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Clarkston board approves Lightspeed Digital Insight to monitor third‑party apps and student data
Summary
The Clarkston Community School District Board approved a three‑year, $78,750 purchase of Lightspeed Digital Insight to identify third‑party apps that collect student data and help the district comply with FERPA, COPPA and CIPA.
The Clarkston Community School District Board of Education approved a three‑year purchase agreement for the Lightspeed Digital Insight platform to monitor third‑party applications and student‑data flows.
Superintendent Dr. Ryan told the board the tool will help the district meet federal privacy requirements under FERPA, COPPA and CIPA and make it easier to maintain a list of district‑approved vendors. "We were quite surprised to see that, after a month of analyzing it, there was over 1,000 different apps that is collecting and sending data," said Kevin Emmons, who presented the product to the board. The contract term is three years at a total cost of $78,750, according to the motion presented at the meeting.
The district said the platform installs monitoring software on district devices to identify software and services that share or collect student information, flags vendors that have or have not signed national student‑privacy pledges, and supports posting the approved‑vendor list to the district website for transparency. Emmons said the tool also helps the district detect new apps introduced by teachers after conferences or workshops so staff can assess whether those vendors need data‑privacy agreements.
Board members asked about overlap with existing systems and how the purchase would be funded. One board member described the product as "one of those subscription apps that tells you all the subscriptions that you have," and asked for a future presentation on the district's overall technology safeguards. Dr. Ryan said the district already uses monitoring services (he named Gaggle as an example) and will fund Lightspeed from the technology portion of the general fund. "This is something that is new that has come to our attention ... we have earmarked out of our own budget from the technology portion of the general fund the cost for this annually," Dr. Ryan said.
The board moved and supported the purchase agreement. The motion passed on a voice vote with the board president calling for "aye" and announcing the motion carried.
The district said the Lightspeed platform found substantially more apps in 30 days than staff had manually identified over several months, and district leaders said they expect operational savings from consolidating subscriptions and identifying underused paid tools.
