NC Kentucky News

There were 47 African American students enrolled in Spencer County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 51.6% increase from the 31 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Spencer County welcomed a total of 3,609 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 1.3% of the student body to be the third least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the six schools in Spencer County, Spencer County Middle School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 14 students, making up 1.8% 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
Spencer County Elementary School	1.2%	839
Spencer County Middle School	1.8%	761
Hillview Academy	1.6%	123
Spencer County Early Learning Center	2.6%	194
Taylorsville Elementary School	0.8%	653
Spencer County High School	1.1%	1,039