Attea Middle School Principal Diana O''Donnell (2023) | Attea Middle School
Attea Middle School Principal Diana O''Donnell (2023) | Attea Middle School
During the same period, Attea Middle School's 440 white students, who make up 55.3% of the school population, received seven suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 63 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Hispanic students.
Black students at Attea Middle School behaved worse than whites, but better than Hispanics, with one suspension for 11 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of one suspension per 11 Black students.
In contrast, Asian students, who make up 19.5% of the student body at Attea Middle School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 155 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 39 total suspensions at Attea Middle School in the 2021-22 school year, 34 were in-school suspensions and five out-of-school suspensions.
According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 23 student suspensions at Attea Middle School were for violence-related offenses and six for those including drugs.
The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 23 cases - 59% of the total infractions.
During the 2021-22 school year, Attea Middle School reported 38 students - equivalent to 4.8% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 96 students, or 12.1% 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 20.3% of all students who were chronically truant, and 27.8% 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 | 158 | 30 | 0.19 |
| Black | 11 | 1 | 0.09 |
| Asian | 155 | 1 | 0.01 |
| White | 440 | 7 | 0.02 |
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