Saw this a week ago but best I can tell it hasn't made its way to our pages yet.

The Office of the Inspector General’s review comes after Chalkbeat and WBEZ found the district spent tens of millions of federal COVID relief dollars on technology without a reliable system for tracking those devices.

spent 10's of millions Covid relief

23 Million in tech lost or stolen

What happened to $23 million worth of tech devices at Chicago Public Schools? In a wide-ranging annual report detailing the more than 2,000 complaints received by CPS' inspector general's office, IG William Fletcher said the schools need a complete overhaul on how to track lost or stolen laptops and other tech devices.

"We’re looking at fraud, waste, misconduct," Fletcher said.

Fletcher's office found 77,000 laptops and other tech devices worth $23 million to be lost or stolen.

"In the same year where these devices were reported lost or stolen, the district, CPS, spent $124 million on tech assets," he said

Reema Amin, a reporter for Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization, noted: “In reality the district doesn't really have a reliable way to track where their devices are going or really to hold staff and students and families accountable."

Chalkbeat and WBEZ first disclosed how CPS spent $308 million in COVID relief money on technology without a reliable tracking plan.

The IG is offering 16 recommendations, and "the district has agreed in varying degrees to act on all 16 of those recommendations," Amin said.

$308,000,000 in the front door out the back door with little or no accountability, I'm shocked that the Chicago school system could have this happen, until it happens again, and again, and again, etc!

That's racist investigating this.

CPS could benchmark any number of reputable school districts to learn how to maintain ownership of assets. But no.

On the other hand, from the second linked article above:

"On the 77,000 lost laptops and other tech devices, CPS said, "the majority of the 77,000 assets … were well over 5 years old." The district added, "the typical lifespan of a computer is five years. Many of the lost assets were thrown out by schools due to their age.""

Dividing it out and you'll get $298 per unit. I'd throw out a 5 year old $300 laptop as well.

And no financial audits in 5 years even though they are required yearly by law. Shit show!

quote:

Originally posted by blueye:
That's racist investigating this.

Yes, we should instead look at the content of their character. Uh, well … never mind.

Computing devices used in corporations are often capital expenses, meaning they have to be depreciated properly for tax purposes, tracked, inventoried, and taken off the books when disposed of. Big tax liability issues if you do this wrong.

But government doesn't follow GAAP rules and doesn't get externally audited, so they just don't really give a shit.

The goal is to spend the taxpayer money as fast as they get it with their cronies/donors. Why would they give a shit once the money is spent?

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Computing devices used in corporations are often capital expenses, meaning they have to be depreciated properly for tax purposes, tracked, inventoried, and taken off the books when disposed of. Big tax liability issues if you do this wrong.

But government doesn't follow GAAP rules and doesn't get externally audited, so they just don't really give a shit.

The districts I audited in my first three years as an accountant were externally audited every year during the summer which was the slow time at the firm I worked for. The districts didn’t follow FASB GAAP, but they did follow GASB GAAP. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) determines the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) for business entities. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) determines GAAP for governmental entities.

Fund accounting is fun!

I remember an Inspector General’s report from years ago that simply stated: “We find waste and fraud everywhere we look.”

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
On the other hand, from the second linked article above:

"On the 77,000 lost laptops and other tech devices, CPS said, "the majority of the 77,000 assets … were well over 5 years old." The district added, "the typical lifespan of a computer is five years. Many of the lost assets were thrown out by schools due to their age.""

Dividing it out and you'll get $298 per unit. I'd throw out a 5 year old $300 laptop as well.

Why if it’s working perfectly fine. My MacBook is probably ten years old and works perfectly fine.

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:

Why if it’s working perfectly fine. My MacBook is probably ten years old and works perfectly fine.

Nice! You want pony up your property taxes so your district can buy MacBooks? I guarantee we’d have another thread complaining about the extravagant expenses of school districts. CPS obviously didn’t buy MacBooks for $300 each.

