East Pennyroyal News

There were 11 African American students enrolled in McCreary County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 10% increase from the 10 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that McCreary County welcomed a total of 2,954 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 0.4% of the student body to be the second least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the four schools in McCreary County, McCreary Central High School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of four students, making up 0.5% 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
McCreary Central High School	0.5%	796
McCreary County Middle School	0.5%	651
Pine Knot Intermediate School	0.2%	902
Whitley City Elementary School	0.3%	605