Whooda seen that coming?
77,000 items! That is mass theft. It is either organized for profit or a sign of a systemic breakdown of ethics. This is far more and far worse than a lack of accounting safeguards.
Most government agencies do not perform the same kind of inventory of their assets as private companies do. What they do is they take a snapshot of everything they have on hand and they call that their inventory.
No effort is ever made to reconcile purchases with things that are sent out for surplus or trash in order to reconcile what has been stolen or misappropriated.
If only those republicans in Chicago would give the schools more money...