Technology Staff
Chris Moore
IT Support Specialist
cmoore@sau15.net
Quick Links
- Candia School District 2022-2025 Technology Plan
- Candia School District Digital Tools Registry
- Tech Help and Support Form
Student Data Privacy
Protecting student and staff personally identifiable information (PII)
At the Candia School District, we work continuously to secure our staff and student data. Parents and educators should be aware that the FBI has warned school districts that student data is a very valuable target for cybercriminals. This is because students do not have an established credit record, and their identities are easier to impersonate; but also, because cybercriminals are collecting, selling, and saving data sets for future crimes.
For assistance with data privacy concerns, please contact Chief Information Security Officer, Daniel Roma, at droma@sau15.net.
Candia’s Approach
We take data privacy very seriously, while striving to support educational innovation. Since the passage of HB1612 we have taken the following steps:
- The Technology department strives to maintain best security practices, as it has for many years.
- The Candia School Board approved a Data Governance Policy in 2019 .
- We created a Data Governance Plan in 2019, and review the plan regularly with the School Board.
- During the 2019-20 school year, we evaluated each and every online tool that we use in the district to determine if the tool collects student or staff PII; if it does, we ask the vendor to sign a NH Data Privacy Agreement (NH DPA). In short, we do not accept the vendor’s out of the box privacy terms – we ask them to accept ours. Vendors who do not agree are not used in the district.
(It is important to note that data security encompasses a wide range of practices on local and cloud-hosted servers, and we do not publish or share details of our security approach, per RSA 91-A:5, XI)
NH State Law
District policies and procedures align to NH RSA 189:66, V. This RSA was amended in 2018 (HB1612) to give the NH Department of Education, NH school districts, and application vendors the responsibility to secure our student and staff PII. We are also responsible to federal laws such as FERPA, COPPA and CIPA.
Schools have a longstanding culture of adopting free online tools because of tight budgets and to help engage students in their learning. Unfortunately, data privacy was often not a consideration when selecting these tools, a concern that the NH Legislature addressed by passing HB1612.
