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Records escrow

A records-retention plan your accreditor can check off

Pearspark holds your students' permanent records off-site and keeps them obtainable by families, even if your school closes. Start with this year's graduates, add a class each year, and backfill the past when you're ready. No sales call to learn the price: it's below.
Start your archive Read the commitment
$39
per month

Includes your first 1,000 student records, then $10/month per additional 1,000.

$499
one-time setup

Optional full service: we run the import with you, check the archive against your source files, and prepare your custody attestation. Self-service has no setup fee.

$15
per packet released

Only after a closure. While your school operates, you fulfill transcript requests yourself at no charge.

A school archiving 100 graduates a year with a 20-year backfill (about 2,100 records) pays $59 a month, and adding a class each year raises the bill by roughly $10 a month per decade. Already running your school on Pearspark? Records escrow is included with every subscription at no extra charge.

How it works

  1. Bring your graduates in

    Import transcripts and student records from CSV, including exports from other school systems, with a dry-run preview before anything is written. Add each graduating class every year; backfill past classes when you're ready.

  2. Records are held off-site, permanently

    Replicated cloud storage with encryption, access controls, and audit logging. Graduating a student never removes anything, and adding a class costs nothing extra until the archive crosses its next thousand records.

  3. Print the evidence for your accreditor

    A dated attestation letter, generated from live records whenever your review needs it: the custodian named, record counts by graduating class, and the closure commitment in writing.

What we retain

  • Full transcript — courses, marks, credits, and GPA, including honors weighting
  • Attendance history by school year
  • Identifying details: name, date of birth, student number, grade level, graduation or withdrawal date

Health records are left out on purpose: they belong with the school and the family. Our privacy policy states the retention commitment in writing.

What the law and the colleges say

Records custody isn't something we invented. Below are the colleges' expectation and three states' rules, each linked to the statute or the admissions body itself and read in September 2026. Where a state names who receives the records when a school closes, your closure-transfer plan names that office and Pearspark makes the hand-off.

  • Colleges expect the school, not the family, to send the official transcript — which is why the record has to outlive the graduating class.

    “This is normally sent directly from your high school to the college.”
    NACAC, Parts of a College Application ↗

  • California gives a former school — private schools included — ten schooldays to hand over a transferring pupil's permanent record, and gives parents of former pupils an absolute right of access.

    “…shall be transferred by the former public school or private school no later than 10 schooldays following the date the request is received.”
    Cal. Educ. Code §§ 49068, 49069.7 ↗

  • Florida requires a private school that closes to transfer every permanent student record to the district superintendent or its private-school association, and to tell the state where the records are, who holds them, and how many there are.

    “All private schools that become defunct shall transfer all permanent information contained in student records to the district school superintendent…”
    Fla. Stat. § 1002.42(3) ↗

  • North Carolina tells closing private schools to keep graduates' academic records together indefinitely, so transcripts can still be obtained, and to file where they are kept and whom to contact.

    “The school then should notify DNPE in writing where the high school transcripts and academic records for its graduates will be retained…”
    N.C. Division of Non-Public Education, Academic Records FAQ ↗

Questions schools ask

What happens if our school closes?
Our privacy policy commits, in writing, that a snapshot of every student's permanent academic record is preserved, stays obtainable by families and receiving institutions, and is used for no other purpose. After a closure, colleges, employers and families request records from Pearspark, and we release each packet for a $15 fee. While your school operates, you fulfill requests yourself from Pearspark at no charge.
Which records are excluded?
Health records, on purpose: they belong with the school and the family, not in a copy we keep after the relationship ends. Discipline and special-education files are not part of long-term custody either.
Do we have to run our school on Pearspark?
No. A records-only school uses Pearspark only as its records custodian: the archive, imports, transcripts and the attestation letter, without the day-to-day tools. If you later want the full system (attendance, gradebook, tuition, a parent app), your records are already in it.
Our past graduates are on paper. Can you take them?
Yes, once they are typed up. Records enter Pearspark as data, not scanned images; that is what makes a transcript printable and a record releasable decades later. Digitizing a paper archive is yours to do: enter the records in a spreadsheet, then bring them in with the same CSV import as everything else.
Does this satisfy our accreditor's requirement?
Accreditors typically ask for a named records custodian, off-site custody, a written closure plan and a retention schedule: evidence a visiting team reviews from a checklist. Pearspark provides the custody and the attestation; the closure-transfer plan names an accredited receiving institution, with Pearspark as the facilitating custodian. Send us your accreditor's requirement language and we'll tell you plainly whether this covers it.

Start your records archive

Billed monthly from signup. Cancel anytime — and if you ever do, ask us to return your data first; we delete nothing without you asking.

Only sets your first invoice — your bill follows the archive's real size afterward, in steps of 1,000 records.

How do you want to set up?
Monthly custody$39/mo

Your first month is billed at signup.

Not sure it satisfies your accreditor? Send the requirement language to support@pearspark.com and we'll tell you plainly.