The Virginia Department of Education released its final guidance on Tuesday, after a 30-day public comment period. School divisions have until the end of the year to update their policies. The guidance follows Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s July executive order for a “cellphone-free education.” The governor last month issued Executive Order 33 to keep cellphones out of the classroom to address distractions and mental health concerns.

“This guidance from the Virginia Department of Education is an important step towards creating a healthier learning environment where students can receive a quality education free from harmful distractions,” Youngkin said in a written statement released today.

The most stringent guidelines apply to elementary schools, where students will be barred from using their phones inside the building or on school property, including before and after school. Whether middle school students can use their devices before or after school is left up to local divisions. At the high school level, students can use their phones before or after school hours.

In Tuesday’s news release, VDOE officials cited a recent poll of Virginia voters that showed nearly 70% supported a cellphone ban, including during lunch and breaks. The release states that the poll results align with the “broad, bi-partisan” feedback the department has received. The release states that one of parents’ biggest concerns is reaching their children in emergencies. The final guidance includes suggestions for school divisions on creating effective communication plans for emergencies including to “overcommunicate” with families and increasing the frequency of messages during emergencies. The guidance gives divisions the choice of allowing their students to access their phones in an emergency but states that protocols should be clearly communicated to students and parents.

The news release states that many students wrote in requesting to use their phones during lunch.

“However, research shows students receive more than 200 notifications a day on their smartphones and two-thirds of U.S. students report being distracted by using digital devices,” the release states. “It is essential that students have the opportunity to develop face-to-face conversations and critical in-person communication skills during unstructured school hours.”

The guidance makes exemptions for phone use for medical purposes, such as apps that monitor vital signs, if the allowance is written into an individualized education or health plan for students.

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

Students will interview professionals, retirees or “someone with a story to tell” as part of the division’s “signature learning experiences” model, which builds community and career awareness and readiness. Officials say it is a way to inspire students directly.

The minimum time commitment is two hours. All volunteers will be required to have a background check.

To sign up, visit bit.ly/3Xoo6Y3 by Wednesday. The form includes questions about work atmosphere, personal and professional passions and the volunteer’s impact on the community. Any questions about the form or project can be sent to Erica Spencer at espencer@hampton.k12.va.us.

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

Hampton schools saw a significant increase in student absences; officials said 900 more students across the division were absent Thursday than Wednesday. Hampton was one of several districts across the country that had schools on a “hit list” that circulated Wednesday on TikTok.

“While we can’t attribute all of these absences to the social media hoax, we acknowledge that it likely played a role in many of them,” division spokeswoman Kellie Goral said in an email.

On Facebook parent groups and online neighborhood forums, parents shared fears and plans to keep their children home a day or two. Some wondered — as often happens after school-related violence — whether to switch to homeschooling.

In Newport News, parents reported getting a message from the Warwick High School principal Friday telling them the administration was “notified of some threatening comments and chatter posted on social media referencing several NNPS schools.” The message stated the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services said similar posts were circulating in other parts of the state and nationwide.

The social media frenzy came on the heels of the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old Menchville student in Newport News while he was waiting at a school bus stop early Tuesday. It also closely follows school shootings in Maryland and Georgia the previous week.

Ashley Dale, whose children were home sick for a part of the week but were cleared to return on Friday, said she didn’t feel safe sending them back after receiving a message from Hampton schools about the threats.

“I don’t want them there,” Dale said. “It’s scary for me. They’re safer here.”

Dale said this isn’t the first time she’s been concerned about how safe her kids are at school. Last year, she kept her oldest daughter, Madison Peach, then a freshman at Bethel High School, home for several days after a student attacked another with a boxcutter. A few years prior, when a couple of her children were in elementary school, their school called to say that a bullet had been found on the bus they were riding.

“So I said, ‘No more bus.’ ”

But Dale feels stuck. She knows she can’t keep her children home indefinitely and is unable to homeschool. She wishes there were more virtual choices.

“Really, there are no options.”

Madison, 15, said the violence and the messages she’s seen circulating made her worry. Though she usually doesn’t attend football games, her friends at Bethel who do were relieved when the school’s game against Menchville was postponed.

She said the shootings at the schools in Georgia and Maryland have particularly rattled her.

“It’s scary because you don’t know what school is next or who is planning on bringing a gun.”

Though Bethel has a weapons detection system like other Hampton and Newport News schools, Madison said searches are not always conducted when someone sets them off. She worries something could slip in.

