SE Kentucky News

There were 10,055 white students enrolled in Laurel County school districts in the 2022-23 school year, 1.9% more than the previous year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that white students made up 94.7% of the 10,620 students in Laurel County during the 2022-23 school year, making them the most prevalent ethnicity in the county school districts.

Among the two school districts in Laurel County, East Bernstadt Independent School District recorded the highest enrollment of white students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 513 students.

The main offices of all districts mentioned in this article are located in cities associated with Laurel 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 white students enrolment	Total enrollment
East Bernstadt Independent School District	97.2	528
Laurel County School District	94.6	10,092