Rockford Sun

Black students, constituting 68.6% or 234 of Lewis Lemon Elementary School's total student population of 341, accounted for 219 out of the 254 total suspensions (86.2%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Lewis Lemon Elementary School's 42 Hispanic students, who make up 12.3% of the school population, received four suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 11 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 254 total suspensions at Lewis Lemon Elementary School in the 2021-22 school year, 88 were in-school suspensions and 166 out-of-school suspensions. Instead of opting for traditional suspensions or expulsions for some cases, the school administration decided to relocate two students to alternative educational settings.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 140 student suspensions at Lewis Lemon Elementary School were for violence-related offenses.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 140 cases - 55.1% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Lewis Lemon Elementary School reported 274 students - equivalent to 80.4% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 285 students, or 83.6% 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 82.6% of all students who were chronically truant, and 84.3% 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	42	4	0.1
Black	234	219	0.94
Multiracial	24	22	0.92
White	40	9	0.23