Peoria Standard

Black students, constituting 70.6% or 336 of Quest Charter School Academy's total student population of 476, accounted for 257 out of the 285 total suspensions (90.2%) 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, Quest Charter School Academy's 66 Hispanic students, who make up 13.9% of the school population, received five suspensions. This translates to an average of roughly one suspension per 13 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 285 total suspensions at Quest Charter School Academy in the 2021-22 school year, all of them were out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, 182 student suspensions at Quest Charter School Academy were for violence-related offenses and 17 for those including drugs.

The most common infraction causing suspension was violence offenses, tallying 182 cases - 63.9% of the total infractions.

During the 2021-22 school year, Quest Charter School Academy reported 338 students - equivalent to 71% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 262 students, or 55% 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 77.2% of all students who were chronically truant, and 60.6% 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	66	5	0.08
Black	336	257	0.76
Multiracial	42	14	0.33
White	28	3	0.11