's information should contact their child's teacher directly or reach us at the address below.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify teachers of material changes via email or an in-app notice. Continued use of BeeCommons after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at:

ClearLaunchHQ LLC
BeeCommons
support@beecommons.com