Privacy Policy · Teachstead

1. What this covers

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information Teachstead collects, how we use it, who we share it with, how we keep it safe, and what choices you have. It applies to students, guardians, and teachers who use Teachstead.

2. Information we collect

We collect only the information needed to run a lesson-scheduling and billing service. Specifically:

Account information. Your name, email, password (stored as a one-way hash — we never see the plain text), and role (teacher or student).
Student profile information.Phone number, preferred lesson type, scheduling preferences, notes entered by the Studio, and — if the student is a minor — guardian name, guardian email, guardian phone, and the guardian's relationship to the student.
Booking and attendance information.Lessons you've booked, times, cancellations, reschedules, no-shows, and invoices.
Payment information. Teachstead does not store full card numbers or bank account numbers. Payment processing is handled by Stripe, Inc. We receive and store limited payment metadata from Stripe (customer ID, last four digits of a card, payment status, invoice ID) so we can show the right billing state in the app.
Communication records. Emails and notifications the system sends to you (booking confirmations, reminders, invoices) and, where applicable, the content of messages you send through Teachstead.
Lesson recordings and transcripts. If your Studio uses the lesson summary feature, short audio recordings or voice notes made during or after a lesson, the text transcripts produced from them, and the resulting summaries and practice notes. See Section 4 for how this works and the consent it requires.
Technical information. IP address, browser/device identifiers, and rate-limit counters used to protect the service from abuse.

3. Information about minors and children

Teachstead is commonly used by children taking music lessons. We collect a minor's information only for the purpose of scheduling, conducting, and billing lessons, and only when a parent or legal guardian has provided consent during booking or account creation. A guardian is always required for an account or booking marked as belonging to a minor.

Children under 13.We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent, in accordance with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). When a Studio enrolls a student under 13, the Studio is responsible for obtaining parental consent before entering the child's information into Teachstead. A guardian who believes we have collected information from their child without consent should contact us at the address in Section 12 and we will delete the information.

For minors, the primary contact for billing and account communication is the guardian (or both the student and the guardian, if the guardian chose that option). We do not knowingly market to minors, do not use a minor's information for advertising, and do not sell a minor's information to anyone. A guardian may request a copy or deletion of the minor's data at any time (see Section 9).

4. Lesson recordings and AI summaries

Teachers can record a short voice note (or, where the Studio chooses, lesson audio) and have Teachstead produce a written lesson summary, a practice plan, and a private teaching note. Because a recording made during a lesson may capture a student's voice — including a child's voice — this feature has its own rules:

Recording is always teacher-initiated. Nothing is recorded automatically or continuously. The Studio decides when to record and is responsible for telling students and families that lessons may be recorded.
Consent for minors.Before recording a lesson with a student under 18, the Studio must have the parent or guardian's consent. For children under 13, that consent must come from the parent or guardian in accordance with COPPA — a Studio must not record a child's lesson audio without it.
How the audio is processed. Recordings are transcribed by a speech-to-text provider and summarized by an AI language-model provider. These providers process the audio and transcript on our behalf, under agreements that prohibit them from using your data to train their models. We list our current providers in Section 6.
A person stays in the loop. The teacher reviews every AI-generated summary before it is saved or sent to a family. Nothing is sent automatically.
Retention and deletion. Audio is kept only as long as needed to produce the transcript and summary, plus a short window so the teacher can re-listen; the Studio can delete a recording at any time, and deleting a student removes their recordings, transcripts, and summaries. A guardian may request deletion of any recording of their child (Section 12).
Opting out. Tell your Studio you do not want lessons recorded. The rest of Teachstead works exactly the same without recordings.

5. How we use information

To run the scheduling, attendance, billing, and communication features.
To send transactional messages (booking confirmations, reminders, invoices, policy updates).
To process payments through Stripe and reconcile what the Studio is owed.
To protect the service — detect abuse, enforce rate limits, investigate security incidents.
To improve reliability and troubleshoot issues.
To comply with legal obligations.

We do not use your information to train advertising profiles, we do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing purposes. The only third parties we share information with are the service providers listed in Section 6, and only as needed to operate Teachstead on your behalf.

6. Who sees your information

Your Studio. The Studio you belong to (the teacher or teachers running it) can see your profile, lessons, attendance, invoices, and notes — the same way a teacher would keep a ledger for their own students.
Service providers. We use a small number of trusted third parties to run the service: a database and auth host (Supabase), a deployment host (Vercel), a payment processor (Stripe), an email delivery provider (Resend), and — only when your Studio uses lesson summaries — a speech-to-text provider and an AI summarization provider that process recordings and transcripts on our behalf. These providers process information only on our behalf, are bound by contract to keep it confidential, and are prohibited from using it to train their models.
Legal requirements. We may disclose information when required by law, subpoena, or court order, or when necessary to protect our rights or the safety of others.

7. Payment data

Payments are processed by Stripe via Stripe's hosted Checkout and Invoice interfaces. Card details are entered on Stripe-controlled pages and are not collected or transmitted by Teachstead's own forms. Teachstead stores only limited transaction metadata returned by Stripe (such as a Stripe customer ID, the invoice status, and the last four digits of a card) so that the app can show accurate billing state. Stripe's handling of your payment data is governed by Stripe's own privacy notice.

8. How we keep information safe

Teachstead uses encryption in transit (HTTPS) and at rest, row-level security in the database so each Studio only sees its own data, hashed passwords, scoped API keys, and routine backups. No system is perfectly secure, but we apply industry-standard controls and continue to improve them.

9. Your rights and choices

You can:

Access and update your profile information from within Teachstead.
Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to delete it. For students associated with a Studio, the Studio may retain a copy of lesson history and invoices to meet its own business and tax-record obligations.
Ask us to correct information that is wrong. Guardians of minors may exercise these rights on the minor's behalf.
Opt out of non-transactional messages. Transactional messages (booking confirmations, invoices, security notices) cannot be disabled while you have an active account.

To make a request, contact the Studio you belong to for routine changes, or Teachstead support at the address in Section 12 for platform-level requests.

10. How long we keep information

We keep profile, scheduling, and invoice information for as long as your account is active and your Studio needs it to operate. When an account is deleted, we remove or anonymize personal information within a reasonable period, subject to any legal, tax, or dispute-resolution obligations (for example, invoice records kept for tax purposes).

11. Changes to this Policy

When we materially change how we handle personal information, we update the version string and effective date at the top of this page and prompt you to re-accept at your next booking or login.

12. Contact

For questions about your lesson data, contact your Studio first. For questions about how Teachstead handles your information at the platform level — including access, deletion, or correction requests — email Teachstead support at info@teachstead.com.

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5900 Balcones Drive, Ste 100, Austin, TX 78731, USA