A Hampton official said division officials will investigate the complaint and address the issue if necessary.

Despite her anxiety, Madison does not want to learn remotely. She’s able to focus better while at school.

“I think I would do it if it got to a certain point,” she said.

Anxiety after a school or school-connected shooting is not uncommon.

“That’s completely understandable,” said Rachel Stewart, a licensed professional counselor with Thriveworks in Virginia Beach.

Stewart, who works with children, teens and adults, said the Newport News shooting already has come up in some of her client sessions. She said social media is also exacerbating a situation where people’s anxiety feeds off each other.

“When a kid sees their parents being scared or concerned, they’re going to feel the same way, right? When they see other kids being scared or concerned, they’re going to feel the same way,” she said.

This can keep children and teens in a state of anxiety for a longer time, she said.

Even before the most recent violence, Stewart said the fear of a school shooting has been one of the biggest issues for children she works with who are experiencing school-related anxiety.

Data from 2018 Pew Research Center surveys showed that a majority of teenagers — 57% — were worried about a shooting at their school. More than 60% of parents of teenagers surveyed were at least somewhat worried about the possibility.

Mental health professionals have been sounding the alarm about the deterioration of youth mental health for years. Many say the issue was further exacerbated by the pandemic. Schools are seeing record absences, many of them fueled by anxiety and other mental health challenges.

A 2022 policy brief published in the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research cites numerous studies that have found that students exposed to school shootings experience negative impacts on their mental health, as well as their educational and economic trajectories. This includes a higher rate of antidepressant use, lower test scores, increased absenteeism and a higher likelihood of dropping out.

Though the Newport News shooting on Tuesday did not happen at a school, it meets the definition of a “school-associated violent death,” as defined by the School-Associated Violent Death Surveillance System, which includes homicides where the victim was on the way to or from school.

According to the policy brief, school shootings can impact students more directly than other gun violence because of students’ connections to the victims as well as “the loss of trust in their schools’ ability to keep them safe.”

The brief also notes that intensive media coverage of school shootings also likely puts many American students on edge.

Social media hoaxes also cause significant disruptions. A series of bomb threats disrupted schools in numerous Hampton Roads divisions two years ago, in some cases causing students to be sent home early.

“These incidents can cause unnecessary fear and anxiety among students, staff and families,” Goral said. She added that the hoaxes also strain school and police resources, as they ramp up security, investigate threats and deploy counselors and social workers to support students.

A spokesman for the state Department of Education said on Friday that officials are working with school divisions to explore possible resolutions for threats made over social media. Many of these threats may not be originating from within the state, or even the country, he said.

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

The school division partnered with the Modern Classrooms Project last year to train teachers at three middle schools on the model. More than 30 teachers participated and began using it at Hickory, Oscar Smith and Western Branch middle schools.

One of the biggest differences between traditional teaching and an MCP classroom is that a class does not center around a teacher giving a daily lecture. Instead, teachers create shorter instructional video lessons — and other digital content — that they upload online. Students then come in and pick up where they each left off. One student could be on lesson 13, while another who perhaps missed a few days while sick could catch up on lesson 9.

Chief of Schools Jacqueline Miller told board members this week that the model lets teachers “duplicate themselves digitally, allowing them to more freely respond to the various needs of students in their classroom.”

MCP is a nonprofit founded about six years ago by teachers at a Washington, D.C., school. It partners with districts nationwide, including 29 in Virginia.

Miller also stressed that students don’t move on to the next lesson “simply because it’s time.” They only move on once they have demonstrated they’ve mastered the content. The model can be used in any subject.

Chesapeake Director of Middle School Leadership Freddie Alarcon told the School Board that 72 more teachers have been trained and will implement the model this year. Nine sites — eight middle schools and one high school — will participate this year. There is a waiting list of teachers who want to attend the training this fall.

Though the concepts that are the building blocks of the model are not new, Alarcon said, packaging them together and using the MCP network, which provides mentorship, has yielded positive results.

Alarcon shared data comparing student and teacher experiences in MCP classrooms and traditional classrooms within the pilot schools. The study, which included nearly 60 teachers and close to 700 students, showed that 75% of teachers in MCP classrooms reported improved student behavior, compared to 21% in the traditional control group. A similar difference was seen when polling teachers about improved student engagement.

MCP classrooms also had higher pass rates for students on the math and English SOL tests.

Teachers in MCP classrooms also reported higher satisfaction rates, with 88% reporting they intend to continue teaching for many more years, compared to 76% of teachers in traditional classrooms.

