Southern Illinois News

Black students, constituting 7.2% or 38 of Massac County High School's total student population of 531, accounted for 33 out of the 289 total suspensions (11.4%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Massac County High School's 430 white students, who make up 81% of the school population, received 212 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per two white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 289 total suspensions at Massac County High School in the 2021-22 school year, 246 were in-school suspensions and 43 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, two student suspensions at Massac County High School were for violence-related offenses and for an offense including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Massac County High School reported 90 students - equivalent to 17% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 236 students, or 44.5% 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 25.6% of all students who were chronically truant, and 46.5% 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	16	14	0.88
Black	38	33	0.87
Multiracial	41	29	0.71
White	430	212	0.49