Privacy Notice

This notice explains what personal information STEM+C collects about students and families, why we collect it, how long we keep it, and who can see it. It covers our robotics programs — Tie Dye Samurai and Tie Dye Jedi — and this website.

We are a small, volunteer-run nonprofit. We collect what we need to run a safe program and reach someone in an emergency, and not more than that.

Registration is completed by a parent or guardian

For any participant under 18, registration is completed by a parent or legal guardian — not by the student. The parent provides the student's information as part of their own signing session. We do not ask students to submit their personal information to us online.

This matters most for our younger participants. Tie Dye Jedi serves grades 6–9, and some participants are under 13. Directing collection through the parent is deliberate.

What we collect

• Student: name and grade. Email and phone are optional and we encourage families of younger students to leave them blank. We do not ask for a date of birth.
• Parents and guardians: name, email, phone, and relationship to the student, for at least one and optionally a second.
• Health and emergency information: allergies, medical conditions, activity restrictions, and medications our mentors would need to know about in an emergency.
• Your media choice: whether we may use photographs and video of the student.
• Signature records: the executed agreements, who signed, in what capacity, and when.
• Payment records: handled by our payment processor. We see that dues were paid and by whom; we do not receive or store card numbers or bank details.

We do not collect Social Security numbers, government ID numbers, immigration status, or school records.

What this website collects

Nothing about participants. This site is a set of static pages. Registration happens on a separate secure signing platform, and payments on a separate payment platform.

The one exception is our contact form, which sends us the name, email, and message you choose to type into it. Our web host keeps ordinary server logs, as any web host does. We do not use advertising trackers, and we do not sell or rent anyone's information — ever, to anyone.

Who can see it

• Coaches and program leadership, to run the program and respond to emergencies.
• Service providers that operate parts of the program on our behalf — our e-signature platform, payment processor, and email and messaging providers — which may use the information only to provide those services to us.
• FIRST and event hosts, where their own registration requires it. FIRST collects consent directly from families through its own system; that collection is governed by FIRST's privacy policy, not this one.
• Medical personnel, in an emergency.
• Anyone we are legally required to disclose to.

We do not share participant information with sponsors or donors. Aggregate figures we publish — such as the number of students in a season — never identify anyone.

How long we keep it

Signed agreements are retained as long as needed to establish that consent was given, which may extend past the season. Contact and emergency information is retained for the season and while a student remains in the program. Working copies made for team operations, such as an exported contact list, are deleted once they have served their purpose.

When a student leaves the program, we remove them from active rosters and messaging channels. Ask us and we will delete what we are not required to keep.

Your choices

• Media: you may decline media use at registration, and change your mind later by writing to us. We cannot recall material already published, and we cannot control recordings made by FIRST, event hosts, other teams, news media, or spectators at public events.
• Access and correction: ask us what we hold about your family and we will tell you, and correct anything wrong.
• Deletion: ask and we will delete what we are not required to retain.
• Optional fields are genuinely optional. Leaving them blank does not affect a student's participation.

How we protect it

Registration data lives with the e-signature platform that holds the signed agreements, rather than being copied across several systems. Access is limited to coaches and program leadership who need it. Exported copies are generated locally when needed for team operations and deleted afterward. We do not store participant information on this website or in our public source code.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not claim otherwise. If a breach affects your family's information, we will tell you.

Questions or concerns

Email info@stemplusc.org. If something here concerns you, raise it — we would rather adjust what we collect than have a family uncomfortable with it.

This notice sits alongside the Student & Family Team Agreement and the Consent, Assumption of Risk, Release & Emergency Authorization. Where the consent agreement addresses the same subject, it governs.