East Kentucky Times

There were 20 African American students enrolled in Johnson County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 11.1% increase from the 18 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Johnson County welcomed a total of 4,518 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 10 schools in Johnson County, Paintsville Elementary School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of five students, making up 1.1% 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
Johnson County Eagle Academy	0.8%	263
Johnson County Middle School	0.4%	493
Central Elementary School	0.5%	385
Johnson Central High School	0.2%	1,003
Porter Elementary School	0.7%	445
Highland Elementary School	0.4%	463
Paintsville Elementary School	1.1%	467
Paintsville High School	0.6%	352