Student data & privacy
Written for the teachers, coordinators and administrators who are trusting us with their students. Plain language, no marketing — if something isn't true yet, it isn't claimed here.
What we collect
About students
- Name
- Grade
- T-shirt size
- Class or homeroom
- A school email address
- A parent or guardian's email, so we can request consent
What we never collect
- Home addresses
- Dates of birth
- Grades, test scores, or academic records
- Discipline or health records
- Photos or video, unless a parent has separately agreed
- Anything from a student's device — no tracking, no analytics, no advertising
That's the entire student record. It exists so we can build a roster, order the right shirts, and know who is taking part.
Students never get an account
There is no student login, no student password, and nothing for a student to lose. A student fills in a short form using a link their teacher shares, and that's it. A password that doesn't exist cannot be guessed, reused, or leaked.
Parents agree before we use anything
After a student signs up, their parent or guardian receives a consent form. It is recorded with a typed signature, the date, and what exactly was agreed to — including a separate, specific choice about photographs and video. Media consent is asked for on its own, so agreeing to take part is never treated as agreeing to be photographed.
Who can see what
This is enforced by the database itself, not by hiding buttons in the interface. Someone signing in as a coordinator cannot reach another school's data by changing a web address, because the rule lives underneath the application rather than inside it.
| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| A school coordinator | Only their own school — their roster, their visits, their paperwork. Never another school's. Student and parent email addresses are withheld even from them. |
| A trainer | Only the visits they are assigned to. No student records at all. |
| Heroes & Cool Kids staff | Program records, so visits can be scheduled and rosters prepared. |
| Everyone else | Nothing. Every table refuses anonymous access by default. |
How it's protected
- Locked by default. Every table denies access unless a rule explicitly allows it. A new table is closed until someone opens it, rather than open until someone closes it.
- Access is checked on the server. Permission is verified by the database on every request, not decided by the browser. Editing what your browser sends doesn't change what you're allowed to read.
- Student and parent emails are withheld at the column level — not merely left out of a screen, but revoked, so they cannot be retrieved even by someone querying directly.
- Encrypted in transit. The site is HTTPS-only and instructs browsers to refuse an unencrypted connection.
- Coordinator access is approved by a person. Signing up does not grant access to a school — a member of Heroes & Cool Kids staff confirms the person first.
- Nothing important happens quietly. If a visit is cancelled, the school's coordinators, the trainer assigned to it, and our office are all emailed straight away — and who made the change is written to the record.
What we don't do
- We don't sell, rent, or share student information with anyone.
- We don't advertise, and we carry no advertising or tracking code of any kind.
- We don't use student information to train machine-learning models.
- We don't ask students for anything we don't need to run the program.
Where the information lives
Program records are stored in a managed PostgreSQL database (Supabase) hosted in the United States. Email is sent through SendGrid. Those are our only two processors, and neither is given student information for any purpose of their own.
How long we keep it
We keep a student's record for up to four years after they leave the program. A Heroes student can take part through all four years of high school, so their record has to last as long as their own journey does — and dating it from when they leave means a senior's record can't expire while they're still in it.
After that, identifying details — name, email address, parent's email address — are deleted. What we keep is counts, not people: how many students took part, how confidence changed across a group, how many schools we reached. Those figures carry no names and can't be traced back to a student, and we keep them so we can show the program works.
A school can ask us to delete a student's record sooner, and we'll do it — including while the student is still taking part.
Your school stays in control
The information belongs to your school, not to us. A coordinator can ask us at any time to correct a student's record, remove a student, or provide a copy of everything held about the students at their school. We'll do it, and we won't ask why.
Questions
Email pros@heroesandcoolkids.org. If your district needs a data-protection agreement signed before students take part, say so and we'll work through it with you — that's a normal request and we'd rather do it properly.
Last updated 28 July 2026. If we change how student information is handled, this page changes with it and coordinators are told.