STUDENT PRIVACY

Lincoln County School District (LCSD) #1 shares student data with limited outside agencies, vendors, and service providers. Data is shared in accordance with applicable state and federal law and is only shared as necessary to further the district’s educational goals. 

This page describes how the district handles issues of student privacy and how we comply with certain regulations such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

FAMILY EDUCATIONAL RIGHTS AND PRIVACY ACT (FERPA)

FERPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education. 

FERPA prohibits the school district, and those services that we contractually enter into agreements with, from disclosing personally identifiable information from student education records without the consent of a parent or eligible student, unless an exception to FERPA’s general consent rule applies. The general consent exceptions require a school to provide certain privacy protections for those education records that it maintains, either onsite or offsite.

CHILDREN’S ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION ACT (COPPA)

COPPA is a federal law created to protect the privacy of children under 13. COPPA applies to commercial companies and limits their ability to collect personal information from children under the age of 13. Only for-profit websites can violate COPPA. School districts cannot violate COPPA because they are not for-profit websites nor do they offer for-profit services. However, LCSD#1 is cognizant of the requirement of COPPA and how it affects the services we purchase and use.

COPPA allows public school districts to act as “agents” in approving registrations and information sharing in certain cases, as long as the parent/guardian is given an opt-out. The district uses educational programs to help students successfully reach educational goals. To provide for the opt-out option, privacy policies for programs used by the district with students under the age of 13 can be found here. 

ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES

Detailed student data (such as demographics, attendance, grades, transcripts, test scores, etc.) is shared in accordance with the law with administrative services such as our Student Information System (SIS), with educational partners, and for hosted student data systems used by the District such as library management, food service, learning management, special education, or title.  Data is also shared with the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) in accordance with State law and requirements. The WDE may share data with outside agencies according to their policies and law.