McLean County Times

Black students, constituting 15.5% or 98 of Chiddix Junior High School's total student population of 631, accounted for 162 out of the 276 total suspensions (58.7%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.7 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Chiddix Junior High School's 374 white students, who make up 59.3% of the school population, received 65 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per six white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Multiracial students at Chiddix Junior High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 28 suspensions for 46 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per two multiracial students.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 12.8% of the student body at Chiddix Junior High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of roughly one suspension per seven Asian students, totaling 11 suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 276 total suspensions at Chiddix Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, 174 were in-school suspensions and 102 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, three student suspensions at Chiddix Junior High School were for violence-related offenses and five for those including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Chiddix Junior High School reported 64 students - equivalent to 10.1% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 80 students, or 12.6% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

Black students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 23.3% of all students who were chronically truant or absent.

In a broader context, data from the ProPublica database indicates that Black students are suspended at a rate 4.6 times higher than white students in Illinois—surpassing the already high national average rate of 3.9 times.

However, districts’ officials deny a direct link between these statistics and race. Lisa Small, the Superintendent of District 211, argues that these numbers oversimplify the situation. “Decisions are highly individualized and based on the specific behavior and are not well-suited to a simple numerical analysis,” she wrote in a statement. “They are not a statistic to us, but a developing young adult.”

Illinois ranks 12th in the nation for the highest rate of suspensions among Black students relative to their white peers.

Race	Number of Students	Total Infractions	Infractions Per Student
Hispanic	32	10	0.31
Black	98	162	1.65
Asian	81	11	0.14
Multiracial	46	28	0.61
White	374	65	0.17