Terms of Service & Legal Disclaimers

1. Acceptance of Terms & Eligibility

By downloading, installing, viewing, accessing, or using the BCAway mobile application (iOS or Android), web application (app.bcaway.app), landing site (bcaway.app / www.bcaway.app), or any associated edge workers or notification feeds (collectively, the "Service"), you explicitly agree to be legally bound by these Terms of Service and Legal Disclaimers (the "Terms").

Eligibility & Minors: The Service is intended for high school students attending Bergen County Academies. If you are under 18 years of age, you represent that you have reviewed these Terms with your parent or legal guardian, and that your parent or guardian understands and unconditionally agrees to these Terms on your behalf. If you or your parent/guardian do not agree to every provision set forth herein, you must immediately uninstall and permanently discontinue all use of the Service.

2. Complete Non-Affiliation Declaration & Nominative Fair Use

You explicitly acknowledge, understand, and agree that:

• Complete Independence: BCAway is an entirely private, independent student-developed software project. It is not an official school communication platform, administrative record, or student information system.
• No School District Control or Endorsement: Neither Bergen County Academies (BCA), the Bergen County Technical School District (BCTS), the Bergen County Board of Education, nor their respective trustees, administrators, principals, proctors, or faculty operate, review, control, sponsor, or endorse this software.
• Nominative Fair Use: Any references to "Bergen County Academies", "BCA", "IGS", period numbers (e.g., Periods 1–9), faculty names, or bell schedule designations are used purely descriptively under the doctrine of nominative fair use to describe publicly posted school schedules for educational convenience. Such use does not imply any official affiliation, association, or commercial relationship.

3. Informational "As-Is" & "As-Available" Disclaimer (Absences & Schedules)

BCAway is provided strictly on an "AS-IS", "WITH ALL FAULTS", and "AS-AVAILABLE" basis without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise:

• Unofficial Data Source: Teacher absence data and bell schedules displayed in BCAway are parsed from third-party, publicly posted, or school-shared notice boards. This data does NOT constitute an official administrative feed and has NOT been verified by district authorities.
• No Guarantee of Accuracy or Timeliness: Absence records may be delayed, incomplete, superseded, inaccurate, or omitted altogether. Retroactive cancellations, last-minute coverage reassignments, typographical errors, and technical parsing delays can and do occur.
• Unannounced Schedule Alterations: Daily bell schedules are subject to immediate, unannounced modification by school administration at any time due to assemblies, testing, pep rallies, weather emergencies, early dismissals, delayed openings, or emergency drills.
• Disclaimer of Warranties: To the maximum extent permitted by law, Kabir Sekhon and Savera Continental LTD. expressly disclaim all warranties, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular educational purpose, title, quiet enjoyment, and non-infringement.

4. Student Attendance, Conduct & Absolute Personal Responsibility

STUDENTS REMAIN 100% PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR COMPLYING WITH ALL OFFICIAL ATTENDANCE REGULATIONS, STUDENT CODES OF CONDUCT, AND POLICIES SET FORTH BY BERGEN COUNTY ACADEMIES AND THE BCTS BOARD OF EDUCATION.

• No Justification for Cutting or Tardiness: Information displayed in BCAway, the absence of an alert, or a delayed push notification CANNOT AND WILL NEVER serve as an excuse, defense, or justification for tardiness, cutting class, truancy, failing to report to an assigned substitute teacher, leaving school grounds, or being absent from assigned study halls or classrooms.
• Mandatory In-Person Confirmation: Students must verify with an authorized teacher, proctor, or administrative staff member before assuming that a class is cancelled, that a free period is granted, or that they are permitted to report to alternative locations (cafeteria, library, auditorium).
• Official School Channels Control: Official school administrative announcements, public address system directives, Genesis student portal records, teacher emails, and staff instructions unconditionally supersede any information displayed in or notified by BCAway.

