The Fulton County school board will vote Thursday on a plan to install license plate reading cameras on all district campuses.

“Our school board has been very focused on making sure all of our campuses are safe for students, staff, and visitors,” said Dr. Mike Looney, Fulton County Schools Superintendent, “without making our campuses look like prisons or places that are not welcoming.”

The latest effort to ensure school safety is a proposal to install cameras from Atlanta-based Flock Safety. The devices would scan the license plates of every car that enters school grounds and check that information with local law enforcement databases like the sex offender registry.

“More information allows for a better response and more proactive planning,” Looney told WSB’s Jonathan O’Brien. “What we want to do is essentially create a safety perimeter around our campuses.”

According to the district, the data captured by the cameras will be owned by the school system and will not be shared or sold to third parties “except in situations where it is shared with other law enforcement agencies,” a district press release stated. “Camera data and footage is encrypted, stored in a cloud, and permanently deleted after 30 days.”

The cameras cost $626,300, with funding coming from the county’s ESPLOST money. If approved, the cameras would be installed district-wide by January 2023.

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