How Home Year uses family information

Last updated September 22, 2026. This page is for families using Home Year, a private homeschool tracker. It is not a curriculum, a school, or a government filing.

Who this is for

A parent or legal guardian age 18 or older creates the household login. Children do not create a family account on their own. Kids Zone is meant for children in that household, including children under 13, after a parent adds them.

Children’s privacy (COPPA)

Home Year follows the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In plain words:

Only a parent or guardian signs up with an email.
Adding a child on Parents — with a first name, last name, and PIN — is that parent’s consent for the child to use Kids Zone under this household.
Kids jump in with first name, last name, and PIN. We do not ask a child for an email on that path.
A parent can edit or remove a child, change the PIN, or cancel the household account.
We do not sell children’s information, and we do not use it for advertising.

To review, change, or delete a child’s information, sign in on Parents or email michael.kowalke@home-year.com.

What we collect

From a parent: email, password (stored by our login provider, not in plain text), display name, household name, homeschooling state, school year, Kids Zone rules you set, optional notes you leave in the Parents Lounge, gradebook scores you enter for schoolwork, reading-log entries, push-subscription details if you turn on Phone Alerts, and billing details needed to run the household plan (handled by Stripe — we store payment status and Stripe customer/subscription ids, not full card numbers).

From a child the parent adds: first name, last name, grade, PIN (stored only as a one-way hash), optional kid email if a parent still uses the old email login, splat-zone choice, schoolwork checkoffs and quiz answers the child submits, school-day logs, and a Splat run high score posted with first name, grade, and score.

Technical basics such as sign-in sessions, device/browser info needed for push alerts, and basic server logs may also be stored so the app can keep you logged in and stay reliable.

How we use it

We use this information to run the tracker: sign you in, show the right household, let kids check off work, let parents review it, keep school-day records, take payment for the household plan, send optional phone alerts you enable, and build the packet you download. Lounge posts are visible to other Home Year parents in the same state. Those posts should use first names and family names only — no emails. Splat run high scores are visible in Kids Zone and show first name, grade, place, and score only — no last names.

Who can see it / processors

People in your household who are signed in can see that household’s records. Signed-in Kids Zone users can also see the Splat run leaderboard for their grade (first name, place, and score). The site owner can see family rows on the admin desk in order to keep the product running.

We use service providers to operate Home Year, including:

Supabase — login and database storage
Vercel — hosting the website and API
Stripe — household plan payments
Web Push / browser vendors — delivering Phone Alerts if you turn them on

Those providers process data only to provide their service to us. We do not sell personal information.

How long we keep it

We keep household data while the account is open. If you cancel the account from Settings, we delete the family rows we hold in our database (children, plan items, attendance, completions, and related household records). Sign-in records at the login provider, Stripe billing history Stripe is required to keep, and short-lived server logs may take extra time to clear. Backups may retain copies briefly until they rotate out.

You can also email michael.kowalke@home-year.com to request access, correction, or deletion. We may need to verify you are the household parent before we act.

Security

We use industry-standard hosting and hashed PINs/passwords where applicable. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure. You are responsible for keeping parent passwords and child PINs private.

Contact

Privacy questions: michael.kowalke@home-year.com. Also see the Terms & Conditions.

Home Year is operated from Ohio, United States.