Students attending Richmond Public Schools are no longer required to wear masks after the School Board voted to eliminate the mandate at Monday night’s meeting.

Jonathan Young, 5th District representative, has been pushing for the School Board to eliminate the mask mandate for months. In the surrounding counties, Chesterfield and Hanover’s school boards eliminated their mask-wearing requirement in January of this year. Henrico’s School Board followed suit in February.

When Mr. Young initially introduced a motion for the mask mandate to be lifted for all RPS schools, it did not pass. Prior to the vote, Superintendent Jason Kamras asked Mr. Young to amend the motion with language stipulating a return to wearing masks, if necessary, depending on CDC guidelines. Ms. Rizzi then introduced a motion to include Mr. Kamras’ suggested amendment, and it passed.

Protecting student health was not the only concern the School Board discussed Monday.

The district’s Digital Working Group presented data about student use of technology during the school day that includes private cell phones and devices and use of the web on laptops.

The School Board had directed the group to collect and analyze data, identify disruptions to learning and offer recommendations. The district uses several tools to track student use and identify potentially harmful material students in which students may be exposed. In tracking student use, the group found that among the highest blocked sites were social media websites (Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook,etc.), gaming sites, and streaming services such as Netflix.

One of the monitoring programs, Gaggle, analyzes content generated by students to identify content, messages, documents and images that are potentially harmful, and divides the material into categories, such as self-harm, harassment and others.

Since the start of the 2022 school year, the software has generated 3,500 alerts, most of them involving middle and high school students, and falling under the category “violence towards others.” The data also indicated that students mostly use Google Chat to share and interact.

The group reported that “cell phone usage is a major distraction” during the school day, with students sometimes accessing sites that are blocked on their Chromebooks, but accessible on their cell phones.

It was recommended that the School Board purchase student account management software, enact Google chat limitations and educate parents and caregivers about digital safety protocols.

The report and recommendations received mixed reception from School Board members.

Kenya Gibson, 3rd District, said she had deep concern about student exposure to violent and suggestive content. Restrictions are necessary for student safety and academic success, she said.

“When it comes to common sense, we have schools that are not accredited, and yet we have students watching YouTube for 4 1⁄2 hours a day,” she said. “There has to be a way where we can do the bare minimum to ensure our students are able to safely navigate the web using a school provided device.” She introduced a motion calling upon the district to consider options for restricting student access.

Stephanie Rizzi, 5th District representative, said students need to be taught how to responsibly use and access media. She said she does not favor censorship and does not believe it works because children will figure a way to get to what they want, whether there are restrictions or not.

“We have to look at how to build that intrinsic motivation in our kids so they want to focus more on school than on their phones.”

The motion introduced by Ms. Gibson and passed by the School Board calls on Superintendent Kamras to research and present a report with options for limiting student access to platforms that expose them to violence, and ways cell phone use can be limited during the school day.

The report is due in January.