The Cobb County School District said Wednesday it was cancelling a contract for ultraviolet light (UV) disinfecting lights in elementary schools after those lights at a school malfunctioned last month.
In a message to the “Cobb Schools Team,” the district said that it was discontinuing its contract with Cobb-based ProTek Life after the UV light system at Argyle Elementary School in Smyrna failed on Feb. 22.
The UV lights were designed to disinfect classrooms overnight as part of COVID-19 safety measures. They were to have a “fail-safe” element that would prevent the activity from taking place if a student or teacher entered a classroom.
The Cleanz254 lights disinfect classrooms daily after the school day is over. The process takes an hour overnight, and the vendor claims it kills 99.99 percent of all microbes in a classroom.
But the district said in its message that “it appears timing hardware and motion detectors did not work as described” and the UV lights went on in two offices at Argyle during the school day on Feb. 22.
“Although no students were present, one adult was present” and other UV lights “flickered on and off throughout the building in appeared to be attempts to turn on,” the district said, adding that no one appeared to be hurt during the incidents.
The message said an investigation into the problems began and while the problem was limited to one school, “the District’s high expectation and safety requirements were not met despite ProTek Life’s Assurances.
“We have determined ProTek’s hardware does not meet the safety requirement described in and required by our RFP process,” said the district’s message, which added that CCSD would be asking for a repayment under the terms of its contract.
(You can read the full letter by clicking here.)
The district expanded the UV lights contract to all 67 elementary schools after what Superintendent Chris Ragsdale called a successful proof-of-concept at three schools in the fall.
Only a few schools have had the UV lights installed thus far, including Murdock ES and Sope Creek ES in East Cobb.
The contract with ProTek Life was part of a $12 million request by Ragsdale in December with other vendors that included high-tech hand sanitizers.
The board voted to approve the contract, but some board members objected, saying they hadn’t seen any evidence that the products worked, and thought it was not the best use of funds.
One of those objecting members, Jaha Howard, was prevented from asking further questions of Ragsdale during the board meeting.
No information about the $12 million spending request, with the funds to come from the district’s reserve, was ever included on the board’s meeting agenda.
After that, a citizens group called “Watching the Funds—Cobb” organized to question and scrutinize school district spending, and was critical of the $12 million purchase.
The group also has questioned the district’s contract with AlertPoint, a Kennesaw company that manufactures an emergency alert system that’s been installed in all Cobb schools starting in 2017.
On Feb. 2, an alert went off throughout all Cobb school campuses that led to a brief Code Red, which the district said is being investigated as a deliberate cyber attack.
Recent news reports in metro Atlanta and south Florida said that Tony Hunter, a former AlertPoint employee, was indicted in Fort Lauderdale in January for alleged bid-rigging for a technology contract in his position as the information officer for Broward County schools.
A contract for school equipment there was won by David Allen, head of the Kennesaw-based EDCO, an education technology provider.
Allen, who also was the ProTek president and was the founder of AlertPoint, died of COVID-19 last month.
Hunter started work for AlertPoint in 2019 after leaving Florida. He has pleaded not guilty to the Florida charges and is out on bail, according to news reports.
In a report last week, WSB-TV reported that a potential vendor for the Cobb schools UV disinfecting lights contract expressed “concerns about installing a toxic system around kids.”
The TV station also cited unnamed sources who said that Cobb District Attorney Flynn Broady is conducting an initial investigation into the Cobb school contracts after meeting with “whistleblowers.”
In its message on Wednesday, the Cobb school district said in announcing the ProTek contract cancellation that “we do not believe even a single failure to meet the high health and safety standard established in our RFP process is acceptable.
“Nothing is more important than the health and safety our our students and staff.”
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