Terms of Service

Last updated: May 21, 2026

These Terms apply when you use TaleTykes as a family, child learner, teacher, school, district, or platform administrator.

They cover the full TaleTykes platform, including AI-assisted learning, parent controls, student data, classroom administration, moderation, publishing, reports, exports, subscriptions, and platform operations.

Operator, Agreement, and Platform Scope

These Terms of Service govern access to and use of TaleTykes, including the public website, authenticated learning platform, child learner experience, parent tools, teacher and school administration tools, district administration tools, superadmin tools, artificial intelligence features, reports, exports, content libraries, communications, support, and any related software, APIs, documentation, or services that link to these Terms.

The platform is operated by Optiarms, Inc. dba TaleTykes, an Ohio-based company. In these Terms, TaleTykes, Optiarms, Inc., we, us, and our refer to the operator and its affiliates, successors, and permitted assigns. You and your refer to the person or organization accessing the platform.

By creating an account, accepting an invitation, logging in, clicking through an order flow, using a child account, administering a school or district account, or otherwise accessing the platform, you agree to these Terms. If you use the platform on behalf of a family, school, district, homeschool, tutoring program, after-school program, company, nonprofit, or other organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization.

Direct family use is governed by these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and any plan-specific checkout terms.
School, district, or organization use is governed by these Terms plus any signed order form, master services agreement, data processing agreement, student data privacy agreement, purchase terms, or other written contract between us and the organization.
If a signed school or district contract conflicts with these public Terms, the signed contract controls for that school or district relationship to the extent of the conflict.
If you do not agree to these Terms, you may not use the platform.

No Legal Advice

These Terms are not legal advice to users, parents, schools, districts, or administrators. They describe the contractual rules for using the platform and do not replace school policies, district notices, student handbooks, individualized education plans, privacy notices, procurement terms, or legal duties imposed by federal, state, or local law.

Users, Roles, and Account Eligibility

The platform is designed for a role-aware learning environment. Supported roles include child learners, parents and guardians, teachers, school administrators, district administrators, and platform superadmins. Access to protected areas is based on the assigned role, organization membership, guardian links, class enrollment, and school or district hierarchy.

Adult accounts are intended for individuals who can enter a binding contract or who are authorized by an institution to use the platform. Child learner accounts are managed by a parent, guardian, school, district, teacher, or other authorized adult. Children may not create unmanaged accounts, purchase subscriptions, accept legal terms for an organization, or override adult controls.

After the first platform bootstrap account, adult account creation is invite-only unless we expressly enable a different registration flow.
Google sign-in and other single sign-on options, when enabled, are for invited adult users unless a written school contract says otherwise.
Parents and guardians are responsible for ensuring that learner profile information is accurate and that learner use matches household rules and applicable law.
Schools and districts are responsible for determining which personnel may invite users, enroll learners, create classes, assign work, access reports, export records, approve publications, or administer settings.
Superadmin access is reserved for platform operations, support, safety, compliance, billing, and security administration.

School, District, and Organization Use

Schools, districts, microschools, tutoring programs, after-school programs, and other organizations must use the platform only for authorized educational, administrative, reporting, safety, support, and compliance purposes. Organization administrators are responsible for configuring users, classes, memberships, learner links, and permissions in a way that reflects their legal authority and internal policies.

Where the platform is used by or for a school or district, the organization remains responsible for annual notices, directory information decisions, parent and eligible student requests, consent workflows, procurement approvals, curriculum decisions, special education obligations, staff training, and compliance decisions that are legally assigned to the education agency or institution.

We do not decide whether a student is eligible for services, placement, grades, discipline, promotion, graduation, special education, accommodations, or any legally binding educational outcome.
Teachers and administrators must not upload data for students or families they are not authorized to serve.
Organizations must promptly remove or disable accounts for employees, contractors, volunteers, or students who no longer require access.
Organization exports, reports, and portfolio artifacts may contain student information and must be handled under the organization's own record retention, confidentiality, and disclosure rules.

Student Data, FERPA, and Customer Contract Precedence

When a school or district uses the platform and education records are created, received, maintained, or used through the platform, the school or district controls those education records. We act as a service provider, contractor, or school official where permitted by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, its implementing regulations, and the applicable school contract.

We use school-provided education records only to provide, maintain, secure, support, improve, and administer the contracted educational services; to comply with law; to respond to authorized school or district instructions; and to protect the platform, learners, users, and the public. We do not sell education records or use them for targeted advertising.

