SE Kentucky News

There were 130 African American students enrolled in Bell County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 9.7% decrease from the 144 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Bell County welcomed a total of 4,652 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 2.8% of the student body to be the third most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 11 schools in Bell County, Middlesboro Elementary School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 27 students, making up 5.4% 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
Bell Central School Center	0.4%	536
Bell County High School	1.2%	740
Frakes School Center	0.8%	118
Lone Jack School Center	1.3%	229
Right Fork School Center	1.2%	170
Yellow Creek School Center	1.6%	636
Middlesboro Alternative School	4.5%	44
Middlesboro Elementary School	5.4%	496
Middlesboro Group Home School	43.3%	30
Middlesboro Middle School	7.3%	317
Middlesboro High School	6.4%	375
Pineville Independent School	2.2%	641