Chicago Public Schools Inspector General Will Fletcher steps down to launch oversight agency in New York

After helming oversight of Chicago Public Schools during the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid a sea change in the district’s handling of sexual misconduct complaints, Will Fletcher resigned as CPS inspector general, effective last Friday.

Under Fletcher’s four-year tenure, the Office of the Inspector General uncovered multiple patterns of fraud and financial mismanagement in CPS and expanded its Sexual Allegations Unit, which is devoted to investigating alleged adult-on-student sexual misconduct.

While tension between CPS leaders, the teachers union and Mayor Brandon Johnson has recently escalated into calls for a new CEO, and a mediator as CPS and CTU negotiate a new contract, the IG’s office has remained independent of district politics and the personnel change is only due to a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to take on a new role, Fletcher said.

The Board of Education will vote on a resolution Thursday acknowledging that Deputy Inspector General Amber Nesbitt has stepped into Fletcher’s role as acting inspector general.

Fletcher said he will next launch a new inspector general’s office, responsible for overseeing the Gateway Development Commission, an agency created by the states of New York and New Jersey to manage a group of infrastructure projects that will cost at least $16 billion and entail bridge, rail and tunnel projects among both states.

“I loved being the inspector general for Chicago Public Schools,” said Fletcher, a CPS alumni and parent. “Over the last four-plus years, we’ve been able to build a team and build an office that has responded to the volume of complaints that we receive and has been able to do impactful investigations that really matter to the school district.”

Revelations involving district finances that the IG’s office has brought to light in recent years include Paycheck Protection Program fraud among CPS employees; the loss of tens of thousands of technology devices, cumulatively worth millions; failures to verify fraudulent requests for extra pay; and nearly $30 million in payments CPS made without conditions to bus vendors who laid off drivers at the onset of the pandemic, rather than paying to keep them on staff, as CPS had intended.

The OIG also formed its Sexual Allegations Unit, known as the SAU, in 2018, after a Chicago Tribune report exposed conflicts of interest in investigations formerly helmed by the CPS Law Department. Citing “appalling” districtwide “failures” in CPS’ handling of sexual abuse allegations, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights entered the district into a legally binding agreement in 2019, mandating reforms and federal monitoring.

The OIG now investigates all adult-to-student sexual misconduct complaints and refers cases involving alleged student-to-student sexual misconduct to CPS’ Office of Student Protections.

Fletcher noted that CPS is the only K-12 school district that has formed an investigative unit that addresses the “gulf between the types of incidents that the police or that law enforcement will investigate, and the types of incidents that are still serious enough to be investigated and handled in a responsible, thorough way.”

Fletcher, who was appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in June 2020, said he’d like parents to know that every complaint is taken seriously. “There is a lot of attention paid to each and every allegation. There are a lot of resources invested in getting to the bottom of each and every allegation,” Fletcher said, noting there’s been a “major change” in “elevating the sense of responsibility that all CPS employees have to report suspected misconduct.”

Fletcher said there remains what he calls a “stubbornly resilient” subset of adults affiliated with CPS who continue to be the subject of allegations — more often involving inappropriate interactions with students than major crimes. “That’s going to take a lot of work,” Fletcher said, expressing confidence in Nesbitt’s leadership and the district’s respect for the independence of the OIG.

“Even if the investigations that we present to the board represent systemic difficulties, challenges, problems, I’ve always believed that they understood where we’re coming from, and that it makes sense why we’re raising the issues that we’re raising,” Fletcher said.