Chief Education Officer Jason Helfer (2023) | Illinois State Board of education
Chief Education Officer Jason Helfer (2023) | Illinois State Board of education
During the same period, Kankakee High School's 505 Hispanic students, who make up 33.4% of the school population, received four suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 126 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.
Of the 68 total suspensions at Kankakee High School in the 2021-22 school year, three were in-school suspensions and 65 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, 40 student suspensions at Kankakee High School were for violence-related offenses.
The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 40 cases - 58.8% of the total infractions.
During the 2021-22 school year, Kankakee High School reported 1,094 students - equivalent to 72.3% 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 66.6% 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 74.9% of all students who were chronically truant, and 69.3% 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 | 505 | 4 | 0.01 |
| Black | 673 | 55 | 0.08 |
| Multiracial | 13 | 3 | 0.23 |
| White | 315 | 6 | 0.02 |
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