Privacy Policy

IgniteEd Leadership OS Pro (“IgniteEd,” “we,” “us”) is operated by Joe Roman-Torres. It includes IgniteWalk (classroom walkthroughs, coaching cycles, feedback and reports) and IgnitePulse (weekly mastery data and small groups), web tools that help school leaders, instructional coaches and teachers improve instruction. This policy explains what information we collect at getigniteed.com, how we use it, who can see it, and the choices you have.

IgniteEd is built for educators and school staff. It is not directed to children, and students do not sign in to it. Schools may enter limited student information in IgnitePulse; the section on schools and student records explains how we handle it.

Information we collect

Account information

• Your name, email address, school (campus), role, and profile photo if you add one. Your photo is shown to anyone signed in to IgniteEd who views your profile or your records, and on your Spark portfolio PDF. It is stored at a hard-to-guess web address so it can load quickly, and you can change or remove it in Settings at any time.
• If you sign in with Google or Microsoft, we receive your name, email address, and profile photo from that provider to create your account.
• If your district sets up single sign-on (SSO), you can sign in with your district account. Your district’s identity provider sends us your email address and, if it shares them, your name. We use them only to sign you in and to match you to an invitation or your school’s staff roster. Your district’s own sign-in rules, such as two-step verification, apply.
• If you use an email and password, we require an authenticator app for two-step sign-in. We store the information needed to verify it, not your codes.

Information staff enter about teachers and their work

• Teacher names, email addresses, subjects, grades, rooms, and support tier.
• Walkthrough and observation records: T-TESS ratings, evidence notes, observable items, and links to lesson recordings. We store the link only, never the video file.
• Coaching cycle records: feedback notes, coaching session notes, debrief agreements, action plans, and coaching blocks (scheduled coaching time and whether it was held).
• Other campus tools: PLC meetings, action items, attendance and gradebook checks, to-dos, reminders, notes, and calendar events.

Information teachers enter

• Self-reflections and final reflections in a coaching cycle, and edits to their action plan.
• Their growth portfolio (Spark): self-assessments, professional and student growth goals, years of experience, certifications and the documents they upload for verification, evidence (lesson plans, student work samples, video links or files), and professional learning records.
• Written responses to appraisal documents and requests for a second appraisal (Forge).
• A digital signature, drawn, typed or uploaded as an image, which they use to sign action plans and appraisal documents. Each signed document keeps a copy of the signature.

Lesson videos (Video Coaching)

• A teacher, or a coach on the teacher’s behalf, can add a recording of a lesson: its title, the lesson date, and optionally which walkthrough, coaching cycle or portfolio item it belongs with. Lesson videos usually show students.
• By default the video stays in the teacher’s own storage (YouTube, Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint or Vimeo) and IgniteEd stores only its link. Whoever controls that storage decides who else can open the link, so teachers should share it only with their coach (for example, unlisted on YouTube), never publicly. When a video from YouTube or Vimeo plays inside IgniteEd, it uses the provider’s privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com, and Vimeo’s do-not-track option); that provider still receives the request to play it.
• If a school turns on video uploads, the video file itself is stored in IgniteEd’s private file storage (Supabase), up to 500 MB per video. It is never public: it plays only through a link that expires after an hour, issued to someone allowed to see the video.
• Comments on a video: the moment in the video, a T-TESS dimension, the text, who wrote it and when, and the teacher’s replies and reflections. We also record when each person last opened a video, to mark new comments.

Principal appraisal (T-PESS)

• When a district appraises a principal or assistant principal, the principal enters a self-assessment against the T-PESS rubric and a reflection, professional, campus and personal goals with their progress, a professional growth plan, and evidence (files and links). In their Spark portfolio they can also keep a learning log (what they completed, the provider, hours, date and a reflection).
• The appraiser (a district leader) enters conference records for the beginning-of-year conference, mid-year review and end-of-year conference, the appraisal calendar, campus visit notes, goal reviews, ratings for each rubric indicator and standard, the campus student growth rating and the measure it rests on, the principal’s tenure on the campus and the weights used for an overall rating, and the summative appraisal.
• District leaders record each appraiser’s T-PESS certification (the name on the certificate, the date, the provider, an optional recertification date and certificate reference), which state rule requires before someone appraises a principal. Only the district’s leaders and the appraiser see it.
• Each conference and the summative appraisal becomes a signed document with the same electronic signature records described below, and the principal’s written responses and requests for a second appraisal are attached to it.