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

According to police, an alert from ShotSpotter — which traces sound waves to determine where gunshots are coming from — prompted officers to go to the 1200 block of 16th Street, just after 6:15 a.m. Emergency workers found the teen “with at least one gunshot wound.”

He was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Another Menchville student told the Daily Press she was among about five or six other students waiting near the stop, at the intersection of 16th Street and Garden Drive, at the Stuart Gardens apartments.

The girl, also 15, said it was still mostly dark outside when she “saw this guy walk past me” on 16th Street. He was wearing a gray hoodie and a blue medical-style mask of the kind popular during the pandemic.

“And I didn’t think anything of it,” she said. “I knew it was kind of like, weird.”

Then, she said, she saw the male walk completely around a small residential apartment building at the corner of 16th and Garden Drive.

He then walked into the middle of the street on Garden Drive, she said. That’s when he suddenly pulled out a handgun and began shooting toward the 15-year-old male student who had just arrived at the bus stop.

“I saw him pull the gun out,” the girl said of the shooter. “I saw the flash, and I ran.”

Shots continued to ring out as she ran, with at least one bullet striking a car that was parked on 16th Street. Neighbors reported hearing five shots — three rounds in quick succession, then two more after a few seconds.

The shooter ran off, and he’s still at large. Police have not released a motive for the killing, and have not immediately released the slain teen’s identity. Suspect information was also not released.

“Thank God my kid didn’t get hit, because he was shooting in her direction,” said the girl’s father, who said he and his daughter were speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the potential for retaliation.

The girl said she didn’t know the slain boy well, but saw him on the bus beginning with the first day of school a couple weeks ago.

She said she was having flashbacks to last Thursday, when the boy was with a female friend at the bus stop. “And she was like, ‘Can I get a hug?’, and he was like, ‘No, I don’t want to.'”

“And I don’t know if they seen each other since then,” said the girl, who then broke down in tears at the memory. “It’s sad.”

The school bus arrived at the stop “almost immediately” after the shooting, the girl’s father said.

“It kind of got trapped there with the police coming,” he said. The bus, with about five students on board, remained at the scene for about an hour and a half.

Drew confirmed a school bus was in “close proximity” to the shooting, but couldn’t say exactly how far away. Investigators plan to interview those that were on the bus.

A neighbor who lives on 16th Street, Michael Banks, said he was lying in bed when “all of a sudden I heard gunshots” at 6:18 a.m. He said he heard five rounds.

“It sounded like a cannon,” Banks said. “I laid there and I told my wife, ‘Something’s going on across the street.'”

When the rescue squad and fire trucks pulled up a few minutes later, he said, “They jumped out of the truck, and they were running.”

“So I knew that whatever happened, it was serious,” Banks said. “They got out of the truck running. Evidently they knew that it was pretty bad.”

“Tragic events like this can be difficult to process,” Menchville High School Principal Jason Hollar said in a message to the district on Tuesday. “We recognize that some students and staff will need additional support and encouragement. Members of the school division’s support and response team are available at school today to meet and talk with students and staff.”

Drew said additional student resource officers and other resources were added at Menchville in response to the shooting. He added that there will be an officer stationed at the bus stop in the morning for the remainder of the week.

Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones released a statement commending the police investigation and quick response.

“Today our community was struck by a senseless tragedy,” his statement reads. “A young boy’s life has been cut short, and my heart aches for his family and loved ones during this unimaginable time. Words cannot fully convey the grief we feel.”

“My heart is just broken,” said Newport News City Council member John Eley, who represents the South District. “A 15-year-old lost his life.”

“Hasn’t even begun life yet,” he said.

Eley said his mother lives two streets from where the shooting occurred, and that she was “shaken up” by what had happened.

“I woke up to nine missed phone calls from my mother,” he said. “When I finally called back, she was hysterical about the situation. … She said, ‘John, I’m not calling as your mother. I’m calling as a citizen of Newport News. What can we do to help combat crime in the community?'”

Eley urged the community to “continue to come together during these times” — and if they know anything, to come forward to help the police.

“It’s a sad situation, but like I told reporters earlier, our city, our community, our police department and the citizens of Newport News work very closely together, and we will catch who did this crime,” he said.

“We have zero tolerance for crime in our city,” Eley added.

Council member Tina Vick, who also represents the South District, called the tragedy “disheartening.” She said she drove by the scene in the afternoon.

