Alamance-Burlington school board members are considering launching a state-funded Artificial Intelligence school safety pilot program that had been rejected by another school system over concerns about mass surveillance and privacy rights.
The AI surveillance system would be funded by a one-time $3.2 million “directed grant” from the General Assembly that had originally been earmarked to start the program in New Hanover County schools.
The money has since been reallocated to ABSS after New Hanover County school board members opted not to participate in the program early last year, according to Wilmington news outlets.
“I do think we need to find more ways to use technology. I think a lot of folks get upset when they read about some of this. This technology is used in retail, amusement parks, government, and they don’t get upset.”
[But when it’s used in schools, people do get upset, he said.] “I like it. When you go to a stadium on game day, you’re in this type of world. Do I think there are potential issues? Sure.
“. . . When the legislation was put together, it was for putting vendors together that could provide some sort of camera AI. It does specifically have to be used for this, and through the process of selecting vendors, Atos does have to be the vendor.”
– ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming
“When the legislation was put together, it was for putting vendors together that could provide some sort of camera AI. It does specifically have to be used for this, and through the process of selecting vendors, Atos does have to be the vendor.”
That decision followed a “boisterous town hall” in March 2025 where skeptics raised concerns about data security, long-term costs, and details of the contract with Eviden, based on news stories published at the time. Eviden is a French firm that’s part of the Atos Group, according to the company’s website.
ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming said during the school board’s latest semi-monthly meeting Tuesday afternoon that state officials had selected the vendor for the AI pilot.
The AI pilot program was originally funded through a $5.2 million allocation for Davidson and New Hanover counties that had been included in the biennial state budget that the General Assembly passed in September 2023. The unexpended $3.2 million portion of that grant was reallocated to ABSS as part of the latest state budget that the General Assembly passed and Gov. Josh Stein signed in early July.
The three school systems have roughly the same number of schools. ABSS has 38, including the 20 elementary schools, seven middle, and seven traditional high schools, as well as the early college, alternative school, virtual school, and the Career & Technical Education Center; Davidson County has approximately three dozen schools; and New Hanover, 42 schools.
School board members heard a lengthy presentation on the pilot program Tuesday afternoon from Atos representatives Dan Feldhusen and Shawn Hall, who confirmed for the board that Davidson County schools is the only K-12 public school system in the state that has launched the AI pilot program, though they said that private schools and universities employ the technology.
Davidson County schools was working with a “project integrator,” BAS and Evident late last year to coordinate the software installation and was in the process of purchasing servers needed to support the program, according to a report on the pilot program that the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) submitted to the General Assembly in January of this year.
The North Carolina Center for Safer Schools was moved to the SBI under legislation passed by the General Assembly in November 2024, which then-Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed, which the state house and senate voted to override in December of that year.
How the program works
The program would connect AI-enabled software to existing surveillance systems and cameras within ABSS facilities to monitor for potential threats – such as an intruder with a weapon – but would not employ facial recognition, the Atos representatives said during their presentation to the school board.
ABSS currently has 1,800 security cameras that continuously surveil 38 facilities, Hall of Atos said Tuesday afternoon.
The school system’s servers would feed images through four Atos “models” to deliver alerts about possible safety threats in less than 50 milliseconds, Hall explained. The AI program would deliver alerts about: weapons detection; smoke/fire detection; slip/fall detection, which typically detects such things as fights; and perimeter detection, which activates an “alert” when someone enters school grounds or restricted areas.
For example, the system would capture video of someone bringing a gun into a school building; send an alert; and verify that “there’s an action to be taken” and escalate it, Feldhusen explained.
Atos boasts a 98 percent accuracy rate on weapons detection, Hall told the board. “For perimeter detection, if you have anyone come up at 11:00 at night or 1:00 in the morning and stay for more than 10 seconds, it’s probably going to send out an alert,” he explained.
Information about a potential safety threat, such as a lockdown or some other event, is transmitted via Raptor Technologies, another school safety platform that ABSS already uses to screen and track visitors, among other uses, screens and tracks visitors, school officials said Tuesday afternoon.
“Our response time is typically under five seconds for anything we detect,” Feldhusen said, referring to the four categories of potential threats that the Atos system monitors.
Concerns about misuse
Atos isn’t licensed to use controversial technologies like Flock cameras, frequently used to capture, store, and analyze vehicle data in law enforcement investigations, Feldhusen told the school board.
Flock, which has installed 120,000 automatic license plate reader camera systems across the U.S., has come under fire for its retention of personal data and potential privacy violations, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In April 2026, the ACLU filed an amicus brief in a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case, arguing that automatic license plate reader systems “gave the government unprecedented powers of surveillance that upset traditional expectations of privacy in violation of the Fourth Amendment,” according to the organization’s website.
The case, Lee Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, challenges the Norfolk, Virginia police department’s use of Flock cameras to surveil the movements of drivers around the city; the collection of “significant amounts of sensitive location data, including from individuals not suspected of any crime”; and storage of location data in “sprawling, interconnected databases” for an indefinite period of time, according to the ACLU. The case remains pending in the Fourth Circuit.