A written school, district, or data privacy agreement controls data ownership, access, retention, deletion, audit, breach, subcontractor, and compliance terms for that customer if it provides more specific terms.
Requests by parents or eligible students to inspect, amend, or control education records should normally be directed to the school or district that controls the records.
We may support the school or district in fulfilling lawful access, amendment, export, deletion, and transfer requests.
We may disclose education records only as authorized by the school or district contract, user role permissions, FERPA-permitted exceptions, consent, or other applicable law.

Parent, Guardian, and Family Responsibilities

Parents and guardians control direct family use and must decide whether the platform is appropriate for each child. Parent tools may include learner controls, story generation controls, image generation controls, read-aloud settings, publishing approval settings, school library sharing settings, public library sharing settings, approval queues, learner progress pages, reports, and portfolio exports.

Parents and guardians must provide accurate information, maintain the confidentiality of account credentials, supervise child use as appropriate for the child, and contact us or the relevant school if they believe an account, learner profile, publication, report, or consent record is incorrect or unauthorized.

A parent or guardian may not create or manage a learner profile unless they have legal authority or authorization from the school or organization.
If multiple adults have rights regarding the same learner, each adult is responsible for using the platform in a way that respects applicable custody, guardianship, school, and court requirements.
Parent controls affect platform behavior but do not replace adult supervision, school rules, or emergency safety responsibilities.

Acceptable Use and Prohibited Conduct

You may use the platform only for lawful, authorized educational, family learning, administrative, reporting, support, safety, and platform-management purposes. You must not misuse the platform or interfere with its operation, safety systems, security controls, role boundaries, or learner protections.

Do not submit, generate, upload, request, publish, or share content that is abusive, exploitative, sexually explicit, harassing, threatening, discriminatory, hateful, self-harm related, violent, unlawful, defamatory, or inappropriate for children.
Do not prompt AI systems to bypass safety rules, produce disallowed child-facing material, reveal private data, impersonate a person, produce malware, facilitate wrongdoing, or generate deceptive educational records.
Do not access, attempt to access, export, disclose, or modify learner, family, school, district, payment, audit, AI usage, or administrative data without authorization.
Do not scrape, crawl, overload, reverse engineer, probe, scan, attack, or bypass the platform, except as expressly allowed by a written security program we approve.
Do not use the platform for targeted advertising to children, commercial surveillance of students, unlawful profiling, unauthorized research, credit decisions, employment decisions, insurance decisions, or other non-educational decisions about learners.
Do not misrepresent your role, organization, relationship to a learner, authority to consent, authority to bind an organization, or right to receive student data.

AI Features, Generated Content, and Human Review

The platform may provide AI-assisted story generation, illustration generation, writing feedback, grammar feedback, rubric scoring, math hints, problem generation, assessment generation, parent summaries, teacher summaries, moderation assistance, and related tools. AI outputs are generated by probabilistic systems and may be incomplete, inaccurate, inappropriate, biased, outdated, or unsuitable for a particular learner or educational objective.

AI features are designed to support learning and adult review, not to replace parents, teachers, school administrators, licensed professionals, or educational judgment. You are responsible for reviewing AI output before relying on it, assigning it, publishing it, sharing it, exporting it, or using it in a report or instructional decision.

We may moderate untrusted input and generated output before display or storage, especially in child-facing features.
We may block, rate limit, flag, or route content for review when safety systems detect risk.
We do not guarantee that AI-generated stories, questions, feedback, assessments, hints, scores, summaries, images, reading levels, mastery recommendations, or next-step suggestions are error-free or pedagogically optimal.
Teachers and schools are responsible for reviewing AI-generated instructional materials before classroom use.
Parents and guardians are responsible for reviewing family-generated materials before sharing them outside the household.
AI features may be unavailable if provider credentials, models, storage, rate limits, moderation systems, or third-party services are unavailable.

Educational Content, Mastery, and No Guaranteed Outcomes

The platform provides reading, writing, math, adaptive practice, spaced review, learner profiles, dashboards, assignments, class tools, reports, portfolio artifacts, and related educational content. These tools are informational and instructional aids. They do not guarantee any particular reading level, math level, grade, test result, intervention outcome, school placement, certification, scholarship eligibility, regulatory compliance result, or academic improvement.

Mastery bands, skill states, recommendation engines, assessment outputs, progress charts, and report exports depend on available data, configuration, model behavior, educator use, learner interaction, and the quality of submitted information. They should be interpreted by qualified adults in context.

User Content, Learner Work, Generated Content, and Intellectual Property

User content includes prompts, learner writing, learner answers, assignments, teacher instructions, class materials, uploaded or entered data, comments, publication requests, approval decisions, moderation reports, support submissions, and other material submitted to the platform. Learner work includes stories, writing drafts, math responses, reading activity, portfolio artifacts, achievements, and similar student-created or student-linked materials.

