Written for Bacon’s Rebellion by James A. Bacon

At some public schools across the state last year, educators relaxed standards for everything from classroom attendance to cell phone usage out of a sense that children who had spent a year doing remote learning needed to ease back into learning at school. Adults effectively relinquished control, and anarchy followed. (See “No Grades, No Discipline, No Structure, No Learning.”) School officials say they learned their lesson, and they are trying to reestablish order in the new school year.

But educators are finding that it’s not easy putting the genie back in the bottle.

As WRIC reports, school divisions across Central Virginia are addressing internal security policies and procedures “amid a rash of in-school violence in local academic buildings.”

Brookland Middle School in Henrico County was put on “lock and teach” status — school and classroom doors are locked while teaching continues — after a 7th-grade student was hospitalized from a locker-room stabbing. Several students at Highland Springs High School, also in Henrico, had to be treated for pepper spray after a School Resource Officer used the chemical to break up a fight.

“There is an enormity of threat, both inside and outside the school building,” Richmond school board member Jonathan Young said Tuesday. “In a year, we average something like 20,000 incidents. To be clear, not all of them materialize in a melee or all-in assault on a student. But too frequently, they do.”

Approximately 3,500 alerts of violent messaging toward others via in-school devices were tracked since the start of the academic year, WRIC reports.

An emerging narrative in problem school divisions blames COVID, teenage angst, and social media for the disorder. 

“Kids are trying to impress each other, and there’s a lot of social anxiety, and the pandemic hasn’t helped with any of it,” said Gibson, vice chair of the Richmond School Board. “We’ve all seen these videos of kids — where these massive fights are breaking out at school. Do I think that kids are wanting to be in the videos because it gives some bit of notoriety? Unfortunately, I do.”

Richmond officials approved Monday a motion to restrict cell phone usage for secondary students in class.

“With all the personalities and the hormones, the normal choice of growing, learning how to deal with people, the angst of adolescence and all those things that build up, and, plus, an ever-increasing presence of social media putting out every school shooting, every incident, it creates a toxic soup environment,” said Mike Jones, whom WRIC described as a security consultant who works with several Virginia school divisions. “We’ve got students who are coming back for the first time with full school time, instead of a modified time due to COVID. So they’re having to re-learn the aspects of working with their peers, with their teachers, and just the way it is now.”

While there are elements of truth to this explanation — Bacon’s Rebellion has been highlighting the role of cell phones for many months — it overlooks the fact that many schools have abandoned traditional expectations for good behavior and punishments for bad behavior in favor of a social justice-inspired “restorative” approach to maintaining order.

But not everyone buys into that narrative.

Richmond’s Jonathan Young acknowledged that cell phones were a big part of the problem. But he also says that schools need to uphold strict consequences for poor behavior.

“Our first and foremost responsibility is always to prioritize the safety of our students, and too infrequently are we doing that,” he said. “All we need to do is look at our numbers. The metrics, unfortunately, bear out the consequences of a school district that is unwilling, it seems, to hold folks accountable.”

School officials have had an easier time in exurban counties such as Hanover and Goochland.

Hanover schools, which ban cellphone use during classroom instruction, have not seen many fights so far this school year.

“Over the summer and into the new school year, Goochland County Public Schools took a proactive approach to re-establishing a high level of expectations for student behavior,” a Goochland spokesman told the television station. “Policies were revised to discourage inappropriate behavior through the use of strong consequences, while also establishing structures and strategies that allow students to seek assistance prior to any confrontation taking place.”