Lake County Gazette

Black students, constituting 2.4% or 36 of Vernon Hills High School's total student population of 1,496, accounted for 25 out of the 72 total suspensions (34.7%) 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, Vernon Hills High School's 831 white students, who make up 55.5% of the school population, received 23 suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 36 white students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students.

Multiracial students at Vernon Hills High School behaved worse than whites, but better than Blacks, with eight suspensions for 79 students in the 2021-22 school year - an average of roughly one suspension per 10 multiracial students.

In contrast, Asian students, who make up 21% of the student body at Vernon Hills High School, had the lowest suspension ratio with an average of one suspension per 314 Asian students, totaling one suspension. This rate is definitively lower than that of Black students, establishing them as the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 72 total suspensions at Vernon Hills High School in the 2021-22 school year, 51 were in-school suspensions and 21 out-of-school suspensions. Instead of opting for traditional suspensions or expulsions for some cases, the school administration decided to relocate four students to alternative educational settings.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 16 student suspensions at Vernon Hills High School were for violence-related offenses and 17 for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was drug offenses offenses, tallying 17 cases - 23.6% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Vernon Hills High School reported 82 students - equivalent to 5.5% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 283 students, or 18.9% 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 35.9% of all students who were chronically truant, and 46.2% 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	231	15	0.06
Black	36	25	0.69
Asian	314	1	0
Multiracial	79	8	0.1
White	831	23	0.03