SE Kentucky News

The majority of students in Harlan County schools were white in the 2022-23 school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Of the 5,296 students attending Harlan County schools, 94.5% were white. African American students were the second most represented ethnicity, making up 2.2%.

In the previous school year, white students were also the most common group in Harlan County schools, representing 93.7% of the student body.

Harlan High School had the most diverse student body in the county, which included African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Hispanic or Latino, multiracial, and white.

In the 2022-23 school year, the total number of students enrolled in schools in the county increased by 11.5% compared to the previous year.

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	Most Prevalent	Percent of Total Student Body	Total Enrollment
Harlan County High School	White	95.6%	1,143
Cumberland Elementary School	White	92.1%	633
Wallins Elementary School	White	98.5%	473
James A. Cawood Elementary School	White	94.9%	454
Evarts Elementary School	White	95.6%	451
Harlan High School	White	88.2%	448
Rosspoint Elementary School	White	97.4%	429
Black Mountain Elementary School	White	94.2%	378
Cawood Elementary School	White	98.4%	308
Harlan Elementary School	White	87.5%	281
Green Hills Elementary School	White	98.2%	170
Sunshine School	White	91.4%	128