East Pennyroyal News

There were 18 African American students enrolled in Russell County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 5.9% increase from the 17 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Russell County welcomed a total of 3,206 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 0.6% of the student body to be the second least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the five schools in Russell County, Russell County High School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of seven students, making up 0.8% 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
Russell Springs Elementary School	0.3%	671
Russell County High School	0.8%	883
Salem Elementary School	0.7%	428
Russell County Middle School	0.8%	708