Privacy Policy

North Country ISR is a small, family-run swim school serving DuBois, Clearfield, Clarion, and the surrounding central Pennsylvania communities. We collect only what we need to schedule lessons and keep your child safe in the water — your contact information and what you choose to tell us about your child. We don’t sell your information, and we don’t share it with anyone who isn’t part of delivering your lessons.

If anything here is unclear, please just ask. You can reach us at emerson.herzing@infantswim.com or (814) 287-9656.

The short version

• We collect only what we need to teach your child safely.
• We never sell your information, and we never share it for advertising.
• Your child’s medical information goes to the ISR medical review team, because no child gets in the water without that clearance. It goes nowhere else.
• We will never post a photo or video of your child publicly without asking you first, in writing.
• You can ask us what we hold, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, at any time.

Who we are

North Country ISR is operated by Emerson Herzing, a certified Infant Swimming Resource instructor serving families in DuBois, Clearfield, Clarion, and surrounding communities in central Pennsylvania.

This policy explains what information we collect through northcountryisr.com, how we use it, who we share it with, and how long we keep it. It applies to this website and to the registration and inquiry forms on it. It does not cover information you give us in person, by phone, or by text during lessons, though we treat that with the same care.

What we collect

When you contact us through the website

Our enquiry form asks for:

• Your name, as the parent or guardian
• Your email address Your phone number
• Your child’s age range
• Anything you choose to tell us in the message box — usually your child’s previous experience in water, and your scheduling needs

That last box is free text, so you control entirely what goes in it. Please do not put anything in there you would not want sent by ordinary email, because that is how it reaches us.

When you enroll your child

Once you decide to go ahead, enrollment requires more, and some of it is health information:

• Your child’s full name and date of birth
• A medical and developmental history, completed by you through Infant Swimming Resource’s national registration system
• Emergency contact details
• Any allergies, medical conditions, medications or physical considerations that affect how your child should be taught
• Your address and billing details, for scheduling and payment

We ask for the medical history because ISR requires it, and because it genuinely changes how a lesson is taught. An instructor who does not know about a heart condition, a recent ear infection or a seizure history cannot teach a child safely. This is the most sensitive information we handle and we treat it that way.

When you simply visit the site

Like nearly every website, our web host records basic technical information automatically: the IP address you connect from, your browser type, which pages you looked at, and when. We do not use this to identify you personally. It exists so the site can run and so we can tell if something is broken.

Our website runs on WordPress, which sets a small number of cookies necessary for the site to function. We also use Google Analytics to understand which pages people find useful. It tells us things like “twelve people read the fees page this week” — it does not tell us who you are. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, and we do not run retargeting pixels of any kind.

Why we collect it

Every item above exists for one of five reasons, and nothing is collected “just in case”:

• To answer your enquiry and talk with you about lessons
• To schedule lessons and manage your child’s six-week session
• To teach your child safely — this is what the medical history is for
• To take payment and keep the records a small business is required to keep
• To reach you quickly if something happens during a lesson

We do not build marketing profiles, we do not run advertising campaigns using your details, and we will not add you to a mailing list because you enquired. If we ever start a newsletter, you will have to ask to be on it.

Photos and video

This deserves its own section, because swimming lessons and cameras go together and parents deserve to know exactly where the line is.

We sometimes record short video of a lesson for teaching purposes — reviewing a child’s float position, or showing you progress you could not see from the side of the pool. Those recordings are for you and for the instructor.

We will never publish a photograph or video of your child on our website, on social media, or in any promotional material without your specific written permission first. That permission is separate from enrolling, it is entirely optional, and saying no changes nothing about the lessons your child receives. If you give permission and later change your mind, tell us and we will take the material down.

You are welcome to photograph or record your own child during their lesson. We do ask that you avoid capturing other families’ children, and that you do not post footage that shows another child without that family’s permission.

Health and safety information

Please do not include your child’s medical details in the comment field on our registration form. We will go over health, medical, and safety information with you directly before lessons begin, in a setting better suited to it.

