Chicago City Wire

Expense records obtained by Chicago City Wire show that Chicago Public Schools spent nearly $100,000 on international student trips booked through a Chicago-based travel agency over the past year.

Records were obtained for two trips, one to England, Scotland and Ireland last spring and another to Costa Rica planned for late May to early June of this year.

A copy of an invoice to Walter Payton College Preparatory High School from Exotic Journeys shows that the airfare for a trip to the United Kingdom and Ireland for 28 people cost $994.88 per person, for a total cost of $27,856.64. The group left Chicago on March 28 and returned April 8.

Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner

A separate Request for Approve Pay form covering the trip lists two additional trips in a handwritten note that cost $21,298.48 and $24,771.60 for a total cost of the three trips of $73,926.72. The note provided no details of the other two trips.

Jason Chau, an English teacher at Walter Payton whose name appears on the Exotic Journeys invoice for the trip to the UK, replied to an email request for comment on the trip. 

“I am on a student trip to Belize right now but can help when I return," he wrote. "Also, this trip was NOT paid by the district. It was funded by students and fundraising. In the end, I could not participate because of an injury, but my colleagues proceeded with trip and had an amazing educational experience with our students.”

When pressed whether that “fundraising” covered the cost of airfare he replied: “CPS requires us to deposit funds into central account, and then the checks come from them," he wrote. "Our school accountant Amma Nantwi can better explain. She is copied on this email.”

Nantwi never replied to an email asking whether CPS covered all or part of the UK trip, or the trip planned to Costa Rica.

Chau earned $96,480 last year.

The trip to Costa Rica for 35 people will cost $25,970 in airfare plus $1,320 in insurance for 30 students, plus $430 for insurance for five adults for a total cost of $27,720, according to a Request for Quote for CPOR form. CPOR stands for chief procurement officer report.

The CPOR form contains a quote from Exotic Journeys to Valentin Torres, identified on the Walter Payton website as an advanced placement biology teacher, to cover the cost of the trip from May 27 to June 4. A box on the form labeled “Project Overview” was blank.

Torres did not respond to a request for comment.

In August, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed school-funding legislation that gave CPS $450 million more in state funding than the previous year. He signed the bill even though it contained $150 million more for CPS than the original school funding measure that the Republican governor vetoed and repeatedly derided as a bailout of Chicago's mismanaged schools.