'Wasteful': Chicago schools lost $23 million in taxpayer-funded electronic devices in one year, report finds

Chicago schools lost $23 million in taxpayer-funded electronic devices in one school year, an annual report from the Inspector General of Chicago Public School recently revealed.

The fiscal year 2023 report, which audited the 2021-2022 school year, found that CPS could not account for 77,505 electronic devices, with an original purchase price totaling over $23 million. The technology devices included laptops, iPads, Wi-Fi hotspots, printers, document cameras, and interactive whiteboards.

Of the missing items, 4,897 were reported stolen, while 72,608 were reported lost. Many of the devices were given to students and some to staff, and most were marked as "unassigned," meaning the items had not been "assigned to a person" and "could be assigned to a room or to 'None,'" the report noted.

Additionally, the report mentioned that the $23 million figure did not include the value of 35% of the missing devices, which "had a blank or $0 for a purchase price in the SY 2021-22 CPS asset inventory database."

"Obviously, the items had values at time of purchase, but those values were missing, so the OIG's $23M figure is conservative," the report commented.

The OIG also found that CPS failed to execute "search and recovery procedures" for the missing items. The district "sometimes didn't try hard enough to find or recover" the missing devices, it added.

In many cases, the same students, or siblings, had reported multiple lost technology devices, the report found. A significant number of devices provided to students for remote learning purposes during the COVID lockdowns were reportedly never returned. Some staff claimed that there were no consequences for students who failed to return the items.

The OIG's report is the first time inventory has been assessed since in-person teaching was shut down.

"During the first in-school post-Covid-19 inventory, CPS schools reported an unacceptably high percentage of technology devices as lost or stolen, based on a flawed inventory process in need of a serious overhaul," the report read.

CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher told WGN-TV, "It's just wasteful, [and] that's what our office is here to address and that's what we do."

"Our work uncovered an incident where there were a pair of siblings, a brother and sister at school who between them lost 9-10 devices, [and] there's no record or indication that the district reached out to the family, mentioned this was an issue, try to figure out what happened," Fletcher added.

In a statement to Fox News, CPS said, "In a district of our size, some device loss is expected, but we remain concerned about the loss of any public asset."

"Our CPS team will work to streamline our system for tracking resources, including devices, while enforcing compliance with Board policy," the district continued. "In a district where more than 72 percent of students are from economically disadvantaged families, it is crucial that we are sensitive to our families as we conduct any device recovery efforts."

According to CPS, many of the devices were "well over five years old," and more than 12,000 missing devices have since been recovered. The district estimated that the current value of the missing items is closer to $2.5 million.

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