Data Privacy/Security Guidance Around Remote Learning and Virtual Classrooms

Data Privacy/Security Guidance Around Remote Learning and Virtual Classrooms

• A Best Practice, always, is to never record sessions.
• Under FERPA, parental consent is required to share student PII from educational records.
  • Recorded videos or photos taken from videos are considered PII.
  • For questions on what criteria determines whether a Video is part of an Educational Record, please review the FAQs on Photos and Video Under FERPA.
  • If there is a recorded video or photo taken of a student during a session, and it’s considered part of the educational record, parental consent would be required to share it with a third party.
  • Parental permission to use the remote session tool itself would likely be obtained via the ToS (Terms of Service) for the App used to conduct the sessions.
• The app facilitating the sessions should be evaluated for its Safety/Privacy Features and Protocols.
• School staff setting up remote sessions should be thoughtful about whether or not they have to provide student PII to the online service provider in order to set up the remote session.  It is possible for them to do so without parental consent under FERPA’s school official exception only so long as the provider and terms of use of with provider are FERPA compliant.
• School staff should coordinate with their schools/districts on the tools they select for remote sessions.