Dr. Donna Leak Vice-Chair - Flossmoor | solutiontree.com
Dr. Donna Leak Vice-Chair - Flossmoor | solutiontree.com
During the same period, Westfield Community School's 788 white students, who make up 60.2% of the school population, received 98 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 Westfield Community School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 14 suspensions for 62 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per four multiracial students.
In contrast, Asian students, who make up 8.4% of the student body at Westfield Community School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of roughly one suspension per 28 Asian students, totaling four suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.
Of the 176 total suspensions at Westfield Community School in the 2021-22 school year, 134 were in-school suspensions and 42 out-of-school suspensions.
According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, one student suspension at Westfield Community School was for violence-related offenses and three for those including drugs.
During the 2021-22 school year, Westfield Community School reported 132 students - equivalent to 10.1% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 266 students, or 20.3% 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 | 283 | 42 | 0.15 |
| Black | 59 | 17 | 0.29 |
| Asian | 110 | 4 | 0.04 |
| Multiracial | 62 | 14 | 0.23 |
| White | 788 | 98 | 0.12 |
Alerts Sign-up