Sangamon Sun

Multiracial students, constituting 6.9% or 50 of Glenwood Middle School's total student population of 729, accounted for five out of the 32 total suspensions (15.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging one suspension per 10 students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Glenwood Middle School's 557 white students, who make up 76.4% of the school population, received 19 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 29 white students, which is definitively lower than that of multiracial students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 32 total suspensions at Glenwood Middle School in the 2021-22 school year, all of them were out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 20 student suspensions at Glenwood Middle School were for violence-related offenses and five for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 20 cases - 62.5% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Glenwood Middle School reported 78 students - equivalent to 10.7% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 126 students, or 17.3% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

Multiracial students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 22.2% of all students who were 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	33	4	0.12
Black	48	4	0.08
Multiracial	50	5	0.1
White	557	19	0.03