As between you and us, you retain any ownership rights you have in your user content and learner work, subject to rights held by schools, districts, parents, learners, licensors, and third parties. We own the platform, software, design, trademarks, service marks, source code, documentation, templates, workflows, interfaces, safety systems, analytics structures, and other platform technology.

You grant us a limited license to host, process, display, store, reproduce, adapt, transmit, moderate, analyze, and use user content as needed to provide, secure, support, improve, and administer the platform.
For school or district use, that license is limited by the applicable school contract, data privacy agreement, and law.
AI-generated content may be used within the platform according to the permissions, parent controls, publication settings, and school contract that apply to the learner or organization.
You must not submit content that violates another person's intellectual property, privacy, publicity, contractual, or legal rights.
We may remove, restrict, or refuse to publish content that violates these Terms, safety rules, school controls, parent controls, law, or platform policy.

Publishing, Approvals, Moderation, and Takedowns

The platform may allow learner or adult-created content to be private, class-visible, school-visible, district-visible, family-visible, or public, depending on the feature, role, parent controls, school settings, and approval workflow. Publishing is never guaranteed. Some content may require parent, teacher, school administrator, or platform review before it is shared.

We may use automated and human moderation to detect safety issues, policy violations, abuse, privacy risk, personal information leakage, inappropriate themes, copyright concerns, or other issues. Moderation systems are not perfect and may allow, block, or flag content incorrectly.

Parent controls may require approval before publication and may disable school or public publishing.
Schools and districts may impose additional publishing rules, library rules, classroom rules, or removal obligations.
We may remove or restrict content at any time to protect learners, comply with law, honor school or parent instructions, enforce these Terms, or maintain platform integrity.
To send a copyright, privacy, safety, or content takedown request, contact legal@taletykes.com and include the content URL or identifier, the reason for the request, your authority, and your contact information.

Reports, Exports, Portfolios, and Records

The platform may produce CSV exports, dashboards, progress summaries, portfolio artifacts, reading records, math records, writing records, AI usage reports, moderation reports, audit logs, and system health views. These outputs may contain personal information, education records, child data, confidential school data, or administrative data.

You are responsible for handling downloaded, copied, printed, emailed, uploaded, or externally stored exports in accordance with your legal duties, school policy, parent instructions, and contractual obligations. We are not responsible for misuse of data after it is exported by an authorized user or transferred according to authorized instructions.

Do not export student data unless you have a legitimate educational, administrative, compliance, or family purpose.
Do not use reports as the sole basis for high-stakes decisions about a learner.
Do not upload platform exports into third-party systems unless the transfer is authorized and the receiving system is appropriate for the data type.

Plans, Subscriptions, Billing, and Payment Processors

The platform may offer family plans, teacher plans, school plans, district plans, trials, pilots, annual subscriptions, monthly subscriptions, quote-based pricing, and add-ons. Prices, features, plan limits, included learners, billing intervals, taxes, discounts, and renewal rules may vary by plan, region, channel, school contract, or order form.

Payments may be processed by third-party payment processors such as Stripe or another provider. We do not require children to enter payment information. Payment processors may collect payment card, billing, fraud prevention, tax, and transaction information under their own terms and privacy notices.

Subscriptions renew until canceled unless the checkout page, order form, or written contract states otherwise.
You authorize us and our payment processor to charge applicable fees, taxes, renewals, overages, add-ons, and other amounts you approve.
Unless a contract says otherwise, fees are non-refundable except where required by law or where we expressly agree in writing.
Schools and districts may be billed by invoice, purchase order, procurement card, or other agreed payment method.
Failure to pay may result in suspension, feature limitation, non-renewal, or termination, subject to any school contract and applicable law.

Third-Party Services and Integrations

The platform may depend on third-party services for hosting, databases, storage, email delivery, authentication, OAuth, AI models, image generation, payment processing, logging, rate limiting, analytics, support, security, and other operational functions. Examples may include PostgreSQL hosting, blob storage, SendGrid, Google OAuth, Stripe, Redis or Upstash-compatible services, Anthropic, xAI, and Vercel or comparable infrastructure providers.

Third-party services are not controlled by you or us in the same way as first-party platform code. Their availability, performance, security, data practices, model behavior, and terms may affect platform functionality. We are not responsible for third-party products except to the extent required by law or an applicable written contract.

Security, Credentials, and Responsible Disclosure

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect the platform and the information processed through it. No online service can guarantee perfect security. You must protect your credentials, use accurate contact information, log out of shared devices, and notify us promptly if you suspect unauthorized access.

