South Cook News

Black students, constituting 1% or 13 of Lemont Township High School's total student population of 1,364, accounted for four out of the 45 total suspensions (8.9%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per three students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Lemont Township High School's 1,086 white students, who make up 79.6% of the school population, received 31 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 35 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 45 total suspensions at Lemont Township High School in the 2021-22 school year, all of them were out-of-school suspensions. Instead of opting for traditional suspensions or expulsions for some cases, the school administration decided to relocate one student to alternative educational settings.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, four student suspensions at Lemont Township High School were for violence-related offenses and nine for those including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Lemont Township High School reported 31 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, 306 students, or 22.4% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

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	157	7	0.04
Black	13	4	0.31
Multiracial	42	3	0.07
White	1,086	31	0.03