Chicago Public Schools’ system for tracking student computers needs a “serious overhaul” after up to 77,000 devices worth more than $23 million were considered lost or stolen in one year, according to a recent report.

CPS Inspector General William Fletcher’s 2023 annual report contends district officials rarely used a $3 million tracking system to find missing devices, including some that were left on shelves or desks unaccounted for, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

The report found 11% of the district’s devices were considered lost or stolen in the 2021-22 school year, up from 8% listed as lost the year prior. In addition to computers, the district’s technology assets include air purifiers, projectors, iPads, and other devices.

An expert cited in the report described the 2021-22 loss as “alarming,” according to the news site.

The inspector general found that some teachers and students were not asked to return computers. His report detailed at least one case of a teacher losing 10 computers in one year, only for eight to be later found at the school.

Fletcher also noted that at 36 schools there was no clear expectation for students to return their devices, and each school conducted audits differently.

“There are just black holes in terms of where devices were,” he said.

Media reports from the Sun-Times, WBEZ and Chalkbeat Chicago have detailed the district’s struggles tracking the devices, which require regular time-consuming inventories often conducted by outside vendors who do not search for the devices.

“CPS spends a couple million dollars on software and other assets that try to monitor and keep track of their assets, and we found out that that system is just very flawed,” Fletcher told Chalkbeat.

“When we followed up with the schools, we would talk to people who had an asset or a laptop or a Chromebook that was issued to them that was marked lost or stolen – that in fact wasn’t,” he said. “There were a few interviews with people who reached into their desk and said, ‘Hey, I got this laptop, no one ever asked me for it.’”

District officials in July sent messages to 50,000 reportedly lost or stolen devices, and had recovered 12,000 as of Monday, a district spokesperson told the news site.

CPS spent more than $308 million with three vendors between March 2020 and August 2023 to purchase nearly 311,000 laptops and tablets, and about 41,000 remain in warehouses or have yet to ship, officials told Chalkbeat.

The OIG reports CPS spends $2.6 million a year on services that allow officials to track or freeze devices, but had only recovered 11 devices through those services by the end of the 2021-22 school year.

Fletcher ultimately made 16 recommendations to improve CPS’ technology tracking system, ranging from holding students, staff and principals accountable to notifications for missing devices.

CPS officials agreed with all of the recommendations to some extent, vowing to create a “cross-functional committee” to determine how to hold students and principals accountable for lost devices.

A CPS spokesperson told Chalkbeat the district is working to automate the recovery process and plans to disable lost or missing devices that are not promptly returned. The district is also considering using sensors to track mobile devices in schools, the spokesperson said.

In addition to the OIG findings regarding school computers, Fletcher’s office also detailed concerns about how the district is tracking a 74% increase in extra pay for school staff between 2017 and 2021, as well as numerous cases of substantiated student sexual abuse by staff over the last year.

Roughly one-fifth of the more than 2,000 complaints filed with the OIG last fiscal year were related to sexual misconduct, Chalkbeat reports.