North Cook News

Black students, constituting 6% or 33 of Lords Park Elementary School's total student population of 553, accounted for two out of the seven total suspensions (28.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per 17 students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Lords Park Elementary School's 453 Hispanic students, who make up 81.9% of the school population, received four suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 113 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the seven total suspensions at Lords Park Elementary School in the 2021-22 school year, four were in-school suspensions and three out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, two student suspensions at Lords Park Elementary School were for violence-related offenses.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying two cases - 28.6% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Lords Park Elementary School reported 143 students - equivalent to 25.8% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 192 students, or 34.8% 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 47.2% of all students who were chronically truant, and 55.6% 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	453	4	0.01
Black	33	2	0.06
White	30	1	0.03