Privacy Policy
Sunflower Montessori School
15520 Sherman Way, Van Nuys, CA 91406
(818) 781-3662 · info@sunflowermontessori.org
Effective date: January 1, 2023
1. About This Policy
Sunflower Montessori School ("Sunflower Montessori," "we," "us," or "our") operates the website at www.sunflowermontessori.org (the "Site"). This policy explains what information we collect through the Site, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.
This policy covers information collected through our website only. Information you provide to us in person or through our enrollment paperwork once your child is admitted — health records, emergency contacts, immunization records, and similar records — is handled under our enrollment agreement and our obligations as a licensed California child care facility (License No. 191203781), not under this policy.
By using the Site, you agree to the practices described here. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site.
2. Information We Collect
Information you give us
When you fill out an enrollment inquiry or contact form on the Site, we collect:
• Your first and last name
• Your email address
• Your phone number
• Your child's age
• How you heard about us
• Anything else you choose to write in a message field
We only collect what you type into a form. You are never required to use the Site's forms — you can call or email us instead.
Information collected automatically
Our Site is built on the Wix platform and uses analytics and advertising tools. These automatically collect standard technical information when you visit, which may include:
• IP address and approximate general location (city or region)
• Browser type and version, device type, and operating system
• Pages you viewed, time spent on the Site, and the site or search you arrived from
• Cookie and similar identifiers, including advertising identifiers
We use this to understand how families find and use our Site, to keep it working properly, and to measure and deliver our advertising. See Sections 5 and 6 for details on the advertising tools we use and how to opt out of them.
What we do not collect
We do not knowingly collect information from children. We do not sell personal information for money. We do not collect Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, or payment card information through this Site.
3. Children's Information
Our website is written for parents and guardians — not for children. We do not direct the Site's content to children, and we do not knowingly permit children under 13 to submit information through it.
When a parent enters a child's age on an inquiry form, that information comes from the parent, not the child. We use it only to determine program fit and to answer the parent's inquiry.
If you believe a child has submitted personal information through our Site, please contact us at info@sunflowermontessori.org and we will delete it promptly.
Photographs of enrolled children. We sometimes photograph classroom activities and school events, and we may publish these on the Site, on our social media pages, or in school materials. We never publish a child's full name alongside their photograph.
If you do not want your child's image used, tell us in writing at info@sunflowermontessori.org and we will honor that for all future materials and remove existing images from anything we control. You may make or withdraw this request at any time, and it will never affect your child's standing at the school.
4. How We Use Your Information
We use the information described above to:
• Respond to your inquiry and answer questions about our programs
• Schedule and follow up on tours and enrollment conversations
• Send information you asked for about admissions, availability, and school events
• Maintain, secure, and improve the Site
• Comply with our legal and licensing obligations
Advertising. We advertise our school to families in the San Fernando Valley through Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram). To do this, we use tracking tools on our Site that let those platforms measure which ads bring families to us and show our ads to people who have visited our Site or who resemble our visitors. This means the technical and browsing information described in Section 2 is shared with those advertising platforms.
We do not use the contents of your inquiry form — your name, your phone number, or your child's age — for advertising. We do not upload inquiry information to advertising platforms.
5. How We Share Your Information
We do not sell personal information for money, and we do not rent or trade our inquiry list.
We do share website activity data with advertising platforms as described below. Under California law, this kind of advertising activity can be considered "sharing" for cross-context behavioral advertising, so we want to be plain about it rather than claim otherwise.
We share information with:
• Wix.com Ltd. — hosts our website, delivers our inquiry forms, and stores form submissions. Wix processes this on our behalf. Privacy policy: https://www.wix.com/about/privacy
• Google (Analytics and Google Ads) — measures Site traffic and delivers and measures our search advertising. This may involve remarketing, meaning you could see our ads after visiting our Site. Privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• Meta Platforms (Facebook and Instagram) — we run a Meta pixel on the Site to measure and target our Facebook and Instagram advertising. Privacy policy: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy
• Yelp — we maintain a business listing and may run Yelp advertising. Interactions with our Yelp listing are governed by Yelp's own privacy policy: https://terms.yelp.com/privacy
• Professional advisors, such as our accountant or attorney, when necessary and under a duty of confidentiality.
