Privacy and School Use
Step Into Your Future - Today! | Branford High School edition
23-bhs-no-photo · Reviewed 2026-11-04
Career roadmaps
The browser sends four fixed-menu selections to this app: grade, career, path and priority. Local school-course and prepared career data produce the roadmap. This feature sends no request to OpenAI, Gemini or another external AI service. No student name, account, school login, transcript, actual age or sensitive student record is required.
Optional fictional-student preview
A restricted presenter chooses one of the app's bundled, entirely fictional people. The server sends that synthetic image and a constrained career/age prompt to OpenAI's image-editing service. No real student photograph, name, transcript, disability information or free-text prompt is requested. Grade and priority are used locally, not included in the provider prompt. The resulting image is permanently marked FICTIONAL AI DEMONSTRATION and NOT A REAL STUDENT / NOT A PREDICTION. The district may approve roadmaps separately from this optional feature.
Real photos and tracking are disabled
The BHS explorer and BHS fictional preview have no photo picker or camera control. Real-person upload endpoints reject requests before image processing; environment flags cannot enable them in this release. Google Analytics and Tag Manager have been removed from shipped pages. The app does not serve advertising, sell student data, build commercial student profiles or use session replay or cross-site tracking.
Storage, cookies and infrastructure
- App: selections and results are processed in memory. There is no student account, selection-history, photo or results database. The app does not intentionally log selection content, images, raw IP addresses or credentials. Do not include student details in URLs or support requests.
- Browser: a first-party signed session cookie supports request security and restricted-preview authorization/counts. It contains no career selections or photos. Hosted HTTPS cookies use Secure, HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax. Persistent administrator sessions expire after 60 minutes; ordinary session-cookie lifetime also depends on browser close/restore behavior. Clear site data to remove the cookie.
- Security memory: temporary rate-limit records use a keyed hash of the connection IP and timestamps. They are pseudonymous, not guaranteed anonymous. Idle entries are cleared on the next limiter check after 15 minutes or at process restart.
- Host/network: Render and school/network systems may process IPs, timestamps, request paths and browser/security metadata. Host log retention, subprocessors, security and deletion terms must be verified separately. No zero-retention claim is made.
- OpenAI: only fictional previews use this provider. Published API policy excludes model training unless the customer opts in. Standard abuse-monitoring retention may be up to 30 days, with endpoint/safety exceptions. Zero Data Retention is not claimed. Account data-sharing settings and applicable contractual protections must be confirmed before district use.
- Saved copies: downloads, printouts, screenshots and district-controlled records remain until their holder deletes them. The operator cannot delete copies on school or personal devices.
Ownership and restricted use of student data
Step claims no ownership or control over student information, records or student-generated content. Student-generated content belongs to the student or parent/guardian under Connecticut law. District records remain subject to district control and applicable law. As between the operator and the student/district, the operator claims no exclusive ownership of a student's saved roadmap or associated educational record. This does not guarantee copyright in AI output or override third-party rights.
The operator's policy restricts any student data to providing and securing the district-authorized educational service. Student data must not be sold, rented, traded, used for commercial profiling or targeted advertising, or contributed to AI training, fine-tuning or shared training datasets. Provider agreements and account settings must support these restrictions. Optional provider training/data-sharing programs must remain off.
Review, correction, deletion and incidents
Students and families should contact the district representative supervising use. The district can forward verified requests to the operator's privacy contact without unnecessary student records. The operator will identify what information is actually held, assist with access/correction and coordinate lawful deletion with applicable providers. Where no record exists, the response will explain that rather than claim a deletion occurred. Response times, provider closeout, authorized contacts and breach procedures must be agreed before school use.
When district use ends, operator-held student data must be returned/deleted under the approved agreement, subject to legally required retention and qualifying inaccessible disaster-recovery copies permitted by law. No independent student accounts are offered. The review packet contains proposed request and incident procedures; these are not an executed agreement.
Course information and annual review
The displayed BHS catalog year is 2026-27. Course information should be reviewed each year against the latest official BHS Program of Studies. In coordination with school staff, approved changes to courses, prerequisites, grade eligibility and opportunities can be incorporated and the displayed catalog year updated after verification. Until then, the existing catalog year remains visible. This is not an automatic update service or a promise of indefinite maintenance.
The app does not read transcripts, verify completed prerequisites, assess ability or make admission, placement or employment decisions. Students must confirm current availability, eligibility, prerequisites and scheduling with a BHS counselor. Career paths and fictional images are illustrative, not predictions or guarantees.
Security and accessibility
Controls include same-session request tokens, constrained menu values, small requests, retired real-photo endpoints, first-party-only browser connections, security headers, no-store responses, secure hosted cookies and limited diagnostic logging. Actual deployment, provider terms and independent security/accessibility checks remain for district review. Keyboard, screen-reader, contrast and mobile/reflow checks and accessible alternatives are part of that review. No security or legal certification is claimed.
Free software permission; district costs and ownership
Bruce Wayne Brailsford offers Branford Public Schools nonexclusive permission to use this edition indefinitely without a software licensing fee. Under the proposed arrangement, the district would bear all costs associated with its deployment and use, including hosting, optional AI/API processing, setup, infrastructure, administration, maintenance, support, updates and other required services. Bruce is not obligated to fund, advance or absorb those expenses or provide unlimited unpaid services. District-managed hosting and paid provider accounts, where needed, must be arranged before school-directed use; Bruce will not advance expenses for reimbursement; this notice does not change existing demonstration billing. He retains ownership of his original application, code, branding and intellectual property. Permission is not a sale or assignment; student data and third-party materials retain their own rights.
Contacts and approval
Creator/proposed permission grantor: Bruce Wayne Brailsford
Operator label: Step Into Your Future
Privacy contact: District review pending: use the school representative who provided this app.
Before school-directed use: designate an active operator privacy/security contact and request process. Publishing this notice does not satisfy that missing requirement.
The actual operator/contracting identity must be confirmed with the district. No district endorsement, executed privacy agreement, FERPA/COPPA certification or Google Workspace Core Service designation is asserted.