Cleveland schools to end contract covering 201 cameras on district property

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District said Monday night it will not renew its contract with Flock Safety, directing the company to suspend operation of 201 cameras on district property. The district had been expected to take up a one-year extension worth $603,000 at a school board meeting scheduled for Tuesday.

The district's contract with Flock lapsed at the end of June 2026, though the cameras kept running under a short-term extension. In a statement, the district said a review of exterior security, including surveillance, site conditions and staffing, led to the decision. The Board of Education had also asked the administration to examine Flock's technology, privacy concerns raised by the community and board members, input from law enforcement partners, the cost-benefit of the system against alternatives, and the district's existing capabilities.

"The District has decided not to pursue an extension of CMSD's contract with Flock Safety," the statement reads. It added that the district will keep reviewing alternative safety measures. The district said its existing surveillance network includes nearly 5,000 district-owned cameras, Safe Passage, its partnership with the Cleveland Department of Police and the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, and temporary parking lot monitors deployed recently. A significant number of CMSD staff cars have been broken into in school parking lots over the last two school years.

Bryn Adams of the Flock No Cle activist group said other political bodies in Cleveland and beyond should follow the district's lead. "I think it is really reassuring to feel like at least some leadership body in the city is reflecting on the risks and costs associated with just sort of running headlong into these tech quote unquote 'solutions' to problems that they don't actually solve," Adams said. Flock No Cle has said the potential for "misuse and abuse is extremely well-documented" in the AI-powered license plate reader system.

Adams said the contract decision does not close the group's concerns. "If the cameras don't get taken down, if they just get replaced with another system, this is a problem that's just gonna keep coming up. And so I think it's something that we still feel we have to be vigilant about," she said.

The district said it recently concluded an audit of its Flock system, which led to closing access to all non-Cleveland Police or CMSD officials as of July 2026. A Sept. 30 audit report provided by CMSD said it examined activities and system-related information covering fiscal years 2024 through 2027. The report stated that during June 2026 the network audit contained 141,032 searches, including 16 CMSD searches, 10,832 Cleveland Department of Police searches, 59,219 searches by other Ohio organizations, and 70,965 searches by out-of-state organizations. The audit does not identify which out-of-state organizations or other Ohio entities accessed the data, the purpose of the searches, or the timeframe the 141,032 searches covered. Adams said how the data was used remains a concern for Flock No Cle.