An elite high school allowed for-profit sports clubs that had connections to school employees to use its facilities “for little to no cost” and without required contracts, Chicago Public Schools’ inspector general said this week.
Administrators at the school, identified by sources as Whitney Young High School, gave free or discounted gym and pool time to youth swimming, basketball and volleyball clubs, according to a seven-page report from CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler’s office.
That meant the school “gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in rental discounts to those private businesses, if not more, at the school’s and the taxpayers’ expense,” the report said.
The administrators’ actions, the inspector general said, “should be a sobering wake-up call that a check is needed on school administrators’ discretion as to how much to charge when renting school facilities — particularly the discretion that currently is afforded to school principals.”
The school is not named in the public investigation summary of the inspector general’s report published this week. The report comes outside the office’s normal cycle for issuing such information and is part of a new effort provide “timely updates on significant matters”.
In a statement, CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner said the district “takes the misconduct detailed in the report seriously and does not tolerate the exploitation of school resources for personal profit.”
She said CPS has begun a disciplinary process for several implicated employees and is in the process of clarifying its policies.
Schools often obtain valuable streams of revenue by renting out their facilities for public use. But at Young, the report said the school’s head aquatics coach, who is also the owner of a for-profit swimming team, used school aquatics facilities for what the inspector general estimated to be an hourly rate of $1.20.
The club team also incorporated itself with Whitney Young’s name, listed the school address on its incorporation documents and suggested it was “formally affiliated with, or even sponsored by” the school.
In addition, one of the school’s basketball coaches who also owns a youth basketball club didn’t pay $25,800 in rent it agreed to through “informal arrangements or subsequent rental contracts,” the report said.
In an effort to reduce the amount of back rent, the club and the school’s principal agreed to what the report described as “an odd — if not a sham — business deal” where the club would donate basketball equipment to the school. The inspector general, however, said it determined that Whitney Young already owned the equipment the club attempted to donate. The basketball coach resigned while under investigation, Schuler’s office said.
More Top Picks Why My Autistic Child Hates Haircuts And Clothing Tags
Also, Schuler’s office said an employee of the district’s main sports office, who had once coached at a different high school, owned a volleyball club that used the school’s gym and gyms at two other schools for free. The club, which employed a Whitney Young volleyball coach, reported close to $1.3 million in annual revenue in its most recent financial disclosure, according to the report.
twitter @perezjr