Technology experts have cited concerns about the absence of state and federal regulations to prevent a third-party vendor, such as Flock or Aptos, from storing, misusing, and profiting from biometric data.
The Atos system doesn’t do “facial recognition, profiling, or routine individual tracking,” and any data captured would remain on ABSS-owned servers, Hall said. Nor does the AI system store or transmit data anywhere else, he added. “We don’t have access and will never have access [to the data being collected,” Hall assured the board.
All of the company trains its AI models – i.e., feeding data into algorithms in order to learn statistical patterns – is done with “synthetic data,” rather than human biometric data, he said.
ABSS officials said later during the discussion that data collected by school security cameras is stored on the school system’s servers between 30 and 45 days.
“Right now we’re storing [this data] – every time you walk into a school right now,” Fleming told the board.
No funding allocated for additional cameras, equipment, or maintenance
“The cost for adding cameras, is that on the school district?” asked school board member Tameka Harvey.
The company’s representatives acknowledged that there’s no additional state funding for cameras, equipment, or maintenance that may be needed, though Feldhusen suggested that ABSS might be able to move security cameras it already has in place.
“Then you take that chance of having that moment where that weapon is not detected because you can’t add in new cameras,” Harvey pointed out.
Hall said, “We’re working with the state legislature on that, as well.”
School board member Seneca Rogers asked whether the $3.2 million earmarked for the AI program could be used to fund other expenses that impact school safety.
“For me, when I look at school safety, I look at it from a holistic point of view – not just cameras, not just [school resource officers]. It is also school counselors. Why is it the only means for this security piece?
“. . . I guess part of my hangup is there’s multiple ways of school security. I’m not against AI and what’s going to happen with it . . . I worry about misidentification of our kids. In my mind, I’m like, ‘Does [senator Amy Galey, who helped reallocate the grant to ABSS] want AI cameras watching our kids?’ I don’t want AI cameras watching our kids. That’s where I’m sitting right now.”
– School board member Seneca Rogers
“For me, when I look at school safety, I look at it from a holistic point of view – not just cameras, not just [school resource officers],” Rogers said Tuesday. “It is also school counselors. Why is it the only means for this security piece?
“I guess part of my hangup is there’s multiple ways of school security,” said Rogers. “I’m not against AI and what’s going to happen with it…I worry about misidentification of our kids. In my mind, I’m like, ‘Does [senator Amy Galey, who helped reallocate the grant to ABSS] want AI cameras watching our kids?’ I don’t want AI cameras watching our kids. That’s where I’m sitting right now.”
Fleming said, “When the legislation was put together, it was for putting vendors together that could provide some sort of camera AI. It does specifically have to be used for this, and through the process of selecting vendors, Atos does have to be the vendor.”
The program is designed to be a “managed process” for a two-year term, Feldhusen said.
Concerns about false positives
School board members also peppered the Atos representatives with questions about the possibility of false positives or false “alerts.”
Feldhusen said that Atos goes through a monthslong process of fine-tuning the algorithms and training its models to prevent false positives. Neither he nor Hall estimated the percentage of alerts that turn out to be “false positives.”
“It’s kind of like training your email client” to recognize when something isn’t spam, school board member Dr. Charles Parker elaborated.
The majority of false alerts are subjective, Feldhusen said. “Guns are not so subjective; perimeter is subjective,” meaning that the system could pick up a dog approaching a fence around a school in the middle of the night, even though it doesn’t pose a threat.
Meanwhile, the superintendent sought to reassure board members that the AI security system isn’t some shadowy, dystopian force that’s monitoring people’s every move.
“I’m making an assumption there’s more false positives than false negatives – you’re hitting hot on something that might be a three-ring binder or a thermos,” Fleming said, likening the system to having security guards scanning images 24/7.
“I do think we need to find more ways to use technology,” Fleming added. “I think a lot of folks get upset when they read about some of this. This technology is used in retail, amusement parks, government, and they don’t get upset.”
But when it’s used in schools, people do get upset, he said. “I like it,” Fleming added. “When you go to a stadium on game day, you’re in this type of world. Do I think there are potential issues? Sure.”
The superintendent told the board the presentation was for “information” – not a vote right away – and that ABSS has asked the state to retain the funds until the board decides whether to move forward.
“The biggest thing is having eyes on it [security cameras] when you typically don’t,” Fleming said. “With the technology, depending on where cameras are, [the AI system will pick up that] there’s an intruder before a human does…There’s nothing here that’s on the cloud; it’s coming directly from our server. It is only on our server. It’s not sitting in a data center in Iowa or wherever.”
School officials said Tuesday afternoon that the next step would be to develop a scope of work for Atos and a contract to be reviewed by the school system’s lawyers. “I think we’re a few weeks down the road from that,” the superintendent said.