Counselor appraisal (T-SCESS)

• When a campus appraises a counselor, the counselor enters a self-assessment against the T-SCESS rubric and a reflection, a professional growth goal and annual student outcome goals (with their baseline, target and progress), a growth plan, and evidence (files and links). Student outcome goals describe groups of students and school data, not individual students.
• The appraiser (a leader of the counselor’s campus or district) enters records for the annual administrative conference, mid-year conference and end-of-year conference, observation notes, goal reviews, ratings for each rubric dimension and domain, and the summative evaluation.
• The counselor or the appraiser records the share of the counselor’s time spent on the counseling program (planned and actual), with other duties and the period measured, so the district can show it follows the Texas Education Code’s expectation for counselor time.
• Each conference and the summative evaluation becomes a signed document with the same electronic signature records described below, and the counselor’s written responses and requests for a second appraisal are attached to it.

Support staff appraisal (Hearth and Lantern)

• When a campus appraises an instructional aide or office staff member, the employee enters a self-assessment against the Hearth or Lantern standards, a reflection, and growth goals and evidence in My Spark.
• The appraiser (a leader of the campus) enters check-in notes, job-description duties, ratings for each standard with evidence, the calculated score, and the records of the mid-year review, final appraisal and any support plan. Only the appraiser evaluates; teachers and other staff take no part.
• The orientation acknowledgment, mid-year review, final appraisal and support plan become signed documents with the electronic signature records described below, and the employee’s written responses are attached to them.

Electronic signature records

• When someone agrees to sign electronically, and each time they sign, we record the date and time (from our server), their account, their IP address, their browser and device details, whether they signed in with two-step verification, and a fingerprint (SHA-256 hash) of the document. We keep these with the signed document so the signature can be verified later, and print them on the document’s audit-trail page.

Student information (IgnitePulse)

• Student first and last name, an optional student ID, grade level, and optional English learner, special education and Section 504 indicators that a school chooses to record for grouping.
• Assessment results by standard (TEKS): scores and mastery levels, and the small groups built from them.

Roster information from your school’s systems

• A school or district may load its roster into IgniteEd from its student information system, by uploading OneRoster files or, once connected, through ClassLink or Clever. We keep: for staff, name, email address, school, and the roster system’s ID for the person; for students (only where the school uses IgnitePulse), first and last name, student ID, grade level, school, their teacher, and the roster system’s ID. We use class lists only to place each student with their teacher; we do not store class schedules, parent or guardian contacts, or demographics from the roster.
• Each import is logged: who ran it, when, and how many records changed. The log names no students. People who leave the roster are marked inactive rather than deleted, so the school’s history stays intact; the school can ask us to delete them like any other record.
• If a school connects ClassLink or Clever, the access keys are stored encrypted (AES-256) and used only to read that school’s roster.

Technical information

• Basic logs our hosting providers keep to run and secure the service, such as IP address, browser type, and request times.
• An audit log of changes to school records (who changed what, and when), kept so schools can see the history of their records.
• Page-view statistics from Vercel Web Analytics, which uses no cookies or browser storage and reports only totals. We do not use advertising trackers. See our Cookie Policy.

Work calendar connection (Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook)

Connecting a work calendar is optional. If you choose to connect one, you sign in with Google or Microsoft and grant IgniteEd permission to see, create, change, and delete events on your calendar. We request only the access needed for two-way sync:

• Google: the calendar.events permission (view and edit events on your calendars) and your basic profile (email address).
• Microsoft: Calendars.ReadWrite, User.Read, and offline_access.

How we use calendar data

• We copy events from your work calendar into your IgniteEd calendar, and send events you create or change in IgniteEd to your work calendar, so both stay in sync.
• Sync covers events from 30 days in the past to 6 months ahead, and runs only when you open the IgniteEd calendar or press “Sync now.”
• Synced events are visible only to you. Other staff at your school cannot see them.
• We store the access tokens Google or Microsoft gives us in encrypted form (AES-256), and use them only to perform the sync you asked for.

Google API Services User Data Policy

IgniteEd’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Specifically, data we receive from Google Calendar:

• is used only to provide the calendar sync feature you turned on;
• is not sold, and is not used for advertising or to build user profiles;
• is not shared with or transferred to anyone else, except our infrastructure providers listed below to the extent needed to store it and run the service, as required by law, or with your consent;
• is not used to develop, improve, or train artificial intelligence or machine learning models;
• is not read by people, except with your permission for support, when needed for security, or as required by law.

Data we receive from Microsoft is handled under the same rules.

Disconnecting

You can disconnect your work calendar at any time from the IgniteEd Calendar page. Disconnecting deletes your stored tokens and removes the events that were copied in from your work calendar. Events you created in IgniteEd stay in IgniteEd. You can also revoke access from your Google Account or Microsoft account.

