SE Illinois News

Multiracial students, constituting 3.5% or 13 of Carmi-White County High School's total student population of 371, accounted for 20 out of the 233 total suspensions (8.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.5 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Carmi-White County High School's 348 white students, who make up 93.8% 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 multiracial students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 233 total suspensions at Carmi-White County High School in the 2021-22 school year, 213 were in-school suspensions and 20 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 26 student suspensions at Carmi-White County High School were for violence-related offenses and four for those including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Carmi-White County High School reported 51 students - equivalent to 13.7% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 188 students, or 50.8% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

Multiracial students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 57.9% 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
Multiracial	13	20	1.54
White	348	212	0.61