SE Bluegrass News

There were 23 Black students enrolled in Powell County's only school district in the 2022-23 school year, 15% more than the previous year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Black students made up less than 0.1% of the 2,587 students in Powell County during the 2022-23 school year, making them the third most represented ethnicity in the county school district.

The main offices of all districts mentioned in this article are located in cities associated with Powell County.

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.

District	% of black students enrolment	Total enrollment
Powell County School District	< 0.1	2,587