How we use information

• To provide, maintain, and secure IgniteEd.
• To let authorized staff at your school see and act on your school’s records.
• To let a teacher see their own feedback, coaching cycle and action plan, and do their own steps.
• To send emails you ask us to send, such as sharing feedback with a teacher, and service emails such as sign-in and password-reset messages.
• To show in-app notifications, such as telling a teacher that their next coaching step is open.
• To generate optional AI feedback drafts when a user requests one (see below).
• To respond to support requests and comply with the law.

We do not sell personal information, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not build profiles of students for any purpose other than the school’s own instructional use.

AI-generated feedback

IgniteEd has one optional AI feature, Draft with AI, used only when a staff member asks. It turns an observer’s rough notes into a draft of evidence by T-TESS dimension, feedback and one suggested action step. On an observation that is already submitted, it drafts only the feedback and the action step. Draft with AI is off for every school until IgniteEd turns it on for that school, which it does only after the district’s signed data privacy agreement lists Anthropic as a subprocessor.

What is sent to our AI provider, Anthropic: the observation type and purpose (coaching or evaluative), the observed teacher’s subject and grade, its length, its coaching focus, the T-TESS ratings and evidence already entered, the checklist items marked observed, the observer’s notes, and the titles and descriptions of action steps in the school’s library.

What is not sent: no teacher, staff or student names on purpose. Before anything leaves IgniteEd, names of teachers, staff and students on the school’s IgniteEd roster are replaced with placeholders, and other words in the notes that look like names are replaced too. The observed teacher’s name is never sent. No email addresses, account details, IgnitePulse student records, assessment data or calendar data are sent. Names are put back only in the draft shown to the staff member. Names that do not look like names, such as a nickname written in lower case, may not be caught, so staff should leave student names out of observation notes.

Anthropic processes this data on our behalf and does not use it to train its models. Every request asks Anthropic to run the AI model only on US-based infrastructure. IgniteEd does not store the request it sends or the AI’s reply. For each Draft with AI request it keeps a usage record (who asked, for which observation, when, the AI model, how much text was processed, how many names were held back, and whether the draft was accepted or discarded) so the school can review how the feature is used.

Drafts are suggestions. Nothing an AI drafts is saved to an observation, shared with a teacher, or assigned until a person reviews and accepts it. On evaluative (appraisal) observations, the AI never suggests or fills a rating; the observer is responsible for every rating.

Who can see your information

• Your school. Records are kept separate for each school, and the database itself enforces it. Staff see only their own school’s data, limited further by their role. Personal notes, to-dos and calendar events are visible only to their owner.
• Teachers see only their own records: feedback that has been shared with them, and their own coaching cycle and action plan. A teacher never sees a colleague’s records.
• Student information (IgnitePulse) on a campus is visible to the campus’s leaders (owner, principal and administrators), instructional coaches, its district’s leaders and IgniteEd’s platform administrator; a teacher sees only their own class. Three campus staff roles see part of it, and the database enforces each limit:
  • an instructional aide sees and enters students, assessments, scores and small groups only for the classes of the teachers a campus leader has linked them to;
  • a counselor can read the campus’s student mastery data, reports and small groups, and cannot change them;
  • office staff keep the student roster (names, student IDs, grade levels and each student’s teacher) and can import it from the student information system, but never see assessments, scores or small groups.
  None of these roles sees walkthroughs, coaching or appraisal records.
• Lesson videos and their comments are visible only to the teacher in the video, that teacher’s coaches, the leaders of the teacher’s campus (owner, principal and administrators), and IgniteEd’s platform administrator. Other teachers, read-only staff, other coaches and other schools cannot see them, and the database enforces this. Notifications and emails about a comment say who commented and when in the video, never the comment itself. A teacher or the person who added a video can delete it, which deletes its comments and any uploaded file.
• Principal appraisals (T-PESS) are visible only to the principal being appraised, the leaders of their district, and IgniteEd’s platform administrator. Campus staff, including other principals and assistant principals, cannot see them. The appraiser sees a self-assessment once the principal submits it; the principal sees visit notes once they are shared, and ratings in the signed summative appraisal.
• Counselor appraisals (T-SCESS) are visible only to the counselor being appraised, the owner, principal and assistant principals of their campus, the leaders of their district, and IgniteEd’s platform administrator. Coaches, teachers, other counselors and other staff cannot see them. The appraiser sees a self-assessment once the counselor submits it; the counselor sees observation notes once they are shared, and ratings in the signed summative evaluation.
• Support staff appraisals (Hearth and Lantern) are visible only to the employee being appraised, the owner, principal and assistant principals of their campus, the campus’s district leaders, and IgniteEd’s platform administrator. Teachers, coaches and other staff cannot see them.
• Staff Spark portfolios follow the person’s appraisal. A principal’s or assistant principal’s portfolio, including the learning log they keep in it, is visible only to them, the leaders of their district and IgniteEd’s platform administrator. An instructional coach’s, counselor’s, instructional aide’s or office staff member’s portfolio is visible to them, the owner, principal and assistant principals of their campus, the campus’s district leaders and the platform administrator. Coaches and observers do not see each other’s or other staff members’ portfolios.
• Your digital signature is visible only to you in Settings. A plan you sign shows a copy of it to you and the staff on your campus who can see that plan.
• IgniteEd’s platform administrator, who can access all records to support and operate the service, and does so only as needed. Changes the administrator makes to school records are recorded in the audit log.
• Service providers that run the service for us under terms that limit how they use data:
  • Supabase (database, file storage and sign-in)
  • Vercel (website hosting and page-view statistics)
  • Cloudflare (domain name service for getigniteed.com)
  • Anthropic (optional Draft with AI feedback drafts)
  • Google Workspace (sending email)
  • Google and Microsoft (sign-in, if you choose it, and work calendar sync, if you connect it)
  • ClassLink and Clever (roster sync, if your school or district connects one)
  • Your district’s identity provider (single sign-on, if your district sets it up)
• Legal reasons, if required by law or to protect the safety and rights of our users.

