Macon Reporter

White students, constituting 91.2% or 302 of Sullivan High School's total student population of 331, accounted for 196 out of the 212 total suspensions (92.5%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per two students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Sullivan High School's 15 multiracial students, who make up 4.5% of the school population, received three suspensions. This translates to an average of one suspension per five multiracial students, which is definitively lower than that of white students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 212 total suspensions at Sullivan High School in the 2021-22 school year, 181 were in-school suspensions and 31 out-of-school suspensions. Instead of opting for traditional suspensions or expulsions for some cases, the school administration decided to relocate four students to alternative educational settings.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 13 student suspensions at Sullivan High School were for violence-related offenses and for an offense including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Sullivan High School reported 17 students - equivalent to 5.1% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 67 students, or 20.2% 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 5.6% of all students who were chronically truant, and 21.2% 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
Multiracial	15	3	0.2
White	302	196	0.65