In the wake of a tumultuous few months in Chicago Public Schools, the district’s Office of the Inspector General released its annual report Wednesday, detailing dozens of the more than 300 investigations involving fraud, mismanagement and adult-on-student sexual misconduct, closed by the CPS watchdog agency between July 2023 and June 2024.
Highlights of the report include a sweeping recommendation that CPS “fundamentally reform how it oversees and regulates high school sports,” based on the findings of two OIG investigations. The oversight agency found that fraudulent recruiting practices deprived legitimately enrolled students of fair play. And, in a separate case, investigators found that lacking background checks allowed four former employees with findings of sexual misconduct involving students to referee games, despite their “Do Not Hire” designations.
Along with detailing the approximately 50-person oversight agency’s efforts to address a variety of alleged misconduct by staff, key findings in the report reflect rising concerns over the district’s budget and leadership, with school board elections set to take place again in the fall.
Noting that “opportunistic campaigns could attempt to use CPS students, employees, and resources to advance their candidate” in the future, the report highlights recommendations stemming from the OIG’s investigation of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, whose second mayoral campaign solicited CPS staff and students, over whom she “exerted significant leadership authority,” to volunteer.
While the OIG didn’t find evidence that Lightfoot was aware of the communications before media reports in January 2023 brought the ethics violation to light, the agency’s report notes that the former mayor’s “failure to fully cooperate impeded the OIG’s investigation.”
A spokeswoman for Lightfoot said the assertion of noncompliance is misleading. “We faithfully cooperated with all appropriate requests for available documents, as well as a lengthy interview process,” the spokeswoman wrote in an emailed statement Tuesday in which the former mayor said she was “never involved personally” in volunteer outreach and reiterated that her campaign “did not intentionally engage in improper coordination with CPS.”
In an interview with the Tribune, interim Inspector General Amber Nesbitt noted the ongoing relevance of the case. “That was one moment in time … but we now will have 21 elected seats in the future,” she said of the size of the board of education after voters return to the polls this fall. If ethical concerns involving future candidates or current board members arise in the meanwhile, she added that the OIG is “ready to receive those allegations and address them as needed.”
Solutions that the agency recommended CPS adopt include a requirement that future board candidates attest their awareness of the CPS code of ethics and commit to not sending electioneering communications to CPS staff and students.
The agency also recommended CPS create a new athletics oversight officer position, reporting directly to the board.
“CPS appreciates the work of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and takes all findings and recommendations seriously,” a spokesperson said Tuesday, adding that the district remains committed to training employees and vendors and enforcing policies “as required under law and in accordance with the highest ethical standards.”
Rather than creating the new sports oversight position, CPS said it will soon be filling the currently vacant executive director role in the Office of Sports Administration. The background checks of sports officials which commenced last month are underway, the spokesperson said, noting CPS is dedicated to providing safe learning environments for students and staff.
Transparency in CPS’ structural deficit
Another dominant concern in the district at present — CPS’ approximately $500 million structural deficit — is flagged in the report, with the agency advising CPS to provide more transparency to the public on how the district used the $2.8 billion in total federal COVID-19 emergency relief funds that CPS received to support pandemic-era learning recovery.
In independently tracking the last of three rounds of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding provided to CPS, the agency found that the district spent $1 billion, or 55% of the money to cover the salaries of more than 11,000 existing and new employees.
Questioning whether the district’s spending decisions were “financially prudent,” the OIG advised CPS to account for the role that increasing permanent positions played in causing its current deficit.
CPS stood by the district’s ESSER funding decisions in a statement Tuesday. Citing historical underfunding, the district said it remains far from the level of funding temporarily provided by ESSER which drove students’ academic gains in the past two years.
“Reasonable minds might be able to differ on that and how many positions were really warranted,” said Nesbitt. “Our job here is to push for the transparency behind it and ask the district to be more accountable for its decision-making.”
OIG received fewer complaints than last year
Cases detailed in the agency’s annual report largely stem from complaints the OIG received directly from students, staff, families and community members.
In fiscal year 2024, the OIG said it received more than 1,400 complaints, opening investigations into 544, with the limited number due to constraints on the agency’s capacity given the complexity of its existing caseload and difficulties in pursuing anonymous complaints. Complaints declined from the prior fiscal year, with the agency’s 2023 report noting that the OIG received 2,075 complaints.
While specific allegations are what spark the investigations, the agency’s electioneering and sports recommendations show the OIG’s work is also aimed at “pulling back the scope and looking at more systemic issues and procedural flaws that allowed that conduct to happen in the first place” Nesbitt said.
Sexual Allegations Unit and general investigations
In the period covered by the report, the OIG’s General Investigation Unit identified misconduct by the former chief of the Office of Student Protections and Title IX, ongoing flaws in the district’s automatic enrollment of students in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program despite prior reforms, and the use of “unreliable, unverified, and unaudited” information to identify low-income students, a status which grants extra benefits, such as fee waivers, to students and their schools. The report also details several instances of residency violations and Paycheck Protection Program fraud among staff.
But, as in recent years, the largest number of complaints, 25%, received by the agency in fiscal year 2024 entailed alleged staff-on-student sexual misconduct — a category which ranges in severity from looks that make students uncomfortable to sexual abuse.
Among a small uptick in complaints received by the OIG’s Sexual Allegations Unit, known as the SAU, in fiscal year 2024, at least four investigations resulted in arrests, among seven substantiated cases of sexual abuse. Findings in multiple other investigations include sexual harassment, attempted grooming and inappropriate comments.
Last year, the OIG’s annual report urged CPS to require volunteers and vendors to undergo mandatory training in district policies, similar to training required of employees; and to create a centralized, searchable database showing the training status of vendor employees with potential contact with students.
CPS said Tuesday that it’s developing a database, to be available by the end of the year, that will enable the district to manage vendors’ compliance with the new training requirement.
Nesbitt, who was deputy inspector general in charge of the SAU for more than six years, said that the degree to which the agency is transparent about sexual misconduct often prompts unfair criticism. CPS deserves credit for being the only K-12 entity in the nation that investigates alleged sexual misconduct to such an extent, she said.
The OIG’s report notes an analysis featured in a recently published Harvard Education Press book, “Organizational Betrayal: How Schools Enable Sexual Misconduct and How to Stop It,” that commended the SAU’s work as a national best practice.
“The number of complaints the SAU receives is due in large part to the transparency of our office and sharing this information, that’s uncomfortable. No one wants to know about these terrible situations, but I think until you shed light on them, they will continue to be swept under the rug,” she said.
“There’s always room for improvement and growth, and to evolve with the times as things change. But I was happy to see that we’re getting the recognition I think we’ve long been deserved.”
