Investigation Of Cobb School Board Purchases Opened By Cobb Grand Jury: Report

COBB COUNTY, GA — A Cobb County grand jury is investigating purchasing decisions made by the Cobb County Board of Education, including the purchase of UV lights that were used to sterilize classrooms, an attorney in the Cobb County District Attorney's Office told the Marietta Daily Journal.

The Cobb Board of Education approved up to $12 million in December 2020 for hand-sanitizing machines from 3Oe Scientific and ProTek Life's Cleanz254 UV lights. These lights are low-voltage UV lights that were intended to sterilize classrooms overnight while schools were unoccupied.

The UV lights were first installed in three elementary schools — Argyle, Belmont Hills and Bryant — to test the product, and the district expanded installation to all 67 elementary schools in December after the "successful" proof-of-concept period.

Each room with the UV lights was required to have a motion detector as a "fail-safe," the district said in a letter in March 2021, to ensure the devices wouldn't activate if a student or staff member walked in. But the motion detectors and timing hardware in two UV lights malfunctioned in February 2021 at Argyle Elementary, according to the letter.

Related:

• UV Light Malfunction Ends Cobb Schools Contract With ProTek Life
• Sanitizing Tech Expanded To All Cobb Schools Elementary Campuses

No one was injured, but one adult was in the room at the time, which indicated the motion detector failed.

The district immediately paused the use of the UV lights, halted further installation, removed the existing lights and requested a refund from ProTek Life in March last year. Shortly after, the DA's office said it was opening an inquiry into the school district's business practices.

An attorney within the DA's office told the MDJ a Cobb grand jury "started the initial stages of an investigation" into purchasing decisions made by the board, including the UV lights and other purchases.

Read more from the Marietta Daily Journal here.