Department of Education; school boards; student online activity; data collection, monitoring, and restrictions.
HB1840 would add a new section to the Code of Virginia requiring the Department of Education to set reporting expectations for school divisions that collect student online activity data. The bill defines that data broadly to include metadata from students’ online activity, such as search queries, browsing history, emails, messages, social media content, and other nonacademic content collected from school-issued devices. If a school division collects such data, it would have to disclose to parents what is monitored, what data is collected, what triggers alerts, how alerts are handled, who is contacted, and what information is added to a student’s permanent record.
The bill also requires school divisions to update acceptable use policies to state that online activity is tracked and data is collected, and to provide parents access to collected data when available. It further requires parental notification after an alert or action based on a student’s online activity, unless doing so would create a significant safety concern, and it limits inclusion of this data in permanent records to the most severe cases as defined by the Department. In addition, the Department must provide a template disclosure for school boards and best practices for deleting student online activity data.
HB1840 would create new statewide disclosure, notification, access, and record-retention requirements for school boards and school divisions that monitor student online activity. It would not ban monitoring outright, but it would regulate how schools collect, disclose, share, retain, and delete student online activity data, and it would require the Department of Education to issue guidance and templates to standardize compliance. The bill would affect school boards, school administrators, parents, and students, especially in divisions using device-monitoring or filtering software.
The available vote history suggests mixed but cautious support, with the subcommittee vote to lay the bill on the table passing 5-3. That outcome indicates the proposal drew some interest but did not advance cleanly, and the absence of recorded committee testimony limits insight into the full range of views. Overall, the bill appears to have been viewed as a privacy-focused measure, but one that may have raised implementation or policy concerns among some members.
The main points of contention likely center on the scope of school monitoring and the burden of compliance. Supporters would likely favor stronger parental transparency, access to records, and limits on keeping online activity in permanent student files, while opponents or skeptics may worry about administrative complexity, costs, and whether parental notification could interfere with student safety or school disciplinary processes. The bill’s requirement to define “most severe cases” in guidance, and its broad treatment of online activity data, could also prompt debate over how much discretion schools should retain.