For some reason, this comes as no surprise:
But wait, there's more.
These are the same teachers who are always demanding more pay!
From the report, "Examination of CPS Overnight Travel Spending":
Fueled in part by federal pandemic relief money, CPS travel expenditures that included such items as airfare and lodging more than doubled between Fiscal Year 2019 (the last full pre-Covid school year) and Fiscal Year 2024 (the most recent post-pandemic school year analyzed by the CPS OIG), as indicated in Chart 1. FY 2023 and FY 2024 alone produced, conservatively, more than $14.5 million in travel expenditures, mostly for out-of-town employee professional development seminars or overnight student outings, an analysis by the OIG's Performance Analysis Unit estimated.
The chart:
More from the report:
An OIG investigation ultimately found that eight schools had used more than $142,000 in CPS funds to pay this vendor for 15 staff trips to Finland, Estonia, Egypt and South Africa for professional development and school visits. These tours also featured numerous scheduled as well as optional tourist activities of debatable value, including a visit to a South African game park, a hot air balloon ride, camel rides and a visit to a bazaar. Thirteen of the 15 trips were never pre-approved, as required.
Another story from the report followed a principal, who "traveled to Las Vegas multiple times to attend a professional development conference without CPS approval." The principal stayed in a hotel suite for $400 per night, and this wasn't even the same hotel where the conference was taking place.
More than 600 employees from 140 schools or departments spent more than $1.5 million in taxpayer funds on these particular seminars between calendar years 2022 and 2024, an OIG investigation into this series of conferences found. Nearly 90 percent of CPS attendees stayed in hotel rooms that exceeded CPS spending limits, and at least two dozen took round-trip Chicago-Las Vegas flights costing more than $1,000 each, the OIG found. Notably, when this conference was held in Chicago, few CPS employees attended.
The report tells us that nobody was even checking to see if CPS was getting a fair deal on the trips. They just booked 'em and went, sometimes allowing 20% fees for travel agencies.
All that Covid money's gotta get spent somewhere!
Chicago teachers REALLY like their time off, too.
From Fox News:
The Illinois State Board of Education revealed in a new report that 43.2 percent of teachers in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) logged 10 or more absences for the 2024-25 school year.
And that leads to this:
For their part, CPS is actually saying they're going to crack down on the luxury vacations:
Judging by the report, it might be pretty easy for CPS to identify the main culprits.
[I]n FY 2024, eight schools or departments spent more than $100,000 each on overnight travel, including two with more than $200,000 in travel expenditures. But 197 CPS schools spent zero CPS funds on travel. Obviously, some schools and departments were taking far more advantage of CPS funding when it came to travel.
CPS plans to keep these conferences more close to home in the future.
As a proud resident of Wisconsin, I request that you send these people anywhere but north.
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