Schools and student records

When a school or district uses IgniteEd, we act on the school’s behalf and under its direction. The school controls the records it creates and decides what to enter. We treat student information as education records under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and applicable state student privacy laws, including Texas Education Code chapter 32, subchapter D (student information and school-provided online services), and we:

• use student information only to provide the service to the school;
• never sell it, use it for targeted advertising, or use it to build profiles for non-school purposes;
• never send student records to an AI provider, and replace student names in observation notes before an AI request;
• disclose it only to the school, to the providers above as needed to run the service, or as required by law;
• delete or return it when the school asks or ends its use of IgniteEd, within 60 days of the school’s request.

Parents and eligible students who want to review or correct student records should contact their school, which controls those records. We will help the school respond.

Cookies and browser storage

We use only what is strictly necessary to keep you signed in and to remember that you dismissed our cookie notice. We do not use analytics, advertising, or tracking cookies; our page-view statistics use no cookies at all. Our Cookie Policy lists each item.

Offline walkthroughs. If you log a walkthrough without a connection, it is saved only in your browser on that device (including its notes and ratings) until it syncs to your school’s records; we cannot see it until then. To make the walkthrough form work offline, the device also keeps your campus’s teacher names and the T-TESS rubric. Signing out deletes all of it from the device, including walkthroughs that have not synced yet, so sync before you sign out on a shared device.

Security

• All traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS).
• Database access rules keep each school’s data separate and each person’s private items private.
• Accounts that sign in with a password must use two-step sign-in with an authenticator app.
• Submitted observations and completed coaching steps are locked; reopening one is recorded with a reason.
• Calendar access tokens are encrypted at rest.

No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and fix issues quickly. If we learn of a breach that affects your information, we will notify the affected school or district without undue delay and no later than 72 hours after we confirm it, help the school notify affected people, and notify users as the law requires. To report a security issue, email contact@getigniteed.com (see also security.txt).

Keeping and deleting information

We keep information while your account or your school’s use of IgniteEd is active. You can ask us to delete your account and personal information at any time by emailing contact@getigniteed.com. Records that belong to your school (for example, observations about you, or a plan you signed) may be kept for the school as it directs. When a school ends its use of IgniteEd, we delete its data, or return it first if the school asks, within 60 days of the school’s written request, unless the law requires us to keep it. Copies in backups are removed as those backups expire. The record of changes kept for a school (its audit log) is kept with the school’s data and deleted with it.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

IgniteEd does not track you across other websites, does not use advertising or tracking cookies, and does not sell or share personal information for advertising. Because we do none of these things, we do not change how IgniteEd works when your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal; the protections those signals ask for already apply to everyone.

Your choices and rights

• You can update your profile in Settings, and teachers can change or remove their digital signature there.
• You can connect or disconnect a work calendar at any time.
• You can ask us for a copy of your information, or to correct or delete it. We respond within 30 days. If a request concerns records your school controls, we will refer it to your school.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, we will update the date above and notify users in the app or by email before the changes take effect.

Contact us

Joe Roman-Torres, IgniteEd. Questions or requests: contact@getigniteed.com