East Kentucky Times

There were 110 African American students enrolled in Breathitt County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 54.9% increase from the 71 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Breathitt County welcomed a total of 2,553 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 4.3% of the student body to be the second most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the seven schools in Breathitt County, Breathitt Regional School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 83 students, making up 26.5% 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
Highland-Turner Elementary School	0.9%	223
Breathitt Regional School	26.5%	313
Breathitt County Day Treatment	34.5%	55
Breathitt County High School	0.4%	819
Sebastian Elementary School	0.2%	515
Marie Roberts-Caney Elementary School	0.4%	259
Jackson City School	0.3%	369