About one in every three black students in Palm Springs Unified middle and high schools was suspended during the 2009-2010 school year.
The Palm Springs Unified School District suspends black students almost twice as often as their white or Latino peers, an inequality that has persisted at least a decade.
About one in every three black students in Palm Springs Unified middle and high schools was suspended during the 2009-2010 school year, based on the most recent data available — a rate significantly higher than the national average. Nationwide, one in every four black students was suspended from secondary school.
The disparity is compounded by the correlation between suspensions and dropouts. Even a single suspension increases the chances of a student dropping out of high school, education experts agree. In Palm Springs Unified schools, black students are more likely to drop out than their classmates.
For Loret Stagg, who has taught at Palm Springs Unified’s three high schools during the past 26 years, these suspension statistics confirm what she has always believed: that there is a quiet, almost invisible bias in many classrooms, which lingers from a time when racism was widespread.
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