40,000 Chromebooks, Almost 10,000 iPads And More Remote Learning Tools Went Missing or Were Stolen In Chicago

By Ana Dascalescu

Posted on March 30, 2022

Chicago’s crime wave rose by more than 220 percent in 2021 and the equipment given to kids for remote learning was not spared.

A Chicago Sun-Times report says that the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) organization has lost 8% of schools’ ‘tech assets’ during COVID.

That percentage, converted into real devices, paints a stark picture of the crime levels in Chicago.

40,000 out of 210,000 Chromebooks given to students were reported lost. Among other items, also missing are more than 9,600 iPads, 114 televisions, 1,680 printers, and 1,127 audiovisual projectors.

Even air purifiers and defibrillators went missing, with schools making repeated efforts to recover lost devices.

To put the number of devices lost and misplaced in perspective, at the start of the 2020-2021 school year there were 340,658 students enrolled in the Chicago Public Schools. The cost of the missing items in schools was estimated by police at more than $920,000 but that number doesn’t tally hundreds of devices.

According to Chicago Sun-Times, the police have classified most of the missing property reports for those 15 schools as “suspended” or “closed non-criminal,” meaning it’s unlikely anyone will be held responsible for the theft.

The newspaper also looked at schools all over the city and underlined that “no matter where they are or how poor or wealthy a neighborhood, all had similar theft problems.”

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40,000 Chromebooks, Almost 10,000 iPads And More Remote Learning Tools Went Missing or Were Stolen In Chicago