Grundy Reporter

Hispanic students, constituting 20.3% or 171 of Morris Community High School's total student population of 843, accounted for 55 out of the 163 total suspensions (33.7%) 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, Morris Community High School's 614 white students, who make up 72.8% of the school population, received 83 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per seven white students, which is definitively lower than that of Hispanic students.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 1.3% of the student body at Morris Community High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 11 Asian students, totaling one suspension. This rate is definitively lower than that of Hispanic students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 163 total suspensions at Morris Community High School in the 2021-22 school year, 144 were in-school suspensions and 19 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 10 student suspensions at Morris Community High School were for violence-related offenses and three for those including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Morris Community High School reported 76 students - equivalent to 9% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 238 students, or 28.2% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

Hispanic students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 13.3% of all students who were chronically truant, and 30.8% 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	171	55	0.32
Black	21	18	0.86
Asian	11	1	0.09
Multiracial	25	6	0.24
White	614	83	0.14