Metro East Sun

Black students, constituting 15.9% or 107 of Prather Elementary School's total student population of 674, accounted for six out of the seven total suspensions (85.7%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per 18 students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Prather Elementary School's 426 white students, who make up 63.2% of the school population, received one suspension. This translates to an average of one suspension per 426 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the seven total suspensions at Prather Elementary School in the 2021-22 school year, two were in-school suspensions and five out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, all student suspensions at Prather Elementary School were for violence-related offenses.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying seven cases - 100% of the total infractions.

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
Black	107	6	0.06
White	426	1	0