Lee County Schools Informed Parents Stronger Schools Brighter Futures

Lee County schools, in the open.

A community improvement initiative run by parents in Lee County, Florida. We collect what families, teachers and students are actually seeing inside the district, check it against the public record, and publish both.

Privacy

No analytics, no tracking pixels, no advertising network, and no code anywhere on this site that reads your IP address. What each form collects, what happens to it, and the honest limits of any promise of secrecy.

What we collect from you, why, who else sees it, and what you can make us do about it.

Parents for Transparency LLC is a Florida limited liability company, at 11000 Metro Parkway, Unit 13, Fort Myers, FL 33966. When this policy says "we," that’s who it means.

This policy covers what we collect from you, why, who else sees it, and what you can make us do about it. It applies to this website, our email lists, our workshops, and our membership program.

Start here: what this policy is not

We are not a school, a school district, or a government agency. The School District of Lee County’s privacy obligations are not ours, and ours are not theirs. Nothing you send us becomes part of your child’s school record, and nothing in your child’s school record comes to us unless you send it.

We are not a healthcare provider. HIPAA does not apply to us. If you tell us about your child’s diagnosis, disability, therapy, or medical history, that information is not protected by HIPAA in our hands - it’s protected only by this policy and by the law that applies to any private company. Please read the section on stories before you send us anything about a child.

We are a for-profit company, not a charity. Your membership is a purchase. This policy governs it as a commercial relationship.

What we collect

When you become a member. Your name, email address, billing address, and the tier you chose. We keep a record of your payments, your renewal date, and whether you’ve cancelled.

Payment card details go to Stripe, not to us. We never see your full card number, and we never store it. We can see the last four digits, the card brand, and whether a charge succeeded - that’s all. Stripe’s handling of your card is governed by their privacy policy.

When you join an email list. Your email address and the subjects you picked. Nothing else is required.

When you register for a workshop. Your name, email, and whether you attended. If a workshop has a question-and-answer portion, we may keep the questions - see below.

When you register for the educational advocate directory. Your name, email, and whatever else you put on the form: phone, website, the counties and services you work in, credentials, fees, a bio, and your answers to the two disclosure questions. You asked to be published, so after we review it the listing appears on the site with the contact details you ticked - and only those. The profile link and reference you give us are for checking, and are never published. Write to us from the same address to change or remove it.

When you use the site. Standard server logs and basic analytics: pages viewed, approximate region, browser type, referring link. We use Google Analytics & Go High Level.

When you ask to be on the supporter wall. Only the name you type into the box. It appears nowhere unless you tick the box, and you can have it removed at any time by emailing us.

When you send us a story, a tip, a document, or a survey response. Whatever you choose to send. This is the category that needs its own section.

Stories, tips, and documents about children

This is the most sensitive information we handle, so we’re going to be specific rather than reassuring.

What you send is up to you. We ask for stories about what families are experiencing inside the district. People send us IEPs, 504 plans, evaluation reports, emails from school staff, and detailed accounts of their children’s disabilities and services. We did not ask for that level of detail, and you should send us the least you need to in order to make your point.

Redact before you send. Remove your child’s full name, student ID, date of birth, address, and any medical record numbers if you can. A story about "a third grader at [school] who went eleven weeks without speech services" is as useful to us as one with a name on it, and far safer for your child.

We do not publish anything identifiable about a child without written permission from the parent or guardian. Not the name, not the school plus grade plus disability in combination, not a photograph. If we want to publish your story in a form that could identify your child, we will come back to you, show you the exact text, and wait for you to say yes in writing. You can say no, and you can change your mind before we publish.

We will aggregate and de-identify. Your story may inform a count, a pattern, or a records request without any identifying detail being published. That’s the main thing we do with stories.

We cannot un-ring a bell. Once something is published, it can be copied, archived, and screenshotted by people we don’t control. Take that into account before you consent to publication.

Retention. We keep story submissions for 3 years and then delete them, unless you ask us to delete sooner or the submission is part of something we’ve published. You can ask us to delete your submission at any time at info@parentsfortransparency.com.

Teachers, district employees, and confidential sources

If you work for the district and send us information, you are taking a risk. Here is precisely what we can and cannot do about it.

What we will do. We will not publish your name, school, or position without explicit permission. Source communications are stored apart from our general records, accessible to 2 people. We will not confirm your identity to the district, to a reporter, or to anyone else who asks.

What we cannot promise. We cannot guarantee that a court could never compel us to produce what you sent. Florida recognizes a qualified privilege for professional journalists - but it is qualified, it can be overcome, and whether it covers an operation like ours has not been settled. Any website telling you it can absolutely protect a source is overselling.

We do not operate an encrypted or anonymous tip channel. Anything you send reaches us by ordinary email or through a form on this site. That means it sits on our email provider’s servers and our host’s servers, it carries your address and your IP with it, and it can be subpoenaed from them without us ever being asked. We are telling you this because we would rather lose a document than have you assume a protection that doesn’t exist.

So, practically:

What we never do with your information

If we ever receive a subpoena, court order, or other legal demand for information about you, we will notify you before we respond, unless a court orders us not to.

Who does see your information

Only vendors that need it to run the operation, and only for that purpose:

Each of these is bound by its own contract and privacy terms. We don’t authorize any of them to use your information for their own purposes.

Email

Membership and billing emails are part of the service, and you’ll keep getting those while you’re a member. Every other email has an unsubscribe link, and we honor it. Our physical mailing address appears in the footer of every commercial email, as federal law requires.

Children

This site is built for parents and adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If your child has submitted information to us, email info@parentsfortransparency.com and we’ll delete it.

If you are a student and you want to tell us something, please talk to a parent or guardian first.

Security and what happens if we’re breached

We use gated administrative access to protect what we hold. No system is perfect and we won’t pretend otherwise.

If personal information is breached, we will notify affected individuals no later than 30 days after we determine a breach occurred, as Florida’s Information Protection Act requires, and we will notify the Florida Attorney General if 500 or more Florida residents are affected. We will tell you what happened rather than issuing a non-statement.

Your choices

Florida’s Digital Bill of Rights applies only to for-profit companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue that also meet one of three additional conditions, so its core obligations don’t reach a company our size. We’re offering these anyway:

Email info@parentsfortransparency.com. We respond within 72 hours.

A note about the people we write about

This policy is about your information. It is separate from what we publish about candidates, donors, committees, and public officials.

That material comes from official campaign-finance filings, public records, and published reporting - records that are public by law and that anyone can pull from the same sources we link. Publishing them is not a privacy decision we make about a private individual; it’s a republication of a public record with a citation attached. If you believe we’ve published something about you that is inaccurate, write to info@parentsfortransparency.com and we’ll look at it.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we’ll email members and post the date at the top. Continuing to use the site or keep a membership after that means the new version applies.

Contact