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Topline: Chicago Public School employees spent an “exorbitant” $14.6 million on travel in 2023 and 2024, including to vacation spots like Disney World and Las Vegas, according to a Nov. 12 report from the Chicago Board of Education Inspector General.

Key facts: The investigation began following a complaint that one elementary school planned to spend $20,000 on a staff trip to Egypt without approval. The trip was cancelled one day before departure, but it was not an isolated incident.

Staff members had already spent $142,000 on 15 “professional development” trips to Egypt, Estonia, Finland and South Africa, the inspector general found. The bill included hot air balloon rides and camel rides.

More than 600 employees from 140 schools spent $1.5 million attending professional development conferences in Las Vegas. Almost 90% of them violated school travel policy by spending too much on hotel rooms, including luxury options like Caesars Palace and the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, the audit found.

One principal spent $945 per night on a hotel. Another stayed in his hotel an extra night after the conference to celebrate his anniversary with his wife.

There was an option to attend the exact same conference virtually or locally in Chicago, but few employees chose to do so.

Another teacher spent $4,700 on a seven-day trip to a Hawaiian resort for a professional development seminar.

Several trips were booked through travel agencies that charged 20% fees.

The total travel bill was $6.9 million in 2023 and $7.7 million in 2024. From 2019 to 2022, employees spent between $1.8 million and $3.6 million annually on travel.

The audit placed most of the blame on the school’s written travel rules, which are allegedly “so riddled with holes and poorly written that they have been misinterpreted in the field or ignored.”

There are no written spending limits on international travel. Trips are approved based on whether paperwork has been filled out properly, without considering if they are “worth the taxpayer dollars involved or could be replaced by a less expensive alternative,” the audit claimed.

The school district has almost $10 billion in debt. It had to lay off staff this year to close a $734 million budget deficit. Fewer than 1-in-3 students can read at grade level, and fewer than 1-in-5 are proficient in math.

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Critical quote: “Just because employees participated in expensive trips does not mean they were out to game the travel system,” the inspector general wrote. “Yet clearly, many taxpayers would find some excursions described in this report objectionable and even excessive — especially in tight budget times. Such outings were possible because of lax, vague, inadequate and unenforced travel rules, training and procedures.”

Summary: It’s difficult to teach students how to read and do math when their teachers are on another continent.

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