Thank you for visisting Belmont Public Schools Web sites. The Belmont Public Schools system maintains these Web sites as a basic public service. BPS Web sites collect no personal information about you when you visit the Web sites unless you choose to provide that information to the Web sites. The Belmont Public Schools system does not give, share, sell, or transfer any personal information to a third party. The following is the privacy statement for these Web sites.

BPS Web sites do not collect personally identifiable information unless you choose to provide it to the Web sites. Personal information that you provide via e-mail or through other online means such as a Web form will be used only for purposes necessary to serve your needs. This may involve redirecting your inquiry or comment to another person or department better suited to meeting your needs. All uses of that information are described on the Web page containing the form. We make every effort to disclose clearly how information is used at the point where it is collected so you can determine whether you wish to provide the information.

When we collect sensitive information we use a technology called 'Secure Sockets Layer', (SSL). SSL technology protects data transferred over the Internet by encrypting information so it cannot be accessed or changed. You can confirm that you are on a SSL protected page. Check to make sure the URL begins with "https" rather than "http" and/or look for a padlock icon on the bottom left or bottom right of your browser.

There may be cases where your browser reports insecure items, the padlock is not displayed or is displayed with a red slash. This happens because the page also contains items that do not need to be encrypted such as images, or style sheets.

Nevertheless, if the URL begins with "https" you can be assured that sensitive information remain encrypted and secure even though the padlock icon disappears.

The information BPS Web sites collect when you subscribe to one of BPS e-mail lists is used solely to administer these lists and is not shared, disclosed or sold to other organizations.

You can always remove yourself from a list to which you have subscribed. Simply go to the free mailing lists sign-up page, Belmont Public Schools E-mail Lists, select a list then enter your email address, and click the "Unsubscribe or edit options" button.

Under federal and state laws and regulations, the school may release for publication certain information concerning you and/or your child(ren) without first obtaining your consent, UNLESS you inform us otherwise. Opt-out form is available here. Occasionally a picture of a particular school activity such as a science project, a play, artwork, sporting event, or other activity may be posted. This may involve posting a picture showing a student or group of students or a sample of a student’s work. If a student’s picture or work is used, these are the guidelines we follow:

• Only first names shall be used if referencing student pictures or scanned classroom work.
• Personal information will not be published
• Documents will not include information that indicates the physical location of a student at a given time other than attendance at a particular school or participation in an activity.

These Web sites contains links to other Web sites. The school system cannot monitor all linked resources, only those pages that fall directly within the Belmont Public School System web structure. Belmont Public School System is in no way responsible for the content of these linked resources and the statements, views, and opinions expressed therein are neither endorsed by nor do they reflect the opinion of the school system.
Once you link to another site, you are then subject to the privacy policies of the new site.
Your rights under the Privacy Act: Information on the Privacy Act can be found on the following web site: http://www.cftc.gov/foia/foiprivacyact.htm

Cookies are commonly used on Web sites to enhance user experience or to track session time-outs. BPS Web sites, however, do not use cookies.

If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the Web sites, read pages, or download information, BPS Web servers will gather and store certain information about your visit automatically.

BPS Web services use the server logs to help make BPS Web sites more useful to visitors, to learn about the number of visitors to the Web sites, and the types of technology our visitors use. BPS Web services do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.

BPS Web services use log analysis tools to create summary statistics. These statistics help assess trends, determine technical requirements, and identify system performance or problem areas. This information may also be used for site security purposes, to ensure the service remains available to users, to detect unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, and discern misuse of resources that might otherwise cause damage. Unauthorized attempts to upload or change information on BPS web servers are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act or other law. Examples of the types of information collected in our logs include:

• User Client hostname - The hostname (or IP address if DNS is disabled) of the user/client requesting access.
• HTTP header, "user-agent" - The user-agent information includes the type of browser, its version, and the operating system it's running on.
• HTTP header, "referrer" - The referrer specifies the page from which the client accessed the current page.
• System date - The date and time of the user/client request.
• Full request - The exact request the user/client made.
• Content length - The content length, in bytes, of the document sent to the user/client.
• Method - The request method used.
• Universal Resource Identifier (URI) - The location of a resource on the server.
• Query string of the URI - Anything after the question mark in a URI.
• Protocol - The transport protocol and version used.

Special restrictions on a visitor's license to access the Web sites apply to Non-Human Visitors. Non-Human Visitors include, but are not limited to, web spiders, bots, indexers, robots, crawlers, harvesters, or any other computer programs designed to access, read, compile or gather content from the Web sites automatically. Non-Human Visitors are restricted from taxing the resources of the Web sites beyond what would be typical of a human visitor.

Because of their potential for abuse, in consideration for access to the sites, non-human visitors are required to read and observe the industry-standard restrictions as set forth in the robots.txt file.

As specified by the "no-email-collection" meta-tag and the robots.txt file, email addresses on these sites are considered proprietary intellectual property of the Belmont Public School System. These email addresses are provided for human visitors alone, and have value in part because they are only accessible to said human visitors. Intentional collection, harvesting, gathering, or otherwise storing email addresses by non-human visitors is recognized as theft or diminution of value of the Belmont Public Schools’ intellectual property and expressly prohibited.

The Web site is not a contract.

The statements set forth in these web sites are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as the basis of a contract between the Belmont Public School System and any individual. While every effort will be made to insure accuracy of the material stated herein, Belmont Public School System reserves the right to change any provision listed in these web sites without notice to any individual.

Many of the resources linked from these web sites are not maintained by the Belmont Public School System. The school system cannot monitor all linked resources, only those pages that fall directly within the Belmont Public School System web structure. Belmont Public School System is in no way responsible for the content of these linked resources and the statements, views, and opinions expressed therein are neither endorsed by nor do they reflect the opinion of the school system.

The contents of all materials on these Web sites are copyrighted by Belmont Public School System unless otherwise indicated. All rights are reserved by BPS. When you access the BPS Copyright requests should be directed to the web content manager at webmaster@belmont.k12.ma.us

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices or your use of the BPS Web sites, please contact:

By Mail:

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
BELMONT PUBLIC SCHOOLS
644 PLEASANT STREET
BELMONT MASSACHUSETTS 02478

By Phone: (617) 993-5450
By Fax: 617-993-5459
By Email: webmaster@belmont.k12.ma.us