Southern Illinois News

Multiracial students, constituting 10.9% or 30 of Massac Junior High School's total student population of 275, accounted for 13 out of the 49 total suspensions (26.5%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per two students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Massac Junior High School's 210 white students, who make up 76.4% of the school population, received 30 suspensions. This translates to an average of one suspension per seven white students, which is definitively lower than that of multiracial students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 49 total suspensions at Massac Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, 29 were in-school suspensions and 20 out-of-school suspensions.

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

During the 2021-22 school year, Massac Junior High School reported 43 students - equivalent to 15.7% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 100 students, or 36.3% 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 45.2% 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
Black	24	6	0.25
Multiracial	30	13	0.43
White	210	30	0.14