Although out of school suspensions at Oak Park and River Forest High School are down significantly from two years ago, Black students are still much more likely to be suspended from the school than other students.
In a report presented Feb. 6 to the OPRF District 200 School Board, officials said the disproportionate rate of suspensions affecting Black students is not the result of discrimination at the school or evidence of implicit bias. They pointed at the standardized “implementation of our Behavior Response Grid.”
“Students who commit specific offenses are disciplined in the same manner regardless of their race,” school officials said in the report. “Stated another way, students are not being suspended or excluded from school due to their race or the decisions of those that implement disciplinary policy. Our policy is being implemented uniformly.
“Rather, our root cause analysis leads us to a more alarming conclusion: the students that are engaging in behavior that warrants out-of-school suspension tend to be of African American descent, and this is because these students are likely to have been impacted by trauma in their formative years, even before they become OPRF students. This trauma may have been in their homes, in their communities, or even in virtual spaces such as social media.”
Only 19% of students at OPRF are Black, but they account for the overwhelming majority of out of school suspensions at Oak Park and River Forest. According to data compiled by the Illinois State Board Education, during the 2023-24 school year only two white OPRF students were suspended or expelled, compared to 17 students of other races. In the 2023-24 school year District 200 ranked third among all public school districts in Illinois in the racially disproportionate rate of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions. Because OPRF ranks in the top 20% of school districts in the state in that statistic, the district is required to submit a Discipline Improvement Plan to ISBE outlining steps the school is taking to reduce the racial disproportionality in out-of-school suspensions.
School officials presented their plan last week at the school board’s Committee of Whole meeting. The plan will likely be approved with some tweaks at the School Board’s Feb. 20 meeting.
OPRF Principal Lynda Parker highlighted the steep drop in out of school suspensions at OPRF, but the racial disproportionality remains stark. During the 2022-23 school year, according to data provided by the school, Black students accounted for 51 of the 66 OPRF students who received out-of-school suspensions. In the 2023-24 school year only 22 students, 16 of whom were Black, received out-of-school suspensions. So far this school year 11 students have received out-of-school suspensions, eight of whom are Black, two Hispanic and one white.
The strategy, officials told the board, is to reduce the behaviors that lead to suspensions, not just merely reduce suspensions, specifically for the school’s African American students.
That sharp decline in out-of-school suspensions over the past 2½ years has convinced OPRF officials that the steps they have been taking to reduce out-of-school discipline are working. Those steps include eliminating zero tolerance policies, employing restorative justice practices, adopting the work of racial equity and using it as a basis of all work at OPRF across all disciplines and departments, educating staff on equitable practices and creating a culture where equity conversations are the norm.
Other measures have included creating an office of equity and the position of executive director of Equity and Success, creating a trauma interventionist position, creating a behavior response grid that identifies all possible student misconduct and emphasizes restorative justice rather than suspension and adopting an in school reflection model that emphasizes the teaching of skills specific to the disciplinary infraction.
Parker said fights are what typically lead to suspensions, and discipline for other, less serious infractions, such as vaping in school, are less racially disproportionate. Trauma, she said, is the root cause of many of the serious infractions, such as fighting, that lead to out-of-school discipline.
“We are addressing the root causes,” Parker told the School Board.
School Board member Fred Arkin asked Parker to define trauma.
Parker mentioned a whole host of factors including being shuffled between homes, lack of stable schooling, moving from school to school, different expectations at home versus expectations at OPRF, different reactions to the freedom of OPRF, and problems managing anger.
Assistant principal of operations David Narain mentioned another key element of trauma.
“I would just definitely add a connection of some sort of violence, either being the victim of or being a witness to or knowing some people who have been impacted by violence,” Narain said.
The report also pointed to the school’s proximity to Chicago as a factor. Narain told the School Board that most of the students who commit the acts that lead to out-of-school discipline have some sort of connection to Chicago.
“Our in school analysis of the suspension data is that the students involved in these incidents carry trauma in their history and our personal knowledge of these students,” Narain said. “That trauma is coming from the city of Chicago and when we compare data from students who have been in Oak Park their entire lives and are also students of color, we do not see the same behaviors manifesting and therefore do not see them present in the data of out-of-school suspensions.”
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
