Tuesday, February 2, 2021

SOPPA Information for Teachers -- Part 3

 This is part 3 of 4 in my series of posts to help teachers understand SOPPA and how it will impact them at the classroom level. This post will share an overview of the school's responsibilities, and finally, next week, you will learn exactly what this all means for you directly!

Under SOPPA, which takes effect on July 1, 2021, schools have responsibilities just like the operators do. What do schools have to do in order to protect student data and information and maintain transparency? Here's a sampling:

  • Only collect student information and data for school-related purposes
  • Post a list of all operators or online services used by the district
  • Post the types of student data the district collects as well as what they do with the data, whom it is shared with, and why that data is collected
  • Post contracts with operators within 10 days of signing the contract
  • Post data breaches within 10 days and notify parents of these data breaches within 30 days
  • Create a policy about who can enter into contracts with operators
  • Designate someone as a privacy officer to ensure compliance with SOPPA
  • Maintain reasonable security and safety measures

As you can see, transparency for families is a significant part of SOPPA. This is going to take some work and effort for the district to ensure that all requirements are being met -- the privacy officer will have quite a bit of responsibility!

Next week will be the final post in this series, and it will focus on what all this means specifically for you as a classroom teacher! Any thoughts? Share them in the comments!


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1 comment:

  1. UnknownFebruary 3, 2021 at 8:36 AM

    Thank you for this info! I looked into the music program I use in my class and was pleased to see they boast being COPPA compliant. I hope this is true and I can keep using it.

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