• Government agencies, where we are legally required to disclose information — including our obligations as a licensed facility under the California Department of Social Services, Community Care Licensing Division, and mandated reporting obligations under California law.
• A successor entity, if the school is ever sold, merged, or reorganized.
Google, Meta, and Yelp act as independent businesses with respect to the data they collect through these tools, and their own privacy policies govern what they do with it.
6. Cookies and Tracking
Our Site uses cookies — small files stored by your browser — and similar tracking technologies. They fall into three groups:
• Essential cookies set by Wix to keep the Site functioning and secure. These cannot be turned off.
• Analytics cookies set by Wix and Google Analytics to measure how many people visit and which pages they read.
• Advertising cookies and pixels set by Google and Meta. These are the ones that allow our ads to follow you to other websites and apps, and they allow those companies to collect information about your browsing across different sites over time.
Third-party tracking across sites. Because we run Google and Meta advertising tools, third parties may collect personally identifiable information about your online activities over time and across different websites when you visit our Site. We want you to know this plainly.
How to opt out:
• Google Analytics: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
• Google Ads personalization: https://adssettings.google.com
• Meta ad preferences: https://www.facebook.com/adpreferences
• Industry-wide opt-out: https://optout.aboutads.info
You can also block or delete cookies through your browser settings. Blocking essential cookies may cause parts of the Site to stop working correctly.
Do Not Track and opt-out preference signals. Some browsers and extensions send a "Do Not Track" signal or a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal. There is still no uniform industry standard for DNT. We honor Global Privacy Control signals where our platform supports them by disabling advertising cookies for that visit. If you want certainty that our advertising tools are not tracking you, use the opt-out links above or block third-party cookies in your browser.
7. How Long We Keep Information
We keep inquiry information only as long as we need it:
• Inquiries that do not lead to enrollment: retained for up to two (2) years, then deleted, so we can follow up with families about future openings.
• Inquiries that lead to enrollment: transferred into the student's file and retained under our enrollment records policy and California licensing requirements.
• Website analytics data: retained according to the retention periods of the platform that collects it.
We do not retain personal information indefinitely. You can ask us to delete your inquiry information sooner — see Section 8.
8. Your Choices and Rights
Regardless of where you live, you may contact us at info@sunflowermontessori.org to:
• Access — ask what information we hold about you
• Correct — ask us to fix information that is wrong
• Delete — ask us to delete your inquiry information
• Opt out of marketing — ask us to stop contacting you about admissions
• Opt out of ad tracking — see the opt-out links in Section 6
We will respond within 45 days. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request, and we may need to keep certain records where the law requires it.
California residents. California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA) applies to businesses that meet certain size thresholds — roughly $26.6 million in annual revenue, data on 100,000 or more California consumers, or half of revenue coming from selling personal information. Sunflower Montessori School is a small local school and does not meet any of those thresholds, so the CCPA does not currently apply to us.
We nonetheless honor the access, correction, and deletion requests described above as a matter of practice. If you want us to stop the advertising-related sharing described in Sections 4, 5, and 6, email us at info@sunflowermontessori.org with "Do Not Share" in the subject line, or use the opt-out links in Section 6. Exercising any of these rights will never affect your child's admission or standing at the school.
"Shine the Light." California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about disclosure of personal information to third parties for those third parties' own direct marketing purposes. We do not disclose inquiry information for that purpose.
9. How We Protect Information
We use the security protections built into the Wix platform, including encryption of data in transit (HTTPS), and we limit access to inquiry information to school staff who need it to do their jobs.
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Please do not send sensitive information — medical details, financial information, or identification numbers — through the Site's contact forms.
10. Links to Other Sites
Our Site links to other places, including our Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, and Google listings. Those services have their own privacy policies, and we are not responsible for how they handle your information. We encourage you to read their policies before providing information to them.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the effective date at the top and post the revised version on this page. Significant changes will be communicated to enrolled families directly.
12. Contact Us
Questions about this policy or about information we hold:
Sunflower Montessori School
15520 Sherman Way
Van Nuys, CA 91406
(818) 781-3662