North Cook News

Hispanic students, constituting 51.6% or 455 of Grove Junior High School's total student population of 882, accounted for 32 out of the 34 total suspensions (94.1%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per 14 students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Grove Junior High School's 349 white students, who make up 39.6% of the school population, received two suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 175 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Hispanic students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 34 total suspensions at Grove Junior High School in the 2021-22 school year, nine were in-school suspensions and 25 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 12 student suspensions at Grove Junior High School were for violence-related offenses and 10 for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 12 cases - 35.3% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Grove Junior High School reported 123 students - equivalent to 14% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 265 students, or 30% 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 20.8% of all students who were chronically truant, and 35.7% 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	455	32	0.07
White	349	2	0.01