FERPA

How Greta thinks about FERPA.

Last updated: May 2026 · v1 (alpha)

Plain reading: Greta is a personal tool teachers buy for their own practice. It is not a school-contracted system. The data you keep in Greta is the same kind of observational notes a teacher has always kept in a paper notebook — and FERPA explicitly carves those out as the teacher’s own records.

The short version

• Greta is not a “school official” under FERPA.
• Greta does not store official education records (transcripts, grades of record, IEPs, disciplinary files, attendance records).
• Greta doesstore the kind of teacher-kept observational notes that FERPA §1232g(a)(4)(B)(i) explicitly excludes from the “education records” definition — “records of instructional, supervisory, and administrative personnel and educational personnel ancillary thereto which are kept in the sole possession of the maker thereof and which are not accessible or revealed to any other person except a substitute.”
• We treat your notes with FERPA-equivalent care anyway: limited access, encryption, no third-party disclosure without your direction, and your right to export or delete at any time.

What this means in practice

You don’t need district approval to use Greta.

Greta is a personal subscription, like a Moleskine or a productivity app you pay for yourself. Your district doesn’t need to sign a data processing agreement with us because we are not processing data on the district’s behalf — we are providing a personal tool to you.

You shouldn’t use Greta to store official records.

Anything that belongs in your district’s SIS, gradebook, or special education platform should stay there. Greta’s schema actively rejects fields like SSN, full date of birth, government IDs, and free-text medical diagnoses. If you try to enter them, Greta will redirect you to the appropriate system.

If your district asks, here’s what you can tell them.

• Greta is a personal teacher productivity tool.
• Notes stored in Greta are the teacher’s own observational records, equivalent to a personal notebook.
• No data is shared with third parties for marketing or training.
• The teacher can export and delete all data at any time.
• Sub binders Greta generates for substitute teachers fall within FERPA’s “or to a substitute” clause and contain only what the substitute needs to run the day.

If your district has further questions, have them email privacy@teachgreta.comand we’ll respond directly.

What Greta is working toward

We are not currently SOC 2 certified, and we don’t hold state-specific data agreements (NDPA, etc.). When we pursue school-purchased deals (v3+), we will obtain those certifications. Until then, Greta is a tool for individual teachers, not for districts.

One last note

We’re not your lawyers. This page describes how we think about FERPA and how Greta is designed. If your district has specific policies or your state has stricter rules (California, New York, Illinois, and a few others go beyond FERPA), follow those. When in doubt, ask your district’s privacy officer.

Contact

FERPA questions: privacy@teachgreta.com.