Schools
Student data privacy agreement
A contract between a school or district and an edtech vendor that sets how student data may be collected, used, stored, shared, and deleted.
- Educators and school leaders
This is general information, not legal advice.
What parents should know
A student data privacy agreement is the contract that says what a vendor may do with student information. It is not a badge on a website. If the school cannot show you the terms on training, advertising, and deletion, the review is not finished. This page is general information, not legal advice.
On this page
What is a student data privacy agreement?
Districts sign these agreements before a tool is used with students. The better ones name the data elements, the purpose, who the vendor may share with, whether student data trains a model, how long data is kept, and how it is deleted when the contract ends. State student-privacy laws often sit behind the form. There is no single federal template that every district must use.
The Student Data Privacy Consortium publishes agreement resources that many districts start from. A national pledge a company signs on its own is not the same document as the contract your district negotiated. Ask for the agreement that names your school.
Why a student data privacy agreement matters
AI tools make the training question urgent. A chatbot that improves its model on student prompts is a different deal from a chatbot that answers and then stops. If the agreement is silent, do not fill the silence with a hope.
Parents are not usually a party to the contract. You still can ask the school what it signed. FERPA may give you a path to inspect education records. The agreement is how the school bound the vendor.
How it shows up in practice
- A curriculum director will not turn on a writing bot until the agreement says prompts are not used to train a public model.
- A vendor's marketing line says private, and the contract still allows a subprocessors list the school has not read.
- The district sets a deletion date for when the pilot ends.
- A parent asks who can export a transcript of their child's prompts.
How HeyOtto helps
HeyOtto for Schools is a separate deployment from the family app. School data handling is designed to align with FERPA's requirements around education records and directory information. That is a design statement, not a signed agreement and not a FERPA certification. Ask the school for the contract that covers your district, including whether student prompts may be used to train a model. On HeyOtto, conversations are not used to train models.
- Teachers and advisors have dashboards, and schools choose which student tools are on.
- The family app is parent-created. It is not the school contract.
- Bring the agreement question to the demo. The page you are reading is not the contract.
For schools
Request a demoFAQs
Is a privacy policy the same as this agreement?
No. A privacy policy is a notice. A student data privacy agreement is a contract between the school and the vendor. The contract is the document that can require deletion, limit training, and name subprocessors. Ask which one your district signed.
Who signs it, the teacher or the district?
Usually the district or an authorized school official, not a teacher clicking a consumer sign-up. A class that opens a free consumer account may have no agreement at all. That gap is the thing to close before student work goes in.
What should the AI clauses say?
Look for a clear line on whether prompts and outputs train a model, who can read them, how long they are kept, and how they are deleted. If those sentences are missing, ask for them in writing before the pilot. This is general information, not legal advice.
Does FERPA replace the need for a contract?
No. FERPA is the education-records law. The agreement is how a school allocates duties to a vendor. You want both: a school that understands the records, and a contract that binds the company.
Sources
Last reviewed September 26, 2026. Law entries are reviewed every quarter.
This is general information, not legal advice.