Opt-Out Forms & Consent Policy

Privacy and consent at Polaris

Families and students should know what's being collected and have a real say in whether they take part.

Privacy policy

Polaris is FERPA and COPPA compliant. The full policy is at polariseducation.ai/privacy.

We collect names, emails, the audio and written submissions students choose to share, and standard technical data like usage logs and cookies. Sensitive demographics (race, ethnicity, sexual orientation) are only collected if a student opts in. We use the data to run the platform: account management, analytics, and security. Polaris has no ads, nothing is sold, and nothing is shared with third parties for their own marketing.

A small set of vendors processes data under contractual limitations: Auth0, Mixpanel, Turbopuffer, Digital Ocean, Anthropic, and Cortico. Each school keeps control of its own records, and everything is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Students can ask their school to access, correct, or delete their data at any time. When a school's account is closed, the data attached to it is deleted with it.

Empathy Interview Consent Form

We provide a template consent form for families. It's a Google Doc you can copy and adapt for your district:

View or copy the Empathy Interview Consent Form

The template explains how student data is anonymized. Student names become grade-level labels like "7th Grade Student," and voice audio can be altered if a family asks. Audio and transcripts are used for research and professional development, and never sold or marketed. Participation is voluntary, and students can pause, stop, or leave any conversation.

Families can opt out at any time by emailing support@polariseducation.ai or contacting the school administrator.

In-app consent at recording time

Beyond the take-home form, every student sees a consent prompt the first time they open a recording. It lays out what Polaris does with the recording and what rights they have, then asks directly: Do you consent to participate?

If they say yes, Polaris asks a second question: voice privacy. Choosing "Change my voice" means a computer-generated voice reads their words back to teachers instead of playing their real audio. The transcript still shows their exact words; only the playback is regenerated.

If a student declines, Polaris tells them that's a fair choice and points them back to their teacher or counselor to find another way to take part. Nothing is recorded and they aren't sent into the conversation. Plan for this before the day — decide in advance what an opted-out student does while their group records, because Polaris won't give them an activity.

Students can revisit both choices any time at polariseducation.ai/settings under Privacy.

Allowing your devices access

If your district runs a content filter or blocked-domain list, two things need to be reachable from student devices before Polaris will work:

• polariseducation.ai: the recording flow runs in the browser, so the domain needs to be open. Microphone access must be permitted for it too — a policy that blocks the mic will let the page load and then fail silently at record time.
• Our sign-in provider: authentication happens on a hosted login page rather than on polariseducation.ai itself, so that domain needs to be reachable as well. If your school signs in with Google accounts, accounts.google.com and Google's other auth endpoints need to be open too. Ask us for the exact hostnames to hand your IT team.

If any of these is blocked, the page may load but the sign-in step will hang. If you need to make the case to your IT team, our privacy policy and the Common Sense Privacy review linked from our main page cover what data we collect and how we protect it.