I find it difficult to lay the blame with VSCode when the terminology belongs to git, which (even 7 years ago) was an industry standard technology.
People using tools they don’t understand and plowing ahead through scary warnings will always encounter problems.
Exactly this, and rightly so. The school’s administration has a moral and legal obligation to do what it can for the safety of its students, and allowing this to continue unchecked violates both of those obligations.