My experience, which is limited to buying 25 Dell Latitude 5000 series from the Dell Outlet for the teachers at my kids’ school, is that they lasted about 5 years before most were having issues that weren’t worth repairing, so I bought 25 more Dell Latitude 5000 series from the Dell Outlet. Those lasted about 6 years, but my kids have moved on, so I left the replacement for someone else. The issues were video failures, jack failures, HHD failures, general were and tear, etc.

I agree that if everything is working fine, replacement wouldn’t be necessary. Case in point, with the first round of laptops I bought, I also bought 25 Dell Optiplex desktops for the school’s computer lab. Those were still going strong when my last kid moved on from the school.

I posted this out of concerned with one example of the waste of our COVID stimulus money. Well, put you favorite gov handout (here). Here's another article with additional detail about how the OIG report mentioned in original post (waste and fraud everywhere) included overtime pay, and sexual assaults.
just more stuff

The OIG’s office noted a 74% increase in extra pay from 2017 to 2021. The district has since received $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief funding. The report notes that last school year, about $100 million of that funding was allocated to summer school, after-school programs, and professional development.

The OIG has pressed the district to monitor those payments more closely after detecting seemingly unchecked approvals of extra pay, such as pay granted without timesheets or without “supporting swipes” in the timekeeping system.

The district plans to create “new processes to ensure that payment reports are accurate and validated,” a spokesperson said, but did not provide more details.

Fletcher’s office highlighted two cases of fraud connected to programs operating outside the school day. Though both schemes allegedly began prior to the pandemic, Fletcher notes that they illustrate the “systemic problems” with how extra pay is tracked.

In one case, an elementary school assistant principal allegedly stole $195,000 over two years by diverting fees paid by parents for after-school programs into her personal bank account. Fletcher’s office first reported the alleged fraud, which dated back to 2011, in 2021 and referred the case to local authorities. In July 2023, a 17-count indictment came down against the former assistant principal, alleging she stole a total of $273,364.

“I mean, $200,000 is a lot more than a rounding error for an after-school program,” Fletcher said. “For that to go missing without any curtailment of the programming or anything like that raises concerns about what the parents are getting charged.”

In another case highlighted in the report, Fletcher’s office found a school clerk approved close to $70,000 in extra pay for hours she didn’t work. The alleged fraud took place at two separate schools dating back to 2017. She was able to log the payments for herself and an additional $15,000 for another clerk because “supervisors did not check to see whether they earned the extra pay they were claiming,” the report said.

More in the article.

quote:

Originally posted by preten2b:
I posted this out of concerned with one example of the waste of our COVID stimulus money.

The $23 million spent on 77,000 devices had nothing to do with COVID stimulus money. That’s what your thread title and over 50% of your first post is written about.

I’m in no way defending shoddy bookkeeping and poor internal controls which lead to wasteful spending and outright fraud.

For example from the articles you linked:
$308 million of COVID money spent on 311,000 laptops and tablets with no method in place to keep track of them. 41,000 of those devices still sit in warehouses or have yet to be shipped. The $308 million is about what CPS spent with the same vendors over the last two decades. Why? Because the government forced kids to stay home from school, take classes online, and not everybody can afford a $1,000 MacBook or iPad (Apple was one of the three vendors).

What could go wrong when CPS purchases a normal 20 years worth of expenditures in 1 year? You think they have the manpower, knowledge and capability to keep track of all that? Is it reasonable to expect them to? Whose fault is all this? We have an almost 1,200 page thread dealing with the COVID scam.

Believe it or not, there’s a process involved when school districts and other governmental entities spend money. There’s a process involved in determining property tax increases so schools have the money to spend. It’s easy to complain and point fingers, but what are you going to do to get involved in that process to stop this shit? I think I can count on one hand and name by screen name members here that have done so, or at least tried to do so. I’m sure there are others that haven’t posted about their efforts. If good people don’t get involved, who is left to approve the budgets and expenditures? Who is left to vote on property tax changes?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: trapper189,