By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – The Chicago Board of Education’s Office of Inspector General has released a report detailing falsified federal grant applications, false reports on employee income statements and sexual abuse cases at Chicago Public Schools.

According to the recently-released annual report, the OIG’s Sexual Allegations Unit closed 335 cases with 55 substantiated findings of misconduct. Nearly half of the allegations involved teachers or substitute teachers.

The office said it substantiated 26 cases in fiscal year 2025.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was asked about the report Tuesday at City Hall.

“Well obviously this is absolutely disturbing to hear. Our communities, particularly our school communities have to be a safe space,” Johnson said.

The OIG said it found “many instances” of adult-on-student sexual misconduct across two unnamed high schools located on one campus.

In one case, an employee began grooming a student for sexual activity when she was 15 years old and began engaging in sexual acts with the student during the summer before her junior year. That employee was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual assault and other charges and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

According to the report, several other employees at the same campus engaged in sexual misconduct toward students and/or targeted former students for sex. The OIG said the incidents at this campus occurred years earlier, mostly during the 2010s, but came to light years later when victims and witnesses stepped forward.

The OIG report also found that a program manager repeatedly falsified federal grant applications in a CPS program, even after the OIG recommended that CPS correct the manager’s misconduct as part of an earlier investigation that revealed the program’s falsified applications.

At the conclusion of its first investigation in 2021, the OIG found there had been a longstanding practice of overstating the number of students enrolled in the program on the program’s grant applications.

The U.S. Department of Education then conducted a follow-up investigation and found that CPS received $1,194,935 in federal funding under this program based on data that CPS was unable to verify. CPS agreed to pay these funds back by October 2026.

The report also found that more than 600 CPS employees listed incomes on forms for the 2023-24 school year that “appeared to falsely identify them as ‘low-income’ — including more than 100 who were making at least $100,000 a year at CPS.”

The low-income identifications qualified the employees’ children for student fee waivers and entitled their schools to extra funding.

According to the report, at the OIG’s recommendation, CPS this school year stopped using Family Income Information Forms, filled out annually by parents, to determine school funding.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ted Dabrowski detailed what he called “legal corruption” in CPS when he held a press conference in downtown Chicago Monday.

Dabrowski said the Chicago Teachers Union pressures the Illinois General Assembly to keep failing schools open.

“And the legislature buckles,” Dabrowski said.

Since Gov. J.B. Pritzker took office in 2019, CPS enrollment has fallen by 45,000 students but employment is up by 8,000.

“Most of that is coming from administration and support staff,” Dabrowski said.

The Chicago Board of Education’s OIG full report can be viewed online.