Hundreds of cases couldn’t substantiate sex abuse allegations, 302 discovered substantial policy violations, and at least 16 resulted in criminal charges.
A backlog of 349 cases remains, the report says.
According to the OIG, 2022 saw one sexual misconduct case closed for every 66 CPS teachers.
The report also revealed CPS spent 77 percent of its $1.49 billion in pandemic relief funds on boosting employee salaries.
However, many of these cases haven’t resulted in criminal charges, the report stated. The lack of criminal charges doesn’t mean accused adults didn’t commit sexual abuse, the report said. It just means there wasn’t enough evidence to get a conviction.
Allegations of Abuse
In one case, the OIG looked into thousands of calls and texts. Investigators concluded that a special education teacher “groomed” an eighth-grade student and eventually had sex with the child.The student initially denied the encounters, but later admitted details. The teacher pleaded guilty to criminal sexual abuse.
Another student came forward about past abuse after turning 18.
The Inspector General’s Office unearthed details in another case but there wasn’t enough evidence to get a criminal conviction.
A teacher was accused of committing multiple sexual assaults against a female student. The student backed up her allegations with messages in text, Instagram, and Remind, the CPS-sanctioned communications app.
The teacher begged the student not to reveal the abuse, according to the report.
“We r talking about my entire life here ... Please ... I’m begging u,” he told her by text.
Another teacher bought a student alcohol and smoked marijuana around her, the report said. He also sexually abused her and threatened murder when she said she would tell others about the abuse.
Yet another teacher repeatedly dropped his sweatpants in front of a girl and pulled up the pants when others walked past. When the student told CPS staff, the school didn’t take action.
Then, a staff member blamed her “for wearing provocative clothing, implying that she brought the problem on herself,” the report reads. The student only got help when she posted about the harassment on social media.
Another teacher systematically groomed female students in his classroom from 2015 to 2020, the report says. He made hundreds of phone calls to students, touched them, and made sexual remarks.
And the list of allegations goes on.
Many of the incidents covered in the Inspector General’s report involved inappropriate contact between teachers and students through phone use and social media.
‘We Take Seriously Our Responsibility’
Incidents without enough evidence for criminal prosecution still can result in firing, license removal, permanent employment consequences, and reporting to the police, the OIG said.“Chicago Public Schools greatly values our partnership with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and we support the work to investigate all issues of misconduct among our 40,000 team members,” Mary Fergus, CPS executive director of media relations, wrote in a statement to the media.
“As a district, we take seriously our responsibility to serve our families with integrity and to address individuals who breach CPS policies and the public’s trust and hold them accountable.
“CPS will continue to ensure our district policies and procedures support the highest ethical standards to ensure our valued team members act in the best interest of our students.”
According to David Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, the sexual abuse problem in schools goes far beyond Chicago.
“We have a sexualized culture, a ‘pornified’ culture,” Smith told The Epoch Times. “It is seeping through every single crevice in our culture. And our children are at risk.”
Teaching Sexting
The revelation of allegations of widespread sexual abuse makes it all the more mind-boggling that Illinois lawmakers have been eager to push non-abstinence sex education programs on children, Smith added.The study said CPS’s Law Department both investigated abuse allegations and drew on the investigative files to defend the alleged abuser from victim lawsuits.
Despite major sexual abuse issues, Illinois lawmakers have been eager to provide teachers with more chances to talk about sex with kids, he noted.
“When our lawmakers in [the capital] Springfield push so-called comprehensive sex education, starting at kindergarten and through 12th grade, one has to sit back in the light of this [Chicago Tribune abuse] study and say, ‘Are they grooming our children to be easier victims of sexual abuse? What is their goal?’” Smith said.
Sexting means sending another person sexually explicit pictures or descriptions by phone.
“We don’t need to be in our classrooms teaching in sixth grade about sexting. If they’re naive and innocent, why don’t we safeguard their purity, for goodness sakes?” Smith said.
Aligning With Standards
Children in third, fourth, and fifth grades should be capable of explaining “romantic sexual feelings, masturbation, mood swings, [and] timing of pubertal onset,” the National Sex Education standards say.Illinois requires its sex education programs to align with these standards.
The National Sex Education Standards also say children should also know “the potential role of hormone blockers on young people who identify as transgender,” and should know about sexually transmitted diseases.
Children in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades should know about “vaginal, oral, and anal sex” and the use of contraception, the same standards say. They should also know “factors that are important in deciding whether and when to engage in sexual behaviors.”
‘What Is Their Goal?’
Smith’s advice for parents: Keep children out of public school and educate them in faith to protect them from the culture.He added, the goal of public schools seems to be “to replace God” with government, and to give government the role of teaching children “what is right and good and what is harmful.”
But families and children will have to confront America’s culture of sexual dysfunction wherever they go, Smith added.
“If you think this problem is isolated just to Chicago, you’re naive,” he said.
Money Machine
For CPS employees, the pandemic brought profit.According to the OIG report, CPS schools and departments spent $1.1 billion on “extra pay” for work outside the normal workday.
The OIG’s investigation discovered “a number of recurring problems and a lack of internal controls” in how the school paid employees.
CPS’s 2021 plan to spend $1.79 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds only provided “broad categories” such as “districtwide initiatives to address unfinished learning” and “programmatic investments in schools,” the report added.
It noted that the CPS budget for 2023 ESSER fund spending provides more detail.
But 55 percent of more than $1 billion in future ESSER funds will go to employee salaries and benefits of 11,312 new and existing employees, the report said.
The report observed that “extra pay” for work outside the normal workday jumped by 74 percent in five years.
A system to make sure extra pay is fair “does not exist,” the OIG noted.
The OIG noted CPS has a history of cheating for extra pay. Many employees practiced “buddy punching” schemes where one employee clocked in or out for another person.
In one school, missing internal cameras allowed a clerk to get $100,000 in extra pay without confirmation that she clocked herself in or out, the report notes.
In another, the clock-out machine was positioned just out of range of a security camera, according to the report.
And in some schools where the OIG investigated these issues, paper timesheets mysteriously disappeared.
The OIG said in its report that it will continue investigating this spending.
