Grundy Reporter

White students, constituting 66.3% or 705 of Minooka Junior High School's total student population of 1,064, accounted for 18 out of the 22 total suspensions (81.8%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per 39 students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Minooka Junior High School's 249 Hispanic students, who make up 23.4% of the school population, received four suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 62 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of white students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 22 total suspensions at Minooka Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, 15 were in-school suspensions and seven out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, one student suspension at Minooka Junior High School was for an offense including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Minooka Junior High School reported 99 students - equivalent to 9.3% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 244 students, or 22.9% 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	249	4	0.02
White	705	18	0.03