Public schools in Charlottesville are shutdown for the second day in a row over an online threat.
The threat was “racially charged” though no further specific details about the threat have been shared by the Charlottesville School Board.
An investigation involving state and federal authorities is ongoing, according to the Charlottesville City Schools superintendent Rosa Atkins.
“We do not tolerate hate or racism. The entire staff and School Board stand in solidarity with our students of color — and with people who have been singled out for reasons such as religion or ethnicity or sexual identity in other vile threats made across the country or around the world. We are in this together, and a threat against one is a threat against all,” the school board said in a statement.
This is not the city’s first brush with race-based issues. Charlottesville was the site of the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017 where groups of white supremacists and counter protesters clashed on the streets.
The Charlottesville City Schools include seven elementary schools, one middle school, one high school and one education program for young patients at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital.
The school board gave parents some tips about how they should broach the shutdown with their children.
“For instance, for young students, you might say, ‘Someone said they wanted to hurt some students, and the people who run the schools decided that it would be safer for for students to stay home,'” the school board posted on its website.
