$23 million worth of Apple iPads, laptops were ‘lost or stolen’ in a single school year in Chicago

As Amazing Grace goes: ‘I once was lost, but now am found’ – well, not exactly. Not in Chicago.

Usually, when we put together words like ‘lost’, ‘stolen’ and ‘Apple’ in the same sentence, it’s about a happy-end story that involves AirTag and the ways in which Apple’s tracker helps many folks retrieve what’s theirs.

This time, though, the story is a bit different: once again we’re gonna bring together ‘lost’, ‘stolen’ and ‘Apple’ in the same sentence, but the happy end is unlikely.

There’s a report from the Chicago Public Schools Inspector General: more than 70,000 laptops and iPads were lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year (via WGN-TV). This is causing Chicago City Council members to question the process that gave away and lost millions of dollars worth of technology.

What do the numbers say?

The Inspector General’s report has the exact numbers: during the 2021-22 school year, 77,505 devices were reported lost or stolen in the Chicago Public Schools system. In total, that’s $23 million worth of laptops, hotspots, and iPads. For reference, between 2020 and 2023, Chicago Public Schools spent $308 million on 311,000 laptops.

A brother and a sister ‘lost or found’ 9-10 devices

The Inspector General report highlights that there are three dozen schools where every single device is unaccounted for: “It’s just wasteful (and) that’s what our office is here to address and that’s what we do,” CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher said. “Our work uncovered an incident where there were a pair of siblings, a brother and sister at school who between them lost 9-10 devices, (and) there’s no record or indication that the district reached out to the family mentioned this was an issue try to figure out what happened.”

The Inspector General report also noted that the district did little to try to track them down. The report showed CPS did spend about $2.6 million on software to track and recover computers, but didn’t utilize it.

The Inspector General’s office is also blaming the school administration, stating that they should’ve taken measures after the first ‘two or three’ devices disappeared: “This is a disservice to our young people because now we have to figure out how to raise that money. This was wasteful.”

The district reports it has recovered 12,000 laptops so far. CPS also estimates the current depreciated value of the devices as $2.5 million saying the majority of them are now well over five years old, stating many others were “thrown out” and marked lost.