Quincy Reporter

White students, constituting 94.4% or 220 of Seymour High School's total student population of 233, accounted for 60 out of the 63 total suspensions (95.2%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per four students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Seymour High School's 12 multiracial students, who make up 5.2% of the school population, received three suspensions. This translates to an average of one suspension per four multiracial students, which, while appearing the same, is marginally lower than that of white students when comparing raw counts, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 63 total suspensions at Seymour High School in the 2021-22 school year, 41 were in-school suspensions and 22 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 11 student suspensions at Seymour High School were for violence-related offenses.

During the 2021-22 school year, Seymour High School reported 52 students - equivalent to 22.2% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 74 students, or 31.8% 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 22.6% of all students who were chronically truant, and 31.9% 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
Multiracial	12	3	0.25
White	220	60	0.27