Report: Chicago Public Schools 'failed to recognize' extent of systemwide sexual abuse problem

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Broad failures at all levels of Chicago Public Schools kept officials from preventing and responding to sexual misconduct that occurred throughout the nation’s third-largest school system, according to a prominent law firm’s early review of problems documented this summer in a Tribune investigation.

The Schiff Hardin law firm and firm partner Maggie Hickey identified repeated “systemic deficiencies” in training, incident reporting, data collection and trend tracking that pervaded city schools, the system’s downtown headquarters and a school board controlled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.


Employees were not consistently trained on district policies and procedures involving sexual misconduct, attorneys said in a lengthy report that CPS released Friday morning. CPS also did not ensure those policies were being implemented or effective, attorneys said.

Understaffed and underfunded CPS investigators wrangled with cumbersome district software that documented thousands of reports of potential sexual harassment, notifications to the Department of Children and Family Services, employee misconduct allegations and altercations between students and staff — just during the 2016-17 school year. But investigators also used “deeply flawed” methods of tracking their work.

“CPS did not collect overall data to see trends in certain schools or across geographies or demographics,” attorneys said.

“Thus, CPS failed to recognize the extent of the problem.”

Government schools in Chicago : a danger to children. It's time to consider shutting down some public school districts because they are unsafe for children.