Fairfax County's School Board voted 12-0 on Thursday, Sept. 24, to ban automated license plate readers from all roughly 200 school campuses.

The prohibition covers the "installation, procurement, or leasing" of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) from any manufacturer on property the board owns. That includes Reston-area campuses such as South Lakes High School and Langston Hughes Middle School. It does not affect existing security cameras, speed cameras or school bus stop-arm cameras already in use across the district, which serves about 177,000 students.

Vice Chair Kyle McDaniel, the at-large member who introduced the motion, framed the ban as a line between education and policing. "We are not a police department. We are an educational institution," McDaniel said at the Sept. 24 meeting, according to FFXnow. "Our job, our mission, our focus, our budget dollars, are about making sure that 177,000 kids get the best education possible."

West Springfield District representative Sandy Anderson seconded the motion.

The vote was preemptive. Superintendent Michelle Reid told board members no ALPRs are currently installed on FCPS property and none were planned, WTOP reported. Before the vote, the board amended the motion to clarify it covers plate readers from any manufacturer, not just Flock Safety cameras. FCPS is the nation's ninth-largest school division.

Franconia District representative Marcia St. John-Cunning said the ban signals to families who contacted her that the board values their right to privacy. She noted the district's existing security cameras provide adequate protection "without going into some of this technology that, to this point, does not have guardrails," according to FFXnow.

McDaniel said he began working on the proposal about a month and a half before the vote, before neighboring governments took their own steps, Patch reported.

The School Board's ban is a separate and stronger action than the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors' Sept. 15 vote to pause new Flock camera installations. That pause left 84 existing cameras running. The county has also sent Flock's CEO a letter asking who owns and can access county data, how the company handles conflicts between states with different laws, and how its AI-powered searches work.

In a statement after the Sept. 24 vote, McDaniel said he hopes Virginia's General Assembly will address the issue statewide in its next session, according to WUSA9. The supervisors' Safety and Security Committee is scheduled to review the county's Flock relationship on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 1:30 p.m.