East Central Reporter

Black students, constituting 5.2% or 39 of Charleston High School's total student population of 754, accounted for 35 out of the 175 total suspensions (20%) 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, Charleston High School's 632 white students, who make up 83.8% of the school population, received 118 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per five white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Multiracial students at Charleston High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 17 suspensions for 37 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per two multiracial students.

In contrast, Hispanic students, who make up 4.5% of the student body at Charleston High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of roughly one suspension per seven Hispanic students, totaling five suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 175 total suspensions at Charleston High School in the 2021-22 school year, 111 were in-school suspensions and 64 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, five student suspensions at Charleston High School were for offenses including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Charleston High School reported 297 students - equivalent to 39.4% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 336 students, or 44.6% 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 78.4% of all students who were chronically truant, and 84.3% 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	34	5	0.15
Black	39	35	0.9
Multiracial	37	17	0.46
White	632	118	0.19