clearAMS — Terms of Service

Version 1.1 Effective date: October 28, 2026 for districts that join from that date; November 27, 2026 for districts that accepted version 1.0 Last updated: October 28, 2026

Version 1.1 changes one thing: backups of deleted data expire within a further thirty-five (35) days, not thirty (30).

These Terms govern use of clearAMS by any California local educational agency. They are the only terms on which clearAMS is offered.

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1. Who these terms are between

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between Pulse Pedagogies, LLC, a California limited liability company ("Pulse Pedagogies", "we", "us"), and the local educational agency that accesses or uses clearAMS ("District", "you").

"clearAMS" or the "Service" means the clearAMS web platform for Proposition 28 site expenditure planning and audit evidence, including its websites, applications, exports and generated documents.

If you are accepting these Terms, you represent that you are authorized to bind the District. If a separate written agreement, purchase order with negotiated terms, or data privacy agreement is executed between Pulse Pedagogies and the District, that agreement controls to the extent it conflicts with these Terms.

2. Who may use clearAMS

clearAMS is offered to California local educational agencies — school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools — and to their employees and authorized agents. It is not offered to consumers, to individuals in their personal capacity, or to students.

clearAMS is not directed to children, does not knowingly collect information from children, and is not intended for student use. See Section 10.

3. The Service, and what it is not

3.1 What clearAMS does

clearAMS helps a District plan, document and review its Proposition 28 Arts and Music in Schools site expenditure plans. It provides guided planning workflows per school, allowability screening, enforcement of each school's allocation as its spending ceiling and of the non-personnel share limit, review, revision and approval workflow with School Site Council formalization, an e-signature certification record, multi-year dashboards, cross-year reconciliation, and generated plan documents retained as immutable record copies.

3.2 clearAMS is not professional advice

This is the most important term in this agreement. Read it.

clearAMS is software. It is not legal advice, accounting advice, auditing services, financial advice, or a professional opinion of any kind. Pulse Pedagogies is not your attorney, not your auditor, not your accountant, and not your fiscal advisor. Using clearAMS does not create any advisory, fiduciary, or professional relationship.

Nothing clearAMS outputs — including allowability results, ceiling and non-personnel-share calculations, waiver records, flags, warnings, narratives, generated plan documents, or any other output — is a determination that the District's plan or expenditures comply with Education Code sections 8820 et seq., Assembly Bill 2440, or any other law, regulation, or audit standard.

The District must have its own qualified personnel and advisors review every plan, submission, calculation and document before relying on it, filing it, certifying it, or submitting it to any agency or auditor.

3.3 The compliance check is advisory and may be wrong

clearAMS includes automated and AI-assisted checks. These checks:

• are advisory only and are not a substitute for human review;
• may produce results that are incomplete, inaccurate, or wrong;
• may fail to identify a problem that exists;
• may identify a problem that does not exist;
• fail open — if a check is unavailable, plans can still be built and submitted without it, and no check result should be read as an assurance that a plan was validated.

The District's own reviewers remain responsible for review in all cases. The absence of a flag is not an approval, and is not evidence of compliance.

3.4 No guarantee of outcomes

Pulse Pedagogies does not warrant, guarantee, or promise that use of clearAMS will result in: an audit without findings; the avoidance of any finding, disallowed cost, questioned cost, penalty, repayment obligation, or corrective action; approval of any plan by any body; the granting of any waiver; or any particular treatment by any auditor, the California Department of Education, a county office of education, or any other authority.

4. Accounts, sign-in and access control

4.1 Sign-in

Staff sign in with their District-assigned account: through Google sign-in with a District Google account, or with a one-time sign-in code sent to their District work email address. clearAMS does not create, issue, or store passwords for user accounts.

4.2 The approved list is the District's responsibility

A valid Google sign-in alone does not grant access. A person must also appear on the District's approved list. The District is solely responsible for maintaining that list, determining who has access and at what level, and removing people promptly when their role or employment changes.

Pulse Pedagogies is not responsible for access granted, retained, or misused as a result of the District's approved list, the District's Google Workspace configuration, or the District's failure to revoke access.

4.3 Administrator credentials

Administrator credentials are scoped to a single District. The District is responsible for safeguarding them and must notify us promptly at support@clearams.app of any suspected compromise.

4.4 Acts of your users

The District is responsible for the acts and omissions of its personnel and agents using clearAMS as if they were the District's own.

5. Tiers, fees and payment

5.1 Free tier

The free tier is the product, not a trial. Every California public school district can build a plan for every one of its schools on it, at no cost.

