More Misconduct — Including Sexual Abuse — At Chicago Public Schools

Over 700 CPS employees were disciplined in 2025

Why is no one talking about the more than 700 Chicago Schools employees who have been disciplined for misconduct — including sexual abuse against students — in just the last year?

The first news of this sordid state of affairs broke at the end of July when WTTW reported that more than 700 employees of the CPS had been caught engaging in some sort of misconduct, including harassment, financial crimes, and sexual abuse. And this huge number represents only a single year of disciplinary records.

The CPS has nearly 43,295 employees, so 700 is nearly two percent (1.62 percent is the number here) of the total number of employees. That seems fairly high. Granted, zero misconduct is what any business or organizations strives for, but 1.6 percent is certainly not acceptable, and is higher than the average rate in the private sector, regardless.

WTTW noted the number of disciplined CPS workers were counted between January of 2025 and January of this year. While most of the misconduct cases were low-level infractions, dozens were clear crimes including harassment, discrimination, fraud, and sexual assaults. Of the latter, 10 employees were either fired or had resigned over accusations of sexual assault involving students.

The records identified 723 employees tied to 794 disciplinary cases, WTTW noted, with most cases showing the employee had committed their third infraction. Also, most of these allegations were proven and disciplinary action was taken, so, these aren’t just “allegations” we are talking about. Only three percent were overturned or reduced on appeal by the employee.

The cases were handled at both the school level and the district office level, according to the inspector general’s office.

Naturally, CPS delivered one of those non-comment comments when confronted with the report.

"Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is committed to ensuring safe, respectful and accountable learning and working environments for students and staff," the district said in its statement. "CPS continually works to improve policies and procedures to ensure the safety and security of schools."

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What we don't know is how common it is to have 700 disciplinary cases in a single year. Has this been the norm? Does CPS have 700 employees that need disciplinary actions every year? And how many of those are sexual misconduct with students?

Worse, why has the media simply moved on from this story and stopped looking into it as if it was no big deal? Why don't we have this information on an ongoing basis?

This is not the first time a high number was reported. In 2022, The Illinois Policy Institute found CPS had 500 disciplinary cases, many of which were sexual misconduct against students. And in 2024, it was reported sexual abuse was up 12 percent over the previous year.

And the misconduct is still occurring, too. Just last week CPS employee Charles McKenzie — who also claimed to be an "anti-violence" activist — was arrested on charges of grooming and sexually assaulting at least two young girls. McKenzie had been working as a school counseling assistant.

But it seems these cases just continue to rise and no effort is made to address the problems.

Chicago’s kids deserve far better than this. It is high time that the Chicago School Board take this rising rate of misconduct seriously. The board needs to create a plan to reverse this multi-year trend.

Now that we have a supposedly autonomous school board, it's past time we get serious action. The board needs to address serious issues like this.

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