South Central Reporter

Black students, constituting 7.7% or 65 of Centralia High School's total student population of 849, accounted for 20 out of the 91 total suspensions (22%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly one suspension per three students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Centralia High School's 634 white students, who make up 74.7% of the school population, received 59 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 11 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Multiracial students at Centralia High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with nine suspensions for 83 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per nine multiracial students.

In contrast, Hispanic students, who make up 7.1% of the student body at Centralia High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 30 Hispanic students, totaling two suspensions. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 91 total suspensions at Centralia High School in the 2021-22 school year, all of them were out-of-school suspensions.

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

During the 2021-22 school year, Centralia High School reported 114 students - equivalent to 13.4% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 338 students, or 39.8% 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 22.7% of all students who were chronically truant, and 53.8% 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	60	2	0.03
Black	65	20	0.31
Multiracial	83	9	0.11
White	634	59	0.09