What this is

data.sfhsbta.com is a data-literacy strand for a business and technology academy — half an hour at a time, a real chart on the screen, and three questions asked of it. It is not a math class and not a statistics course. A student learns to read a chart, to ask what it leaves out, and to build one of their own from real public data.

This page is for anyone who arrives without a class to walk them in: a family wondering what their student is doing and whether it is safe, or a school weighing whether to run it. A student on their own should start at the library or the bar; a teacher, at the dives.

Is it safe? What happens to a student's data

Nothing a student does here leaves their own computer. Plainly:

• No accounts. Nobody signs in. There is nothing to create and no password to lose.
• Nothing is uploaded. Every chart is drawn in the browser. When a student saves their work it downloads to their own device as a file — it is never sent to a server, ours or anyone else's.
• No tracking. There is no analytics, no advertising, and no third-party script on any page. The only thing a browser requests is the site's own pages and data files; nothing about what a student does is ever sent anywhere.
• The name stays on the device. When a student types a name it is written into the file they download, and — so the browser can reopen their own work — kept in that browser's own storage. It is never sent to a server. Clearing the browser's data for the site removes it.
• You can check all of this. Every data file is downloadable, and every one names its source beside it. Nothing here asks you to take our word for it.

The laws that govern student data — FERPA, COPPA, and state student-privacy statutes — reach the information a service gathers onto its servers, keeps there, and shares. This site gathers nothing onto a server, keeps nothing on one, and shares nothing; what a student's own browser remembers for them stays on their own device. A hand-in a student chooses to turn in travels the way any homework does: the student gives the teacher a file.

Accessibility

The site is built to the intent of WCAG 2.1 AA.

• Every page a student browses is operable by keyboard and carries a skip-to-content link.
• Every chart carries a text description, so a screen reader can say what is in it, not only that a chart is there.
• Colour is never the only carrier of meaning, and body text meets a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1.
• Once a page has loaded it needs no network and no plug-in.

Known limits, stated plainly. The projected lesson slides are run by a teacher on a screen and carry no page chrome — no menu and no skip link — of their own. No independent audit has been done, so this is a statement of intent and practice, not a certification. If a student needs an accommodation the site does not yet meet, tell the teacher — every chart's data also exists as a plain file that opens in anything.

Why it exists

In April 2024 five national teaching bodies — the mathematics teachers, the science teachers, the statisticians, the social-studies council, and the computer-science teachers — signed one sentence together: data science should be taught across the curriculum, not inside mathematics, to help develop informed users of data. That is the licence for a data strand inside a business and technology academy, and the shapes on this site are grounded in the GAISE II guidelines. The full case, and where each shape's grounding comes from, is on Where this comes from.

Where to go from here

• A student, on your own — start at the bar, then open the library and the pool.
• A teacher — every level of the dives is a ready lesson, and the tracker is the printable three-questions sheet.
• A school or a family — the privacy and accessibility above is the whole of it; Where this comes from is the reasoning behind the strand.