East Pennyroyal News

There were 168 African American students enrolled in Pulaski County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 10.5% increase from the 152 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Pulaski County welcomed a total of 11,212 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 1.5% of the student body to be the third least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 17 schools in Pulaski County, Southwestern High School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 28 students, making up 2.1% 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
Burnside Elementary School	1%	491
Eagle Academy	17%	112
Memorial Education Center	2.3%	311
Eubank Elementary School	0.2%	408
Nancy Elementary School	0.3%	358
Pulaski County High School	0.9%	1,288
Pulaski Elementary School	0.8%	591
Southern Middle School	1.3%	1,015
Northern Middle School	0.6%	904
Southwestern High School	2.1%	1,345
Oak Hill Elementary School	0.3%	576
Shopville Elementary School	0.3%	383
Northern Elementary School	1%	397
Southern Elementary School	1.1%	728
Science Hill Elementary School	0.2%	510
Hopkins Elementary School	2.4%	718
Somerset High School	4%	575
Meece Middle School	3.2%	502