Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and what this covers

BandRoomHQ (“we”, “us”) makes software that band directors use to run their programs: rosters, concerts, music, seating, instruments, and rehearsal recordings. This policy covers the app at app.bandroomhq.com and our website at bandroomhq.com.

The school or district that uses BandRoomHQ (“the school”) decides what goes into it. Where the school has signed a student data privacy agreement with us, that agreement governs student data, and it wins if it and this policy ever disagree.

2. Our role with student data

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), we act as a “school official” with a legitimate educational interest. That means we perform a service the school would otherwise do itself, we work under the school’s direct control over its records, and we use student records only for the purpose the school gave them to us for.

The records stay the school’s. They belong to the program, not to any one director, so a director leaving the district does not take the records with them or lock the school out.

3. What we collect

About students, entered by school staff:

• Name, graduation year (the grade level is worked out from it), and, if the school imports one, its own student ID number.
• Which ensembles the student plays in each year, their instrument, chair, and seat.
• Solo and ensemble music assigned to them.
• School instruments checked out to them, with any notes staff write about the instrument.

We do not ask for and do not store a student’s email address, date of birth, home address, phone number, photo ID, or parent contact details. When a roster spreadsheet holds other columns, the import ignores them and nothing from them is saved.

Recordings and images that staff save: rehearsal recordings, ensemble photos, and school logos. Recordings and photos can include students. See Recordings.

About school staff who have accounts: name, email address, password (stored only as a one-way hash), two-factor settings, role in the program, and a record of access changes such as invitations and role changes. If someone chooses Sign in with Google, we also receive their Google name, email, and profile photo.

Program information: schools, ensembles, concerts, music, the library, and the instrument inventory.

Waitlist: the email address of anyone who asks for early access on our website.

Technical information: the IP address and browser of each signed-in session, which we use to keep accounts secure, and request logs, which we keep for up to 7 days to find and fix errors.

4. How we use it

We use school data only to provide BandRoomHQ to the school: to show it to the school’s staff, to keep it safe, to help when staff ask for support, and to fix problems. We use staff email addresses to send account email such as invitations and password resets.

We do not:

• sell, rent, or trade student data or the program directory to anyone, for any price;
• share it with anyone except the service providers listed below, who process it only for us;
• show advertising, or use any data to target advertising at students, families, or staff;
• build a profile of a student for any purpose other than the school’s;
• use student data or recordings to train artificial intelligence models;
• contact students or families.

We may use information with every name and identifier removed, such as how many programs use a feature, to improve the product. We never try to re-identify it.

5. Students and children

Students do not use BandRoomHQ and have no accounts. Everything about them is entered by school staff. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13, so the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) consent process does not arise. If you believe a child has given us information directly, write to support@bandroomhq.com and we will delete it.

6. Recordings

The rehearsal recorder captures audio of the ensemble, which usually includes students. Before a staff member saves their first take in a program, they confirm that their school allows audio recording of students in rehearsal and that any permission it requires from families is in place. Each school sets its own rules for this, and the school is responsible for following them.

• A recording is saved only when a staff member chooses to save it. Until then it stays on their device.
• Saved recordings are private to the program. Its staff can play and download them. There are no public links.
• A recording is kept until staff delete it, or until the program is closed. Deleted recordings are erased from storage within 24 hours.
• We never listen to, analyze, or reuse recordings, except to fix a problem that staff ask us to look at.

7. Who else handles the data

We use the service providers below to run BandRoomHQ. Each one handles data under written data protection terms with us and only to provide its service. We do not share data with anyone else, except as described in Legal requests.

We give schools 30 days’ notice by email before adding a provider that will handle student data.

8. Legal requests

We disclose school data to a government or court only when the law requires it. Unless the law forbids it, we tell the school first so it can respond, and we disclose only what is required.

9. How we protect it

• All traffic uses HTTPS, and browsers are told never to connect without it.
• Data is encrypted at rest by our hosting provider.
• Every record belongs to one program, and the app checks the program on every read and write.
• Staff see only the programs they belong to, and roles decide what each person can change.
• Two-factor sign-in is available to every account and required for our own administrators.
• Our administrators manage accounts and access. They act on a program only when the school asks, such as restoring an owner who lost access or deleting the program, and each of those is recorded.
• Backups are kept no longer than 30 days.

10. If something goes wrong

If we confirm that school data was accessed or disclosed without authorization, we notify the school within 72 hours, or sooner where the school’s agreement or state law requires it. The notice says what happened, what data was involved, what we are doing about it, and who to contact. We help the school notify families when it needs to, and we follow any longer notice duty a state law puts on us directly.

11. How long we keep it, and deleting it

• Program data is kept while the program uses BandRoomHQ.
• Taking a student off a roster removes them from that season only, so past seasons still show who played. A program owner can delete a student permanently, which removes every roster spot, seat, and assignment they had and checks their instruments back in. A name staff typed into a free-text note stays until staff edit it out, and ensemble recordings they played on stay until staff delete them.
• Recordings are kept until staff delete them. See Recordings.
• A program owner can delete the whole program at any time. Everything goes at once, including recordings and photos, along with any staff account that belongs to no other program. We keep a record of the program’s name, when it was deleted, and who asked, and nothing else from it.
• If a school stops using BandRoomHQ without deleting its program, the data stays available to export for 60 days, then we delete it the same way. The school can ask us to delete it sooner, or to keep it longer while it arranges a transfer.
• Deleted data can remain in backups for up to 30 days before it is gone for good.
• A waitlist address is deleted whenever its owner asks.

12. Exporting, correcting, and deleting

A program owner can download a full copy of the program’s data at any time from Staff and access: spreadsheets of everything, with links to each recording, photo, and logo. It is free, always, including after the school stops using BandRoomHQ, for as long as we still hold the data. If no owner can sign in, write to support@bandroomhq.com and we will get it to the school within 10 business days. Staff can correct student information in the app themselves.

Parents and eligible students who want to see, correct, or delete a student’s records should ask the school, which controls them under FERPA. If they write to us, we pass the request to the school and act on the school’s instructions.

13. State student privacy laws

Many states add their own student privacy rules, such as California’s Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA), New York Education Law 2-d, and the Illinois Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA). The commitments in this policy are written to meet them: no targeted advertising, no profiling, no sale of student data, reasonable security, and deletion when the school asks. Where a state requires a signed agreement or a specific addendum, we sign it.

14. Cookies

We use only the cookies the app needs: the ones that keep you signed in and secure your sign-in, one that remembers which program you are working in, and a few that remember display settings such as light or dark mode. There are no advertising or tracking cookies. Our page analytics, provided by Cloudflare, sets no cookies and does not follow you across sites.

15. Changes to this policy

We email program owners at least 30 days before a material change takes effect, and the date at the top of this page always shows the latest version. We will not use student data already collected in a materially different way without the school’s consent.

16. Contact

Questions, requests, and signed agreements go to support@bandroomhq.com. Our Terms of Service cover the rest of how BandRoomHQ works.