Kendall County Times

Black students, constituting 12.1% or 100 of Thompson Junior High School's total student population of 825, accounted for 127 out of the 267 total suspensions (47.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.3 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Thompson Junior High School's 383 white students, who make up 46.4% of the school population, received 47 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per eight white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 267 total suspensions at Thompson Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, 157 were in-school suspensions and 110 out-of-school suspensions. Instead of opting for traditional suspensions or expulsions for some cases, the school administration decided to relocate one student to alternative educational settings.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 119 student suspensions at Thompson Junior High School were for violence-related offenses and six for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 119 cases - 44.6% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Thompson Junior High School reported 123 students - equivalent to 14.9% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 177 students, or 21.4% 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 26.9% of all students who were chronically truant, and 30.8% of the chronically 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	276	81	0.29
Black	100	127	1.27
Multiracial	29	10	0.34
White	383	47	0.12