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Ever wonder just how priceless your child’s data is? It’s apparently Fort Knox-level priceless. So priceless that state agencies are shelling out millions to erect huge data centers all over the country to store it away. Some of these digital “vaults” are nestled in undisclosed locations.
There’s a vast and rapidly expanding ecosystem of student data collection that every parent should understand. Your child’s personal, behavioral, and even emotional information can be gathered through state-mandated surveys administered by the Department of Education or local school districts, which probe self-reported mental health, home environment, and social supports. Proprietary Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) assessments/screeners and questionnaires designed to gauge self-awareness, self-management, and social skills, generate scores and comments that often become part of the student’s permanent record or are uploaded to third-party dashboards. Meanwhile, every interaction on online learning platforms and apps (such as Google Classroom, Canvas, or Schoology) is logged: submitted assignments, time-on-task, and even keystroke patterns, while supplemental tools capture performance metrics—and sometimes audio or video recordings. Legislative “tip” programs like Georgia’s HB 268 further expand this data pipeline by authorizing anonymous reporting hotlines or apps; each tip, and any resulting investigation, produces records that may bypass normal FERPA safeguards.
Most of this collected information ultimately ends up in one of three places. States typically operate centralized data centers—sometimes called “enterprise data warehouses”—where K–12 records (academic, behavioral, disciplinary) are consolidated. Increasingly, districts and states contract with major cloud-service providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud; those servers may be physically located in multiple states or even overseas, depending on contract terms. Some larger districts maintain their own server farms, often repurposed municipal or school-district facilities, where they house and manage these records locally.
If you want to know exactly where these data centers are and how many operate in your area, start by examining state procurement records: search your state’s purchasing portal for K–12 data-center contracts, cloud-hosting agreements, or “enterprise data warehouse” solicitations. You can also file a public-records (FOIA) request with your state Department of Education or local district office, asking for the addresses of all physical data centers used to store student information and copies of any cloud or colocation service contracts. Many states’ Offices of the Chief Information Officer publish annual IT-infrastructure reports—often including maps or inventories of major data centers—and school-board agendas and minutes (which are public) frequently detail votes on new server builds or vendor agreements.
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