In 2015, the Ferguson-Florissant R-II district issued 634 suspensions to students in kindergarten through third grade.

Black students make up 80.1 percent of its K-3 population. White students make up 12.5 percent.

Those suspensions went to both black and white students.

The Ferguson-Florissant R-II district is one of at least 79 in Missouri that recorded different types of suspensions: in-and out-of-school.

Here’s the breakdown of the district's suspensions from last year:

It gave 250 — or 97.7 percent — of its in-school suspensions to black students. White students received six — or 2.3 percent of these suspensions.

That works out to a rate of about one in-school suspension for every 11 black students and about one in-school suspension for every 69 white students.

Here’s the picture for out-of-school suspensions:

It gave 355 — or 93.9 percent — of its out-of-school suspensions to black students. White students got 16 — or 4.2 percent of these suspensions.

That works out to a rate of about one out-of-school suspension for every seven black students and about one out-of-school suspension for every 26 white students.

But the picture looks quite different for long out-of-school suspensions.

In the Ferguson-Florissant R-II district, only black children got out-of-school suspensions of a week (5 school days) or longer. They received 69 of these long out-of-school suspensions last year.

That works out to a rate of about one long out-of-school suspension for every 39 black students.

Crave even more context?

In Missouri, during the 2014-15 school year, students in kindergarten through third grade were suspended 21,463 times.

Black students make up about 17 percent of students in those grades. If they were given suspensions at a rate equal to their enrollment, they'd have received 3,574. Instead, they got 11,079 — more than half of all suspensions.

Still want to learn more? Look up another district or listen to the podcast.