Security and privacy
Written for the person who has to sign off on it.
What K12 Professional Development Tracker holds, who can reach it, how it is protected, and the two places where we do not yet have an answer worth publishing. If your question is not answered below, ask it and we will answer in writing.
No student-level data Bound to a district and a role Administrative actions logged
The short version
Three questions, answered before you read any further.
The rest of this page is the same three answers at length, plus the two questions we will not answer on a web page because we cannot yet answer them accurately.
Whose data is in here?
Staff professional learning records, and basic demographics. K12 Professional Development Tracker is not a student information system and holds no student-level data at all, which takes an entire category of district review off the table.
Who can see it?
Every account is bound to a district and a role, with building and committee scope on top. Administrative actions are written to an audit log.
How is it protected?
Encrypted connections throughout, and multi-factor authentication at sign-in that a district can require or an individual can switch on. Uploaded certificates and transcripts are served through short-lived private links rather than public URLs.
What data is held
Staff professional learning records. Not students.
K12 Professional Development Tracker exists to hold what a district's staff have done to earn, keep and grow their credentials. It is not a student information system and it holds no student-level data at all.
That is worth stating first, because it removes an entire category of district review before it starts. There is no student roster in here to protect, because there is no student roster in here.
What is in the system
Staff records, and the documents behind them
- Professional development requests and the decisions made on them
- Growth Plans (IPDPs) and the goals on them
- License and permit records for staff
- Your own course catalog, its sections and who attended them
- The verification documents staff upload, such as certificates and transcripts
- The staff accounts that sign in, and the scope each one carries
Who can see it
District first, then role, then the scope on top.
Every account is bound to a district and a role, with building and committee scope layered on top of that role. A principal sees a building. A committee member sees the committee's work. A teacher sees their own record.
Administrative actions are written to an audit log, so a change to somebody else's record is not an anonymous event.
How access is decided
Four things, in this order
- Every account is bound to a district
- A role decides what that account is allowed to do
- Building and committee scope narrows it further
- Administrative actions are written to an audit log
How it is protected
Encrypted connections, sign-in you can harden, private document links.
Connections are encrypted. Multi-factor authentication at sign-in is available and is switched on either by the district for its staff or by an individual user for their own account, so a district that wants a second factor everywhere can require it.
Uploaded documents are served through short-lived private links rather than public URLs. The address of a teacher's certificate is not something that can be copied out of the application and stay open indefinitely.
What is in place
Three things, stated plainly
- Connections are encrypted
- Multi-factor authentication at sign-in, enabled by the district or by the individual user
- Uploaded documents served through short-lived private links, not public URLs
Hosting and backup
Where it is hosted, and the backup position.
We do not publish our hosting and backup arrangements on this page, and we would rather say so than print something approximate: ask through the contact form or on a walkthrough and we will answer in writing.
Leaving
What happens to your data if you leave.
We will not describe an export or a deletion process here until the one we actually operate is written down and can be relied on, so ask us and we will put the current answer in writing before you sign anything.
What is not here
What is deliberately not on this page.
No certification badges, no customer count, and no availability figure restated here. Each of the first two belongs on a security page only once there is something behind it: an audit report a reviewer can actually request, or a district that has agreed in writing to be named. We have neither today, so neither appears above. The one number that is a real commitment, Web Service Availability, is published in the Service Level Agreement linked below; this page does not restate it, so it stays authoritative in one place instead of drifting out of date here. The same rule governs the two sections we left open: where a question has no answer we can stand behind, this page says so rather than filling the space. In K–12 procurement an unverifiable badge costs more credibility than a missing one, and a district that discovers the gap later remembers it longer.
The paperwork
The three documents that govern all of this.
Everything above is a plain-language summary. Where this page and one of these documents differ, the document is the one that counts.
Privacy policy
What we hold, how it is handled, and how to reach us about it. Read it in full before you decide anything on the strength of this page.
Terms of service
The agreement between your district and Patacca Services LLC for use of the application.
Service level agreement
What we commit to on availability and support, in the document where a commitment can actually be held to.
Need something a form cannot carry, such as a vendor questionnaire or a signed agreement before a conversation? Call 1.844.587.4440, Monday to Friday, 8am–4pm EST, or write through the contact form. A person answers.
Try it with your own staff list for thirty days.
Nothing to install, no credit card, and a person on the phone if you would rather be walked through it.