If you do share health information with us — through the form or any other way — we use it only to keep your child safe during lessons. We don’t share it with anyone outside our instruction [CONFIRM: “and our certifying organization” if health forms go to ISR], and we don’t keep it after your child’s lessons with us have ended.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your information. We have never sold it, and we will not start. We also do not trade or rent it, and we do not share it with data brokers or advertisers.

There are four situations where information does leave us:

Infant Swimming Resource

Your child’s medical and developmental history is submitted through ISR’s national registration system and reviewed by their medical team, who clear each child before lessons begin. This is a requirement of the ISR program, not an optional extra — no child enters the water without it. ISR handles that information under its own privacy practices.

The pool we teach at

Where lessons are hosted at a community or private pool, that facility may need a participant list, and sometimes a signed waiver, for their own insurance. They receive names and session times. They do not receive medical information.

Service providers

A handful of ordinary business services touch your information in the course of doing their job — our website host, our email provider, and our payment processor. They may only use it to provide that service to us. [LIST YOUR ACTUAL PROVIDERS HERE, e.g. web host, email provider, payment processor]

When the law requires it

We will disclose information if we are legally required to — a court order, or a lawful request from an authority. We would also share information if we genuinely believed it was necessary to protect a child from harm. We hope never to need this paragraph. How long we keep it Enquiries that do not turn into lessons are deleted within 24 MONTHS, because after that they serve no purpose.

Records for enrolled students are kept for [PERIOD — CONFIRM WITH ISR AND YOUR INSURER] after the last lesson. Two things drive this: many families return for refresher lessons and the history is genuinely useful, and liability insurance for children’s aquatic instruction typically requires records be retained for a set period. Financial records are kept as long as tax rules require.

When a retention period ends, we delete the record. You can ask us to delete it sooner and we will, unless we are required to keep it — in which case we will tell you plainly which record we must keep and why.

How we protect it

We are a small business and we will not pretend to have an enterprise security department. What we do have is proportionate and real:

• The website runs over an encrypted HTTPS connection
• Accounts that hold family information use strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication where it is offered
• Medical information is held in ISR’s registration system rather than in a spreadsheet on a laptop
• Only Emerson has access to student records
• Paper records, where they exist, are stored securely and shredded when no longer needed

No system is perfectly secure, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What we can promise is that we do not collect information we do not need, which is the most effective protection there is.

If something goes wrong

If your personal information were ever exposed in a security breach, we would notify you without unreasonable delay, as Pennsylvania’s breach notification law requires, and we would tell you what happened, what was affected, and what to do about it.

Your choices

At any point you can:

• Ask what information we hold about you and your child
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong
• Ask us to delete it, subject to the retention rules above
• Withdraw permission for photos or video, at any time, for any reason

Ask us to stop contacting you

Email emerson.herzing@infantswim.com or call (814) 287-9656 and we will respond within 30 days. There is no charge, and asking will never affect the lessons your child receives.

Children’s information

This website is written for parents and guardians, not for children. Our forms ask for a parent or guardian’s contact details and a general age range for the child — we do not ask children to submit information about themselves, and we do not knowingly collect information directly from children.

The information you give us about your child is used only to place your child in the right lesson and to keep them safe in the water. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, or anyone else outside the people involved in delivering your lessons, and we do not keep it indefinitely.

If you believe your child has submitted information to us directly, contact us at emerson.herzing@infantswim.com and we will delete it.

Links to other sites

This site links to Infant Swimming Resource and may link to host pool facilities or other resources. Once you follow a link you are on someone else’s website, governed by their privacy policy, not this one. We would encourage you to read ISR’s policy in particular, since that is where your child’s medical history is submitted.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information, we’ll update this page and change the “Last updated” date at the top. If the change is significant — a new service provider handling your data, for example — we’ll tell enrolled families directly rather than relying on you to notice.

Contact us

Questions about this policy, or about your family’s information:
North Country ISR Email: emerson.herzing@infantswim.com

Phone: (814) 287-9656

We would genuinely rather you asked than wondered.