163 employees barred from working in Chicago Public Schools were hired by charter or contract schools

Many former Chicago Public Schools staffers who have been caught abusing students or stealing from the district were subsequently hired by privately managed charter and contract schools in the city, an investigation has found.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that 163 former district employees permanently banned from working for the school system were hired by 33 different charter or contract school operators as of December. The disclosure was part of an investigation by the district's inspector general, Nicholas Schuler.

Three of those 163 were people who had been given a permanent “Do Not Hire” designation by Chicago schools following reports of sexual abuse of students.

The charter and contract schools didn’t know they had been hiring banned employees because no system existed to inform them, the investigation determined.

That apparently is changing; Chicago officials are developing a plan for prospective employers to check candidates and employees against the district's no-hire list.

Schuler would not name any of the schools or employees whose names came up in the investigation. But he says that larger operators tended to employ more problem employees.