Keystone Oaks OKs YouTube, Maps; Parental Consent Plan Unspecified | The Locally Times
A district plan to meet federal privacy rules gives students access to YouTube and Google Maps, but leaves parental consent and third-party app approvals unspecified.
The Keystone Oaks School District announced on April 22, 2026, a new initiative aimed at strengthening student privacy and preparing for updates to the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). According to a notice posted on the district’s website, the plan includes publishing a public, online list of all approved digital tools used by students, complete with links to each company’s privacy policy. The district stated its goal is to achieve full compliance with the updated COPPA requirements by April 22, 2026. COPPA mandates that online services for children under 13 must be clear about the information they collect and must obtain appropriate parental consent. The district’s notice acknowledges that because schools select and require these digital tools, they have a responsibility to be transparent about application usage and data handling. The district provides student personal information to Google to facilitate the creation of these accounts. Through this platform, students can access a set of what Google terms “Core Services.” The district’s notice specifies these services include educational and productivity tools such as Assignments, Calendar, Classroom, Drive and Docs, Gmail, and Google Meet. The list of core services also includes Google Chat, Google Chrome Sync, Cloud Search, Google Vault, Groups for Business, Keep, Migrate, Sites, and Tasks. These services are accessible to students using their district-provided Google Workspace for Education accounts. The document does not name these other third-party services, outline the criteria administrators use for their approval, or describe the process for adding them to the district’s approved list. The announcement also does not detail the specific process for how the district obtains and verifies the appropriate parental consent required by COPPA for the use of these commercial platforms and third-party applications. The district has committed to publishing the public list of digital tools to fulfill its transparency goal. According to the announcement, the list will identify all approved applications and provide direct links to each company’s privacy policy for families to review.