CPS watchdog finds worker journey spending doubled after COVID — on journeys to Las Vegas, Finland and Estonia

The Chicago Public Schools watchdog discovered that spending on in a single day journey doubled after the pandemic when colleges and the district had been flush with federal COVID reduction cash — and that some journeys had been “questionable, excessive and even exorbitant.”

The No. 1 vacation spot was Las Vegas, regardless that a few of the seminars employees attended had been additionally provided domestically or included digital choices, the inspector normal mentioned in an investigative report launched Wednesday. There had been additionally employees excursions to far-flung locations like Finland and Estonia.

Inspector General Philip Wagenknecht mentioned poor insurance policies allowed this journey to go unchecked.

“Clearly, in this system there was not significant oversight, and there wasn’t a practice of carefully reviewing school and department expenditures to make sure the trips that were being booked were necessary, that they were justified and that they were done economically,” he mentioned. “If more had been done in that area, a lot of money could have been saved.”

In response to the report, CPS froze virtually all in a single day journey, efficient Oct. 29. It is also forming a journey evaluation committee that can think about the inspector normal’s suggestions, together with requiring two ranges of approval for scholar journey, imposing current cost-saving guidelines, limiting the variety of staff from anyone college who can attend the identical convention and establishing a “Travel Desk” just like different college districts that critiques and approves journey.

“We take seriously the findings and recommendations from the Office of the Inspector General and will continue to ensure our District policies and procedures support the highest ethical standards and that our employees act in the best interest of our students, the District, and our city,” CPS mentioned in a press release.

The investigation analyzed the previous six years of journey bills. The $7.7 million tab for 2024 was greater than double the $3.6 million spent in 2019, the final full college 12 months earlier than the pandemic. During these post-pandemic years, CPS had $2.8 billion in federal COVID reduction cash, which the district utilized in half to pump up school-level budgets for issues like out-of-school packages {and professional} growth. Wagenknecht mentioned this further money gave colleges and the central workplace “additional budget flexibility” that allowed them to go on these journeys.

The district coverage calls for employees to hunt pre-approval for any out-of-town journey by submitting particulars such because the itinerary, estimated prices, variety of vacationers and purpose for the journey. But the CPS worker journey handbook is “riddled with holes” that staff both misread or ignore, in keeping with the report.

Some employees went on journeys with out the approval of CPS, staying in luxurious motels and reserving costly airplane tickets. In different situations, they went on journeys that had been rejected and confronted no penalties.

Record-keeping can be missing. Approval requests, buy orders and reimbursements are scattered throughout as many as seven totally different departments, making it tough to precisely monitor group or particular person journey prices. There was additionally no option to distinguish between in a single day journey exterior of Chicago and routine journeys inside town comparable to discipline journeys or for athletic occasions.

This allowed abuses to happen, together with one trainer’s $4,700 week-long journey to a luxurious Hawaiian resort for a four-day skilled seminar. Other situations included multi-day retreats at spas or motels funded by CPS regardless of not qualifying as a result of they occurred lower than 50 miles from work websites. CPS funds had been additionally spent on worldwide worker journeys that featured a number of “optional” vacationer actions.

The investigation additionally discovered examples of questionable purchases and “outright fraud.” In one case, a clerk altered an bill from a journey company to take away a reference to an costly resort suite earlier than submitting it for approval. In one other, a principal booked a luxurious resort on the Las Vegas Strip away from a convention they had been attending — and stayed an additional day on the district’s dime to have fun an anniversary together with his partner, who isn’t a CPS worker.

CPS is weighing whether or not to self-discipline these two staff as really helpful by the inspector normal.

There had been lapses in oversight of worldwide journeys as properly. Eight CPS colleges booked 15 abroad journeys to Estonia, Finland and South Africa of “questionable value” by means of a single journey company that, whereas an accredited CPS vendor, doesn’t have a contract with the district. The company tacked on as a lot as 20% in hidden charges to their payments, the OIG discovered.

One elementary college had paid the journey company $20,000 for a employees growth journey to Egypt that arguably didn’t meet the brink for allowable journey, the report states. It included visits to museums and excursions extra “akin to tourism than typical professional development.”

That journey was canceled after CPS was made conscious.