SE Kentucky News

There were three African American students enrolled in Owsley County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 25% decrease from the four African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Owsley County welcomed a total of 817 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 0.4% of the student body to be the least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the two schools in Owsley County, Owsley County Elementary School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of two students, making up 0.5% 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
Owsley County Elementary School	0.5%	426
Owsley County High School	0.3%	391