McHenry Times

White students, constituting 58.8% or 271 of Lake In The Hills Elementary School's total student population of 461, accounted for 58 out of the 67 total suspensions (86.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per five students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Lake In The Hills Elementary School's 155 Hispanic students, who make up 33.6% of the school population, received nine suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 17 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of white students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 67 total suspensions at Lake In The Hills Elementary School in the 2021-22 school year, 48 were in-school suspensions and 19 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, five student suspensions at Lake In The Hills Elementary School were for violence-related offenses.

During the 2021-22 school year, Lake In The Hills Elementary School reported 59 students - equivalent to 12.8% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 110 students, or 23.8% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

White students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 24.5% 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
Hispanic	155	9	0.06
White	271	58	0.21