Kendall County Times

Black students, constituting 9.2% or 94 of Traughber Junior High School's total student population of 1,024, accounted for 30 out of the 85 total suspensions (35.3%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per three students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Traughber Junior High School's 624 white students, who make up 60.9% of the school population, received 26 suspensions. This translates to an average of one suspension per 24 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 85 total suspensions at Traughber Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, 70 were in-school suspensions and 15 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 24 student suspensions at Traughber Junior High School were for violence-related offenses and five for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 24 cases - 28.2% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Traughber Junior High School reported 94 students - equivalent to 9.2% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 97 students, or 9.5% 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 22.3% of all students who were chronically truant, and 19.2% 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	220	25	0.11
Black	94	30	0.32
Multiracial	55	4	0.07
White	624	26	0.04