School Community Data Sharing Guide

Our platforms provide your school with several features to support parents' engagement and empowerment in online safety. These features address the increasing demands from school communities for visibility and influence over student online activity while addressing the dual obligations of schools and parents to work together to keep children safe in and outside of school.

The purpose of this guide is to provide school administrators and leadership with information and guidance to support making their important decisions concerning sharing data with parents.

What data can School Manager share with parents?

School Manager allows schools to share Weekly Summaries and Timelines of children’s online activities with the parents of Connected Students through the Qustodio parent app. See Share student timeline with parents using Community to learn how to manage data sharing at your school.

Weekly Summary

The Weekly Summary gives an overview of the websites and mobile apps a student has visited and used over the past seven days. Qustodio shows this Summary on the parent’s User Dashboard.

Timeline Activities

The Timeline provides more details of a student’s internet activity over the past 30 days. Qustodio shows this Timeline on the parent’s User Dashboard. Your school has a range of Timeline Sharing options. You can choose to share:

You can choose to share or not each type and share any blocked activity of each type.

Who should make decisions on sharing student data at your school?

Sharing student data with parents can impact student safety and is subject to federal and state-specific data protection laws and regulations. We recommend that senior administrators and/or leadership at your school make data-sharing decisions.

When setting data sharing policies, what factors should you consider?

You should consider several factors when deciding what, if any, data to share with parents. Not every school will have the same set of needs and circumstances, so this list may not be exhaustive:

• Laws: Local laws and regulations relating to school data, rights of parents and rights of students to agency/privacy.
• Risks: If data sharing may create unnecessary concerns for parents or put students at risk of physical or psychological harm.
• Benefits: if sharing of data will benefit students, parents or the broader community by improving online safety or wellbeing.
• Expectations: What your school community’s expectations are regarding sharing of student data.

Contact your Linewize Account or Success Manager if you have any questions or need help with this analysis.

How should we communicate with parents and students?

You want your parents and students to feel involved in a shared safety journey every step of the way, and avoid them feeling blindsided by the implementation of new technologies. We have consistently found that schools achieve the best outcomes with the least conflict when they communicate openly and sincerely about the purpose of their safety programs. These schools also explain the benefits and limitations of their safety programs and systems before they put them in place.

In particular, we suggest:

• informing both parents and students of the planned measures and options available to participate, to opt-out or to raise concerns before enabling data sharing with parents; and
• where schools choose not to share specific data (for example, blocked online activity), you communicate the school’s reasoning to parents.

Can parents choose to opt out of receiving data?

Yes. Parents are opted out by default. They must actively use the Qustodio app to opt-in to their child’s data. Parents can ask you to disconnect them from their child or they can change their email address on their Qustodio account to stop receiving data.

What options do students have if they are concerned about data sharing with their parents?

If students are worried about their data being shared with their parents by your school, students should contact you first. We recommend having a response and plan of action ready if a student raises these concerns at your school.

If needed, you can permanently turn off an individual student’s data connection to the Qustodio app. This will prevent their parents from seeing their data, even if the parent tries to opt-in.

Why does student data show visits to websites they don't have access to?

Student data may show students visiting websites they would usually be blocked from accessing, such as Facebook, Pinterest or YouTube. This is because some websites use third-party services provided by these sites for authentication, caching, and advertising. Our platforms filter out the full websites. The web addresses of filtered websites may still appear in the student's data. It’s important to be prepared to explain the data should parents have questions about their children accessing these sites.