The site expenditure planning workflow is offered at no charge to any California school district, county office of education or state special school, at any size, with no time limit. The free tier is provided as is and we may modify, limit, or discontinue it, or change what it includes, on sixty (60) days' prior notice. We will not delete District data as a result of such a change.

Charter schools above the minimum invoice. A charter school that is its own LEA, and whose annual fee calculated under Section 5.2 is equal to or greater than the minimum invoice stated in that section, is offered clearAMS on the paid tier rather than the free tier. A charter school whose fee falls below that minimum receives the free tier on the same terms as any other LEA, including the paragraph below.

The threshold is the one already stated in Section 5.2 and is not a second number: it is the point at which an invoice can be issued at all.

Why charter schools are treated differently here. The free tier exists so that no public school district is priced out of filing a compliant plan for schools it is required to plan for — a district plans for every one of its sites, including the smallest, and the cost of the smallest should not decide whether the district can comply. A charter school that is its own LEA receives its Proposition 28 allocation directly and is, in nearly every case, a single-school LEA, so that purpose is not engaged in the same way. Charter schools also operate under a governance and funding framework distinct from that of school districts, and a substantial number are operated by multi-site charter management organizations rather than by a single district governing board. We therefore ask a charter school large enough to be invoiced to contract on the paid tier, and continue to offer the free tier to those below that line. This paragraph states our commercial policy; it is not a statement about the legal status, governance or quality of any charter school.

Charter schools authorized by, and operated as part of, a district that is itself the LEA are not affected by this paragraph. That district contracts under Section 5.2 like any other and keeps the free tier, even though its charter sites are billed at the charter rate.

An LEA with fewer than 500 students, as shown in the California Department of Education's most recent Arts and Music in Schools allocation schedule, may also, at no charge, plan in every fiscal year its account carries and generate the plan document and SSC presentation. We confirm eligibility against that schedule.

Google Workspace for Education. Connecting clearAMS to the District's Google Workspace for Education — Google sign-in, and delivery of plan documents to the District's own Google Drive (Privacy Policy, Section 5) — is provided at no charge on both tiers, including our help setting it up. Compliance-tier subscriptions fund it.

5.2 Paid tier

The District compliance tier is priced per school, per year, by school level, for each school receiving a Proposition 28 allocation:

Continuation, alternative and special-education preschool sites are billed at the elementary rate. District office and department records are not billed.

Charter sites. A school the California Department of Education's public school directory identifies as a charter is billed at $600 whatever grades it serves. The charter rate replaces the school-level rate; it is not added to it, so a charter school serving K–12 is billed $600 once. This applies to a charter school that is its own LEA and to a charter site on a district's own roster alike. Whether a school is a charter is taken from the Department's directory and not from information the District supplies.

The annual fee is the sum of those rates. There is no district minimum and no fixed upper limit: the District pays the sum of its schools' rates, subject only to the affordability limit below.

Affordability limit. No District's annual fee will exceed 0.25% (25 basis points) of its Arts and Music in Schools allocation, meaning the District's most recent allocation as certified by the California Department of Education on the date of the quote. Where 0.25% of that allocation is less than the sum of the rates, the District pays 0.25% of the allocation, rounded down to the dollar. The allocation used is stated on the quote. We never quote more than this limit. It is a maximum only; it will never increase a District's fee.

Minimum invoice. Where the annual fee calculated under this section is less than $250, no fee is charged and no invoice is issued for that term. The District receives the compliance tier at no charge for that term. For a charter school this is also the test in Section 5.1: a charter school whose fee falls under the minimum is a free-tier LEA, and one at or above it contracts on the paid tier.

The fee for a term is set when the term begins. Schools opened or closed during a term do not change it; the District's schools are counted again at renewal.

County office of education agreements are priced separately by written agreement, subject to the same affordability limit.

5.3 Billing terms

Paid subscriptions are billed as a single invoice against a single purchase order, in advance, in U.S. dollars. Payment terms are Net 30 from the invoice date. Fees are exclusive of any applicable taxes.

Every paid term ends on June 30, so that each term falls within a single fiscal year of the District. A term that begins on July 1 runs the full year at the annual fee. A first term that begins later is prorated: the annual fee multiplied by the number of calendar months from the start month through June (counting the start month), divided by twelve, rounded down to the cent.

Because clearAMS is district administrative software rather than a Proposition 28 expenditure, the District is responsible for determining the correct funding source for these fees. Statements on our website about budgeting clearAMS from the General Fund are general commentary, not advice about the District's accounting treatment.

