Chicago public schools:"has lost 8% of schools’ ‘tech assets’ during COVID, tens of thousands of computers, even air purifiers, defibrillators"

CPS has lost 8% of schools’ ‘tech assets’ during COVID, tens of thousands of computers, even air purifiers, defibrillators

The police suspect that much of the property that CPS has listed as missing actually was stolen by people with access to school buildings during the pandemic. 

By Frank Main

 March 25, 2022 05:30 AM

Computers and other devices that amount to at least 8% of the Chicago Public Schools’ “technology assets” have been listed as “lost” during the coronavirus pandemic.

Among the missing items: Tens of thousands of computers, iPads and other high-tech devices. They were lent to students during remote learning but weren’t returned. 

The police suspect that much of the other property that CPS listed as missing actually was stolen by people with access to school buildings during the pandemic.

It isn’t just computers. Air purifiers, defibrillators, a treadmill, lawn equipment and other property also vanished from schools since the beginning of the pandemic.

The Sun-Times reviewed police reports listing lost items for 15 public schools in Chicago. The cost of the missing items in those schools was estimated at more than $920,000.

And that doesn’t include hundreds of computers whose values weren’t even tallied in the reports.

The police have classified most of the missing property reports for those 15 schools as “suspended” or “closed non-criminal,” meaning it’s unlikely anyone will be held responsible for the thefts. No one has been arrested in connection with the missing items in those 15 schools, according to police sources.

The newspaper looked at schools all over the city — on the North Side, the West Side and the South Side. No matter where they are or how poor or wealthy a neighborhood, all had similar theft problems.

According to CPS, 8% of the district’s technology assets were reported lost during the 2020-2021 school year, compared with 3% of those assets during the 2018-2019 school year. Those percentages include technology that’s used for in-person and remote learning, according to school officials.

They say they haven’t tallied the total cost of lost or stolen items during the 2020-2021 school year.

About 390 of Chicago’s more than 650 public schools have reported items lost or stolen and have filed police reports, according to school officials. Another 83 schools were in the process of completing audits to determine what’s been lost or stolen.When the school system shifted to having students learn remotely in the spring of 2020 near the beginning of the pandemic, it lent students iPads, MacBooks and Windows computer devices so they could do school work and do virtual classes from home.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot waves to South Side preschool students learning virtually on Jan. 11, 2021.

Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times

CPS then spent about $165 million to buy Chromebook desktop computers so that every student from kindergarten through senior year in high school who needed a computer could have one.

Students borrowed 161,100 Chromebooks in September 2020. By June 2021, more than 210,000 of those devices had been given out.

Of them, nearly 40,000 Chromebooks have been reported lost — nearly a fifth of those that were lent.