COPPA Compliance

Dear Par­ents of school-aged children under the age of 13,

In order for Haverford School District to con­tinue to be able to pro­vide your stu­dent with the most effec­tive tools to enhance their learning, teachers and librarians may use educational web-based services and applications. Many of the Terms of Service and/or Privacy Policies of these applications state that, due to Federal Law, any users under the age of 13 must obtain parental permission to use their sites and often require an email address.

Our District uti­lizes sev­eral com­puter soft­ware appli­ca­tions and web-based ser­vices, oper­ated not by Haverford School District, but by third par­ties. In addition to Google Workspace for Education, some of the applications used are Study Island, Clever, Canvas, and other sim­i­lar edu­ca­tional pro­grams. A list of some of our most commonly used sites can be found below.

In order for our stu­dents to use these pro­grams and ser­vices, cer­tain per­sonal iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion -gen­er­ally the student’s name and email address -- must be pro­vided to the web site oper­a­tor.  Your student has received a Google account to participate in the Google Apps for Education program used by Haverford School District. Under fed­eral law entitled the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), these web­sites must pro­vide parental noti­fi­ca­tion and obtain parental con­sent before col­lect­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion from chil­dren under the age of 13. For more information on COPPA, please visit https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions

The law per­mits schools like Haverford School District to con­sent to the col­lec­tion of per­sonal infor­ma­tion on behalf of all of its stu­dents, thereby elim­i­nat­ing the need for indi­vid­ual parental con­sent given directly to the web site operator.