The Cleveland Metropolitan School District will not pursue a one-year, $603,000 extension of its Flock Safety contract and is suspending use of the company’s cameras on district property, spokesperson Jon Benedict said in an email Monday evening. The board had been expected to consider the extension at a meeting this week.
Benedict attributed the decision to privacy concerns, the cost-benefit of Flock relative to alternatives and input from law enforcement partners. He said the district still has nearly 5,000 district-owned security cameras, contracted safe-passages staff and recently deployed temporary parking-lot monitors, among other measures.
CMSD has used Flock license plate readers since 2022; the latest contract covered 201 cameras at 62 schools. School safety officials had urged renewal earlier this month, citing break-ins and car thefts. The reversal followed an internal audit presented this summer. It found that most law-enforcement searches of district data were not made by CMSD security or Cleveland police, and that outside law enforcement searched the system more than 130,000 times before the district stopped sharing with outside agencies on July 7.
The audit concluded CMSD had adequate safeguards, though some were put in place while the review was underway. In July, Cleveland police made 8,984 searches, compared with 44 by CMSD safety and security staff.
Board Chair Sara Elaqad requested the audit in April after residents raised privacy and immigration-enforcement concerns. She told Signal Cleveland earlier this summer that the board wanted students, including those from immigrant communities, to feel safe and was assessing the program’s effectiveness, cost, operational needs and stakeholder concerns. Elaqad had no additional comment Monday. Flock Safety could not be reached before publication.