Indian Prairie District 204 saw fewer aggression, technology-based student infractions last year, officials say

As the new school year ramps up, Indian Prairie School District 204 leadership is reflecting on student behavior and discipline trends from last school year — and they recently unveiled a new data tool to help analyze incidents.

On Monday, at the district school board’s regular meeting, several Indian Prairie leaders gave a presentation on the district’s behavior- and safety-related goals, and shared how some behavior and infraction statistics changed during the 2025-26 school year compared to the year before.

They also shared information on a new behavior dashboard the district began using at the start of the current school year that’s meant to help the district work proactively to identify potential problems.

At Monday’s meeting, Brad Hillman, the district’s assistant superintendent for middle schools, noted the district board policy’s objectives of ensuring the safety and dignity of students and staff, maintaining a weapons- and drug-free environment, keeping school property and others’ property secure, addressing the causes of student misbehavior and teaching students positive behavioral skills.

Among the district’s goals last year, Hillman said, were “deepening restorative practices” and “building proactive systems” to promote positive student behavior.

Included in the district’s recent efforts on this issue is a new behavior dashboard, which allows the district to monitor and analyze behavior trends.

The new dashboard shows things like the top trends based on current infractions, as well as the location, time of day and day of the week when an incident occurs, according to Nicole Howard, the assistant superintendent for high schools.

The idea is for the dashboard to be used for “proactive planning” by the district, and to help Indian Prairie identify problems before they become bigger ones and improve response times for interventions, she said. It’s been used since the first behavior incident of the current school year.

“This will allow us to leverage our resources in the right places at the right times,” Howard said, “so that we continue to grow, improve and ensure all of our students are learning in environments that help them achieve to their greatest potential.”

To a student question about access to the dashboard data, Sarah Mumm, the district’s director of research and assessment, indicated that, currently, only the district’s administrators and school principals have access.

Mumm and the other district leaders also went on to describe some of the behavioral trends seen last year.

For example, Mumm described how the types of infractions that were most prevalent changed.

In the 2025-26 school year compared to the year prior, for example, the number of physical aggression, fighting and technology violations decreased, as did students leaving without permission, Monday’s presentation noted.

Last school year, truancy and tardiness were the top two most prevalent infractions, per the presentation. Most of those violations, Mumm noted, don’t result in suspensions, but are more so resolved through conversations with students and families as well as through interventions and support.

Speaking of suspensions, Mumm noted that over 91% of all students at any level have had no suspensions.

Last school year, the district data indicates that 3.6% of high school students, 8.2% of middle school students, and 1.2% of elementary school students had received a suspension. Those numbers are slightly higher than the year before at the middle and elementary levels, but lower at the high school level.

Disruptive misconduct and violence not leading to physical injury account for the vast majority of in-school and out-of-school suspensions, according to the district presentation.

Mumm also noted that suspensions are temporary, and that the district’s goal is to get students back into class as soon as possible. The length of suspension depends on the situation, she said, and both in-school and out-of-school suspensions are options.

And Howard pointed to the number of students who get more than one suspension as a way to gauge whether the district’s efforts to address infractions are successful, pointing out that last year’s data shows that a smaller percentage of students have had multiple suspensions compared to just one across the elementary, middle and high school levels.

Additionally, other data presented Monday looked at student-reported feelings of safety.

Per data presented Monday, which comes from a survey of fourth- through 12th-grade students in the district, 80% of students last year felt safe outside of the school area, 93% felt safe in classes, 83% felt safe in hallways, and 72% felt safe in bathrooms. These percentages are all small increases from the year prior.

At Monday’s meeting, board member Mark Rising expressed concern about the district seeing an increase last year in the percentage of middle school students with suspensions.

Hillman responded that the district works to dole out consequences that are most appropriate to change student behavior, but confirmed that that number still went up this year.

Board member Catey Genc asked about the student-reported feelings of safety, namely the percentage of students reporting not feeling safe in bathrooms.

Hillman said that part of the issue is that bathrooms are unsupervised, and he noted that the district has worked on decreasing access and making sure most students are going to a restroom where an adult is outside.

And board member Andrew Bernard inquired about how many chances a disruptive student is given before the student is removed from the class so as not to further disrupt other students’ learning environment, saying that education generally tends to “prioritize the offender” rather than those affected by the offense.

According to Hillman, that is something the district has looked at. He said district officials have worked to implement structures in school buildings to address the impact of behavioral issues on others, but noted that the question of how many chances a student gets is “nuanced.”

Board president Laurie Donahue, meanwhile, asked the district officials to further clarify what restorative practices are within the district.

To that, Laura Rosenblum, the assistant superintendent for elementary schools, said it refers to working with students to repair the harm they’ve done to students or staff and help them learn from their behavior.

mmorrow@chicagotribune.com