(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The Chicago Public Schools’ inspector general says he’s found that schools have persistently misused a system for reporting truancy.
What this means, according to the watchdog’s annual report, is this: that schools have reported many students who were truants as transfers or as “lost” instead.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that under the CPS system, schools are penalized if they have a high absentee rate. The implication is that there’s an incentive for schools to hide chronic absenteeism.
The IG’s report says it’s recommended that CPS reform the way truancy is reported by schools; CPS has reportedly taken steps to do that.
In other areas of the school system it studied:
--The IG said its Sexual Allegations Unit closed more than 600 cases last year, twice the number of cases it closed in 2021.
The IG’s annual report says that in the past four years, 18 cases have led to criminal charges.
--There has been a dramatic drop in JROTC enrollment.
Enrollment in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps has dropped 67 percent in the freshman classes at eight CPS schools. The reason: Those CPS schools had been automatically signing up freshmen for JROTC until the IG called them on it.
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