Effective date: July 31, 2026.
Mills River Elementary PTO (“the PTO,” “we,” “us”) runs this website, millsriverschoolpto.com, to keep parents, teachers, and our school community informed and connected. This page explains what information we collect through the site, why, and what choices you have. We’ve tried to write it in plain English rather than legal boilerplate — if anything is unclear, just ask (see Questions? below).
Information we collect
Newsletter and mailing list. If you sign up for PTO emails — through the sign-up box in the footer of every page, or the fuller sign-up form on the homepage, which also lets you optionally choose your child’s grade level(s) so we can send grade-specific news — we store your email address, an optional name, which topics you want (general newsletter, fundraisers, events, volunteer opportunities), and any grade level(s) you selected. You must click a confirmation link in an email before you’re added to any mailing list (double opt-in); until you confirm, your address isn’t used for anything and is automatically deleted after 30 days if you never confirm. If we imported an address from our previous mailing list, we ask you to re-confirm before sending anything the same way — imported addresses aren’t subject to that 30-day auto-delete while they’re awaiting re-confirmation.
Contact form and teacher request form. If you write to us through the site, we store your name, email address, and message so we can reply and keep a record. The contact form also stores a one-way cryptographic hash of your IP address (not the address itself) to help us catch spam — it can’t be reversed back into your actual IP. The teacher request form also writes an entry to our security and activity log, which records the actual IP address the request came from — see Security and activity log below.
Event RSVPs and volunteer sign-ups. If you RSVP to an event or claim a volunteer slot, we collect your name, email, and whatever else the form asks for (for example, party size or notes) so we can plan the event or shift.
Accounts for board members, teachers, and volunteer editors. A small number of people who help run the site — PTO board members, teachers, and volunteer content editors — have login accounts. Account information includes name, email, and a password (stored as a secure one-way hash — we never see or store your actual password). The public cannot create an account on this site — accounts exist only by board invitation. Sign-ins, password resets, and content changes made through an account are logged — see Security and activity log below.
Security and activity log. When you take an action on the site — signing up for or unsubscribing from the newsletter, confirming a subscription, changing your email preferences, RSVPing to an event or canceling an RSVP, claiming or releasing a volunteer slot, sending a teacher request, or (for account holders) signing in, resetting a password, making a content change, or other account actions such as accepting an invitation or confirming an email change — the site records that action in a security log along with the IP address it came from, and your email address where one was given. That means using the newsletter sign-up box in the footer of any page records your IP address in this log, the same as the other actions above. This log is kept indefinitely as an internal security and accountability record, standard practice for a site that handles PTO funds and restricted access. You can contact us about information in this log (see Questions? below).
Anti-bot verification. Cloudflare Turnstile — a challenge that confirms you’re a person rather than an automated bot, without the annoying “click all the traffic lights” puzzles — loads only when you start filling in a protected form: the footer newsletter box or the contact form, for example. The login page and the teacher request page load it as soon as the page opens instead. If you just read other pages on the site without touching one of those forms, your browser never contacts Cloudflare and you get no Turnstile cookie. When it does load, Turnstile processes technical browser signals and your IP address to make its call; we don’t see any of that ourselves, only whether you passed.
Site visits. We don’t currently run a visitor-analytics tool — no visit counts, no page-popularity stats. The only record we keep of site traffic is our host’s standard server logs (see Server logs below).
Language preference. If you switch the site to Spanish, we set a small cookie that remembers your choice on your next visit.
Donations, and payments not yet turned on. Online donations are live today, as a link-out: the Donate button on this site shows you a short informational notice, then takes you to GiveButter (givebutter.com), a separate donation platform, to complete your gift. We collect nothing in that flow — no payment information, no donor information. Everything from that point on happens on GiveButter’s own site, under GiveButter’s own privacy policy.
The Spirit Wear store, Fast Pass, and any other on-site card payments are not live on this site today; the related pages return a “not found” page until the board turns them on. When they are:
- Card payments will be handled directly by our payment processor (the site is currently built for Stripe; the board may choose a different processor before this feature launches) — the PTO’s own server will never receive or store your full card number.
- Some of these features ask for your child’s first name and teacher or grade — for example, to identify a Spirit Wear pickup or print a Fast Pass hangtag. That information comes from you, the parent, and is used only to run that specific activity (see Children’s privacy below).
- The payment processor may set its own fraud-prevention cookies as part of checkout.
Server logs. Like virtually every website, our hosting provider keeps standard technical logs (IP address, browser type, pages requested) for security and troubleshooting. These are not used to build a profile of you.
Information we do not collect
- We don’t run advertising trackers, marketing pixels, or third-party ad cookies.
- We don’t sell or rent your information to anyone, for any reason.
- We don’t knowingly collect personal information directly from children (see below).
- We never see or store full payment card numbers, even once payments are turned on.