“It’s really just tragic that our young people — not all of them, but some of them — are in a mindset to think that this type of violence is OK when it’s not,” she said.

“And to see that some young person’s life has ended when they’re just trying to go to school — I’m deeply saddened by that. It really is a sad day in our city. A sad day in our city and the entire Hampton Roads region when we keep losing our children to this gun violence.”

Vick is urging the community to “support our children” and said anyone with information about what happened should come forward.

“I know for many people, it’s very difficult, but we cannot keep allowing our community to suffer through this type of violence,” she said.

Detectives and police forensics technicians were at the scene until about 11 a.m. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call 911 or the nonemergency number at 757-247–2500.

Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com

Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

Josh Janney, joshua.janney@virginiamedia.com

Hickory High and Hickory Middle schools will have synchronous virtual instruction that day, meaning students will log on to their school computers for class. Southeastern Elementary and Hickory Elementary will dismiss students at 1 p.m.

Country music star Luke Bryan will bring his “Farm Tour” to Heritage Park, 3444 S. Battlefield Blvd. in Chesapeake, for a 6 p.m. show. Parking will open at 2 p.m.

In a message sent to parents and posted on the schools’ websites, officials said that the division is “committed to the safety and security of our students and staff” and made the changes after receiving updated information about the concert’s “anticipated community impact.”

After-school activities were also canceled and school officials said the elementary afternoon bus routes might experience delays. Students at the elementary schools who were scheduled to attend the Oceana Air Show will still do so. Breakfast and lunch will still be served at the elementary schools.

During the pandemic, many divisions provided their students with devices to complete online assignments. Since virtual learning became widespread in 2020, some divisions have used the option instead of giving students a “snow day” during bad weather. In April, Norfolk schools moved to virtual learning because of safety concerns regarding the solar eclipse.

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

Alexander was a student at the high school when it served Black students during segregation. She later taught there when it became a middle school, and her children and grandchildren attended. Alexander attributes her success to Huntington’s loving teachers. A strong school and a strong school spirit mean a lot to a community, she said.

“Pride, dedication, family.”

Superintendent Michele Mitchell — who was a principal at the school and whose father attended Huntington —  said a strong sense of school pride is “everything” for a community, bringing people together to help all children flourish.

“In this community, to be able to say you are a Viking that means something,” Mitchell said. She is confident the new school will continue the legacy.

The original Huntington opened as a first-of-its-kind for Black students in 1920, with two teachers and 92 students. In 1936, it was relocated to 35th Street and Orcutt Avenue and closed in 2018. The site went through expansions and transformations, becoming an intermediate school after desegregation in 1971 and then a middle school in 1981.

Demolition began last year, though the facade is being preserved to be used as part of the planned Southeast Community Resource Area.

The new $77 million school will be located a few blocks south at 28th Street. The multistory building will house 600 students and focus on science, technology, engineering, art and math — or STEAM. It will feature open, collaborative spaces, learning studios and specially designed science labs.

Planning was, at times, contentious as some community members fought to keep the new school at its old site. But on Thursday, even some who had originally opposed the move came to celebrate the new chapter. 

School Board Vice Chair Terri Best, who attended Huntington in the ’70s, had initially pushed to keep the school at the old site. But she is now excited about the new location.

“This new school will be more than just classrooms,” Best said. “It will be a place where ideas flourish, dreams take shape and futures are built. It will also be a place for reflection, for remembering the rich Huntington legacy.”

Huntington students are currently housed at the Heritage High School campus.

The school is expected to be open for the 2026-27 school year. Mayor Phillip Jones said it will serve as the “anchor” to the new Southeast Community Resource Area, which will include a library and recreation center.

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

The program is a result of a $135,000 grant from the Scratch Foundation that partners Hampton University and the DevTech Research Group at Boston College for a two-year collaboration to develop the ScratchJr software, train educators and pilot the program this year. Teachers completed the training at Hampton in August.

Elaine Atherton, head of programs for the Scratch Foundation, said part of their work is bringing together nonprofits, schools, universities and other groups so they can collaborate in developing coding resources for “communities that are usually underrepresented from a lot of coding education.”

Atherton said the developers call the curriculum “Coding As Another Language” and see it as no different than learning phonics or developing number sense.

“Learning computer science is a new literacy for the 21st century,” she said. And though people often refer to today’s children as “digital native,” coding is still a learned skill.

“Yes, they have more exposure and access than any other generation to technology,” Atherton said. “But it is not intuitive that all of these children know how to use technology in a way that helps them think critically, problem solve, develop other computational thinking skills.”

