Macon Reporter

Black students, constituting 48.3% or 480 of Eisenhower High School's total student population of 994, accounted for 702 out of the 1,059 total suspensions (66.3%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.5 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Eisenhower High School's 352 white students, who make up 35.4% of the school population, received 225 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per two white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Multiracial students at Eisenhower High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 121 suspensions for 116 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly 1 suspensions per student.

In contrast, Hispanic students, who make up 3.4% of the student body at Eisenhower High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of roughly one suspension per four Hispanic students, totaling eight suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 1,059 total suspensions at Eisenhower High School in the 2021-22 school year, 247 were in-school suspensions and 812 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 429 student suspensions at Eisenhower High School were for violence-related offenses and 18 for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 429 cases - 40.5% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Eisenhower High School reported 796 students - equivalent to 80.1% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 775 students, or 78% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

Black students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 88.1% of all students who were chronically truant, and 82.9% 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	34	8	0.24
Black	480	702	1.46
Multiracial	116	121	1.04
White	352	225	0.64