5.4 Renewal

Paid terms do not auto-renew. Each renewal is a new term from July 1 to June 30 and requires a new purchase order. We will give notice before a term ends so the District has time to raise one, but a term that is not renewed simply expires on June 30 and the District drops to the free tier under Section 8.2. Nothing renews automatically and nothing is charged without a purchase order.

5.5 Non-payment

If an invoice is materially overdue we may, after written notice and a reasonable opportunity to cure, suspend the paid-tier features. The District drops to the free tier under Section 8.2 — we do not delete District data for non-payment.

5.6 Founding districts

A District whose first paid term begins on or before June 30, 2027 is a founding district. For its first three consecutive full fiscal-year terms:

• its fees are calculated using the rates and affordability limit in effect when its first paid term began, even if our published pricing later rises, or our then-current published rates, whichever produces the lower fee; and
• if it renews for the second and third of those terms without a gap, the third term is provided at no charge.

A prorated first term counts as the first of the three only if it begins on July 1. Otherwise the three terms begin with the District's first full fiscal-year term, which must begin by July 1, 2027. The third term still requires a purchase order, for $0, so the term is on the District's record.

5.7 Support

Support differs by tier. This section says which support each tier includes, so that a District can tell before it signs up rather than after.

Onboarding support is the same on both tiers, and it is a person. Every District that creates an account — free tier or paid — gets direct human help getting set up: confirming its school roster and allocations against the California Department of Education's published figures, adding its administrators, and walking its site principals through filing a first plan. Onboarding support runs until the District has filed its first plans for a fiscal year, or ninety days from account creation, whichever is later. We do this on the free tier deliberately: a plan filed against the wrong roster is wrong in a way the District will not discover until an audit, and we would rather spend the time than publish a figure we knew was unchecked.

After onboarding, support is Level I on the free tier and Level II on the paid tier. In this agreement:

• Level I is self-service: the guidance built into the application, the published documentation, and any automated or AI assistant we make available within the Service. It answers general questions — what a field means, what the allocation ceiling and the non-personnel share require, why a line was flagged, how to move through filing, review and approval. Both tiers have Level I. Anything AI-assisted within it is subject to Section 3.3 in full: it is advisory, it can be wrong, and nothing it says is legal, accounting or audit advice.
• Level II is a person at Pulse Pedagogies who can investigate a District's own account and its own data: reproducing a problem against the District's actual plans, correcting records, explaining a compliance verdict on a specific line, recovering a plan from backup, and escalating a defect to whoever is going to fix it. Only the paid tier has Level II.

We do not commit to a human reply to a free-tier support request outside onboarding, and a District that needs one should expect the paid tier.

Level II support is reached at support@clearams.app from an address on the District's approved list, or by a route we give the District's administrators during onboarding.

No response-time commitment. Nothing in this section is a service level. We do not commit to a response time, a resolution time, or an availability target for support on either tier unless one is stated in a separate written agreement signed by both parties — see Section 11.2. Support is provided during our normal business hours, Pacific time, excluding weekends and United States federal holidays.

What support does not include. Support is help operating clearAMS. It is not a review of whether a District's plan complies with Education Code section 8820 or any other law, it is not an audit, and it is not professional advice of any kind. Sections 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 apply to everything said in a support exchange exactly as they apply to the Service itself. Neither tier includes custom development, integration work other than the Google Workspace for Education connection in Section 5.1, data entry on the District's behalf, or training delivered on site.

6. District data and ownership

6.1 The District owns its data

As between the parties, the District owns all data it enters into or generates through clearAMS: plan lines, narratives, amounts, allocations, review notes, decisions, approval records, School Site Council dates, signature records, and generated plan documents and record copies ("District Data").

6.2 Our license to operate the Service

The District grants Pulse Pedagogies a limited, non-exclusive license to host, process, transmit, display and back up District Data solely to provide, maintain, secure and support the Service, and as otherwise permitted by the Privacy Policy. We do not sell District Data, use it for advertising, or use it to train machine learning models (Section 6.7). See the Privacy Policy for detail.

6.3 No student data

clearAMS does not collect, store, transmit, or process student records of any kind. This is a design commitment, not merely a current state. A plan records the number of students a program serves as an aggregate count; that figure is not a record about any student. Funded positions are recorded by role and total cost, never by the name of the person who holds them. The District agrees not to enter student personally identifiable information into clearAMS. If the District does so, it must notify us and we will work with the District to remove it.

