NE Kentucky News

There were 17 African American students enrolled in Lawrence County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 5.6% decrease from the 18 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Lawrence County welcomed a total of 2,621 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 0.6% of the student body to be the third least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the six schools in Lawrence County, two schools recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of five students.

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
Louisa East Elementary School	0.6%	514
Louisa West Elementary School	0.3%	390
Fallsburg Elementary School	1.2%	260
Louisa Middle School	1%	487
Lawrence County High School	0.6%	782