The Cleveland Metropolitan School District announced Monday it would not move forward with an extension of its contract with Flock Safety.
District officials had planned to ask the school board to approve the $603,000, one-year contract at its meeting this week but now will suspend the use of Flock cameras on CMSD properties.
Jon Benedict, the district’s spokesperson, announced the decision via email Monday evening. In a statement, he cited several factors including privacy concerns, the overall cost-benefit of Flock compared to alternatives and input from law enforcement partners.
Benedict wrote that the district would still have plenty of other measures to protect school property, including nearly 5,000 district-owned security cameras, contracted “safe passages” staff stationed in and around schools, and “recently deployed temporary parking lot monitors” alongside other physical security measures.
“The District’s goal is to direct resources toward the combination of measures that provides the most responsible safety benefit for our schools and community,” Benedict wrote.
How CMSD has used Flock
The district has used Flock license plate readers since 2022. The most recent contract covered 201 cameras, which collect images of cars as they move past, stationed at 62 schools across the district. School safety officials urged the board to renew the contract earlier this month, saying the services were essential for combating break-ins and car thefts that have plagued district properties over the past year.
The decision to cut ties with Flock comes after district officials presented the results of an internal audit conducted by CMSD this summer that showed that the majority of the law enforcement searches of the data were not made by CMSD security or the Cleveland police. Board Chair Sara Elaqad requested the audit in April after community members raised concerns about privacy and the use of the technology for immigration enforcement.
“It is important to the Board that all students — including those from immigrant communities — feel safe, respected, and protected,” she wrote to Signal Cleveland earlier this summer. “We are looking to assess the program’s effectiveness, cost, operational needs, and the concerns raised by stakeholders.”
Elaqad had no comment to add when reached Monday evening.
The audit found outside law enforcement had searched the district’s Flock system over 130,000 times before it turned off sharing with outside agencies on July 7. But it ultimately concluded that the district had adequate safeguards for the technology. Some of those safeguards were only put in place during the course of the audit, the document shared with Signal Cleveland last week showed.
The audit also showed that the system was primarily used by Cleveland police. For example, in the month of July, police conducted 8,984 searches, compared with 44 by CMSD safety and security staff.
Flock Safety could not be reached for comment before publication.
