North Cook News

Black students, constituting 4.6% or 123 of Elgin High School's total student population of 2,664, accounted for 162 out of the 1,330 total suspensions (12.2%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.3 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Elgin High School's 2,076 Hispanic students, who make up 77.9% of the school population, received 1,096 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per two Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 5% of the student body at Elgin High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 22 Asian students, totaling six suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Multiracial students at Elgin High School behaved worse than Asians, but better than Blacks, with 23 suspensions for 72 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per three multiracial students.

Of the 1,330 total suspensions at Elgin High School in the 2021-22 school year, 948 were in-school suspensions and 382 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 168 student suspensions at Elgin High School were for violence-related offenses and 57 for those including drugs.

During the 2021-22 school year, Elgin High School reported 1,425 students - equivalent to 53.5% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 1,412 students, or 53% 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 65.4% of all students who were chronically truant, and 62.8% 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	2,076	1,096	0.53
Black	123	162	1.32
Asian	132	6	0.05
Multiracial	72	23	0.32
White	224	32	0.14