SE Kentucky News

There were 91 African American students enrolled in Harlan County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 4.2% decrease from the 95 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Harlan County welcomed a total of 4,756 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 1.9% of the student body to be the third most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 12 schools in Harlan County, Harlan High School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 23 students, making up 5.5% 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
Harlan County High School	1.7%	1,068
Black Mountain Elementary School	2.5%	320
Cawood Elementary School	0.8%	242
Cumberland Elementary School	3.6%	505
Evarts Elementary School	0.6%	359
James A. Cawood Elementary School	1.9%	359
Wallins Elementary School	0.2%	435
Harlan Elementary School	3.2%	375
Harlan High School	5.5%	415