IL Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders (2023) | Illinois State Board of education
IL Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders (2023) | Illinois State Board of education
During the same period, Thomas S. Baldwin Elementary School Site 2's 399 white students, who make up 71.3% of the school population, received 50 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per eight white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.
Multiracial students at Thomas S. Baldwin Elementary School Site 2 behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with 14 suspensions for 76 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per five multiracial students.
In contrast, Hispanic students, who make up 4.3% of the student body at Thomas S. Baldwin Elementary School Site 2, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 24 Hispanic students, totaling one suspension. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.
Of the 82 total suspensions at Thomas S. Baldwin Elementary School Site 2 in the 2021-22 school year, 17 were in-school suspensions and 65 out-of-school suspensions.
According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 39 student suspensions at Thomas S. Baldwin Elementary School Site 2 were for violence-related offenses.
The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 39 cases - 47.6% of the total infractions.
During the 2021-22 school year, Thomas S. Baldwin Elementary School Site 2 reported 72 students - equivalent to 12.9% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 155 students, or 27.6% 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 28.2% of all students who were chronically truant, and 47.5% 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 | 24 | 1 | 0.04 |
| Black | 54 | 15 | 0.28 |
| Multiracial | 76 | 14 | 0.18 |
| White | 399 | 50 | 0.13 |
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