Privacy Policy

Who we are

BesterTogether LLC, doing business as The Ballet Garden, is a small children’s ballet school in San Clemente, California. We are responsible for the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us at any time at jess@bestertogether.com.

This policy covers our website, the class catalog, trial and enrollment booking, the parent portal, and the email we send about your child’s classes.

Information you give us

We ask for as little as we can while still running a class safely. What we collect depends on how far you go:

• When you send an inquiry: your name, your email address, your child’s age, an optional phone number, and anything you choose to write in the message.
• When you book a trial or enroll: your name, email address, and phone number; your child’s first and last name and date of birth; and an emergency contact’s name, relationship, and phone number.
• Care notes: anything you tell us that helps your child feel settled and safe — allergies, medical needs, or how they respond to a new room.
• When you accept a waiver: the name and email you sign with, the date and time, a one-way hash of your IP address, and your browser’s user agent. We keep these so we can show what was agreed and when.

Your child’s date of birth is used to confirm they fall inside a class’s age range. We do not ask for a Social Security number, a government identifier, or any information about your household beyond the above.

Information created by using the school

• Attendance, trial history, enrollment history, and waitlist or renewal offers.
• Payment records: what was paid, when, for which Cycle, and any refund. Card details never reach us — see below.
• Email delivery events from our email provider, such as whether a message was delivered or bounced, so we can tell when an important note did not arrive.
• Sign-in events for the parent portal.

What we do not collect

• Card numbers. Payments are handled on Stripe’s own checkout; we only ever see the outcome and the last four digits Stripe reports.
• Analytics, advertising, or social media trackers. There are none on this site, which is why you are not asked to dismiss a cookie banner.
• Location data, contact lists, or anything from your device beyond what your browser sends with an ordinary request.

Children’s information

This website is written for adults. We do not knowingly collect information directly from a child, and nothing on the site invites a child to give us their details.

Information about your child reaches us because you, as their parent or guardian, chose to give it to us so that they can take a class safely. We use it only to run the class, keep your child safe, and communicate with you. We never use a child’s information for advertising, and we never sell it.

You can ask to see, correct, or delete your child’s information at any time by emailing jess@bestertogether.com.

How we use information

• To run classes: confirming a place, checking the age range, taking the register, and knowing who is collecting your child.
• To keep your child safe: emergency contacts, allergies, and medical notes are there for the moment they are needed.
• To take payment and issue refunds.
• To write to you about your child’s classes — confirmations, reminders, schedule changes, and when the next Cycle opens.
• To keep the records a school has to keep: waivers accepted, payments taken, and attendance.

We do not use your information to make automated decisions about you, and we do not profile you.

We do not sell your information

We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not trade it with anyone for any form of value. We have never done so.

Who else ever sees it

Day to day, the only people who see your information are Jessica and anyone helping to run the school. Beyond that, we use three service providers, each doing one job on our behalf:

• Stripe, to take payment securely and to hold card details so that we never do.
• Resend, to deliver the email we send you.
• DigitalOcean, which hosts the server running this site and its database.

These providers may only use the information to provide their service to us. We will also disclose information where the law requires it, or where it is genuinely necessary in an emergency to protect a child’s safety.

Cookies

We use strictly necessary cookies only. They keep you signed in to the parent portal and protect forms from being submitted from somewhere else. There are no advertising or analytics cookies to consent to, and nothing follows you to other websites.

Photographs and video

We only photograph or film a child if their caregiver has given permission. That permission is optional, is asked for separately when you book, and is never a condition of taking a class.

You can withdraw permission at any time by emailing jess@bestertogether.com. We will stop using new images straight away and remove existing ones from anywhere we control, though we cannot recall a copy someone else has already saved or reshared.

How long we keep it

• Inquiries that do not lead to a booking: kept while we are still in touch about a place, then removed.
• Family and student records: kept while your child attends, and for a period afterwards so we can answer questions about past classes and so a returning family does not have to start again.
• Waivers, payments, and attendance: kept longer, because they are the record of what was agreed, paid, and attended, and we may need them for tax, insurance, or a liability question.

If you ask us to delete your family’s information, we will, except for anything we are required to keep for the reasons above. We will tell you if that applies and what is being retained.

Your choices

You can ask us at any time to:

• Show you what we hold about your family, or send you a copy.
• Correct anything that is wrong or out of date.
• Delete your family’s information.
• Withdraw photography permission.
• Stop sending anything that is not necessary for a class your child is enrolled in. We will still send the essentials, such as a schedule change or a payment receipt, while your child is enrolled.

Email jess@bestertogether.com and we will respond. We will not treat you differently for asking. California residents have specific rights over their personal information, and while a school of this size falls well below the thresholds that make those rules mandatory, we honor the requests above regardless.

How we protect it

• Everything travels over an encrypted connection.
• The parent portal signs you in with a one-time emailed link, so there is no password to be guessed or reused; staff accounts additionally use a second factor.
• Each family can only reach its own records, enforced by the database itself rather than only by the application.
• Links we email — such as a waiver to sign — are stored only as one-way hashes and expire.
• The database is backed up nightly.

No system is perfect. If a breach ever affects your information, we will tell you promptly and explain what happened.

Where your information is held

Our server and our providers are in the United States, and your information is stored and processed there.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the effective date at the top of this page. If a change materially affects how we handle your family’s information, we will email you rather than rely on you noticing.

Contact us

Questions, requests, or concerns about privacy: jess@bestertogether.com. We are BesterTogether LLC, doing business as The Ballet Garden, San Clemente, California.