How Teacher OS handles your data.

1. Design Philosophy

Most education platforms ask schools and teachers to move their student information into a vendor's database. Teacher OS was built around the opposite idea: teachers should keep ownership of their data, and the platform should work alongside the tools they already use.

Teacher OS supports teachers across Grading Workspace, Hall Pass, Student Support Log, AI Authoring, Students & Classes, Student Progress, and Students. Across these workflows, the goal is the same: help with the busy work while keeping teachers in control of their classroom information. We collect as little as we can, keep teacher-owned Google Workspace files as the source of truth for classroom records, and explain the limited account and operational metadata Teacher OS needs to run.

2. How Teacher OS Stores Data

Google Sheets is the source of truth. Your classroom data — rosters, grades, notes, and the records you keep — lives in the Google Sheets you own and control, not in a separate Teacher OS database.

Teacher OS stores only what it needs to operate. That means teacher account information and workspace configuration — for example, which spreadsheets a workspace points to and your settings. This intentionally minimal footprint keeps student information in your spreadsheets rather than copied into a large proprietary store.

Teachers stay in control. Because the data lives in your own Google Sheets, you decide what to record, what to keep, and what to remove.

3. Authentication and Access

Teacher OS uses Google Authentication to sign you in. You log in with your Google account, and Teacher OS connects to the spreadsheets you choose — it does not ask you to create a separate password to manage.

Each teacher's workspace is tied to their own account, so access to your data follows the permissions of the Google account and the spreadsheets you own and share.

4. AI Processing

Teacher OS uses AI to help with tasks like grading support and drafting communications. When you use these features, Teacher OS sends the content needed to complete your request to OpenAI and returns the result to you.

Student names are minimized in the prompts Teacher OS generates. In grading, each submission is identified to the AI by a non-identifying label such as Student row-Nrather than the student's name. For Student Support Log email drafts, the prompt uses a placeholder such as [STUDENT_NAME], and Teacher OS inserts the real student name afterward when preparing the teacher-facing draft — so the name is not part of the request to OpenAI.

To provide these features, some content is still sent to OpenAI — for example, the academic responses being graded and the notes and context a teacher documented. Teacher OS minimizes the names it places into system-generated prompts, but it does not remove names or other personal details that appear inside free-text that a teacher or student wrote (such as an answer, a note, or a comment). Please avoid including unnecessary sensitive information in free-text fields.

AI output is a draft. Teachers remain responsible for reviewing and editing AI-generated content before using or sending it.

Daily Classroom Insights do not use AI. They are calculated deterministically from teacher-owned records and are not stored as a separate insight record.

5. Third-Party Services

Teacher OS relies on a small number of third-party services to operate. We share information with them only as needed to provide the features you use, and each has its own privacy practices.

• Google Authentication. Signs you in to Teacher OS securely.
• Google Sheets. The source of truth for your classroom data; Teacher OS reads from and writes to the spreadsheets you connect, based on what you do.
• OpenAI. Powers AI-assisted features such as grading support and communication drafts, as described in the AI Processing section above.
• Gmail. With your permission, Teacher OS sends messages from your connected Gmail account for feedback and support-log communications — each message is composed in Teacher OS and sent only after you review and confirm it. Its Gmail access is send-only — it does not create drafts in your Gmail account and does not read, search, or download your existing email.

We only list services the platform actually uses. If we add or change one in a way that affects this overview, we will update this page.

6. Google Data We Access and Why

Teacher OS requests the minimum Google permissions its features need. Each is used only as described, and nothing more is requested.

• Sign-In (openid, email, profile). Authenticates you and manages your access to Teacher OS. It does not provide your password or any other profile data.
• Per-file Drive access (drive.file). Reads from and writes to only the files Teacher OS created for you and the files you individually connect through the Google file picker. It cannot see the rest of your Drive, and Teacher OS keeps no central copy of your data.
• Gmail (gmail.send). Sends messages you compose, review, and confirm in Teacher OS. It does not create drafts in your Gmail account and does not read, list, or download existing email.
• Google Classroom, read-only (classroom.courses.readonly, classroom.rosters.readonly). Lists your courses and rosters to build your Student Directory. Teacher OS never writes to Classroom.

Teacher OS does not store your Google emails or spreadsheet contents in its own database. Sign-in tokens are kept in a signed, http-only session cookie and are not stored server-side. Application metadata in our database is limited to workspace pointers and configuration — never student records or email content.

Teacher OS's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. See our Privacy Policy for details.

7. Security Practices

We take reasonable measures to protect the information Teacher OS handles — including relying on Google authentication, transmitting data over encrypted connections, and limiting what we store to what is needed to run the platform.

Teacher OS's Gmail access is send-only (messages you review and confirm in-app — no drafts are created in your Gmail), and it does not retain Google email or spreadsheet contents in its own systems.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. We work to follow sound security practices and to improve them over time.

8. Future Commitments

Teacher OS is early in its journey, and we intend to keep strengthening how we protect data. Looking ahead, we are committed to:

• Continuous privacy improvements — refining our minimal-data approach as the platform grows.
• Working toward independent privacy review — building toward recognized educational privacy standards and third-party review processes.
• Responsible AI practices — continuing to minimize identifying information in AI prompts and keeping teachers in control of AI-assisted decisions.

These are forward-looking goals. We describe them as commitments we are working toward, not as certifications we have earned.

Questions?

If you are a school leader, technology director, or privacy reviewer with questions about how Teacher OS handles data, we are happy to talk. You can reach us at:

privacy@theteacheros.com