SE Kentucky News

There were 81 African American students enrolled in Knox County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 1.3% increase from the 80 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Knox County welcomed a total of 5,385 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 1.5% of the student body to be the third least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 15 schools in Knox County, Barbourville City School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 17 students, making up 2.2% 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
Barbourville City School	2.2%	760
Barbourville Learning Center	8.3%	12
Lynn Camp Elementary School	0.2%	594
Knox Appalachian School	15.8%	95
Knox County Middle School	1.3%	474
Lynn Camp Middle High School	0.6%	534
Central Elementary School	2.8%	424
Knox County Day Treatment	1.5%	68
Knox County Learning Academy	1%	102
Knox Inspire Academy	2.1%	97
Dewitt Elementary School	2.1%	146
Flat Lick Elementary School	0.4%	224
G. R. Hampton Elementary School	0.3%	307
Knox Central High School	1.6%	822
Jesse D. Lay Elementary School	1%	394