McHenry Times

Hispanic students, constituting 72.4% or 420 of Harvard Junior High School's total student population of 580, accounted for 12 out of the 13 total suspensions (92.3%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging one suspension per 35 students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Harvard Junior High School's 146 white students, who make up 25.2% of the school population, received one suspension. This translates to an average of one suspension per 146 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Hispanic students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 13 total suspensions at Harvard Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, one was in-school suspension and 12 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, seven student suspensions at Harvard Junior High School were for violence-related offenses and for an offense including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying seven cases - 53.8% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Harvard Junior High School reported 13 students - equivalent to 2.3% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 118 students, or 20.4% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

Hispanic students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 2.5% of all students who were chronically truant, and 20.6% 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	420	12	0.03
White	146	1	0.01