Kankakee Times

Multiracial students, constituting 5% or 30 of Manteno High School's total student population of 601, accounted for 48 out of the 247 total suspensions (19.4%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.6 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Manteno High School's 497 white students, who make up 82.7% of the school population, received 165 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per three white students, which is definitively lower than that of multiracial students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 247 total suspensions at Manteno High School in the 2021-22 school year, 215 were in-school suspensions and 32 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 31 student suspensions at Manteno High School were for violence-related offenses and 14 for those including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Manteno High School reported 99 students - equivalent to 16.5% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 178 students, or 29.7% 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 36.4% 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	53	29	0.55
Multiracial	30	48	1.6
White	497	165	0.33