For parents and guardians
Your student's journey to Sustainable farmer.
Their first task is to bring home the introduction packet from the Sustainable Gardens program at their school. Together, you can review the program description, the App and its many uses, and the details of next steps.
Administered at your school by Sustainable Support Team, a 501(c)(3) public charity.
What your student does
- Students learn to grow lettuce, tomatoes, herbs and other produce outside of their classroom time at school.
- Students will complete a training course using the App online, and vertical hydroponic towers hands-on.
- Following training, students will rotate tasks that will include germinating seeds, planting seedlings, nourishing and tending to the plants, checking and adjusting pH, harvesting, packaging, and participating in the distribution to their community.
- Their coordinator, the adult at school who coordinates the farm, checks every tower each week.
What you decide
- Your student can't begin the program until you sign the parent packet, on paper. It describes every task and includes an emergency and medical form. Your school can add its own forms.
- You can say no to dosing in the packet. Then your student won't add plant food or pH solution.
- There's no parent account. Your student adds one emergency contact, a name and a phone number, for their coordinator to use.
Notes and notifications
- There's no messaging between students. Students can leave notes about a tower for their farm crew. Each note is checked before it posts, anyone can report one, and the coordinator can remove it.
- Your student's phone asks before the app can send notifications, and none are sent between 9 pm and 7 am. Notifications never carry streaks, rewards, or "come back" messages.
What the app keeps
- Your district's data office signs a student data agreement with us before any student joins.
- The app keeps what a service record needs: your student's full name, personal email, school, and graduation year, plus their birth month and year (never the day), which it uses only for the age rules, such as the one on dosing.
- It also keeps the times they're free to work, their shifts, tower readings, a photo of the tower each visit, and a short reflection after each shift, spoken or typed. We keep the text and delete the recording.
- A tower photo with a person in it is never shown to the farm crew, and it's deleted.
- When your student checks in, the phone works out whether they're at the garden and sends us only that answer, never their location.
- The app contains no analytics or advertising code from other companies.
- Some features use AI services, such as turning a spoken reflection into text and helping draft a recommendation letter with your student's name taken out. The app asks your student before anything of theirs first goes to an AI service, and typing is always offered instead of speaking.
- Your student can download everything the app holds about them, or delete their account, at any time. A few records stay after deletion, such as the farm's harvest weights and anonymous hour totals. The app's privacy notice will list them.
The app's privacy notice will list everything the app keeps, who can see each part, and every company that handles student data for us, including the AI services. We'll publish it on this site before any student joins.
What your student gets
A personalized App that documents and charts their community service participation to help combat hunger in their neighborhoods. At the end of the semester, SST will provide a Certificate of Completion, a compilation of their individual contribution to the program, and total Community Service hours earned. This can be attached to their college application.
Questions?
Ask your student's coordinator, or email support@sustainablegardens.com.