5. Push Notification Service & Delivery Disclaimer

BCAway offers automated push notification features, including morning absence digests, alerts when your starred teachers are absent, absence modification notices, and return announcements:

• Best-Effort Delivery Only: All push notifications are dispatched on a best-effort basis only. Delivery is NEVER GUARANTEED.
• External Network & OS Factors: Notification delivery is subject to third-party dependencies beyond our control, including Apple Push Notification service (APNs), Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), Expo notification gateways, Cloudflare edge execution, Wi-Fi and cellular network connectivity, and device operating system power management (e.g., iOS Low Power Mode, Focus modes, Do Not Disturb, Android Doze mode, and background task throttling).
• Cooldowns & Batching: To prevent notification storms and conserve device battery, our backend utilizes automated rate-limiting, deduplication windows, and multi-teacher batching algorithms. These optimizations may intentionally coalesce or delay notifications.
• No Reliance: You agree that you will not rely solely on push notifications for critical attendance, scheduling, or academic obligations. Missing a push notification does not relieve you of any school attendance duty.

6. Faculty Directory & Teacher Request Disclaimer

The faculty directory and teacher addition request feature (bcaway.app/requestteacher) are provided solely as community conveniences:

• Informational Directory: Faculty names and department affiliations are compiled from public school listings. Listing does not imply faculty endorsement of BCAway.
• Request Submissions: Submitting a request to add a teacher via Google Forms does not guarantee that the faculty member will be added to the directory or that their absences will be monitored. App maintainers reserve the unilateral right to accept, reject, modify, or remove faculty entries at any time without notice.

7. Student Accounts, Security & Anti-Circumvention

Access to authenticated features within BCAway is a revocable privilege conditioned upon strict compliance with our acceptable use rules:

• Authorized District Credentials: You must authenticate using your own valid, active district email address ending in @bergen.org. Impersonating other students or using another person's email is strictly prohibited.
• Confidentiality of Magic Links: Sign-in links delivered to your email are single-use credentials intended solely for your device. You may not share, forward, or transfer authentication tokens or links to unauthorized third parties outside the school community.
• Anti-Scraping & Anti-Abuse: You expressly agree that you will NOT:
  1. Deploy automated bots, spiders, scrapers, crawlers, or scripts to extract teacher absences, faculty directories, or backend API responses;
  2. Probe, scan, reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or test the vulnerability of our Cloudflare edge workers, Supabase database, or authentication mechanisms;
  3. Attempt to bypass, disable, or circumvent database Row-Level Security (RLS) policies or domain-verification triggers;
  4. Engage in denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, flood our endpoints with excessive requests, or degrade service quality for other students.
• Immediate Revocation: We reserve the right to immediately invalidate sessions, ban IP addresses, and terminate access for any user who violates these security rules.

8. Complete Exculpatory Release & Waiver of Claims

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW (INCLUDING THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY), YOU, ON BEHALF OF YOURSELF, YOUR HEIRS, EXECUTORS, ASSIGNS, AND (IF A MINOR) YOUR PARENTS OR LEGAL GUARDIANS, HEREBY FULLY, FINALLY, UNCONDITIONALLY, AND FOREVER RELEASE, ACQUIT, WAIVE, AND DISCHARGE:

• Kabir Sekhon (Developer);
• Savera Continental LTD. (Publisher), its directors, officers, agents, and affiliates; AND
• Bergen County Technical Schools (BCTS), Bergen County Academies (BCA), the Bergen County Board of Education, and all of their trustees, superintendents, principals, teachers, proctors, and staff;

FROM ANY AND ALL CLAIMS, DEMANDS, LIABILITIES, SUITS, PROCEEDINGS, CAUSES OF ACTION, LOSSES, DAMAGES, PENALTIES, OR EXPENSES OF ANY NATURE WHATSOEVER, WHETHER KNOWN OR UNKNOWN, SUSPECTED OR UNSUSPECTED, ACCRUED OR UNACCRUED, IN LAW OR IN EQUITY, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY ARISING OUT OF, RESULTING FROM, OR RELATED TO:

