NW Illinois News

Black students, constituting 25.1% or 98 of Carl Sandburg Middle School's total student population of 390, accounted for 167 out of the 337 total suspensions (49.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.7 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Carl Sandburg Middle School's 154 white students, who make up 39.5% of the school population, received 46 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per three white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 337 total suspensions at Carl Sandburg Middle School in the 2021-22 school year, 206 were in-school suspensions and 131 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 108 student suspensions at Carl Sandburg Middle School were for violence-related offenses.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 108 cases - 32% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Carl Sandburg Middle School reported 114 students - equivalent to 29.2% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 145 students, or 37.3% 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 34% of all students who were chronically truant, and 38.5% 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	62	26	0.42
Black	98	167	1.7
Multiracial	71	94	1.32
White	154	46	0.3