Misuse of CPS emails by Mayor Lightfoot’s campaign could be repeated with elected school board: Report

Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot didn’t fully cooperate with an investigation into emails sent by her mayoral campaign to Chicago Public Schools staff members that solicited student volunteers, according to the school district’s inspector general, but there’s no evidence CPS staff coordinated with the campaign.

Still, the emails violated CPS’ ethics policy, something the school district needs to ward against as it moves to an elected school board this month, said Interim CPS Inspector General Amber Nesbitt.

“More campaigns in the future will directly implicate CPS and CPS staff,” she said, stressing that CPS staff and school board candidates should be “aware of their obligations and expectations. I think going forward, this will just become increasingly important.”

Nesbitt recommended that the school district make elected board members attest that they have reviewed the CPS code of ethics and “that they will not send CPS employees or students electioneering communications at their cps.edu email addresses.” In response, CPS officials said they can not require such an attestment for candidates, but they will send guidance to candidates and provide ethics training for school board members.

The investigation, highlighted in an annual report released by the inspector general’s office on Wednesday, tracks back to the months before the 2023 mayoral election when Lightfoot was in the midst of a contentious race and struggling to bolster her campaign. News broke that teachers and other staff got emails from Lightfoot’s deputy campaign manager, asking them to share a “volunteer opportunity with students.” The email called it an externship.

Initially, Lightfoot defended the emails, saying it was common practice. But later, when it became clear that the outreach violated ethics policies and that her campaign had been previously warned against sending emails to city staff, including those at the City Colleges of Chicago, Lightfoot apologized. In 2023, Chicago Board of Ethics dismissed a complaint against Lightfoot, saying the evidence did not show that Lightfoot herself was involved in the creation or dissemination of the emails.

CPS employees are prohibited from doing anything political on work time; suggesting that students volunteer for a campaign would violate that provision, according to the inspector general. The report from her office said an email from the mayor, who appointed the school board members and controlled the district, put CPS staff in a tight position.

They “may have feared that they’d be punished if they failed to pass along the Campaign’s offer to students, or conversely, that they might be rewarded for doing so,” according to the report.

The inspector general found that Lightfoot’s campaign sent 247 CPS staff members about 7,500 emails, though some were part of email blasts. While the office did not conclude there was coordination with CPS staff, Nesbitt noted her office was unable to make a full determination given Lightfoot’s limited cooperation with their investigation.

Some CPS staff ultimately recruited students to volunteer, but Nesbitt did not recommend any disciplinary action against those employees.

Nesbitt also found Lightfoot reviewed the press statement sent by CPS communications’ office in response to the revelation that staff had received campaign emails. But communications staff were just following “usual protocols rather than intentionally coordinating with Elected Official A or the Campaign,” the report said, referring to former Mayor Lightfoot. “Nevertheless, it risked enabling the very sort of improper coordination that CPS leadership seemingly wished to avoid.”