East Pennyroyal News

There were 99 African American students enrolled in Wayne County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 28.6% increase from the 77 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Wayne County welcomed a total of 3,468 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 2.9% of the student body to be the third most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the eight schools in Wayne County, Lake Cumberland Youth Development Center recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 43 students, making up 60.6% 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 African American Students Enrolment	Total Enrollment
Wayne County Middle School	0.7%	707
Wayne County Learning Academy	6.6%	61
Lake Cumberland Youth Development Center	60.6%	71
Otter Creek Academy	20%	50
Monticello Elementary School	1.5%	658
Wayne County High School	1.6%	984
Walker Early Learning Center	1.4%	432
Bell Elementary School	1%	505