About Ask Before You App
Built by the person who used to answer these questions for the whole state.
Ask Before You App is a one-person company founded by John Lyman, an M.Ed. educator with nearly 30 years in the field and the former Student Data Privacy Specialist at the Utah State Board of Education. The records-retention schedule your Utah district follows today? He wrote it.
~30 years
in education
Educator first. M.Ed. Classrooms, districts, and the state office.
150+ LEAs
supported at USBE
As Utah State Board of Education Student Data Privacy Specialist: 41 districts and over a hundred charters.
8% → 92%
compliance climb
Statewide student data privacy compliance during the program John helped run. The playbook inside ABYA is the one that did this.
$2,995
flat, on purpose
Privacy over profit. The lowest price that keeps ABYA building, same for every district and charter, no deadline.
At the state office, John watched the same scene repeat in district after district. A teacher finds a tool that would help kids. The request disappears into a queue. Weeks pass. The teacher either gives up or goes rogue and uses it anyway, and now nobody knows what student data is going where. The district was not careless. It was drowning.
Meanwhile parents had nowhere to look. Districts spend real money promising families they take privacy seriously, and when a parent asks the simple question, which apps does my kid actually use and who approved them, there is no page to send them to.
ABYA is the answer to both. A public privacy hub at your district's own subdomain, built from the SDPC agreement data your district already has, that answers the parent's question before they call and gives your staff the training to stop wondering. The faster a district can say yes to a teacher, the fewer tools go rogue. Speed is the safety feature.
One person runs this company, which is exactly why it is priced the way it is. No sales team, no urgency games, no per-student tiers. $2,995 a year for every district and charter, about $8.22 a day, for a hub that is live every day of the year. Privacy over profit is not a slogan. It is the pricing model.