Lake County Gazette

Black students, constituting 10% or 75 of Miguel Juarez Middle School's total student population of 749, accounted for 80 out of the 144 total suspensions (55.6%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging roughly 1.1 suspensions per student, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Miguel Juarez Middle School's 633 Hispanic students, who make up 84.5% of the school population, received 56 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 144 total suspensions at Miguel Juarez Middle School in the 2021-22 school year, 39 were in-school suspensions and 105 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 78 student suspensions at Miguel Juarez Middle School were for violence-related offenses and five for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 78 cases - 54.2% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Miguel Juarez Middle School reported 297 students - equivalent to 39.7% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 284 students, or 37.9% 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 56.5% of all students who were chronically truant, and 54.7% 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	633	56	0.09
Black	75	80	1.07