Federal officials withhold grant money from Chicago Public Schools, citing failure to protect students from sexual abuse

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Federal officials are withholding millions of dollars in grant money from Chicago Public Schools because of its failure to protect students from sexual violence, a rare step that signals intensifying efforts by the U.S. Department of Education to investigate complaints in the district since the Tribune exposed pervasive problems this summer.

In a letter delivered Thursday to CPS, the department said it has suspended the funds from an ongoing magnet schools assistance grant because CPS cannot show it is meeting its civil rights obligations to address specific sexual violence complaints or districtwide patterns of harm.


The department’s Office for Civil Rights said in an internal memo justifying the funding cutoff that it has “identified serious and pervasive violations under Title IX,” the federal law that protects students from gender-based discrimination and from abuse and harassment that interfere with schooling. That memo, which federal officials provided to the Tribune, also expressed frustration with the district’s slow and incomplete responses to federal investigators who are looking into two student complaints filed in recent years.

One of those cases dates to 2016, when a sophomore at Clemente Community Academy told the school’s dean and police that she was assaulted after school, just off campus. She alleged she had been punched in the face, forced into an abandoned building by a group of 13 boys — eight of whom she recognized from school — and forced to perform oral sex on some of them.

The year before, in 2015, a Prosser Career Academy sophomore alleged that one of her teachers got her drunk on sangria and then sexually abused her in his car.

In both cases, whose details have not previously been reported, there have been police investigations, CPS inquiries and, for the Prosser student, a civil settlement that resulted in a $780,000 payout from the district.

Government schools in Chicago need to be shut down for the safety of the children.