CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune
January 7, 2026
By Hope Moses
[See also the text of the Inspector General’s 2025 report on the Chicago Public Schools.]
Chicago Public Schools’ watchdog released its annual report Wednesday, detailing dozens of the more than 1,200 complaints it received between July 2024 and June 2025. The report addressed accusations of pandemic program fraud, excessive overtime, stolen equipment, residency violations and sexual misconduct by district employees.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is an independent body that investigates allegations of fraud, waste and misconduct within the district. The office does not disclose the identities of accused employees in the report.
Pandemic relief fraud
The OIG reported closing two cases in fiscal year 2025 involving former CPS principals who defrauded pandemic relief programs, including one who received more than $41,000 in loans on top of her six-figure salary.
One principal’s termination hearing is pending with the Illinois State Board of Education. The other principal retired amid OIG’s investigation, but a “Do Not Hire” designation was placed in her personnel file due to unrelated conduct.
The two principals join the more than 20 investigations by the agency in previous fiscal years into CPS employees defrauding pandemic relief programs, as well as district charter schools that received over $43 million in forgivable loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, in addition to their full school funding, the report said.
About 400 government employees were recently investigated by the state for similar fraud.
Past investigations into pandemic relief spending also revealed $28.5 million in “good-faith” payments to bus vendors who performed no services during the suspension of in-person learning. Themoney was intended for bus drivers who were laid off amid the pandemic but were never distributed to them, the report said. The bus vendors agreed to pay back the district about $3 million, according to a previous report.
The agency also found a 74% increase in overtime and other forms of additional compensation between 2017 and 2021 — a year after CPS began receiving federal pandemic relief funds.
More than 77,000 laptops and other technical equipment were also previously reported lost or stolen in the first year after the return to in-person learning, totaling $23 million, the report highlighted.
CPS used the remaining $233 million of the $2.8 billion allocated to address the effects of COVID-19 under the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, the report said.
The agency wrote that it “remains committed to ensuring that individuals and entities affiliated with CPS who abused the public trust during the pandemic are held accountable.”
Other reports of fraud and mismanagement
The watchdog also found that a former CPS program manager repeatedly falsified federal grant applications over the course of a year by submitting fake enrollment data. The federal government required CPS to pay back more than $1 million, the report said.
Another agency investigation revealed that a former CPS employee defrauded the district of potentially more than $135,000 over three years by reporting false or inflated work hours, the report said.
The inspector general also found that the school’s remote work policy allowed staff members to get around CPS’ policy. The report said 15 staff members at one school violated the residency policy by living outside Chicago, and that three of them lived outside Illinois. A school administrator lived as far away as Florida with her family for nearly two years and intentionally misled CPS about her residency status, according to the report.
OIG’s annual review comes on the heels of a November report that found CPS travel expenditures, including airfare and lodging, more than doubled between fiscal year 2019 and 2024 — rising from $3.6 million to $7.7 million. Months prior, the district faced a steep $734 million deficit before passing a $10.2 billion budget in August 2025.
In response to these findings, CPS issued a temporary freeze on district-funded travel, except for travel tied to student activities.
Over 300 sexual misconduct complaints closed
In fiscal year 2025, the agency’s Sexual Allegations Unit closed 335 cases related to sexual misconduct, with 55 reports having substantiated findings of misconduct. The nature of those cases varied, with touching being the No. 1 allegation reported.
Of the 55 substantiated cases, the unit — which mainly investigates adult-on-student sexual misconduct — looked into multiple occurrences of alleged sexual abuse that happened on a high school campus in the 2010s, involving eight staff members.
“These victims and witnesses made the initial reports … exhibited enormous bravery and potentially prevented more students from being victimized,” the report said.
One of those cases includes an ex-CPS dean who was sentenced in August 2025 to 22 years in prison for sexually abusing a former student when she was about 15 years old, occurring from 2013 to 2016.
Other cases mentioned in the report involve sexual misconduct between teachers and students shortly after graduation.
While the OIG did not find a root cause for the multiple occurrences of sexual misconduct on one campus, it recommended several policy changes to address systemic concerns, including adopting a policy that prohibits staff members from engaging in romantic conduct and grooming behaviors with recently graduated or disenrolled students.
The new policy was implemented in the fall, according to CPS Inspector General Philip Wagenknecht.
Other policies the unit is recommending are that the district modify its training materials on grooming to emphasize that emotional connections with students for sexual purposes are prohibited, even if the staff member is waiting until after the student graduates.
The unit has also underscored a need for additional training to all shared campus staff members regarding their duty to report allegations of potential sexual misconduct, which CPS said they conducted in August 2025, according to the report.
In a statement to the Tribune, the district said it takes the OIG’s recommendations seriously, adding that it “strictly enforces all applicable policies, rules, and laws, including those related to preventing abuse, harassment, and misconduct.”
“CPS is committed to providing comprehensive, ongoing training for employees and vendors to recognize, prevent, and report abuse, and to ensure compliance with established policies and procedures,” the district added. “CPS will also continue to strengthen its policies, reporting mechanisms, and oversight practices to foster a culture of accountability, ethical conduct, and support ensuring that all staff act in the best interests of students, the District, and the City of Chicago.”