FERPA notice

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act(FERPA, 20 USC §1232g and 34 CFR Part 99) is a US federal law that protects the privacy of student education records held by schools or anyone acting on their behalf. It gives parents (and eligible students 18 or older) the right to inspect and request correction of those records.

Records FERPA covers include transcripts, class grades, disciplinary records, special-education files, and anything else maintained by the school as part of the educational record.

FERPA explicitly excludes “directory information” from its restrictions. The Department of Education defines directory information at 34 CFR §99.3 as data “not generally considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if disclosed.” The list explicitly includes:

• Student name.
• Grade level.
• Dates of attendance.
• Participation in officially recognized activities and sports.
• Height, weight, and other physical characteristics of athletic-team members.
• Degrees, honors, and awards received.

Athletic-performance data — the time you ran the 400, the height you cleared, the meet you placed at — falls squarely into “participation in officially recognized sports” and “awards.” That’s why meet programs, conference websites, MileSplit, and WI Athlete can publish your results without violating FERPA.

All directory information, none of it educational records:

• Athlete name, school, grade, gender, event.
• Time, distance, place, wind reading, heat assignment.
• Conference and division affiliation.
• Awards and rankings.

We do not collect or display:

• Transcripts or class grades.
• Disciplinary records.
• Health, special-education, or IEP records.
• Standardized test scores (except as self-reported, opt-in profile data — see below).
• Anything held by a school as part of the educational record.

Athlete profile pages support optional fields a family can choose to publish for recruiter visibility:

• GPA (self-reported, unverified).
• ACT / SAT scores (self-reported, unverified).
• Intended major.
• Personal statement.
• Social handles.

These fields are NOT FERPA records because we receive them from the parent or athlete directly, not from the school. They’re entirely voluntary, parent-managed for athletes under 18, and can be deleted at any time from the profile-edit page.

If you, as a parent or athlete, are asked by a recruiter to self-report a GPA: that’s legal under FERPA because the school isn’t the one disclosing. We display only what your family explicitly publishes.

FERPA gives parents (and eligible students 18+) the right to opt out of directory-information disclosures at the school level. Wisconsin school districts typically include this on their annual FERPA notice; opt-out usually means the student’s name doesn’t appear in yearbooks, programs, or honor-roll lists.

If your family has filed a directory-information opt-out with your school district, tell us. Email [OPERATOR: privacy@wiathlete.com] with proof (a copy of the school’s acknowledgment or a screenshot of the family-portal opt-out). We’ll suppress the athlete’s name from public listings within 30 days — on every page and on every future scrape — and replace it with a generic placeholder (“Athlete, [School], Grade [X]”) in any historical results.

Regardless of FERPA status, you can always:

• Ask what we hold. Email [OPERATOR: privacy@wiathlete.com].
• Correct it.Wrong grade year, wrong school, or a typo in your name — we’ll fix it within 30 days.
• Suppress your name from public listings (request above).
• Opt out of recruiter discovery via the parent-managed visibility flag on the profile page.

If you’re a school administrator or athletic director with a FERPA-related question or request, write to [OPERATOR: privacy@wiathlete.com] with your district letterhead. Typical asks:

• Bulk apply directory-information opt-outs from your annual roster.
• Verify which data we hold about students at your school.
• Request that we remove a specific record (we’ll comply when the request originates from the school of record).

We respond to verified school-administrator requests within 10 business days.

Name: [OPERATOR: FERPA compliance officer name — defaults to Kyle Van Dyn Hoven]
Email: [OPERATOR: privacy@wiathlete.com]
Mail: [OPERATOR: physical mailing address]

• Privacy Policy — full data-handling detail.
• COPPA notice — for parents of athletes under 13.
• NCAA compliance posture — how recruiter access is gated and audited.