Status: Enacted — Session Law 2024-57 (Senate Bill 382) was signed into law in 2024. The pilot framework was originally established in the 2023 Appropriations Act and refined through House Bill 97 and SB 382. As of May 2026, Davidson County Schools has voted to deploy the pilot in three schools; New Hanover County’s school board voted narrowly in March 2025 to decline participation, leaving its allocated funds in question. The statutory pilot program itself remains in effect and is the most likely template for any expanded North Carolina AI school safety legislation in future sessions.

Bill Number: NC SB 382 / Session Law 2024-57 (codifying language carried forward from the 2023 Appropriations Act and House Bill 97)

Jurisdiction: North Carolina

Category: AI School Safety, K-12 Mandates and Funding

Industries: K-12 Education, State and Local Government

Enacted Date: 2024 (signed as Session Law 2024-57)

Effective Date: Pilot allocations effective for the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 academic years; implementation timeline determined by participating districts.

Summary: SB 382 directs the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to allocate a directed grant of $3.2 million to New Hanover County Schools and $2.0 million to Davidson County Schools for an AI School Safety Pilot Program. The funds must be used to implement AI technology into existing cameras, video management systems, and alerting protocols. The bill specifies a set of required performance capabilities the contracted vendor must offer, including threatening object detection, intruder detection, person-down detection, door-open detection, tag-and-track functionality, facial recognition, forensic face search, and license plate reading. Both pilot districts are required to contract with the same software vendor. The pilot is significant beyond its dollar value because it is one of the first state appropriations explicitly directing AI integration on top of existing K-12 camera infrastructure rather than purchasing new sensor hardware (as is typical of metal detector and pass-through scanner mandates in other states).

Key Provisions:

Directed Grants: $3,200,000 to New Hanover County Schools and $2,000,000 to Davidson County Schools.
Required Performance Capabilities: Threatening object detection, intruder detection, person-down detection, door-open detection, tag-and-track, facial recognition, forensic face search, and license plate reader functionality.
Vendor Coordination Requirement: Both pilot districts must contract with the same vendor, intended to enable data and operational comparability.
Existing-Infrastructure Mandate: Funds must be used to integrate AI into existing cameras and video management systems, not to deploy new metal detection or pass-through scanner hardware.
Reporting: Pilot districts are expected to report findings back to the General Assembly to inform future statewide funding decisions.

Affected Entities: New Hanover County Schools and Davidson County Schools as the directly funded districts. The pilot framework is precedent for any future North Carolina K-12 AI safety appropriation, which would carry implications for school districts statewide.

Implementation Status (May 2026): Davidson County Schools voted 4-1 to proceed with the pilot in three schools using the Eviden vendor platform. New Hanover County Schools declined to move forward in a narrow board vote in March 2025 after the chair raised data security concerns about a third-party audit. The mismatched outcomes mean the pilot is currently a single-county deployment rather than the originally envisioned two-county comparative study.

IntelliSee Relevance: High — with strategic distinction. The SB 382 pilot specifies a vendor-required feature set that includes facial recognition, forensic face search, and license plate reading. IntelliSee’s product strategy deliberately excludes facial recognition because it generates the privacy-and-data-security objections that derailed New Hanover County’s participation. Future North Carolina AI school safety appropriations — and the broader national K-12 AI safety market — are likely to bifurcate into two procurement lanes:

Identity-tracking systems (facial recognition, forensic face search, tag-and-track of individuals) that face escalating community-board and parent opposition; and
Privacy-preserving event detection systems (weapon detection, person-down detection, door-open and intruder detection) that surface security events without identifying individuals.

IntelliSee fits the second lane. School districts that want the operational benefits of AI-on-existing-cameras — faster detection of weapons, falls, and unauthorized access — without the political and legal exposure of facial recognition can deploy IntelliSee on their existing IP camera infrastructure with no facial recognition footprint.

North Carolina AI School Safety Pilot Program (SB 382 / Session Law 2024-57)

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