FERPA Statement — SPEDGenie™

📚 What Is FERPA?

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. § 1232g, is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. FERPA applies to all educational agencies and institutions that receive federal funding, including public schools and districts.

Under FERPA, schools must:

Protect the privacy of student education records from unauthorized disclosure.
Provide parents (and eligible students) the right to access and request corrections to education records.
Obtain written consent before disclosing personally identifiable information (PII) from education records, with limited exceptions.

Special education records — including IEPs, evaluation reports, and related documents — are considered education records under FERPA and are subject to additional protections under IDEA.

🛡️ How SPEDGenie Is Designed for FERPA Compliance

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Designed to Function Without Student PII

SPEDGenie is architected so that all platform features — goal generation, PLAAFP support, accommodation recommendations, transition planning, vocabulary scaffolding — function without requiring educators to enter any student personally identifiable information.

The platform is designed around this principle: educators provide educational context, not student identity. For example:

Instead of entering a student's name, educators describe the student's grade level and disability category.
Instead of uploading a student's IEP, educators paste or type the relevant information they want to work with.
The Implementation Dashboard™ uses student codes or first names only — never full legal names, dates of birth, or ID numbers.

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Important: Educator Responsibility

FERPA compliance ultimately rests with the educational institution. Educators are responsible for ensuring that any information they enter into SPEDGenie does not constitute unauthorized disclosure of student education records. SPEDGenie strongly advises using anonymized or coded identifiers at all times.

📊 What Data SPEDGenie Collects and Stores

Data Type	Collected?	Stored?	Notes
Student names, DOBs, addresses, IDs	No	No	Platform is designed to function without student PII
Student education records / IEP documents	No	No	Educators paste context; original documents are not uploaded or retained
Educator account information	Limited	Limited	Email address and role for authentication purposes only
Dashboard configuration (student codes, goals, schedules)	Browser only	Local storage	Stored in the educator's browser localStorage; not transmitted to SPEDGenie servers
AI prompt content (educator-provided context)	Session only	No	Sent to Anthropic API; not stored by SPEDGenie beyond active session
Usage analytics (page views, feature usage)	Aggregate	Anonymized	No individual or student-level data; used to improve the platform
Parent information, contact details	No	No	Not collected or processed by the platform

🏫 For Districts: FERPA School Official Exception

Under FERPA, schools may disclose education records to "school officials" with a "legitimate educational interest" without prior parental consent. Some districts may classify SPEDGenie as a service provider acting under this exception when used under a formal Data Processing Agreement.

For districts choosing to operate under this framework:

A Data Processing Agreement (DPA) must be executed between the district and SPEDGenie LLC before any student-identifiable data is entered.
The DPA specifies SPEDGenie's role, data handling obligations, security requirements, and breach notification procedures.
SPEDGenie LLC will not use any student data for any purpose other than providing the contracted educational services.

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Request a Data Processing Agreement

Districts requiring a formal DPA before authorizing SPEDGenie for staff use should contact admin@spedgenie.com. We will provide a DPA for district legal review within 5 business days.

👨‍👩‍👧 For Parents and Families

SPEDGenie is a tool for educators — it is not a platform that families or students log into. If you are a parent or guardian with questions about how your child's school uses SPEDGenie, please contact your child's school or special education coordinator directly.

Your child's school, not SPEDGenie LLC, is the custodian of your child's education records. Your FERPA rights — including the right to inspect records and request corrections — are exercised through your school or district, not through SPEDGenie.

SPEDGenie LLC does not sell, share, or otherwise disclose any information to third parties for commercial or marketing purposes.

📬 Contact and Questions

For FERPA-related questions about SPEDGenie, to request a Data Processing Agreement, or to report a privacy concern:

SPEDGenie LLC
SPEDGenie LLC
Texas City, TX
admin@spedgenie.com

This statement was last updated June 2026. SPEDGenie LLC will update this statement as applicable laws, platform features, or data practices change.