CHICAGO _ 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 exposed in an investigative report this summer.
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 CPS released Friday morning. CPS also did not ensure those policies were being implemented or effective, attorneys said.
The report describes how understaffed and underfunded CPS investigators struggled with cumbersome district software that documented not only reports of potential sexual harassment but also 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. Investigators also used "deeply flawed" methods of tracking their work, it said.
"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."
Several issues at the heart of the district's culture aggravate the problem, Hickey said in the report.
CPS has made a point of giving school principals broad autonomy to control their buildings, a practice that provides significant benefits, Hickey said. "But, for preventing sexual misconduct, it does not," the report 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 long-awaited report arrives two weeks prior to 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.
With the new academic term looming, CPS officials have not offered details on how much progress the district has made on an enormous effort to recheck 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. It budgeted more than $3 million to collect school-based workers' fingerprints, review their potential criminal histories and clear them to enter campuses this fall.
However, the district has denied Chicago Tribune records requests meant to check on the process _ and declined to answer questions about specific numbers of employees so far who have been disqualified from employment because of their backgrounds or how many have been cleared to work.
CPS CEO Janice Jackson said the process is ongoing and that the district will share more information when it is 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."
An investigative series in the Chicago Tribune found the district conducted ineffective background checks that exposed students to educators with criminal convictions and arrests for sex crimes against children, while some teachers and principals failed to immediately alert child welfare investigators when allegations of abuse arose.
CPS officials also acknowledged to the Tribune that the district did not have a standard protocol for investigating reports of sexual misconduct, while weaknesses in Illinois law help protect predators and do not require state authorities to collect data about sexual abuse of students.
Hickey, a former assistant U.S. attorney who led the Schiff Hardin team and once served as a top state inspector general under Gov. Bruce Rauner, said the review would continue until a final report is issued sometime in early 2019.