How we use cookies
| Cookie | Who gets it | Purpose | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Session cookie | Every visitor | Keeps the site’s forms working, and keeps staff signed in to the admin area | HttpOnly, Secure, expires after 30 minutes of inactivity |
| Language preference | Any visitor who switches languages | Remembers English/Spanish choice | HttpOnly, Secure, lasts 1 year |
| Cloudflare Turnstile | Visitors who start filling in a protected form, or open the login/teacher-request pages | Confirms you’re not a bot | Set by Cloudflare only when the widget loads — not on every page |
| Payment processor cookies | Only once payments are turned on | Fraud prevention during checkout | Set by the payment processor, not by us |
How we use your information
We use what you give us only to run the PTO: to send you the newsletter or updates you signed up for, respond to your message, confirm your RSVP or volunteer slot, verify a pickup, keep the login system secure, and — once turned on — process an on-site order (the online store or Fast Pass). Donations are handled entirely by GiveButter once you leave our site (see Payments above). We don’t use your information for anything beyond what you gave it to us for, and we don’t build advertising profiles.
Who we share information with
We work with a small number of service providers to run the site. None of them are allowed to use your information for their own purposes.
- SiteGround — our web host. Stores the site’s database and sends PTO emails (like newsletters and receipts) on our behalf.
- Cloudflare — screens out bots on the site’s protected forms (Turnstile). The site isn’t routed through Cloudflare as a proxy, so this is its only current role here.
- GiveButter — processes online donations if you click through from our Donate button. We don’t send them any information about you; you interact with GiveButter directly, under GiveButter’s own privacy policy.
- Stripe (once payments are turned on) — processes store and Fast Pass payments. Stripe receives your payment details directly; we don’t.
- Anthropic (Claude API) — automatically translates the PTO’s own site content (such as pages, posts, events, meeting minutes, resources, volunteer sheets, classroom pages, and board bios) into Spanish. It never receives subscriber emails, subscriber or donor names, donor information, order details, or any other private information — only the PTO’s own already-public written content.
We don’t share your information with advertisers, data brokers, or anyone else outside of running this site.
How long we keep information
- Unconfirmed newsletter sign-ups are automatically deleted after 30 days if never confirmed. (Imported addresses awaiting re-confirmation are handled separately — see Newsletter and mailing list above.)
- Confirmed subscribers are kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you.
- Stripe webhook processing records (once payments are on) are automatically deleted after 4 days.
- Contact messages, RSVPs, and volunteer sign-ups are kept as part of our regular PTO records — we don’t currently auto-delete these, but you can ask us to remove yours at any time (see Your choices below).
- The security and activity log described above (newsletter sign-ups, confirmations, unsubscribes, and preference changes; event RSVPs and cancellations; volunteer sign-ups and releases; teacher requests; and account sign-ins, resets, and content changes) is kept indefinitely as an internal security and accountability record — standard practice for a site that handles PTO funds and restricted access.
Children’s privacy
This site is built for parents, teachers, and other adults in our school community — not for direct use by children. We don’t knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13, and no part of the site invites a child to create an account or submit information on their own.
Some features ask a parent to share a small amount of information about their child — for example, a first name and teacher or grade, so we can verify a Spirit Wear pickup or issue a Fast Pass hangtag. That information is provided by the parent, not the child, and is used only to run that specific PTO activity — it’s never used for marketing and isn’t displayed publicly beyond what pickup verification requires.
Classroom photo galleries. Teachers can post photos to their classroom’s public page. These photos are chosen and uploaded by teachers (or a site admin on their behalf) — teacher accounts exist only by board invitation, not self-signup. If you’d like a photo of your child removed from a classroom gallery, contact us at any time using the information in Questions? below and we’ll take it down.
Your choices
- Unsubscribe from any PTO email using the one-click link in every email footer, or manage which categories you receive (newsletter, fundraisers, events, volunteer) on the preferences page linked in each email.
- Account holders can update their own email preferences anytime while logged in.
- Ask us to see, correct, or delete information you’ve given us by emailing us — see Questions? below.
Security
We’ve built the site with security as a default, not an afterthought: passwords are stored as salted one-way hashes (never in plain text); logins go through rate-limiting and Cloudflare’s bot screening; every account action is logged; admin sessions use secure, HttpOnly cookies with an automatic timeout; to help prevent abuse, the site temporarily records the IP address of form submissions and sign-in attempts, deleted automatically once they’re more than 24 hours old; and several security checks are built to fail closed — meaning if a security setting is accidentally left blank in production, the affected feature blocks access rather than quietly letting it through. No website is perfectly secure, but we’ve deliberately layered these protections rather than relying on any single one.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the site adds features (like online payments) or as our practices change. We’ll update the effective date above when we do. If a change is significant, we’ll let people know through the site or a newsletter notice.
Questions?
Reach the PTO board at pto@millsriverschoolpto.com or by mail at Mills River Elementary PTO, 94 School House Road, Mills River, NC 28759.