Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: October 7, 2026

Kindred Collective ("Kindred Collective," "we," "our," or "us") is an online space for co-ops, microschools, and other small school organizations. It is operated by Kindred Home Education. This policy explains what information the service keeps, who can see it, what you control, and how Google Calendar sync works if you turn it on. "The Service" means Kindred Collective's websites and apps.

Who is responsible for what

Each organization (a "co-op" or "organization" below) has its own private space on Kindred Collective, at its own web address. The organization decides who is on its roster, what is recorded there, and how that information is used. Kindred Collective provides the system, keeps it running and secure, and keeps each organization's information separate from every other organization's.

Kindred Collective is a separate product from the Kindred home planner (plankindred.app). The two do not share accounts or photos unless you deliberately link them in the future, and a photo in one is never copied into the other.

Your organization may also publish a short note about how it handles your family's information. That note is on your organization's own page and works alongside this policy.

Information we keep

About each person: name, and for adults an email address and phone number. Passwords are stored in scrambled form.
About children: name, birthday, which family they belong to, and which classes they are enrolled in.
Details a family chooses to give: a home address, and photos.
Day to day: attendance (including absences a parent reports ahead of time), class schedules, homework and lesson progress, grades a teacher or parent enters, and messages sent through the Service.
Documents teachers upload: class syllabi and materials.
Technical information: device and browser type, IP address, error logs, and security logs, used to keep the Service working and safe.

We do not collect payment details, government ID numbers, or health information.

Who can see what

A parent	Everything about their own family. Nothing about other families' children.
A teacher (mentor)	The students in the classes they teach: names, attendance, grades they enter, and a child's photo if the parent allows it. Teachers do not see parents' phone numbers or emails; they can message parents through the Service.
The organization's administrators	Everyone in that organization: the roster, attendance, and contact details.
Other families	Only what a family chooses to share (see "What you control").
Other organizations	Nothing. Each organization's information is kept separate, and we test that separation.
Kindred Collective	We run the system. We look at your information only when needed to fix a problem, and we do not use it for anything else.

Messages are not private from administrators. An organization's administrators can read every message thread in that organization, and each thread says so. Please do not use the Service for anything you would not want an administrator to read.

What you control

A child's photo. A photo is stored only if a parent or an administrator adds one. A parent decides whether the photo is shown to teachers and administrators; if it is switched off they see the child's initials instead. A parent can delete the photo at any time. Photos can be viewed only by logged-in people with a reason to see them, and hidden details inside a photo file (such as where it was taken) are removed when it is uploaded.
A home address. A family chooses whether its address may be shown to other families in the same organization (as a pin on the community map). The setting starts as shared and can be switched off at any time on the family's page. Administrators of the organization can see all addresses.
A child's login. Children cannot log in unless a parent turns that on for them.
Your own details. You can correct your name, contact details, and photo on your profile page. To have a person removed, contact your organization or us (see "Contact").

Google Calendar and Google user data

Connecting Google Calendar is optional and is always your own choice, made on your profile page and confirmed on Google's own consent screen. Without it, nothing is sent to Google.

What the connection does

It creates one calendar in your Google account, named after your organization, and adds your organization's community calendar to it: community events and school breaks (for example a picnic or a fall break).
It is one-way. Kindred Collective writes to the calendar it created. It does not read your other calendars or the events in them, and nothing you change in Google changes anything in Kindred Collective.
The only Google permission we ask for is the one that lets an app manage calendars that the app itself created. It does not give us access to your other calendars.
The Service keeps the calendar up to date when the organization changes its calendar, and checks again every few hours.

What we store

Your Google account email address; the sign-in permission Google gives us (stored encrypted); the identifier of the calendar we created; and identifiers of the events we added, so we can update or remove them. The calendar contents themselves come from your organization's own calendar in Kindred Collective.

Disconnecting

You can disconnect at any time from your profile page. Disconnecting stops syncing, deletes the calendar we created in your Google account, revokes our access with Google, and removes the stored sign-in permission. You can also remove our access from your Google Account settings.

How Google data is used and shared

We use Google user data only to provide the calendar sync you asked for. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or share it with anyone else. No person at Kindred Collective reads it except when needed to fix a problem. Kindred Collective's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.

Google Drive (teachers and administrators)

Where available, teachers and administrators may connect Google Drive to link a spreadsheet they already have to a curriculum. This uses the narrow permission that only reaches files you pick yourself, never your whole Drive, and the same rules above apply to it.

Calendar subscription links

You can also subscribe to your organization's community calendar from any calendar app using a private link. Anyone who has the link can see that calendar (community events and school breaks only), so keep it to yourself. You can replace the link at any time, which turns the old one off. The link stops working if your access to the organization is switched off.

Who helps us run the Service

Railway hosts the Service and its database.
Cloudflare stores uploaded photos and files.
Resend delivers emails such as invitations and password resets.
Anthropic reads a syllabus document that a teacher chooses to upload in order to turn it into a lesson plan. This applies to the documents teachers upload, not to a family's records.
Your browser's push service delivers notifications if you turn them on.
Google, only if you connect Google Calendar or Google Drive.

These providers handle information only to do that job for us. Neither Kindred Collective nor your organization sells your information, shows advertising, or shares it with anyone else.

How it is protected

Connections to the Service are encrypted.
Passwords are stored in scrambled form so that not even the people who run the Service can read them. Repeated password guessing is slowed down, and changing your password signs out your other devices.
Sign-in permissions for connected services are stored encrypted.
We take a backup of the database every night and delete each backup after 30 days.
Turning off someone's access takes effect right away.

No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute security.

Keeping and deleting information

Attendance records are kept as a history that is not overwritten: a correction is added as a new entry. Some states require records kept this way. Each organization decides how long it keeps attendance and enrollment records after a family leaves; ask your organization.
When a person is removed, their account and details are removed. Backups made before then are deleted on the 30-day schedule above.
If something goes wrong that affects your information, we will tell your organization's administrators without unreasonable delay, and the organization will tell the families involved.

Children

Kindred Collective is used by parents, guardians, teachers, and organization staff. Information about a child is entered by a parent or by the organization. A child can have their own login only if a parent turns it on, and the child then sees only their own schedule and work. We do not knowingly collect information directly from children for any other purpose.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Updated versions are posted here with a new effective date. If a change is significant, we will tell organizations so they can tell families.

Contact

Questions or requests about this policy, or about deleting information, can be sent to support@plankindred.app. For questions about your own family's information at your organization, you can also contact your organization directly.