There were 116 Black students enrolled in Perry County school districts in the 2022-23 school year, 16% more than the previous year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.
Data showed that Black students made up 2.1% of the 5,543 students in Perry County during the 2022-23 school year, making them the second most represented ethnicity in the county school districts.
Among the two school districts in Perry County, Hazard Independent School District recorded the highest enrollment of Black students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 65 students.
The main offices of all districts mentioned in this article are located in cities associated with Perry County.
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.
| District | % of black students enrolment | Total enrollment |
|---|---|---|
| Hazard Independent School District | 5.9 | 1,110 |
| Perry County School District | 1.2 | 4,433 |
