NE Kentucky News

There were 92 African American students enrolled in Rowan County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 70.4% increase from the 54 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Rowan County welcomed a total of 3,887 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 2.4% of the student body to be the third least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 10 schools in Rowan County, Morehead Youth Development Center recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 37 students, making up 41.1% of the school's total student body.

Despite escaping some of the pandemic's educational disruptions, Kentucky's achievement gaps have remained an issue since 2019. In the eighth-grade reading assessments, for example, Hispanic students scored eight points lower than their white peers, and the gap reached 15 points in math. Black students fared even worse, falling more than 20 points behind and facing a failure rate nearly double that of their white counterparts.

School name	% of African American Students Enrolment	Total Enrollment
Clearfield Elementary School	0.6%	336
McBrayer Elementary School	1.3%	599
Morehead Youth Development Center	41.1%	90
Bluegrass Discovery Academy High School	7.7%	39
Bluegrass Discovery Academy Middle	3.4%	29
Rowan County Senior High School	2.2%	1,115
Tilden Hogge Elementary School	2.1%	237
Rowan County Middle School	1.4%	803
Rodburn Elementary School	0.2%	431