Our FERPA Commitment
A plain-language explanation of how Academic Mail Organizer handles email — written for educators, administrators, and district IT directors.
What is FERPA?
FERPA — the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. § 1232g) — is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. It applies to all educational institutions that receive federal funding, which includes virtually every K–12 public school in the United States.
FERPA restricts the disclosure of education records and personally identifiable student information. Schools and their vendors must take appropriate steps to ensure that student data is not accessed, stored, or shared without proper authorization.
Email in a school setting often contains FERPA-relevant information — grades, IEP discussions, disciplinary matters, and other personally identifiable student details shared in the course of normal school communication. This makes the tools educators use to manage email a legitimate FERPA consideration.
How Academic Mail Organizer works — technically
Most email tools work by connecting to your inbox from an external server. Your email is transmitted to that server, processed there, and then acted on. This creates a real data exposure risk — your email (and any student information it contains) leaves Google's infrastructure and passes through a third-party system.
Academic Mail Organizer works differently.
It is built as a Google Apps Script — a program that runs entirely inside your own Google account, on Google's infrastructure. When you use Academic Mail Organizer:
- The code executes inside your Google account, not on Academic Workflows servers.
- Email content is read and processed within Google's secure environment.
- No email data is transmitted to Academic Workflows. Ever.
- Academic Workflows has no server that receives, stores, or can access your email.
- Processing happens in real time — nothing is retained after a session ends.
In plain terms: Academic Workflows cannot see your email even if it wanted to. The architecture makes it technically impossible for us to access, receive, or store email content from your account.
Our commitments
No data collection
Academic Workflows does not collect, receive, store, or process any email content. The app processes data entirely within Google's infrastructure, inside your account.
No persistent storage
No email data is retained anywhere by Academic Workflows. No email content, no subject lines, no sender information, no metadata. All processing is session-based and occurs within Google.
No third-party disclosure
Student-related information from emails is never shared with, sold to, or accessible by any third party — not advertising networks, analytics services, or any other external system.
Minimal permissions
We request only the Gmail permissions necessary for the app to function (searching, labeling, archiving). We do not request read access to email bodies. You can review and revoke permissions at any time through your Google Account settings.
Right to revoke
You can remove Academic Mail Organizer's access from your Google account at any time. Revocation is immediate and complete. No residual data exists to clean up because no data was ever stored.
Transparency
This page exists because we think you deserve a clear explanation of how the product works — not a wall of legal text. If you have questions not answered here, we welcome them.
Data Processing Agreements
Many school districts require a signed Data Processing Agreement (DPA) before approving third-party tools — even tools that operate entirely within Google's infrastructure. We understand this requirement and fully support it.
If your district requires a DPA, contact us and we will work with your team to complete one promptly. We are committed to making the approval process as straightforward as possible for district IT and legal teams.
Request a Data Processing AgreementQuestions?
If you have questions about our privacy practices, FERPA compliance, or need documentation for a district review, we're happy to help.
Contact Us