West Central Reporter

White students, constituting 31.7% or 256 of Beardstown Junior/Senior High School's total student population of 807, accounted for 213 out of the 458 total suspensions (46.5%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Beardstown Junior/Senior High School's 438 Hispanic students, who make up 54.3% of the school population, received 167 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per three Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of white students.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 1.2% of the student body at Beardstown Junior/Senior High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 10 Asian students, totaling one suspension. This rate is definitively lower than that of white students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 458 total suspensions at Beardstown Junior/Senior High School in the 2021-22 school year, 289 were in-school suspensions and 169 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 10 student suspensions at Beardstown Junior/Senior High School were for offenses including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Beardstown Junior/Senior High School reported 124 students - equivalent to 15.4% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 182 students, or 22.6% 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 18.5% of all students who were chronically truant, and 30.7% 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	438	167	0.38
Black	86	66	0.77
Asian	10	1	0.1
White	256	213	0.83