A 17-year-old boy was arrested and charged in connection with the threat, which appeared to have targeted black and Hispanic students.
The Charlottesville public school district, which serves about 4,300 students from kindergarten to high school, had shut down all of its campuses Thursday and announced that schools would remain closed Friday to prioritize the safety of students.
“We would like to acknowledge and condemn the fact that this threat was racially charged,” Charlottesville City Schools said in a message to the community. “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,” the message continued. “We are in this together, and a threat against one is a threat against all.”
Chief RaShall M. Brackney of the Charlottesville Police Department said that while two days of no school may have caused inconveniences, “the safety of our students and staff was the top priority.”
The back-to-back days of school closures came amid a backdrop of racial tension in Charlottesville, a city that was home to a deadly white supremacist rally in 2017 and where resistance to Confederate statues spurred a movement to remove similar symbols across the country.
A spokesman for Charlottesville police declined to specify the details of the online threat, other than to say that it contained “biased-based language” and “targeted specific ethnic groups.”
But images posted on social media indicate the threat was made on 4chan, an anonymous web forum. A user who claimed to be affiliated with Charlottesville High School promised an “ethnic cleansing in my school” and, using slurs, threatened to kill African-American and Hispanic people.
The 17-year-old, who was not identified, was charged with threatening to commit serious bodily harm on a school property, as well as harassment.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.