Carbondale Reporter

Black students, constituting 28.6% or 266 of Carbondale Community High School's total student population of 930, accounted for 1,020 out of the 1,649 total suspensions (61.9%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 3.8 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Carbondale Community High School's 462 white students, who make up 49.7% of the school population, received 321 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per student, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Multiracial students at Carbondale Community High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 223 suspensions for 62 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly 3.6 suspensions per student.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 4.6% of the student body at Carbondale Community High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of roughly one suspension per three Asian students, totaling 13 suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 1,649 total suspensions at Carbondale Community High School in the 2021-22 school year, 1,576 were in-school suspensions and 73 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 47 student suspensions at Carbondale Community High School were for offenses including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Carbondale Community High School reported 314 students - equivalent to 33.8% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 343 students, or 36.9% 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 52.6% of all students who were chronically truant, and 47.9% 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	97	72	0.74
Black	266	1,020	3.83
Asian	43	13	0.3
Multiracial	62	223	3.6
White	462	321	0.69