Fayette County Public Schools values the trust our parents place in us with their personal and student data. Data Governance is the comprehensive management of data within an organization, including the integrity, security, availability, and usability of information. Fayette County Public Schools is committed to ensuring the accuracy and security of the data entrusted to us.

Our data management practices include:

• Annual staff review of education data privacy procedures
• Ongoing security and data privacy training for staff
• Provide security and data privacy information to parents and students
• Data integrity validations and error management
• Ongoing certification of data for state and federal reporting
• Business process review and recommendations
• Security and access management procedures
• Data loss prevention (DLP) rules to prevent inappropriate sharing of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and financial information
• Data classification and handling rules
• Application privacy policy vetting and website blocking
• Privacy framework, security plan, and incident response activities and implementations

We collect data to facilitate student learning and achievement as well as to comply with state and federal regulations. Only school and other education officials who have “legitimate educational interest” may access education records without parental consent. Those staff who work with education records have legal and ethical obligations to observe rigorous procedures for protecting the privacy of student information.

Student data collected may include information such as demographic, academic, testing, attendance, behavior, program participation, and extracurricular activities, as well as data collected by teachers such as observations and engagement. This data forms a profile of student learning and, when used effectively, empowers student success. In the classroom, data is used to improve learning, at the district level, it is used to determine resource requirements and, at the state and federal government levels, it is used to provide tools and resources for the local districts.

• The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. It affords parents and students over 18 years of age or an emancipated minor under State Law (“eligible students”) certain rights with the respect to the student’s education records. See the Student Code of Conduct for more information.

• The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was enacted by Congress in 2000 to address concerns about children's access to obscene or harmful content on the Internet. Protective measures in place include application vetting and objectionable content filtering and blocking. See the FCBOE Internet Acceptable Use Policy for more information.

• The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires the Federal Trade Commission to issue and enforce regulations concerning children’s online privacy for children under the age of 13. These requirements include clearly posting a privacy policy along with a direct notice to parents to obtain consent before collecting any personal information from the child. It also requires providing parents with access to their child's personal information to allow them to prohibit or delete this information. This rule further states that data collected is retained only for as long as needed to fulfill the purpose of collecting the information.