Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

In the world of media and communication, students often find “what’s cool” before the adults in their lives do. This is particularly true for Web 2.0 sites, applications and services, and the number of online tools and services that offer educational benefit has increased exponentially in recent years. Penn Charter carefully reviews these online programs and services to determine the appropriateness for our students. In some cases, these online programs and services require personally identifiable information (PII); gen­er­ally a student’s name, e-mail address, and username. While many of these programs and services are suitable for children under 13, federal law requires parental/guardian consent for sites that ask for PII.

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law enacted in 1998, requires operators of online programs and services that collect and maintain PII to pro­vide parental noti­fi­ca­tion and obtain parental con­sent before col­lect­ing PII from chil­dren under the age of 13. The law per­mits schools, such as Penn Charter, to do the col­lec­tion of per­sonal infor­ma­tion on behalf of all of its stu­dents, thereby elim­i­nat­ing the need for indi­vid­ual parental con­sent given directly to the web site operator. A form specific to COPPA is included in Penn Charter's summer forms.

Penn Charter is committed to abiding by the federal regulations designed to protect children and to honoring the Quaker testimonies of integrity, stewardship and community by requesting parental consent for students under the age of 13 to use online programs and services. 

If your child is interested in using websites and online services, we encourage you to check the Terms of Service and Privacy Policies to understand what age restrictions may be in place.