Illinois Valley Times

Black students, constituting 5.4% or 55 of Minooka Intermediate School's total student population of 1,019, accounted for 11 out of the 36 total suspensions (30.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging one suspension per five students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Minooka Intermediate School's 699 white students, who make up 68.6% of the school population, received 18 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 39 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 36 total suspensions at Minooka Intermediate School in the 2021-22 school year, all of them were in-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, five student suspensions at Minooka Intermediate School were for violence-related offenses.

During the 2021-22 school year, Minooka Intermediate School reported 98 students - equivalent to 9.6% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 239 students, or 23.5% 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 27% 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	203	6	0.03
Black	55	11	0.2
Asian	20	1	0.05
White	699	18	0.03