Your trust matters
to us

Who we are

Apple Pi Education LLC ("Apple Pi," "we," "us") partners with schools, districts, and families to build mathematical thinkers. This policy describes how we collect, use, and protect personal information through applepied.org, our newsletters, and our program communications.

Information we collect

Contact information you choose to share with us — such as your name, email address, phone number, organization, and role — when you submit a contact form, subscribe to our newsletter, apply to a role, or inquire about our programs.

Basic usage information about visits to our website (pages viewed, approximate region, device type) collected through standard web analytics to help us improve the site. We do not use website usage information to identify you. Email works differently, and "Email tracking" below explains exactly how.

Information about how you interact with email we send you — whether a message was opened, which links were followed and when, and a short line your mail app or browser sends describing itself. Unlike the website information above, this is connected to your contact or household record.

How we use information

To respond to inquiries, provide requested information about our programs, send newsletters you have subscribed to, coordinate partnerships, measure whether the email we send is useful to the people receiving it, and improve our website and services.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.

Email tracking

Some of the email we send tells us whether it was opened and which links were followed. Two things make that work. The first is a picture one dot wide, invisible in the message, that your mail app has to fetch from our server before it can show you the email — so the fetch itself is what tells us the message was opened. The name for it is a tracking pixel. The second is that we replace links in the message with links that pass through our server first, record the click, and send you straight on to where you were going. Most mailing services do both. We do it with our own software rather than an outside marketing company's.

Our newsletter and the mailings we send to families carry both. Some email we send carries neither. Certain links are never rewritten, on purpose: a request to sign a document, an application form, a file download, or any link that carries a sign-in code — because passing one of those through a second server would copy the key into a record that outlives the link. The unsubscribe link in any email is never rewritten and never counted. Links to applepied.org are rewritten, so a click through to our own website is counted like any other.

When a message is opened or a link is followed, we record the date and time, the address of the link, and a short line your mail app or browser sends describing itself — which app, which operating system. We keep roughly the first 180 characters of that line. We attach this to the record of the message we sent you, and through it to your contact or household record, so those records carry the date you last opened something, the date you last clicked, and running totals.

An "open" is a softer number than it sounds, and we would rather say so than let it look firmer than it is. Many mail apps fetch pictures automatically, before a person has read anything — so some of what we record is a machine and not a reader. We sort those two apart and count them separately, but that sorting is our own best guess and we do not treat it as fact.

We use this for one purpose: to learn whether what we send is worth sending, and to stop mailing people who never open anything. We do not use it to make any decision about a student's learning, placement, or program. We do not sell it and we do not send it to advertising networks. Like the rest of our systems it runs on infrastructure we rent — hosting, databases, and email delivery — and those providers are covered by "Sharing" below.

We keep these records indefinitely today. We have built a process that would remove the detail — when a message was opened, which link was followed, at what minute — 180 days after a message is sent, keeping only the totals. It is not switched on yet. When it is, we will say so here.

Unsubscribing stops the mail, and it also stops us recording new opens and clicks against your household. It does not remove what we have already recorded. If you want that removed as well, ask us and we will do it and tell you what was removed.

Students and children

Our public website is intended for adults — educators, district leaders, funders, and parents. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 through applepied.org.

Student learning services are delivered through our program platforms (such as Math Your Mind) under agreements with schools, districts, and families. Student data in those programs is collected and used only to deliver instruction, is protected consistent with applicable laws including FERPA and COPPA, and is never sold or used for advertising. See the applicable program privacy policy for details.

Sharing

We share personal information only with service providers who help us operate (for example, email delivery and website hosting) under obligations to protect it, with your direction or consent, or where required by law.

Security and retention

We use reasonable administrative and technical safeguards to protect personal information. We keep most personal information only as long as needed for the purposes described here or as required by law.

Email open and click records are the exception, and we would rather be plain about it than round it off: we keep those indefinitely today, along with our own copy of the message we sent you. "Email tracking" above explains what that includes and what we intend to change.

Your choices

You can unsubscribe from our newsletter at any time using the link in any email. That link goes straight to us — it is never redirected and never counted.

You may also contact us to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, and we will honor requests consistent with applicable law. Email open and click records are the slowest of these for us to act on, because they sit alongside the record that a message was sent at all; we remove them by hand and we will tell you plainly what was removed.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will update this page and revise the effective date above. Continued use of our website after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact us

Questions about this policy or your information? Reach us at info@applepied.org or 310.800.2242.