Maple Talk

1. About these terms

These terms of service (the "Terms") govern your use of Maple Talk, the website at mapletalk.org and the related calendar feeds, reminders and documents (together, the "Service"). By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

The Service is operated by Ben Seck, a Maple Walk parent, in a personal and non-commercial capacity (the "Operator", "we", "us"). The Service is not operated by, affiliated with or endorsed by Maple Walk School or the New Model School Company. Questions about these Terms can be sent to admin@mapletalk.org.

Our privacy notice and cookie information explains what personal data we collect and how we use it, and forms part of these Terms.

2. What the Service is

Maple Talk reads communications that Maple Walk School sends to parents (broadcast emails, the weekly newsletter, parent-portal pages, the school's public calendar and the year-group WhatsApp groups) and presents them as a list of dated items: events, deadlines, notices and clubs. Items are extracted automatically, partly by software and partly by an artificial-intelligence model, and are then shown to you filtered by the children, year groups and classes you enter.

The Service is a convenience for parents. It is not a source of record and does not replace the school's own communications.

3. Who may use it

• The Service is for parents and carers of children at Maple Walk School, and for people helping such a family with school logistics.
• You must be at least 18 years old to create an account.
• Sign-up requires a passcode shared within the parent community. You agree not to pass the passcode to anyone outside that community and not to create accounts for people who are not entitled to one.
• We may refuse, suspend, retire or delete any account at our discretion, including where we believe these Terms have been breached.

4. Your account

• You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything done under your account. Do not share your account with others; each parent or carer should have their own.
• Tell us promptly at admin@mapletalk.org if you believe your account has been used without your permission.
• The information you enter about your children (first names, year groups, classes, clubs) must be accurate and must relate only to children you are responsible for.
• You can remove your children, change your reminder settings and change your password at any time from within the Service. To close your account entirely, email us or ask an administrator.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• share the Service, your personal calendar link, the newsletter or other documents obtained through the Service with people outside the Maple Walk parent community;
• use the Service to collect information about other families or children, or for any purpose other than managing your own family's school logistics;
• attempt to gain access to accounts, data or parts of the Service you are not authorised to use, or to probe, scan or test its security;
• scrape, copy or redistribute the Service's content in bulk, or use automated means to access it other than the calendar feed provided for that purpose;
• upload or enter anything unlawful, offensive, misleading or infringing, or anything containing another person's personal data without their agreement;
• interfere with the operation of the Service or place an unreasonable load on it.

6. Administrators

Some accounts have an administrator role. Administrators can see additional detail (such as short excerpts of the source messages), correct or hide items, manage accounts and upload documents for extraction. Administrators agree to use these powers only to keep the Service accurate and useful for the parent community, to treat what they see as confidential, and never to use it to single out individual families or children.

7. Accuracy and reliance

Items are produced automatically from messages that were written for people, not machines. They may be incomplete, mis-dated, wrongly scoped to a year or class, duplicated, out of date or simply wrong, and messages may be missed altogether. Reminders may fail to send, arrive late or be sent for something that has since changed.

Always check important dates, times, costs and requirements against the school's own message before relying on them. The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without any warranty of accuracy, completeness, timeliness or fitness for a particular purpose, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

8. Availability and changes

• The Service runs on a home computer and free or low-cost hosting. It may be unavailable, slow or behind at any time, without notice, and we have no obligation to keep it running.
• We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of the Service, or the whole of it, at any time.
• We may change these Terms. The date at the top shows when they were last updated; continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept the updated Terms. Material changes will be flagged within the Service where practical.

9. Content and intellectual property

• School communications, the newsletter and other school documents belong to the school or their respective authors. They are made available through the Service only for the personal use of parents and carers who are entitled to receive them.
• The Service's software, design and the extracted items are provided for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not copy, sell or exploit them commercially.
• Anything you enter into the Service remains yours. You give us permission to store and process it as needed to provide the Service, as described in the privacy notice.
• If you believe content available through the Service infringes your rights, email admin@mapletalk.org and we will look into it.

10. Third-party services

The Service relies on third parties, including Vercel and Neon (hosting), Anthropic (extraction), Google (email, calendar and spreadsheet access from the Operator's own account) and, where enabled, a messaging provider for WhatsApp reminders. Their availability and terms are outside our control. Links to external sites, including the school's own website, are provided for convenience and we are not responsible for their content.

11. Liability

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded under the law of England and Wales.

Subject to that, the Service is offered free of charge as a favour to the parent community, and the Operator will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your use of, or inability to use, the Service, including loss caused by inaccurate, late or missing information, missed events or deadlines, or reminders that did not arrive. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to £50 in total.

12. Ending your use

You can stop using the Service at any time and ask for your account to be deleted. We may retire or delete an account at any time, with or without notice, for example where these Terms are breached, where an account appears to belong to someone outside the school community, or where the Service is withdrawn. Sections 7, 9 and 11 continue to apply after your account ends.

13. General

• These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, without prejudice to your rights as a consumer.
• If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
• Our not enforcing a term on one occasion does not mean we waive it.
• These Terms and the privacy notice are the whole agreement between you and the Operator about the Service.