Data Privacy
New Waverly Independent School District values the privacy of its students and employees. Data is a valuable commodity, and institutions must remain vigilant to protect the privacy of data entrusted to them. NWISD is committed to taking the steps necessary to be a trusted caretaker of the personal information within its responsibility. Furthermore, the district encourages students, parents, and employees to become educated on the issue of data privacy and security.
New Waverly ISD currently uses the National DPA, with an Exhibit G containing the Texas specific requirements. Potential vendors can view or download the current TX NDPA version here.
New Waverly ISD is part of the Texas Student Privacy Alliance (TXSPA), a collaboration of Texas
school districts that share common concerns around student privacy. The goal of the TXSPA is to
set standards of both practice and expectations around student privacy such that all parties
involved have a common understanding of expectations. To this end, the first outcome of the
TXSPA was the adoption and implementation of a common Data Privacy Agreement (DPA) to be
used by all member schools when implementing any online application. By adopting such a contract
all vendors and schools have common expectations when entering a relationship or implementation
without having to renegotiate terms in every new instance.
TXSPA is a member of the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC), a collaboration of schools,
districts, divisions, regional, territories and state agencies, policy makers, trade organizations and
marketplace providers addressing real-world, adaptable, and implementable solutions to growing
data privacy concerns. Some of the main goals of the consortium are to establish a community of
stakeholders who have various needs and to develop a clearinghouse of student data privacy
operational resources to support schools, districts, states and vendors in managing data privacy.
One of these resources is a National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA) that streamlines application
contracting and sets common expectations between schools/districts and marketplace
providers/vendors. The NDPA has been developed with extensive review and comments from all
stakeholders and is designed to address common student data privacy concerns and streamline the
contracting processes for users with limited legal or fiscal resources for “one off” contracts with
each of the over 13,000 US school districts. TXSPA, as a member of the SDPC, now recommends
the use of the NDPA.
Another resource is a National Research Data Privacy Agreement (NRDPA) to streamline data
sharing agreements and set common expectations between schools/districts and researchers.
Modeled after the successful NDPA, the NRDPA is a collaboratively built and standardized
agreement for schools and research organizations to use for FERPA’s research studies exception.
The exception allows for the disclosure without consent of existing personally identifiable
information (PII) from education records to organizations conducting studies “for, or on behalf of,”
educational agencies or institutions. These studies can only be for the purpose of developing,
validating, or administering predictive tests; administering student aid programs; or improving
instruction. The NRDPA describes the duties and responsibilities to protect existing Student Data
including compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local privacy laws, rules, and regulations.