In 2015, the Hazelwood district issued 1,567 suspensions to students in kindergarten through third grade.

Black students make up 72.2 percent of its K-3 population. White students make up 22.7 percent.

Those suspensions went to both black and white students.

The Hazelwood 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 698 — or 95.6 percent — of its in-school suspensions to black students. White students received 32 — or 4.4 percent of these suspensions.

That works out to a rate of about one in-school suspension for every five black students and about one in-school suspension for every 37 white students.

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

It gave 781 — or 93.3 percent — of its out-of-school suspensions to black students. White students got 56 — or 6.7 percent of these suspensions.

That works out to a rate of about one out-of-school suspension for every five black students and about one out-of-school suspension for every 21 white students.

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

In the Hazelwood district, only black children got out-of-school suspensions of a week (5 school days) or longer. They received 79 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 48 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.