East Pennyroyal News

The majority of students in Wayne County schools were white in the 2022-23 school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Of the 3,588 students attending Wayne County schools, 87% were white. Hispanic or Latino students were the second most represented ethnicity, making up 7.5%.

In the previous school year, white students were also the most common group in Wayne County schools, representing 85.3% of the student body.

Wayne County Middle School had the most diverse student body in the county, which included African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Hispanic or Latino, multiracial, and white.

In the 2022-23 school year, the total number of students enrolled in schools in the county increased by 4.4% compared to the previous year.

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	Most Prevalent	Percent of Total Student Body	Total Enrollment
Wayne County High School	White	91.6%	1,001
Wayne County Middle School	White	90.5%	756
Monticello Elementary School	White	86.6%	715
Walker Early Learning Center	White	86.9%	451
Bell Elementary School	White	84.1%	428
Otter Creek Academy	White	76.1%	109
Lake Cumberland Youth Development Center	African American	57.1%	98
Wayne County Learning Academy	White	96.7%	30