CMS staff warned security system didn’t work. The district expanded it anyway.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools continued to buy technology from a company despite warnings from employees that the product did not work, according to newly released emails.

The emails show that the district awarded a second bid to Centegix, a Georgia-based company, in June after officials complained that its crisis alert system failed during a classroom incident at an east Charlotte school.

CMS agreed to buy $1.75 million worth of equipment from Centegix, and so far, the district has paid the company $1.13 million. The system is designed to allow employees to trigger an alarm system during emergencies by pressing a button on a card they carry with their ID badges.

But in June, when a teacher at Charlotte East Language Academy hit the alarm button to request help in her classroom, it failed, Pam Fandel, a senior project manager in the district’s technology department, wrote in an email on June 6, 2019.

The system did not send out a mobile alert or desktop alert to other employees when the teacher used the system, Fandel said.

When the school tested cards carried by other teachers in the building, they did not work either, Fandel said.

“The communication and support from this company is concerning,” Fandel wrote in an email the next day. “Had this been a life threatening situation we would be in big trouble.”

Less than three weeks later, CMS sent a letter to Centegix informing the company the district wanted to purchase more equipment.

Following questions from the Observer, Superintendent Earnest Winston last week said that the crisis alert system does not function properly at schools across the district where it was installed and that he had given Centegix 30 days to fix the problem.

That contrasts with a press conference last August, when Winston spoke at Charlotte East Language Academy to tout the district’s new security measures, including Centegix. Other officials at the event conducted a demonstration to show how the crisis alert system works.

The event was part of CMS’s repeated promotion of the system to parents and the media even after district administrators were made aware that the alarm system wasn’t functioning properly. CMS’s 78-page parent-student handbook for this school year touts the Centegix system on the second page.

Former Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board chair Mary McCray said Thursday that she questioned the way CMS awarded deals to Centegix.

She blamed CMS staff and said that the board was not involved in determining the bid process.

Documents show the district received a bid from only one other company after issuing a second invitation for bids in April 2019.

The school board, which is responsible for overseeing how district money is spent, did not vote to approve a contract with Centegix. Instead, district administrators made an agreement with Centegix through purchase orders, which often do not require approval from the board.

School systems around the nation use purchase orders for services that cost relatively small amounts of money, but not for equipment that costs more than $1 million, said Michael Griffith, a school-finance consultant in Colorado.

“There are really only two reasons I know that you would do that and neither of them is good,” Griffith said. “One is for convenience. The other is that you don’t want to go to the board.”

Former Superintendent Clayton Wilcox pushed for the district to get a crisis alert system, according to current and former CMS officials.

Wilcox resigned under pressure from the school board last summer without providing any public explanation. He refused an interview request.

CMS released a subpoena Friday showing that the U.S. Attorney’s Office contacted the district seeking documents about Wilcox’s departure.

Did CMS ignore warning?

The Observer reviewed hundreds of pages of emails obtained through a public records request.

The emails provide new details about how CMS has struggled to implement the crisis alert system in more than two dozen schools.

In November 2018, CMS awarded Centegix a bid and agreed to pay the company to install the crisis alert system. Emails show that some administrators began to question Centegix about seven months later.

On May 28, 2019, Amy Shire, a senior purchasing agent in the district procurement department, urged district officials not to award a second bid to Centegix until problems were resolved.

“There are many factors with this project and this vendor that Procurement may not be aware of, however, my recommendation is not to award or continue until all issues and risks are settled....,” Shire wrote.

Four minutes later, Shire received a response from Ken Kennedy, the district’s director of information systems and support.

After discussion among administrators, Kennedy wrote, the technology team determined that it was OK to award the bid to Centegix.

About a month later, Shire sent a letter to Centegix informing the company it had been awarded the winning bid to install a video classroom system.

Emails show that by the time the current school year started in August, concerns about Centegix had grown.

“We are not as far along with Centegix as I’d hope to be,” Fandel, the senior project manager in the technology department, wrote in an email dated Aug. 26, 2019. “My daily struggle is to get this system installed correctly and working 100 percent at the schools.”

CMS’ anger and confusion

Emails show that CMS staff grew increasingly frustrated with Centegix employees as they worked to install and fix the crisis alert system over the summer. The company’s employees sometimes failed to follow directions from the district, causing problems with CMS facilities.

On June 19, a CMS network engineer wrote to Fandel saying a Centegix technician had taken master keys from Harding High School and never returned them.

Five days later, when Fandel told Rocky River High School staff that Centegix employees would come by to pick up a master key, a school secretary said the one they borrowed two weeks ago was still not returned.

“To my knowledge the team never returned the master key we gave them,” Colette Benson wrote. “Not sure what we can do because we do not have an extra one.”

Benson later wrote to say that the key had been left on the counter and ended up in the lost and found.

In August, Centegix employees set off alarms at Garinger High School, triggering a police response because the CMS police department was not informed that contractors would be on campus.

Two days later, CMS Police Chief Lisa Mangum emailed Chief Technology Officer Derek Root, asking him to inform the company that they have to contact the department before entering schools after hours.

“Unfortunately, when the alarms are determined to be FALSE we and/or the school are CHARGED a substantial fee,” Mangum wrote.

Root replied to say that they had already told the company about this protocol and apologized.

“I’m sorry, they already know this and Pam (Fandel) read them the riot act about it,” Root wrote in response. “Shouldn’t happen again.”

Centegix founder Daniel Dooley did not return a phone call or respond to a text seeking comment. A spokeswoman for Centegix referred a reporter to a written statement the company released last week.

Centegix said it is continuing to partner with the school district as CMS works to complete testing and training for employees.

What did the Board of Education know?

Consultants with expertise in school finance and education technology said it would be rare for a school district to spend that much money without obtaining a signed contract and seeking board approval.

McCray, the former school board chair who retired in December, said last fall she asked why there was no contract with Centegix and was told by CMS administration it was the “superintendent’s prerogative” to use purchase orders.

The Board of Education was informed about Centegix after the district reached an agreement with the company, McCray said. She said she was told sometime between August and October about concerns with how the system functioned at Charlotte East Language Academy.

“We were told it was being worked on,” McCray said. “We were assured the company said it would fix it.”

Current school board chair Elyse Dashew said she did not learn about issues with the crisis alert system until September when members of the district’s Municipal Education Advisory Committee sought an update on school security.

She said Superintendent Winston has been working with Centegix to find out what went wrong and to fix the problem. If the issues can’t be resolved, Dashew said the school board has asked Winston to investigate how the district could recoup the money that has already been spent.

Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security, based in Cleveland, said that school districts have often turned to technology to improve safety when in fact most security lapses involve human error, bad policy and procedures, and poor communication.

“People are looking for a quick-fix technology solution for a human problem,” Trump said. “We need to do more on the people-side of school safety training and preparedness, and less on the excessive target hardening, hardware, products, apps, and other gadgets.”

CMS’s promotions of Centegix sparked the interest of at least one other school administrator. In September, CMS received a flattering email from Chris Farnsworth, director of facilities and security at Carmel Christian School and Carmel WEE School in Matthews.

“I’d like to see if we can get some information on the new alert system CMS has installed,” Farnsworth wrote. “We saw the story on the news and it looks like a great system.”

This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 5:29 PM.