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Chicago Public Schools Inspector General is urging vigilance against improper political activity by district employees and campaigns as the city is now electing school board members.
The recommendations, made in the Office of the Inspector General’s annual report, follow an investigation into former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s campaign staff emailing teachers to solicit student volunteers. That investigation found no coordination between the school district and Lightfoot’s campaign but rather “poor management and oversight.”
Eight students volunteered for the former mayor’s 2023 unsuccessful bid for a second term as a result of the emails to CPS teachers. However, none received class credit as the email initially promised, the investigation found. The inspector general also found these students all signed non-disclosure agreements without their parents’ knowledge, which Lightfoot denied knowing about and admitted was inappropriate.
Although Lightfoot is no longer in office, the inspector general’s report noted that the findings in this case raise important questions for CPS with the advent of school board elections in Chicago.
“The District must maintain vigilance against candidates and campaigns attempting to exert pressure on CPS employees and students,” the report said.
This past September, the district sent school board member candidates guidance on their ethical obligations under the CPS Code of Ethics. The email included links to a school board member’s legal and ethical requirements and a video explaining what is and isn’t acceptable political activity for CPS staff.
In the report, CPS also said the new board members appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson last fall received ethics training in October. A district spokesperson confirmed it took place on Oct. 18. Newly appointed board members were given an ethics presentation and also provided with the political activities video outlining CPS policies.
The district also confirmed to the Office of the Inspector General that students do not get credit for volunteering on campaigns. But a district spokesperson did not say how long that has been district policy.
High school students must complete a service learning project in order to graduate. But the district said service learning projects “should be linked to current academic goals and classroom curriculum and should build social, civic, and academic skills.” They cannot be “partisan-oriented” but can include lessons about elections, including raising awareness about voting or organizing a voter registration event.
The investigation of Lightfoot’s campaign emailing teachers on their work accounts began just over a month before the Chicago mayoral election on Feb. 28, 2023. Lightfoot failed to make the runoff, coming in third among a field of nine candidates. Instead, Johnson, then a county commissioner and organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, came in second behind Paul Vallas, a former CPS CEO and education reform leader. The two would go on to compete in a runoff election that Johnson ultimately won.
The inspector general found that although Lightfoot’s campaign sent more than 7,500 emails to 247 CPS email accounts, most were more general “blast” emails sent to people who voluntarily signed up. The campaign staffer who solicited student volunteers sent 219 emails to 113 district employees whose email addresses they found by searching the internet, the report said.
Still, the inspector general report notes that the emails effectively asked CPS employees “to make a professionally and ethically fraught choice: pass along the message to students and violate CPS policy or ignore outreach from the highest elected official in the city.”
A spokesperson for Lightfoot reiterated in a statement that the former mayor was not personally involved or aware of the recruitment emails.
“As we made clear at the time, in the course of a hotly contested, city-wide campaign in the third largest city in the country, of course the Mayor herself was never involved personally in these volunteer recruitment endeavors,” she wrote. “The OIG report also notes, correctly, that this initiative, spearheaded by one staffer, did not actually have the effect of intimidating any CPS employees into doing anything unethical or inappropriate, and led to fewer than 10 volunteer signups.”
The spokesperson agreed with the OIG’s policy recommendations, but noted they weren’t in effect when the 2023 campaign was taking place.
A CPS spokesperson said the district took additional measures in June 2024 to filter out political emails sent to CPS email addresses. The district’s Ethics Office also did not get any reports of political emails sent to employee email addresses during the most recent election.
Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.
