Kane County Reporter

Black students, constituting 2.2% or 15 of Howard B. Thomas Grade School's total student population of 689, accounted for 19 out of the 96 total suspensions (19.8%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.3 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Howard B. Thomas Grade School's 382 white students, who make up 55.4% of the school population, received 46 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per eight white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Multiracial students at Howard B. Thomas Grade School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with five suspensions for 25 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of one suspension per five multiracial students.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 16.3% of the student body at Howard B. Thomas Grade School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 16 Asian students, totaling seven suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 96 total suspensions at Howard B. Thomas Grade School in the 2021-22 school year, 80 were in-school suspensions and 16 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 47 student suspensions at Howard B. Thomas Grade School were for violence-related offenses.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 47 cases - 49% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Howard B. Thomas Grade School reported 30 students - equivalent to 4.3% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 105 students, or 15.2% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

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	152	19	0.13
Black	15	19	1.27
Asian	112	7	0.06
Multiracial	25	5	0.2
White	382	46	0.12