The Chicago Public Schools inspector general is raising red flags about potential waste and fraud — particularly in areas where the district has spent more than $2 billion in federal COVID recovery money.
In his annual report out Tuesday, CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher also outlined eight cases of substantiated sexual abuse of staff on students, and recommended more consistent training on sexual misconduct for vendors who provide services to schools.
The report — which details the inspector general’s work from the previous fiscal year, or July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 — highlighted the office’s investigation into lost or stolen laptops and other technology valued at at least $23 million and, for the second year in a row, detailed cases of fraud and potential mismanagement of extra pay for staff.
The OIG found that CPS marked at least 77,000 devices as lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year, often with little or no effort to find those devices, according to the report.
The OIG’s review comes after Chalkbeat and WBEZ found the district spent tens of millions of federal COVID relief dollars on technology without a reliable system for tracking those devices.
“CPS spends a couple of million dollars on software and other assets that try to monitor and keep track of their assets, and we found out that that system is just very flawed,” said Fletcher, in an interview Monday with Chalkbeat.
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www.chalkbeat.org/chicago/2024/01/09/chicago-public-schools-inspector-general-finds-waste-fraud/