Posted on 11/24/2025 7:58:22 AM PST by TigerClaws
3.6 million in tax dollars on lavish vacations at 5-star hotels and overseas trips. Much of it was without approval.
Hotel rooms costing $945 per night. Anniversary trips to Las Vegas. South African safaris. Nearly $5,000 for trips to Hawaii.
Grand total: $23.6 million in six years. All at taxpayer expense. All by Chicago Public Schools employees and students.
Much of it was never approved.
Because of “lax, vague, inadequate and unenforced CPS travel rules, training and procedures,” CPS employees excessively spent taxpayer money, in many instances without approval. Luxurious vacations were veiled as professional development conferences, according to the CPS Office of Inspector General.
While staffers were seeing Hawaii, students were seeing their achievement suffer. Only 2-in-5 CPS students can read at grade level. About 1-in-4 perform math proficiently.
The costs exploded when federal pandemic funds became available and loosened district budgets, the report stated. Those funds were intended to help students catch up academically after the Chicago Teachers Union used pandemic fears to force schools to remain closed for 78 weeks.
Of the $23.6 million spent on travel, $14.5 million came in 2023 and 2024 – enabled by those pandemic funds and mostly for out-of-town employee professional development or overnight student outings. “Professional development” was the excuse and lax oversight enabled the abuse.
Spending on out-of-state travel included:
One teacher took a seven-day, $4,700 trip to a luxury Hawaiian resort for a four-day professional development seminar. There were many examples of stays extending past conference dates. Multiple $1,000-a-person round-trip domestic flights and room rates of $500-plus to over $900 a night. Private sedans via a limo service to carry employees to and from Chicago airports. Seven conferences in two years for one principal, visiting New York City, New Orleans, Orlando, Virginia, Philadelphia, Denver and Dallas. $50,000 for 24 employees of one school to attend a professional development conference in Las Vegas in 2024. A principal who decided to attend a 2023 Las Vegas conference at the last minute, booked a hotel room at a cost of $945 per night for a three-night stay.
Word spread about one vendor’s seminars in Las Vegas and other destinations, leading over 600 staffers to spend $1.5 million attending them. They stayed in four- and five-star hotels on the Las Vegas Strip for over $400 a night. When that same vendor offered the conference in Chicago, few attended. A principal booked a suite at a luxury Las Vegas Strip hotel away from the conference and stayed an extra day so he could bring his non-employee spouse to celebrate their anniversary. The principal booked the suite an extra day without requesting approval. At least two dozen employees took round-trip Chicago to Las Vegas flights costing more than $1,000 each. Spending on overseas travel included:
More than $142,000 in CPS funds for eight schools to travel overseas to Finland, Estonia, Egypt and South Africa for trips that included “excursions centered around cultural and educational site visits” and “conventional tourist activities.” “Optional” tourist activities including a visit to a South African game park, a hot air balloon ride, camel rides and a visit to a bazaar. 15 international professional development trips for staff, with 12 of those never submitted for approval. One trip was even rejected by the Office of Finance, but the employees traveled anyway. These expensive trips do nothing to fight the high teacher absenteeism rates. One high-ranking CPS administrator questioned why overseas professional development trips were necessary, asking, “Why can’t this be done in the United States?”
Abuse has also been seen during local or even virtual conferences. When multi-day education retreats were less than 50 miles from work sites, CPS employees booked spa resorts and large hotel complexes.
The inspector general’s report showcased a culture of entitlement. When a conference was offered virtually, only one employee attended.
Since scandal-plagued CTU President Stacy Davis Gates took over in 2022, CPS employees have wasted $18 million in taxpayer money on travel.
The inspector general’s report was released to the Chicago Board of Education on June 30. On Oct. 29, CPS announced a travel freeze to curb non-approved travel.
Interim Superintendent and CEO Macquline King stated the freeze “reflects [CPS] continued commitment to responsible financial stewardship and to prioritizing resources that directly support classrooms and students.”
A temporary freeze is not enough. Changes need to be implemented immediately to prove to taxpayers they are more than a vacation fund. Changes should start with:
Converting vacant buildings into professional development spaces. Requiring approval for “professional development seminars” out of state and considering local options.
Requiring employees attend conferences in Chicago when possible instead of at an out-of-state location.
Switching to flat hotel and airfare maximums, which can more easily be monitored, and requiring employees to pay anything over those maximums. Setting flat dollar allowances for meals.
CPS employees have broken the trust of taxpayers by fraudulently spending money for personal benefit. This $23.6 million should have been used to help students close pandemic achievement gaps, not so educators could live large in Sin City.
What happens when you give ghetto dwellers money Alex
If you think this is bad, you should see what’s covered in their health insurance.
I guarantee you those bennies are costing taxpayers far, far more.
What the hell do they teach in the Chicago Publik Skrools? Drive by shootings.
When you using other people’s money, you can be pretty generous!
I have never sleep in hotels like that!
Even if they are owned by Trump!
A Florida Democratic Rep. has been charged in a federal indictment with stealing federal disaster relief funds and using the money to support her campaign for Congress.
The Department of Justice said that the lawmaker and her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, conspired to launder $5 million dollars obtained from FEMA.
I remember some years ago my city entrusted a local black “organization” with funds for a gun buy back.......long story short, the number of guns turned in didn’t match with the money they were given.
That money went somewhere.
The moral of the story......certainly ethnicities can’t be trusted with money that’s not theirs.
Just gutting educated on Waste-Fraud-Abuse.
Makes sense...
If you had to work with those ‘youths’ you’d need lots of luxury vacations, too.
Now you know why they want things to burn down there, they need the insurance money.
wy69
And yet it’s whitey’s fault why kids can’t read and do math. Those teachers were never late for those airplanes for those trips, I bet you that.
This is not just Chicago. It is any massive government bureaucracy. Government buildings in Washington, DC have been turned into palaces. Most government employees make much more than similarly situated private employees if you take vacation, pensions and other benefits into consideration. And then there are the perks like these lavish trips. Its just a natural outgrowth of big government. It can’t be avoided. Its why government needs to be cut.
There is a class of public employees that see perks they can get away with as an entitlement.
I travel for my job. About 150 nights a year. I sleep cheap and eat kinda cheap. That way when I don’t or can’t find a cheap hotel, there’s never a question about unwise spending.
Well, they deserve it as the Chicago schools are doing such an outstanding job in educating the kids.
Is it my imagination thinking that only in blue states are their government’s totally corrupt and/or inept and are resisting any call for accountability?
Much of it was never approved.
System failure lights and alarms on nobody notices.
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