Do not share adult credentials with children, students, unauthorized staff, or third parties.
Do not attempt to bypass role checks, session controls, parent controls, school controls, rate limits, AI safety systems, audit logs, or moderation gates.
Report suspected security vulnerabilities, unauthorized access, lost devices, exposed exports, or account compromise to security@taletykes.com.
You may not publicly disclose vulnerability details or exploit a vulnerability without our written permission.

Availability, Changes, Beta Features, and Support

We may modify, suspend, discontinue, limit, replace, or update any part of the platform, including AI models, content libraries, dashboards, pricing, storage, reports, learning engines, prompts, safety rules, route availability, user interfaces, and integrations. We may provide maintenance, updates, migrations, or emergency security changes without advance notice where needed.

Some features may be beta, preview, pilot, experimental, or environment-gated. Beta features may be incomplete, unstable, unavailable, or subject to additional limits. We may collect feedback and operational telemetry to improve beta features and may remove them at any time.

Support channels, response times, onboarding, service levels, and uptime commitments apply only if listed in the applicable plan or written contract.
We may use empty states, mocked development behavior, or disabled states in non-production environments.
Production AI generation may require configured provider keys and may not fall back to deterministic development behavior.

Suspension, Termination, and Data Return

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate access if we reasonably believe that a user, account, organization, or integration violates these Terms, creates safety or security risk, infringes rights, misuses student data, fails to pay, exceeds plan limits, violates law, or threatens platform integrity. We may also suspend access to comply with school or district instructions, court orders, law enforcement requests, or legal obligations.

You may stop using the platform at any time. Paid subscriptions, school contracts, data return, data deletion, renewal, and termination rights are governed by the applicable plan terms, checkout terms, order form, school contract, or written agreement.

For direct family use, we may provide export or deletion tools where available and legally appropriate.
For school or district use, return and deletion of education records will follow the school contract, data privacy agreement, applicable law, and verified school instructions.
Some records may be retained as required or permitted for security, audit, legal compliance, dispute resolution, backups, fraud prevention, billing, or enforcement.

Privacy Policy and Student Privacy Terms

Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, retain, protect, and delete information, including child data, student data, education records, account data, AI logs, and operational data. The Privacy Policy is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

For school and district customers, any student data privacy agreement, data processing agreement, state student privacy addendum, security exhibit, or similar contract controls where it provides more specific privacy or security terms for that customer.

Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the platform and all content, reports, AI outputs, recommendations, dashboards, integrations, exports, and support are provided as is and as available, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise. We disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, availability, uninterrupted operation, error-free operation, and educational outcome.

We do not warrant that the platform will meet every legal, educational, accessibility, procurement, curriculum, student privacy, security, or reporting requirement that applies to you unless we expressly agree in a signed written contract. You are responsible for evaluating platform suitability for your learners, organization, curriculum, and legal obligations.

Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, punitive, or enhanced damages; lost profits; lost revenue; lost savings; lost data; lost goodwill; business interruption; substitute services; educational outcome claims; or claims arising from reliance on AI output, reports, recommendations, or exported records, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the platform or these Terms will not exceed the greater of the amount paid to us for the affected service during the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim or one hundred dollars. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some limitations may not apply to you.

Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Optiarms, Inc. dba TaleTykes and its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, contractors, service providers, and agents from and against claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising from your user content, misuse of the platform, violation of these Terms, violation of law, unauthorized access to data, infringement of third-party rights, or use of student data outside the platform.

Public schools, districts, and government entities are not required to indemnify us beyond what is permitted by applicable law and a signed written contract.

Governing Law, Ohio Venue, and Dispute Resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Ohio, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Subject to any signed school or district contract that states otherwise, the state and federal courts located in Ohio will have exclusive jurisdiction and venue over disputes arising from or relating to these Terms or the platform.

These Terms do not include a mandatory arbitration clause. Before filing a lawsuit, the parties will make a good-faith effort to resolve disputes informally by written notice to legal@taletykes.com, unless emergency relief, injunctive relief, payment collection, student safety, data security, intellectual property protection, or legal compliance requires faster action.

Changes to These Terms and Contact Information

We may update these Terms from time to time. If changes are material, we will provide notice by posting the updated Terms, changing the last updated date, sending email, displaying in-app notice, notifying organization administrators, or using another reasonable method. Continued use after the effective date of updated Terms means you accept the changes.

Questions about these Terms, legal notices, school contract conflicts, or account concerns may be sent to legal@taletykes.com. Privacy questions may be sent to privacy@taletykes.com. Support questions may be sent to support@taletykes.com.