Privacy › Student names

What happens to student names?

The short version: names are swapped for placeholders in your browser before anything is sent, real names come back only on your screen, and we don't keep what you paste. Here's each step, plus the limits you should know about.

1. What you type

Depending on the tool, you paste a parent email (reply drafts), jot a few notes about your week (newsletter), or type notes per student (conference prep and follow-up). You can also give Homeroom your class roster and your own name, and in the conference kits a parent's email address, which is only used to fill the “Open in email app” link and is never sent to us.

2. What your browser replaces

Before anything is sent, code running on your own device swaps:

• student names → [STU_1], [STU_2]…: names on your roster, names typed in a tool's student field, and patterns like “my son Leo” or “Leo's mom”
• parent names → [PARENT_1]…: names typed in the parent field and patterns like “This is Dana Ruiz”, a greeting, a sign-off, or a name alone on a line
• other titled names (“Mr. Lee”) → [NAME_1]; your own name → [TEACHER]
• email addresses → [EMAIL_1] and phone numbers → [PHONE_1]

The same person gets the same placeholder everywhere in a request. In the conference kits, if a name you typed would still appear in what's about to be sent, Homeroom stops and tells you instead of sending.

Before and after

This is real output from Homeroom's redaction, with Leo Ruiz and Ava Chen on the roster and Ms. Carter as the teacher:

Hi Ms. Carter,

This is Dana Ruiz, Leo's mom. Leo was out sick Tuesday. Can he make up the spelling quiz? He said Ava Chen has his reading book, and he'd like to sit with Marcus again.

Thanks,
Dana Ruiz
(555) 201-3344 · dana.ruiz@example.com

Hi [TEACHER],

This is [PARENT_1], [STU_1]'s mom. [STU_1] was out sick Tuesday. Can he make up the spelling quiz? He said [STU_2] has his reading book, and he'd like to sit with Marcus again.

Thanks,
[PARENT_1]
[PHONE_1] · [EMAIL_1]

Notice Marcus: he isn't on the roster and isn't in a pattern Homeroom recognizes, so he was not replaced. That's the main limit, covered below.

3. What the AI receives

Only the placeholder text, plus your class facts and voice profile (which are redacted the same way). The list that maps [STU_1] back to “Leo” never leaves your browser. When the draft comes back, your browser puts the real names back in, on your screen only. Each tool has a privacy lens that shows exactly what was sent.

Homeroom's server sends that placeholder text to Cloudflare Workers AI (an open-source Llama model running on Cloudflare) for a single draft. If the AI is unavailable, it falls back to Homeroom's built-in templates, and only placeholder text is involved either way. Cloudflare states that Workers AI doesn't keep prompts or outputs after the response and doesn't use them to train models. We haven't signed a separate data-processing agreement for it, so Cloudflare's standard terms apply.

4. What's stored, and where

• In your browser only: your roster, your name, voice profile and past replies, class facts, and conference notes. They stay until you clear them (each tool has a clear button, or clear your browser's site data).
• Not stored on our servers: the emails, bullets and notes you paste, and the drafts that come back. Our error logs record error messages, not your text.
• What our servers do keep: short-lived rate-limit counters keyed to a scrambled (hashed) form of your IP address, with no text, deleted within two days; your email address if you join the waitlist or tips list; and what you submit in a school inquiry or data-deletion request (encrypted).
• Accounts (coming soon): when sign-in launches, signed-in teachers' voice profile, class facts and roster will sync to their account encrypted (AES-256-GCM). Any message content stored for the inbox connection, also coming soon, will be deleted automatically after 30 days.

5. What we never do

• Train AI models on your data
• Sell or share your data for advertising, or show ads
• Create student accounts or contact students
• Email parents for you. Every draft is copied and sent by you.

Honest limits

• Stray names can slip through. A name that isn't on your roster, isn't typed in a name field, and isn't in a recognizable pattern (like Marcus above) is sent as-is. Nicknames and misspellings too. Add your full roster in setup and glance at the privacy lens.
• Common-word names can be over-replaced. A student named Will or May can turn the word “will” or “may” into a placeholder. That's safe for privacy, but it can make a draft read oddly.
• Only names, emails and phone numbers are replaced. Addresses, student ID numbers, birthdays, school names and details like a diagnosis are not. Leave them out; sensitive topics belong in a call anyway, and Homeroom flags them.
• The leak check covers names you typed. In the conference kits, Homeroom refuses to send if a typed name would still appear. It can't catch names it was never told about.

Common questions

More: privacy in plain language · DPA summary for schools · request data deletion