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Data Retention and Deletion Policy

Effective date: June 1, 2026

This policy explains Via Nova Academy's intended retention and deletion practices. It is designed to support school workflows while minimizing unnecessary retention of student data.

Scope

This policy applies to data stored by Via Nova, including teacher accounts, class records, student records, scores, quiz attempts, point events, exports, audit logs, invitations, and support records.

Retention Principles

Via Nova retains data only as long as reasonably needed to:

  • Provide the service.
  • Support teacher and school workflows.
  • Maintain account security.
  • Preserve audit logs for sensitive actions such as PII-bearing exports.
  • Comply with legal, contractual, tax, accounting, or security obligations.

For child personal information, Via Nova retains information only as long as reasonably needed for the school-authorized educational purpose, security, auditability, legal obligations, or contract requirements.

Active Class Data

Active class data is retained while the teacher account or school account remains active, unless deletion is requested by an authorized teacher, school, or district.

Active class data may include:

  • Class settings and rosters.
  • Teacher-controlled student display names.
  • Student emails used for authentication and invitations.
  • Optional SIS IDs or school student IDs.
  • Teams/houses, avatars, badges, titles, and point totals.
  • Scores, score-entry records, quiz attempts, submissions, and point events.
  • Sanitized presentation data used for student-facing classroom views.

Class Templates

Teachers may save class configurations to a teacher library for reuse when creating future classes. This is template functionality, not a student-record archive.

Class templates are intended to preserve reusable setup information only, such as class structure or settings. They are not intended to retain student rosters, student emails, SIS IDs, scores, quiz attempts, submissions, point events, invite records, or other student education records.

Archived Classes

Via Nova allows teachers to archive classes. Archiving removes the class from ordinary active class selection and removes student access to the class, while preserving the class for teacher review and possible restoration.

When a class is archived, Via Nova also creates student keepsake records on each student's account. These records preserve personal badges, ribbons, final house scores/rankings, and house banner/avatar snapshots associated with that class.

Archived classes may be restored by the teacher. Restoring a class returns it to active teacher class selection and restores active student enrollments from the class roster.

Permanently Deleted Classes

Permanent class deletion is available only after a class has been archived. Teachers must confirm that deleted classes cannot be recovered.

Before permanently deleting a class, Via Nova refreshes each student's keepsake record for that class. Via Nova then removes the classroom record, classroom subcollections, class-owned media, enrollments, and related class session records from active application storage.

Student keepsake records and minimal deletion audit records may remain after permanent deletion. These retained records should not include student PII beyond what is necessary for the student-visible keepsake itself or for a minimal audit trail. Other non-student-PII operational records may remain temporarily or separately where needed for security, auditability, support, export logs, backups, vendor retention, legal obligations, or technical cleanup.

Deletion Requests

Via Nova will process verified deletion requests from authorized teachers, schools, districts, or account owners.

Parent or guardian requests about child personal information should generally be routed through the school unless Via Nova has a direct relationship with the parent or guardian.

Operational target:

  • Acknowledge verified deletion requests within 10 business days.
  • Delete active application records or de-identify them by removing information that identifies a specific student within 30 days where technically and contractually feasible.
  • Vendor backups and infrastructure copies may persist for a limited period according to vendor terms, including Google/Firebase deletion timelines.

Deletion may be delayed where retention is required for security, legal, dispute, or audit reasons.

Student Invitations

Student invitation data should be limited to what is needed to invite and authenticate a student, such as email address, display name, class ID, invite status, and timestamps.

Recommended retention target:

  • Accepted invitations may be retained as part of the student's class enrollment record while the class remains active.

Google Sheets Exports

Via Nova does not control copies of data after a teacher exports data to Google Sheets. Exported spreadsheets are controlled by the destination Google account.

Via Nova keeps audit logs for PII-bearing exports, including export profile, destination/purpose metadata, teacher identity, class ID, source type, spreadsheet ID, and timestamp. These audit logs may be copied to retained audit storage so export evidence survives permanent class deletion.

Retained export audit logs are compliance metadata only. They should not include exported student names, student emails, SIS IDs, scores, notes, spreadsheet URLs, raw exported rows, or other private classroom records. Retained logs include the export date and, after class deletion, the class deletion date so Via Nova can identify records for future retention cleanup.

Recommended retention target:

  • Retain PII-bearing export audit logs for at least 3 years unless a school contract requires a different period.
  • Retain summary-only export logs for at least 1 year unless a school contract requires a different period.

Support Records

Support messages may include account, troubleshooting, and operational details. Teachers and administrators should not send student PII in support requests unless necessary.

Recommended retention target:

  • Retain support records for up to 3 years, unless a longer period is needed for security, legal, or customer-support reasons.

Backups and Vendor Deletion

Some data may remain in backups or vendor-managed systems for a limited period after deletion from active systems. Via Nova relies on its subprocessors' deletion commitments and security controls for these systems. See the Vendor and Subprocessor Disclosure for more detail about Via Nova's service providers.

Contact

Questions or deletion requests can be sent to:

privacy@vianovaacademy.com