1. Your access to, reliance upon, use of, or inability to use the BCAway app or website;
2. Any inaccuracies, errors, delays, typographical mistakes, or omissions in displayed teacher absences, period coverage, room reassignments, or bell schedules;
3. The failure, delay, misdirection, or omission of any push notification, morning digest, or absence alert;
4. Any school disciplinary action, detention, Saturday detention, in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, attendance infraction, cut, truancy record, loss of credit, or grade reduction;
5. Any academic harm, missed quiz, exam, laboratory session, project submission, or extracurricular/athletic ineligibility;
6. Any hardware malfunction, battery consumption, software conflict, or data loss on your device.

9. Comprehensive Limitation of Liability & Damages Cap

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL KABIR SEKHON, SAVERA CONTINENTAL LTD., BERGEN COUNTY ACADEMIES, OR THE BERGEN COUNTY TECHNICAL SCHOOL DISTRICT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ACADEMIC DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS, GRADE PENALTIES, LOSS OF PRIVILEGES, OR INTANGIBLE LOSSES), EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

AGGREGATE LIABILITY CAP: IF, NOTWITHSTANDING THE FOREGOING RELEASES AND LIMITATIONS, ANY LIABILITY IS FOUNDED AGAINST KABIR SEKHON OR SAVERA CONTINENTAL LTD., IN NO EVENT SHALL TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY EXCEED THE GREATER OF: (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNT ACTUALLY PAID BY YOU TO USE BCAWAY IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM (WHICH IS ZERO DOLLARS, $0.00); OR (B) TEN UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($10.00 USD).

10. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Kabir Sekhon, Savera Continental LTD., Bergen County Academies, and the Bergen County Technical School District from and against any third-party claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable legal and attorneys' fees) resulting from or arising out of: (a) your use or misuse of BCAway; (b) your violation of these Terms; (c) your violation of Bergen County Academies attendance policies or district Acceptable Use Policies; or (d) your infringement of any rights of another student, faculty member, or third party.

11. Intellectual Property & AGPL v3.0 Open-Source License

The original source code, algorithms, and application architecture of BCAway are licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3.0. The BCAway name, logo design, visual assets, and customized user interface are the intellectual property of Kabir Sekhon and Savera Continental LTD. You may not misrepresent the authorship or origin of this application, or use the BCAway brand to mislead users regarding official school affiliation.

12. Mandatory Dispute Resolution & Class Action Waiver

Binding Individual Arbitration: Any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be resolved through binding, confidential individual arbitration administered in Bergen County, New Jersey, in accordance with the rules of the American Arbitration Association (AAA), rather than in court.

CLASS ACTION WAIVER: YOU AND SAVERA CONTINENTAL LTD. AGREE THAT ANY DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCEEDINGS WILL BE CONDUCTED SOLELY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS AND NOT IN A CLASS, CONSOLIDATED, OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. YOU EXPRESSLY WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO COMMENCE OR PARTICIPATE IN ANY CLASS ACTION, PRIVATE ATTORNEY GENERAL ACTION, OR COLLECTIVE PROCEEDING AGAINST THE DEVELOPER OR PUBLISHER.

13. Governing Law, Jurisdiction & Severability

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the substantive laws of the State of New Jersey, United States, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any legal proceeding not subject to arbitration shall be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Bergen County, New Jersey.

Severability: If any provision of these Terms is determined by a court of competent jurisdiction to be unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision shall be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

14. Modifications to the Service & Terms

We reserve the unilateral right to modify, suspend, update, or permanently discontinue the Service or any feature (including teacher absence tracking, notification pipelines, or the entire application) at any time, with or without cause, and without prior notice or liability to you.

We may revise these Terms at any time by updating this document and revising the "Last Updated" date. Continued use of the Service after changes are published constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms.

15. Contact Information

For legal inquiries, formal notices, or questions regarding these Terms, please contact: