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A fire marshal intervention that shut down a Wake County school last month has left families scrambling to find other school options, students learning virtually for weeks, and families wondering why no one had flagged the school as unsafe years ago.
Records obtained by WRAL News and interviews with fire officials show the informal guidance the school was operating under and a lapse in oversight that allowed the school to operate outside of that guidance for years.
“It just seemed like everybody was pointing fingers at everybody else,” said Jodi Bulmer, president of the school’s Parent Teacher Student Association.
In 2023, a Wake high school administrator made what they thought was a routine phone call, attempting to find out when Crossroads Flex High School’s last fire inspection was.
But when the Wake County fire marshal’s office answered, there was a problem: They had no idea a school was at the address listed — a multitenant office building and not your typical Wake school building. While the district typically buys land and builds on it, the district leases the space for Crossroads Flex, and the Cary address’s paperwork listed Crossroads as a business, not a school.
That’s a critical distinction for fire officials. Businesses don’t have as stringent of fire safety standards as schools, which require sprinkler systems and fire alarms at lower occupancies. Business tenants aren’t as densely populated as a typical school.
“Once you reach a number of 50 in an educational occupancy, the building codes require some service systems,” said Braxton Tanner, deputy director in the Wake County Fire Marshal’s office. “One of those would be fire alarm system.”
After the phone call, Tanner and others in the fire marshal’s office visited the school, having never inspected it before, believing it to be a business inspected by the town of Cary’s fire marshal.
“It’s two big open spaces with offices kind of along the border,” Tanner said. “There were a
couple of classrooms to notice there, and there were kids assembled in those rooms receiving
instruction.”
He doesn’t remember how many students, but district officials would tell parents years later that up to 90 to 100 students could be there at times.
That 2023 phone call set off a series of events that would ultimately lead to Crossroads FLEX closing its doors to its 149 students, sending them to virtual school for two weeks before final exams and then to some empty classrooms at Cary High School for the rest of the 2025-26 school year.
The situation has caused dozens of parents of students at the school to consider moving to other schools in the Wake County system.
“I’m still just floored how this ever was able to happen in the first place,” Bulmer said. “The school has been around for 10 years.”
The safety determination — amounting to illegal occupancy, officials say, due to violations of the state fire code — caused the school to close its physical space to classes beginning Jan. 5.
Students were set to learn virtually for the rest of the school year until the district found extra classrooms at Cary High School to accommodate at least some of the classes until this fall, when the school will move to a training center in Garner.
‘Can’t learn math over Zoom’
Crossroads Flex — so named by the county because of its “flexible learning experience” — isn’t a typical school. Students are required to be on campus for a certain number of hours per week, depending on their grade level. They take core courses in-person and electives via North Carolina Virtual Public School. The school serves students who need flexibility because of other commitments — often intensive sports or performance training schedules. Its students are among the highest-achieving academically, as well, according to state test score data.
Attending core courses in person is critical, some parents say, because the most important and potentially challenging subjects require more interaction to make sure students understand the subject matter.
“You can’t learn math over Zoom or Google Meet,” said Rachael Sylvester, whose daughter is a freshman at the school.
At one point during remote learning, Sylvester’s daughter, Elle, logged off of her math class in the middle of it. It’s her toughest subject, and she told her mom she didn’t understand the lesson.
“It’s going about as well as it went during Covid,” Sylvester told WRAL, referring to pandemic school closings that required students to learn virtually.
That time in school also allows students to socialize and participate in more typical high school activities, such as yearbook production and study sessions.
Documents obtained by WRAL News and interviews show the school opened in 2016 under conditions stipulated by the state Department of Insurance that weren’t maintained, though it’s unclear when they stopped being met or why inspectors weren’t aware of the conditions no longer being met. Namely, they could have no more than 50 people in the building at a time.
That the school exists in a multitenant office building, unlike most other county-owned school buildings in the district, is part of the reason Crossroads Flex was inspected every three years by the town of Cary as a business, rather than every six months like other schools. Educational spaces require certain fire safety features, such as alarms and sprinklers, under stricter conditions than businesses. Officials are now inspecting the building under the guidelines for educational tenants.
The Wake County Public School System declined several interview requests from WRAL News but answered some questions via email and shared FAQ documents sent to families.
“We’ve known that we have exceeded 50 people” and were working to find workarounds to allow that, a spokeswoman wrote. The district isn’t blaming anyone else for the problem, she said, adding: “We are always responsible for following all rules.”
Representatives of the town of Cary declined interview requests but responded to a handful of questions from WRAL News.
The North Carolina Department of Insurance, which oversees the Office of the State Fire Marshal, declined an interview request, saying the agency is a technical resource for local code officials and that local authorities are responsible for determining compliance.
“Because of OSFM’s advisory role, we are not able to comment on the circumstances of individual facilities or on actions taken by local jurisdictions,” a department spokesperson wrote.
Business vs. School
Documents obtained by WRAL News and interviews with a county fire marshal official and parents show that the specialty high school operated by the Wake County Public School System was allowed to operate as what’s known as a “Group B” business, rather than a school, so long as the number of people in the building didn’t exceed 50 at any given time.
Group B businesses, established in state building code, don’t need fire alarm systems if they have fewer than 500 occupants, fewer than 100 people on floors without exits or no ambulatory care facility. That’s according to the current version of the state building code, which also says that educational facilities with 50 or fewer occupants don’t need fire alarm systems, in most cases. Educational facilities are defined in building code as facilities educating six or more students.
It’s not clear what the requirements were in 2016, when the state Department of Insurance determined that Crossroads Flex could comply as a Group B business. The determination was made and communicated to town and county officials in 2016 after discussions with system leadership.
The email stating that determination is the only documentation of that agreement on how the school would operate, according to town officials. The school’s permit otherwise stated it had a business use and would conduct training and skill development, records show.
For more than nine years, the school operated as a business, while holding classes for students. More than 100 students were enrolled in the school for the vast majority of that time, although it’s unclear how many of those students were physically in the school’s space at any given time.
Parents told WRAL News that district officials informed them that up to 90 to 100 students were present at times.
A district spokesperson told WRAL News the school system doesn’t plan to review if more than 50 people were scheduled to be inside the building at the same time. The district also has little control over whether students decide to hang around the building after their class is over.
The district is trying to solve the problem, spokeswoman Lisa Luten said, by moving the school to an education-compliant building in Garner next school year.
Tenants classified as businesses aren’t required to have fire alarms or sprinkler systems, separate bathrooms for children and adults, or other safety measures that schools are required to have.
“The state provided some unconventional guidance in this situation [in 2016], which resulted in in this proposal operating in more of the gray area than the black and white,” said Tanner, the deputy director for the Wake fire marshal. “And unfortunately, probably the success of the program exceeded the limitations provided by that guidance.”
The state’s guidance allowed the school to open without making significant changes to the building, which is owned by another company.
“Those limitations that made this more palatable were exceeded at some point,” Tanner said. “And we are where we are now.”
The building is owned by Raleigh-based Crossland 2.0 LLC.
The school system’s original lease for the property, signed in 2015 with a previous owner called Chaucer Investments, notes that the system is responsible for having proper documentation to operate inside the building. The lease notes that the system and the landlord will ensure compliance with laws, ordinance and other regulations. The lease was amended in 2024 to accommodate for some building improvements.
Chaucer deeded the property to Crossland 2.0 last year, but the companies have the same address and many of the same officials. A company representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Complying with codes
Local fire marshals began to see the school in a new light in 2023, when a school administrator called the Wake County Fire Marshal’s office to ask when the school was last inspected, according to Tanner. The administrator was filling out the school’s monthly fire drill report and needed that information to complete it.
Despite the phone call in 2023, it wasn’t until September and November of 2025 that county and town officials issued violation notices to the school.
Once Cary issued the November violation, the school system became bound to a quick timeline — by Dec. 31, 2025 — to comply with issues that would take significant time to rectify. Those fixes included:
- A fire alarm system
- A sprinkler system
- Separate bathrooms for staff and students
- Apply for the change to educational zoning with the Cary Zoning Board of Adjustment
If those things were not completed, the school would have to pay up to $400 per day in fines or limit the number of people in the building to no more than 49 people, including both Crossroads and the Score Academy alternative school located in the other half of the building. Score Academy doesn’t conduct classes; students drop in for advising and counseling. Its operations are continuing as normal in the building.
“The building use as defined by the building code has changed from what was approved in 2016 as a business use to an educational use. The building owner and/or occupant shall seek compliance from the town of Cary (zoning and building),” the county wrote in the Sept. 5 notice.
On Nov. 20, the town of Cary issued its violation notice, in coordination with the county, that demanded the changes on a short timeline.
“Cary and Wake County have both determined that the structure at 5651 Dillard Drive … is currently being illegally occupied in violation of the property’s current zoning and certain requirements of the applicable North Carolina state building and fire codes,” the town wrote in the notice. Officials said they were notified of the change in use Sept. 3. “The use of the property in this manner is a life-safety issue and violates” various laws, ordinances and regulations.
The school district was initially on board with making the changes and consulted the building’s owner, which eventually decided against making the changes, according to district officials.
Lacking the ability to limit capacity to 49 or fewer people, the district asked for a deadline extension to comply with the codes by the end of the school year, while planning to move the school to a training facility the district has in Garner. The town declined the extension request.
Moving to Garner
Crossroads Flex will move to Garner next year, where the building is compliant with the requirements of an educational facility. It has served as a swing space for Wake schools whose buildings are undergoing renovation.
That’s forcing some families to think about whether the school will still work for them. Some have said they won’t go, Bulmer said.
The Garner Resource Education Center at 2600 Timber Drive, currently housing Swift Creek Elementary, is about a seven-mile drive southwest from Crossroads Flex’s original location, mostly via Tryon Road and U.S 70.
It will be a longer drive for North Raleigh students — as long as 45 minutes for some, according to some parents. It could be closer for some families living in the county’s eastern towns. The district tried to choose a more centrally located site and dismissed suggestions from parents to occupy extra classrooms at new schools in Apex and Fuquay-Varina for that reason.
Sylvester says she’ll move her daughter to Garner next year, even though she lives in North Raleigh and doesn’t love the change.
“That would be the least of our issues right now,” she said.
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