East Pennyroyal News

There were 2,656 white students enrolled in Russell County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 1% increase from the 2,631 white 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, white students comprised 82.8% of the student body to be the most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the five schools in Russell County, Russell County High School recorded the highest enrollment of white students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 744 students, making up 84.3% 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
Jamestown Elementary School	84.9%	516
Russell Springs Elementary School	78.7%	671
Russell County High School	84.3%	883
Salem Elementary School	86%	428
Russell County Middle School	81.6%	708