6.4 Export

A full export of District Data is available on demand through the Service, and the same snapshot can be restored. The District should take its own exports periodically; export availability is part of the Service, not a substitute for the District's own records retention obligations.

6.5 Public records

The District is a public agency and its records may be subject to the California Public Records Act. Responding to public records requests is the District's responsibility. We will reasonably cooperate with a District request for its own data, at no charge for a standard export.

6.6 Aggregate and de-identified data

We may create and use aggregated, de-identified statistics that do not identify the District, any school, or any individual — for example, product usage patterns — to operate and improve the Service. We will not publish statistics attributable to an identifiable District without its written consent. Such statistics are never used to train a machine learning model (Section 6.7).

6.7 The intelligence engine never trains on District Data

clearAMS's intelligence engine never trains on District Data. Neither Pulse Pedagogies nor any model provider we use may use District Data, or anything derived from it, to train, fine-tune or improve any machine learning model.

This is a term of this agreement, not a setting. No configuration, tier or account option can turn it off, including a model key supplied by or for a District. We send District Data only to model providers whose terms prohibit training on it, and we will provide those terms in writing for a District's review on request.

7. Acceptable use

The District will not, and will not permit anyone to: use clearAMS unlawfully; attempt to gain access to another district's data or to any part of the system it is not authorized to reach; probe, scan, or test the security of the Service without our prior written consent; interfere with or disrupt the Service; reverse engineer or attempt to derive source code except as permitted by law; resell or provide the Service to a third party that is not an authorized user; or enter student personally identifiable information.

Authorized security review is welcome — contact us to arrange it.

8. Term, termination and what happens to data

8.1 Term

These Terms apply for as long as the District accesses clearAMS. A paid subscription runs until the June 30 that ends its term (Section 5.3).

8.2 Termination and downgrade

Either party may end a paid subscription at the end of its term. When a paid subscription ends, District Data is not deleted. The District drops to the free tier: paid-tier features are withheld, but plans, approval records and previously generated record copies remain readable and retain their status. The multi-year view is itself a paid-tier feature and is withheld with the rest; the fiscal years behind it are kept, and become readable again on a new term.

Level II support (Section 5.7) ends with the term, like any other paid-tier feature. The District keeps the AI assistant, and keeps it permanently — the free tier is not a trial.

A charter school that was on the paid tier under Section 5.1 drops to the free tier in the same way, and may continue on it: the test in Section 5.1 decides what we offer at the start of a term, not what happens to an account when one ends. Its plans, approval records and generated record copies remain readable exactly as described above.

8.3 Termination for cause

Either party may terminate for the other's material breach that remains uncured thirty (30) days after written notice. We may suspend access immediately where necessary to prevent harm to the Service, to other districts, or to comply with law — we will notify the District and restore access as soon as the cause is resolved.

8.4 Deletion on request

The District may request deletion of its data at any time. We will delete it within thirty (30) days, except for backups, which expire on their ordinary cycle within a further thirty-five (35) days, and records we must retain by law. The District should export first — deletion is irreversible.

8.5 Refunds

On termination for our material breach, we refund prepaid fees for the unused remainder of the term, pro rata. On termination for the District's convenience, prepaid fees are not refunded; the District keeps paid-tier access for the remainder of the term it has paid for.

9. Intellectual property

Pulse Pedagogies owns clearAMS, including its software, design, documentation, templates, and the clearAMS name and marks. Nothing here transfers any of it. The District receives a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use clearAMS during the term.

Documents that clearAMS generates from District Data — plan documents, decks, PDF record copies — belong to the District. The underlying templates and the software that produces them remain ours.

Feedback the District provides may be used freely without obligation.

10. Confidentiality

Each party may receive the other's non-public information. The recipient will use it only to perform under these Terms, protect it with at least reasonable care, and not disclose it except to personnel and advisors who need it and are bound to comparable obligations. This does not apply to information that is public through no fault of the recipient, independently developed, or lawfully received from a third party. A party may disclose where legally compelled, with reasonable prior notice where lawful — including disclosures the District must make under the Public Records Act.

11. Warranties and disclaimer

11.1 What we do warrant

We warrant that we will provide the Service with reasonable skill and care, and that we will not materially decrease the security protections of the paid tier during a paid term.

11.2 What we do not warrant

Except as expressly stated in Section 11.1, clearAMS is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE", and Pulse Pedagogies disclaims all other warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that the Service or its outputs are accurate, complete, current, or compliant with any law, regulation, or audit standard. We do not commit to any service level or uptime target unless one is stated in a separate written agreement.

