Students no longer have access to additional Google services such as Google Translate, Google News and Google Photos among others, using their school Google accounts starting Feb. 20. This is due to changes in Google’s suite of apps and new requirements for those under 18 to access their additional services in order to better adhere to Connecticut’s student data privacy law.
“It is very important to note, the additional services are nice to have, but do not prevent any curriculum from being delivered or learning to take place,” Westport Public Schools (WPS) Director of Technology Natalie Carrignan said.
While Google has engineered their core services to meet all of the data privacy laws from all 50 states and the European Union, their additional services do not.
“In one case, Google admitted during a meeting in December with directors from around the state that students were using the Google Translate additional service to get around school filters,” Carrignan said. “They have since moved Google Translate to an extension. This begs the question, for me at least, what other vulnerabilities do these additional services bring into our district now or in the future.”
For their additional services, because they were not created to meet all of the required data privacy laws, Google decided to rely on families and school districts that are hosts to the accounts of those under 18. For every additional service, parents would have to look through each subagreement and provide consent for their child to use each service. In order for an additional service to be turned on, a school district has to confirm that they received an individual consent form from every parent in the district. If they are not able to obtain all of the consent forms, then that service would need to be turned off by March for any account belonging to a student under 18. This process would have to be done for every one of Google’s additional services.
“For us, with the staffing we have and the complexities of each agreement, which is subject to change,” Carrignan said, “it is not manageable to obtain all of these individual consents and to understand each service and how it may or may not follow CT law. “
Google and WPS must specifically comply with Connecticut student data privacy law which dictates the rules companies must comply with in order to conduct business with those under 18. In 2016, Public Act 16-189 “An Act Concerning Student Data Privacy” was introduced in order to better protect student data.
According to the Connecticut Department of Education website, the 2016 Act incorporated various requirements for those interacting with student data such as “restricting how student information may be used by entities that contract to provide educational software and electronic storage of student records and by operators of websites, online services, or mobile applications (i.e., apps)” and many others as well.
This district experienced a similar wave of restrictions back in October of 2023 when Google implemented similar restrictions for sites using Google as a sign-in who were not compliant with Connecticut data privacy law. Some of the sites included US News & World Report, The Washington Post and Gramalry among others.
While most sites that will be restricted later this month aren’t as familiar to many students, some like Daisy Seaborne ’25 expressed concern about a few.
“As a student interested in fine arts, the access I’ve had to Google Arts and Culture, as well as Google Photos, has been helpful to me in the classroom,” Daisy Seaborne ’25 said. “While I can find other websites that can come in handy in the future, I wonder how other students who’ve further utilized these programs in-class or independently, will improvise as well.”
