East Central Reporter

White students, constituting 87.3% or 469 of Effingham Junior High School's total student population of 537, accounted for 72 out of the 76 total suspensions (94.7%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per seven students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Effingham Junior High School's 41 Hispanic students, who make up 7.6% of the school population, received one suspension. This translates to an average of one suspension per 41 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of white students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 76 total suspensions at Effingham Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, 10 were in-school suspensions and 66 out-of-school suspensions.

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

During the 2021-22 school year, Effingham Junior High School reported 56 students - equivalent to 10.4% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 157 students, or 29.3% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

White students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 29.9% 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	41	1	0.02
Black	13	2	0.15
White	469	72	0.15