The free tier in particular is provided without any warranty whatsoever.

12. Limitation of liability

12.1 Excluded damages

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Pulse Pedagogies will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any:

• audit finding, questioned cost, disallowed cost, or adverse audit opinion;
• penalty, fine, interest, assessment, repayment or clawback obligation;
• loss, reduction, withholding, or recapture of Proposition 28 funding or any other funding;
• impact on the District's General Fund;
• cost of corrective action, re-submission, re-audit, or responding to an audit or inquiry;
• lost savings, lost funding opportunity, or cost of substitute services;
• loss or corruption of data;
• reputational harm;

whether or not we were advised of the possibility, and regardless of the theory of liability.

12.2 Cap on liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Pulse Pedagogies' total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to clearAMS and these Terms will not exceed:

• for a District on a paid tier — the fees the District actually paid to Pulse Pedagogies in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim; or
• for a District using only the free tier — one hundred U.S. dollars (US$100).

12.3 What these limits do not cover

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence, or willful misconduct.

The cap in Section 12.2 does not apply to our breach of our data-security obligations under Section 9 of the Privacy Policy, or to our indemnity obligations under Section 13.1.

12.4 Basis of the bargain

The District acknowledges that the fees reflect this allocation of risk, that the free tier is provided at no charge in reliance on it, and that these limitations are an essential basis of the agreement between the parties.

13. Indemnification

13.1 By Pulse Pedagogies

We will defend the District against a third-party claim that clearAMS, as provided by us and used as permitted, infringes that third party's U.S. intellectual property rights, and will pay damages finally awarded or agreed in settlement. This does not apply to claims arising from District Data, from combination with anything we did not supply, or from use outside these Terms.

13.2 By the District

To the extent permitted by law, the District will defend and indemnify Pulse Pedagogies against third-party claims arising from District Data, from the District's use of clearAMS in breach of these Terms, or from the District's entry of student personally identifiable information into the Service.

We recognize that many California public agencies cannot lawfully indemnify a vendor. Where that is the case, this Section 13.2 does not apply, and striking it is not a barrier to agreement.

13.3 Procedure

The party seeking indemnity must give prompt written notice, allow the indemnifying party to control the defense, and cooperate reasonably. No settlement imposing liability on the other party without its consent.

14. Public agency terms

Pulse Pedagogies will provide a completed W-9 on request, and will maintain commercial general liability and professional liability (errors and omissions) coverage, providing current certificates of insurance on request.

The District's standard purchase order terms, when executed by both parties, supplement these Terms; in a conflict, the executed agreement controls.

15. Data privacy agreements

Every District signs a data privacy agreement. Pulse Pedagogies executes the California Student Data Privacy Agreement (CSDPA), or a comparable district data privacy agreement, with every District as part of onboarding, and offers it before the District's staff begin entering District Data. Once we have signed the CSDPA with one District, any other California local educational agency may adopt the same terms by signing its general offer (Exhibit E).

Because clearAMS collects no student records, most obligations in a student data privacy agreement are satisfied by the absence of pupil data. Executing one does not change the fact that no student data is collected, and is not a representation that any is.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. For material changes we will give at least thirty (30) days' notice to the District's administrator email and update the date above. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. A District on a paid term may reject a material change and terminate for a pro rata refund of unused prepaid fees.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Los Angeles County, California.

Before filing, the parties will attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute through escalation to senior representatives for at least thirty (30) days.

These Terms contain no binding arbitration clause and no class-action waiver. Disputes are resolved in court, in the venue named above.

18. General

Notices. To the District at its administrator email; to us at support@clearams.app and 1325 Valley View Rd., Suite 205, Glendale, CA 91202.

Assignment. Neither party may assign without the other's written consent, except that either may assign to a successor in a merger or sale of substantially all assets, with notice. We may also assign these Terms, with notice, to a public agency or nonprofit organization that takes over operation of clearAMS as its public steward, provided it assumes these Terms and every executed data privacy agreement.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control.

Severability. If a provision is unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary, or severed, and the rest remains in effect.

No waiver. Failure to enforce is not a waiver.

Independent contractors. The parties are independent; nothing creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship.

Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement on this subject, superseding prior discussions, except for a signed written agreement between the parties, which controls.

19. Contact

Pulse Pedagogies, LLC 1325 Valley View Rd., Suite 205 Glendale, CA 91202 support@clearams.app