Safety and privacy
What the app does and doesn't do
This page is written so you can send it to a principal, a superintendent or a parent as it is. If a question isn't answered here, email jackson@playgrandstand.com and ask it.
What GrandStand stores
- About a student
- A display name, the school they belong to, and their school email address. Nothing else is required to create an account.
- About games
- Which games a student checked in to and when, the five calls they made, the points they've earned, and anything they've redeemed in the store.
- Photos
- Only the photos a student chooses to post to a game's feed, each tied to their account.
What it never stores
- Academic records
- No grades, no class schedules, no discipline records, nothing from your student information system. GrandStand doesn't connect to it.
- Home addresses or phone numbers
- Neither is asked for.
- Location, with QR check-in
- When students check in by scanning the sign at the gate, the app never asks for location permission at all. If your school turns on check-in by location instead, the server checks that the phone is at the venue when the student taps Check in.
How the rules are built in
- Calls are about our team
- Every call is a yes-or-no question about the home team as a whole. A call never names a player and never mentions the opponent, so there's nothing for a student to be singled out over.
- Points only go up
- Students earn points for showing up and for calls they get right. Nothing is wagered, nothing is lost, and there's no money anywhere in the app.
- No chat
- There are no comments, no messages, no text posts and no anonymous features.
- One school
- Students see their own school only. There's no cross-school leaderboard, feed or anything else.
- Photos are reviewed
- Every photo is tied to a real account. Your office sees who posted it and can hide it from the dashboard.
- Under 13
- Accounts for students under 13 follow COPPA, which means a parent's consent before the account is used.
- FERPA
- GrandStand is built to be FERPA aware: no academic data is stored, and each school's data is kept separate from every other school's.
Questions we get asked
Is this gambling?
It isn't. Nothing is wagered, nothing can be lost, and there's no money anywhere in the app. Points are earned for attendance and for calls a student gets right, and they spend on rewards the athletic department chooses.
Can students message each other?
They can't. There's no chat, no comments and no direct messages. The only thing a student can post is a photo to a game's feed, and the office can hide it.
Does the app track where students are?
With QR check-in, the app never asks for location at all. If your school chooses location check-in, the phone's position is checked against the venue at the moment a student taps Check in, and that's what it's used for.
Who can see a student's photos?
Other students at the same school, in the feed for that game, and your office in the dashboard. Nobody outside the school.
What does the office see about a student?
Their display name, their school email, their check-ins, their calls, their points, the photos they've posted and their store orders. That's the whole record.
Where is the data kept?
In a managed cloud database, with each school's data walled off from every other school's. The app itself runs on Cloudflare's network, and passwords are never stored as plain text.
Ask the rest in person
A demo is the easiest place to ask about anything this page doesn't cover, and you'll get the answers in writing afterward if you want them.
Or email jackson@playgrandstand.com