Privacy Policy

Version 1.0 · Last updated: 2026-10-16

The short version

Trellis is operated by Michael Bruder. We collect what a homeschool co-op needs to run classes and nothing more. We don't sell personal information, and we don't use it for advertising. Trellis doesn't use analytics, advertising or tracking scripts.

Whose information we handle

Co-op admins, teachers and parents, who create accounts.
Students, who are often children. Co-ops and parents add students. Students don't sign up or accept terms on their own.

Co-ops and parents can give a student their own sign-in by adding the student's email. Otherwise the student's record is managed by a parent.

What we collect

Account information: name, email, password (stored only as a secure hash), role, and the co-op and family you belong to.

Children's information, added by the co-op, parents or teachers:

Student names, and email if a parent or co-op adds one
Course enrollments, assignments, submissions and uploaded files
Grades and transcripts, including outside credits a co-op records
Teacher notes about a student
Messages and discussion posts
Class-fee charges linked to a family

Billing information: Stripe handles card details. We don't see or store full card numbers. We keep records such as your plan, billing status and class-fee charge records.

Technical and security records: sign-in attempts, a log of emails we sent (without addresses or message content), and an audit log of administrative actions.

How we use it

To run Trellis for your co-op: sign-ins, classes, grades, messages, registration, billing and class fees, plus support and security, and service emails such as invites and password links. We don't use children's information for marketing.

The co-op decides which students to add and what to record. The co-op is responsible for getting any parental consent needed before adding a student. Parents who want to see, correct or delete their child's information should start with their co-op. You can also contact us, and we'll work with the co-op. This includes consent for children under 13.

Who can see what

Co-op admins can see their co-op's information.
Teachers can see information for their courses.
Parents can see their family's information.
Students with a sign-in can see their own courses, assignments, submissions, grades and transcript, along with course files, discussions, messages and the calendar.
A teacher's private notes are visible only to the teacher who wrote them. Co-op admins, other teachers, parents, students and Trellis support can't see them.
We (Michael Bruder, as platform operator) can see data only when that's needed for support, security or keeping the service running.

Service providers (subprocessors)

We share data only with the providers we need to run Trellis:

Provider	What they do
Amazon Web Services (AWS)	Hosting, database, file storage, backups
Stripe	Plan billing (Stripe-hosted Checkout) and co-op class fees (Stripe Connect). You reach Stripe by redirect; we don't load Stripe scripts on our pages.
Resend	Sending service emails

These are the only third parties that handle your data.

Cookies

Our public pages, such as the home, pricing, sign-in and registration pages, set no cookies. After you sign in, Trellis uses only its own cookies:

a session cookie that keeps you signed in
a cookie used when Trellis support views a co-op to help with a request
a short-lived cookie that shows a notice after you change your password

We don't use third-party, analytics or advertising cookies.

Security

Trellis is hosted on AWS in the us-east-2 (Ohio) region. Data is encrypted in transit (the site works over HTTPS only) and at rest, including the server disk, backups and uploaded files. We don't currently hold security certifications. Access is limited by role. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we'll let you know as the law requires.

How long we keep information

Administrative audit log: kept for 1 year, then deleted automatically by a nightly cleanup.
Sign-in attempt records: kept for 30 days, then deleted automatically.
Email send log (no addresses or content): kept for 7 days, then deleted automatically.
Co-op content (courses, grades, submissions, files, messages, teacher notes, class-fee records, families and memberships): kept while the co-op uses Trellis. When a co-op is deleted, we delete its records and uploaded files. Deleted files are permanently removed within about 30 days. A co-op on a paid plan needs to cancel first.
User accounts aren't deleted when a co-op is deleted. Only the membership in that co-op is removed, so people can keep using Trellis with other co-ops. To delete your account, email support@bruder.is.
Backups: deleted data may remain in our encrypted backups for up to about 40 days before it's gone.
Deletion record: we keep an audit record that a co-op was deleted for 1 year.
A teacher can delete a teacher note, and it's removed.