UV Light Malfunction Ends Cobb Schools Contract With ProTek Life

COBB COUNTY, GA — Cobb County School District said Wednesday it is canceling its contract with ProTek Life for ultraviolet disinfecting lights and has requested a refund after a light malfunctioned at an elementary school in February.

The Cobb Board of Education approved up to $12 million — in a 4-2 vote — 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 released Wednesday night, 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 on Feb. 22 at Argyle Elementary, according to the letter.

"Although no students were present in either office, one adult was present, suggesting the motion detector and timing hardware failed. In addition, other UV lights flickered on and off throughout the building in what appeared to be attempts to turn on," the letter reads.

No one appeared to be injured or hurt during the malfunctions, the district said.

According to the letter, the district immediately paused the use of UV lights in all Cobb schools and began an investigation, which proved "the safeguards did not function as required by the district's request for proposal (RFP) process."

Cobb Schools is now halting further installation of the lights, requiring the removal of those already installed and requesting a refund from ProTek Life under the terms of the contract. Patch has requested a copy of the contract under the Georgia Open Records Act.

"We acknowledge the success of the ProTek Life product during the proof-of-concept period and ProTek Life's belief that this is a single failure of their product," the letter said. "However, we do not believe even a single failure to meet the high health and safety standard established in our RFP process is acceptable."

Two board members voted against the initial proposal for the hand-sanitizing stations and UV lights: Jaha Howard and Charisse Davis. Howard cited concerns about using taxpayer dollars for technologies without seeing much hard data about the results of these technologies.

"We know that there's very low-tech ways of fighting this virus: mask wearing and washing with just plain soap and water, so I am very concerned about using taxpayer money for these COVID technologies when we have not seen any studies, particularly peer-reviewed studies," Howard said during the work session in December. "In that vein, I am very curious if the [Cobb-Douglas Public Health] have any input into these items that we are piloting."

Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said at the time that he had conversations with the public health department throughout the process, and "anything that can improve the health and safety in the classroom is on the table."

A parent watchdog group, called Watching the Funds - Cobb, formed shortly after the purchase of the two hygiene products. The group's organizers — Stacy Efrat, Jessica Bergeron and Heather Tolley-Bauer — said these purchases raised questions on Cobb Schools spending among parents districtwide.

"There was not great communication at the highest level at the district around the efficacy of those purchases, particularly the UV lights," Bergeron told Patch last week.

After the district's announcement to cut ties with ProTek Life's UV lights, Tolley-Bauer said the group is considering this a "win," but there is still work to do.

"Although I certainly appreciate that these lights are going to be uninstalled and that we will be getting some money back ... I think that is a great first step," Tolley-Bauer said Wednesday. "I think that we also still have a lot of questions around how was this procured in the first place."