“Report: Chicago Public Schools ‘failed to recognize’ extent of systemwide sexual abuse problem”, Chicago Tribune
Juan Perez Jr. and David Jackson, August 17, 2018
Broad failures at all levels of Chicago Public Schools kept officials from preventing and responding to sexual abuse suffered by students in 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 report by the law firm Schiff Hardin 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, according to the report authored by Schiff Hardin partner Maggie Hickey and released Friday. CPS also did not ensure that those policies were being implemented or that they were effective, the report said.
The report describes how understaffed and underfunded CPS investigators struggled to process reports of potential sexual harassment, notifications sent to the Department of Children and Family Services, employee misconduct allegations and altercations between students and staff — thousands of reports during the 2016-17 school year alone.
Hickey noted that the district’s incident-reporting software, known as Verify, “is almost universally viewed by principals as cumbersome and inefficient.” CPS is moving to a new system next year, the report said.
Investigators also used “deeply flawed” methods of tracking their work, according to the report.
“CPS did not collect overall data to see trends in certain schools or across geographies or demographics,” Hickey wrote.
“Thus, CPS failed to recognize the extent of the problem.”
The school system has “struggled to implement” a state law that requires CPS to notify Illinois authorities when employees are dismissed or resign from their posts while under suspicion of child abuse or neglect, Hickey’s report said. The district said it notified the state last month that more than 100 former CPS employees were fired or allowed to resign since 2016 amid abuse or neglect allegations.
The report identified several issues at the heart of the district’s culture as aggravating CPS’ inadequate response to sexual abuse and misconduct.
CPS has made a point of giving principals broad autonomy to control their schools, a practice that provides significant benefits, the report said. “But, for preventing sexual misconduct, it does not,” it said.
Turnover and scandal have plagued the district’s highest ranks, and critical school network supervisors also experience high turnover rates. That makes it harder to maintain “cultures of compliance,” Hickey said.
Principals and teachers are also expected to guard students against a broad range of threats to their health and safety. The effects of violence, drugs and neglect on schoolchildren compete for attention and weaken the focus on sexual misconduct, according to the report.
Hickey’s much-anticipated review arrived two weeks before the Sept. 4 launch of the 2018-19 school year, and days before the Chicago Board of Education is set to convene and likely revisit the district’s ongoing sexual abuse scandal.
A former assistant U.S. attorney who once served as a top state inspector general under Gov. Bruce Rauner, Hickey said her firm’s investigation would continue until a final report is issued in early 2019.
In addition to reviewing “all practices, policies, and procedures for addressing instances of alleged sexual misconduct, harassment or abuse,” Hickey and the Schiff Hardin team are also being paid to recommend “proactive measures” the district can adopt to protect students.
But rather than wait for the report, CPS already has rushed ahead with some reforms.
Among other findings, the Tribune’s investigation showed that ineffective background checks had exposed students to educators with criminal convictions and arrests for sex crimes against children.
In response, the district embarked on an enormous effort to re-check the backgrounds of tens of thousands of school employees, vendors and volunteers. CPS imposed a tight summer deadline to rapidly scrub the district’s ranks in time for classes, budgeting more than $3 million to collect school-based workers’ fingerprints, review their potential criminal histories and clear them to enter campuses this fall.
But with the new academic term rapidly approaching, CPS officials have not offered details on the district’s progress. The district also has denied Tribune records requests related to the effort, and it declined to answer questions about the number of employees who have been disqualified from employment so far because of their backgrounds or how many have been cleared to work.
District CEO Janice Jackson said CPS will share more information when the checks are complete.
“What I can say about the progress is that we’ve been working around the clock, six days a week, to check the backgrounds of over 40,000 part-time and full-time employees, as well as all of our (Local School Council) members — over 4,000 — plus vendors and volunteers,” Jackson told the Tribune during a brief interview Friday.
“This is definitely a massive undertaking. We will not allow any individuals to work in our schools that have not gone through this background check in the fall.”
Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey and other union officials have said the background check process has been marred by long waits and other problems related to imposing a deadline during summer break.
“It’s been a car wreck from the start. It’s been a dumpster fire from the start,” Sharkey said during a recent interview.
Sharkey also pointed to an incident last month in which the district acknowledged that it mistakenly told the Illinois State Board of Education that 455 employees had left the district amid “potential” neglect or abuse allegations since 2016.
CPS immediately retracted many of those notices, city and state authorities said. In fact, CPS said, 105 of those former employees had left the district amid abuse or neglect allegations. The state board and CPS attributed the mistaken notifications to a misunderstanding.
In late June, CPS officials committed to the rapid launch of a 20-person CPS office, backed by a planned $3 million budget, to act as the school district’s authority for sexual abuse cases. CPS said the new sexual abuse unit would be operational by fall and would forward allegations of adult-on-student misconduct to newly empowered district Inspector General Nicholas Schuler.
To take on its new responsibility, the IG’s office must hire eight to 12 investigators within weeks. That is a rapid and risky pace, said Daniel Pollack, a professor at Yeshiva University in New York who examined the institutional responses to sexual abuse by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
“To hire that number of people in 60 days — that’s really fast! I would say, ‘Give me more time to headhunt and find the very best people because this is a huge job and every single investigator is important,’” Pollack said.
Board members also have clarified the CPS child welfare reporting policy to require annual retraining, to mandate that school employees notify their principal after they call the child welfare hotline about suspected abuse and to require the principal to connect the abuse victim with a school mental health worker.
Other changes require school employees to report any “grooming” behaviors they see on the part of colleagues. The change is aimed at alerting officials to inappropriately intimate relationships with students that can become sexualized — even if it’s not clear whether abuse has occurred.
“Student safety is the highest priority for the Board, which is why we took immediate action before this preliminary report was completed,” Chicago school board President Frank Clark said in a statement. “We will use this report as a road map to build upon the significant steps the district has taken to strengthen safeguards and supports for our students.”
Hickey’s report said she will continue to advise CPS “on an ongoing basis” as the district continues to change its policies and practices.
“Although difficult steps lie ahead and CPS’ commitment will be tested as it continues to implement difficult policies and costly change, we are optimistic that this positive momentum will continue,” Hickey’s report said.
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