Walking School Bus

Privacy Policy

Effective October 6, 2026

Walking School Bus helps families coordinate school transportation. Account and bus information is stored in the cloud so invited members can see the same current schedule.

Information we process

• Account identifiers such as email address, phone number, or Google/Apple sign-in identifier.
• Parent profile names, children’s first names, school selections, bus membership, schedules, and attendance choices.
• Bus messages and emergency contacts that a parent chooses to share.
• Feedback messages, category, account identifier, platform, and app language. Older feedback records may also contain the account email supplied at the time.
• Basic technical information needed for authentication, security, diagnostics, and reliable syncing.

How information is used

We use this information only to provide account access, bus invitations, shared schedules, messaging, emergency quick links, security, feedback follow-up, and support. Walking School Bus does not sell personal information and does not include advertising or payments in this release.

Children and location

The app is designed for parents and guardians. It does not collect continuous or real-time location. Parents should enter only the information needed to coordinate their bus and should not include private details about children in feedback.

Sharing and service providers

Information is shared with members of a bus according to the controls in the app. Feedback is private to the service operator. Cloud authentication and storage are provided using Google Firebase. School search sends the typed search text, a search-session token, and a selected place identifier to Google Places. Public holiday lookup sends the school’s country code and a year to Nager.Date (date.nager.at), with results cached on the device for 30 days. These requests do not include account or child identifiers, but the providers can receive connection metadata such as the network IP address. These providers process data under their own terms and security practices.

Retention and deletion

App information remains until you delete it or it is no longer needed to operate the service. Feedback is retained for private review by the service operator until account deletion or operator removal. There is no individual feedback deletion control in the app. Account deletion also removes your feedback and per-account feedback rate-limit record. Aggregate feedback limit counters do not contain network identifiers. Provider logs and backups may remain under the providers’ retention policies; immediate erasure from these systems is not guaranteed. See the account deletion instructions.

Security and choices

Group invitation links are reusable by invited families for 7 days unless the organizer deactivates them. A family-sharing invitation is for one other parent or guardian and also expires after 7 days or when deactivated. Keep these links private and share only with intended participants. Parents can remove children, schedules, contacts, and buses from the app.

Policy changes

Material changes will be reflected on this page with a new effective date.