SE Kentucky News

There were 3,224 white students enrolled in Letcher County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 7.2% decrease from the 3,473 white students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Letcher County welcomed a total of 3,322 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, white students comprised 97% of the student body to be the most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 10 schools in Letcher County, Letcher County Central High School recorded the highest enrollment of white students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 777 students, making up 96.6% 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 White Students Enrolment	Total Enrollment
Jenkins Independent School	97.4%	547
Letcher Elementary & Middle School	99%	390
Letcher County Alternative Education Center	96.8%	31
Letcher County Central High School	96.6%	804
Arlie Boggs Elementary School	100%	133
Fleming Neon Middle School	96.1%	178
Cowan Elementary School	95.5%	286
Martha Jane Potter Elementary School	95.8%	332
West Whitesburg Elementary School	97.1%	444
Whitesburg Middle School	97.2%	177