Kendall County Times

White students, constituting 65.7% or 453 of Yorkville Intermediate School's total student population of 690, accounted for 22 out of the 26 total suspensions (84.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per 21 students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Yorkville Intermediate School's 142 Hispanic students, who make up 20.6% of the school population, received one suspension. This translates to an average of one suspension per 142 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of white students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 26 total suspensions at Yorkville Intermediate School in the 2021-22 school year, 22 were in-school suspensions and four out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, four student suspensions at Yorkville Intermediate School were for violence-related offenses.

During the 2021-22 school year, Yorkville Intermediate School reported 28 students - equivalent to 4.1% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 66 students, or 9.6% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

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	142	1	0.01
Black	40	1	0.03
Multiracial	48	2	0.04
White	453	22	0.05