Kendall County Times

Black students, constituting 15.6% or 369 of Plainfield South High School's total student population of 2,367, accounted for 75 out of the 213 total suspensions (35.2%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per five students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Plainfield South High School's 1,128 white students, who make up 47.7% of the school population, received 61 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 18 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Hispanic students at Plainfield South High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 69 suspensions for 721 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per 10 Hispanic students.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 2.9% of the student body at Plainfield South High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 34 Asian students, totaling two suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 213 total suspensions at Plainfield South High School in the 2021-22 school year, 161 were in-school suspensions and 52 out-of-school suspensions. Instead of opting for traditional suspensions or expulsions for some cases, the school administration decided to relocate eight students to alternative educational settings.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 16 student suspensions at Plainfield South High School were for violence-related offenses and 46 for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was drug offenses offenses, tallying 46 cases - 21.6% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Plainfield South High School reported 466 students - equivalent to 19.7% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 1,008 students, or 42.6% 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 32.6% of all students who were chronically truant, and 45% 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	721	69	0.1
Black	369	75	0.2
Asian	68	2	0.03
Multiracial	75	6	0.08
White	1,128	61	0.05