Chicago Public Schools (CPS) came under fire for spending millions of dollars on travel expenses for district officials while less than a third of their students are proficient in reading.
A recent report from CPS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) showed just how bad the spending became. The report revealed that officials took trips to Las Vegas, Egypt, Finland, and South Africa, Fox News reported on Monday.
In the combined fiscal year 2023 and 2024, the school system spent $14.5 million in travel expenses deemed “excessive,” while in fiscal year 2024, the report showed leaders spent $7.7 million. That number was up from fiscal year 2021, in which $300,000 was spent.
While officials were jetting off to faraway places, data showed a mere 30.5 percent of students in grades three through eight were proficient in their reading skills.
A report in February 2023 said 55 Chicago Public Schools had zero students proficient in math and reading.
When commenting on the issue of travel expenses, Chicago Pastor Corey Brooks told Fox, “It is a sad commentary on just how far our city has fallen and how bad the leadership is. These individuals believe that spending money on themselves benefits our educational system more so than spending it on the children who so rightfully deserve it.”
Per NBC Chicago, the travel expenses were fueled partly by federal COVID-relief funds and a broken travel expense process that had “no official oversight”:
Brooks also said:
You have third, fourth, fifth, sixth graders who can’t read, and they’re going to eventually become frustrated to the point of what we’re seeing, just saying, I quit, I’m not going to go. You add to that the lack of parenting. Where parents are allowing these children to just do what they want to do… they’re just disinterested, and they’re falling by the wayside every single day.
It is interesting to note that a study found nearly one-third of Chicago’s public school teachers keep their children out of the CPS system, Breitbart News reported in August 2024.
In April, the outlet said, “A look at the data from Illinois public schools for 2024 finds not a single child rated proficient in math in 80 schools and in 24 schools no child was proficient in reading.”
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