Elmhurst School Official Mishandled Credit Card Oversight: District

ELMHURST, IL – Elmhurst School District 205 this week released a key report that indicates a top official mishandled a subordinate's misspending.

Last month, the district declined to release the document in response to Patch's records request. It only divulged it after the police did so.

The police blacked out the name of a former top official whom the district blamed for failing to take action against credit card misuse.

The district unredacted it.

The employee accused of misspending was Todd Schmidt, the facilities director. He was arrested in November 2024 on felony charges of stealing from his mother. He resigned a couple of weeks later.

School records show that Schmidt used the credit card for $50,000 in personal spending, including for booze, cigars, restaurant meals, country club fees, airfare and sorority payments.

It's against the law to use public resources for private purposes.

Schmidt paid back the money regularly, according to documents.

Dated Dec. 17, 2024, the seven-page report was addressed to the school board from Superintendent Keisha Campbell and Joseph Schumacher, assistant superintendent of human resources.

In January 2022, an employee reported to Chris Whelton, Schmidt's supervisor and the assistant superintendent of finance at the time, that Schmidt was using the district's credit card for personal spending. Whelton spoke with Schmidt.

After that, Schmidt largely stopped the practice. In January 2022, Schmidt had a couple of "fairly large" $4,000 charges from the fall of 2021 that he had not yet paid off, according to the report.

Schmidt did not pay off one charge from October 2021 until June 2022, the district said. He used his card again in the summer of 2022 for personal charges.

'Using the wrong card'

The report said two employees remembered bringing up the problem more than once, and, at one point, Whelton yelled at Schmidt about it, the report said.

Schmidt was told to stop the behavior and be sure everything was paid back, the report said.

Whelton considered revoking Schmidt's credit card the second time that he was told to stop using it for personal purposes, the district said. But that did not happen because he paid back everything, according to the report.

Chris Whelton, former assistant superintendent of finance for Elmhurst School District 205, was said to have been negligent with his oversight of a subordinate's credit card use. He is pictured here at a 2023 school board meeting congratulating a student. (David Giuliani/Patch)

Schmidt responded that he was "simply using the wrong card," the report said.

In December, the police department released the police report on Schmidt in response to Patch's request. He was not charged because of the statute of limitations.

The police report cited much of its information from the district's seven-page report, officially called the "Executive Summary of Findings." This was the first time the public learned that such a report existed.

Commutes to Rockford

The police report was also the first time the public heard that Schmidt was believed to have been using a district truck for commutes.

The report stated that two of Schmidt's subordinates were using district trucks for personal commutes starting in October 2024.

Whelton decided to wait until after the Oct. 15, 2024, school board meeting to address the issue and find out whether Schmidt was also using a district truck for personal use, according to the report.

But Whelton did not address the issue afterward. Instead, he determined that he should handle it through an update to the handbook for the next school year, the report said.

It turned out that Schmidt had been using his truck for commutes to his hometown of Rockford, which is 70 miles away, the report said.

When Schmidt was put on leave in the wake of his arrest, the district picked up his district truck in Rockford, according to the report.

'Gross failure'

The report said Whelton failed to hold Schmidt accountable for the credit card misuse. It was in a section of the report labeled "Chris' deficiencies."

"For the District vehicle issue, we again have an instance of not acting on something and then never disciplining Todd for the issue," the report said. "Todd's misuse by commuting to Rockford regularly should have been subject to discipline. There is no indication that Chris would have addressed this any time soon but for the arrest."

Three months after Schmidt's resignation, the school board pressured Whelton out. Whelton, who started in 2010, entered a severance agreement.

The report also said Whelton appeared to exercise no oversight over Schmidt's credit card use before January 2022. The district called it a "gross failure."

"As his direct report, this can be considered negligent," the report said. "(H)owever, no business process has been in place for such monthly approval to occur, likely pre-dating Chris' employment here," the report said.

That same lack of oversight also applied to facilities staff in general, the district said.

'Secondary failure'

"Once Chris learned of Todd's usage, he failed to get Todd to pay all of the outstanding funds back right away," the report said.

Then, "a secondary failure of overnight" occurred in summer 2022 when Schmidt misused his card again.

In December 2024, the district promised it would present information it found about Schmidt's misspending to the public. But it had revealed little until this week's release of the internal report. Most of what the public knew had come through Patch's public records requests.

On Nov. 26, one day after Schmidt's arrest, Patch requested his credit card bills from the district.

The district did not provide the records until Dec. 19. That was two days after the school board met behind closed doors, presumably to discuss the report that school officials issued the same day.

'Legitimately exempt'

On Tuesday, the school district provided the seven-page internal report to Patch. In an email, the district said it stood behind the original justifications to withhold it. But the district acknowledged the police department's decision to release it.

"Maintaining the exemption of a record that is now in the public domain, even if legitimately exempt, is no longer necessary," the district said.

Other than Whelton's name, the district said it has continued to redact the names of employees who were interviewed.

"Making interviewee names and identifying job titles public would result in future interviewees not being as candid or not coming forward at all," the district said. "Such a result would negatively impact the District’s ability to appropriately investigate the matter to the detriment of the investigation."