Kimberly Thomas-Cain, also with Scratch Foundation, said the program allows students to “peek under the hood” and understand that things on the screen are not magic — they are created by someone.

For DeShea’ Simon, a professor in Hampton University’s management information systems department, helping young students learn these skills was part of the program’s appeal. Simon is heading the professional development piece and worked with training teachers. She and her team will support the teachers throughout the year and observe how students use the platform — where they get stuck, if they collaborate with other children while using it, how engaged they are.

“I would like these young people to be able to walk into public schools and know what a coding class is, and not to be afraid of that type of class when they hear it’s being offered.”

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

Her initial results show that AI tools helped students improve their overall scores in class, but that students struggled to use the technology when they needed in-depth help.

Janice Zhang became interested last year in the impact of generative AI on student work as ChatGPT and similar tools became widely available in the spring. She and her research assistants designed CodeTutor, a tool powered by AI. During the semester, the research team divided an entry-level computer programming class into groups —  one with access to CodeTutor and one without. Both groups had access to a human teaching assistant.

The team found a “significant” improvement in final scores among students who used the AI tool versus those who did not. They plan to conduct further studies this fall.

But, Zhang noted, the study showed the students found AI less helpful with time and turned to the human tutor. One theory is that the AI tool was helpful with more simple tasks in earlier lessons, and was not as helpful with tasks that required more critical thinking.

Zhang said as she and her team examined the prompts that students used to ask for help, they recognized that how the questions were asked often impacted the quality of the response.

“The way that you ask prompts is very important,” she said, “otherwise it’s just garbage in, garbage out.”

Some people in the education community have been hesitant to allow AI into the classroom. But Zhang believes AI is an unavoidable tool that will transform teaching and learning, and said the focus should be on teaching students how to use it well and ethically. Students should be taught to think how they structure prompts and be aware of bias and the risk of inaccurate information. Zhang said she tells her students that AI tools can be good for brainstorming, but warns them that they are responsible for what they write.

Zhang is working with some K-12 school divisions, including on the Peninsula and in Northern Virginia, to create AI literacy camps for upper elementary and middle school students about how to use the tool for math modeling.

The research team is also looking at ways to incorporate features into the CodeTutor tool that can help decrease teacher workload.

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com

Monday was the first day for several divisions, including Hampton, Newport News, Virginia Beach and Portsmouth. At Christian Elementary, the first day was party time. Five-year-old Londyn Tate, rocking a “First Day of Kindergarten” shirt and a smile that would win anyone over, said she was excited to meet her teacher and make new friends.

Londyn’s dad, Laquan, was a little nervous as his first baby headed into the building. Mom, Vijie, knew Londyn would be fine.

“She’s a social butterfly,” she said. “She always goes above and beyond.”

Parents took pictures of their children in front of the “First day of school” sign, the kids sporting fresh highlights in their hair, rainbow tutus and superhero backpacks. One dad pumped his fists to the music, three kids in tow.

“Thank you! Thank you!” he shouted.

Principal Lynette Nelms, in a hot pink pantsuit, greeted students as they hopped off the bus. This is her third year leading Christian Elementary and her 30th in education.

“We are setting the tone,” Nelms said about the party atmosphere. “The way we end the school year is the way we’re going to start it.”

The first day of school for many started hours earlier. At Hampton’s transportation lot, bus drivers started streaming in at 5:15 a.m., well before the sun came up. Lights flashed, backup alarms sounded and squeaks and hisses filled the lot as the drivers completed their daily pre-trip inspections.

Darrin Wills, director of transportation, said the drivers started the school year earlier than students, conducting multiple “dry runs” to perfect their routes.

On Monday, following a yearslong tradition, Hampton leadership — including Superintendent Raymond Haynes, Board Chair Richard Mason and various senior staff — lined up to cheer the drivers as they left for their first pickups. Haynes, who has worked to strengthen ties with the city and community, said he was also happy to have city council members and Hampton police representatives sending off the drivers in style, waving #1 foam fingers and ringing cowbells.

As the sun began peeking, turning the sky purple and then peach, Mason said he came to the lot for the same reason he visits the schools on the first day. He wants everyone to feel supported, from the staff to the students to the parents. He remembers driving behind the school bus on his son’s first day of kindergarten and feeling welcomed and supported by the division.

He wants parents to know: “You’re bringing your best to us and so we want to return your best to you better than they came to us — a little more knowledge, a little more excitement about school.”

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com