Jackson Purchase News

The majority of students in Ballard County schools were white in the 2022-23 school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Of the 1,481 students attending Ballard County schools, 88.7% were white. Multiracial students were the second most represented ethnicity, making up 5.7%.

In the previous school year, white students were also the most common group in Ballard County schools, representing 87.6% of the student body.

Ballard County Middle School had the most diverse student body in the county, which included African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Hispanic or Latino, multiracial, and white.

In the 2022-23 school year, the total number of students enrolled in schools in the county increased by 25.4% compared to the previous year.

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	Most Prevalent	Percent of Total Student Body	Total Enrollment
Ballard County Elementary School	White	88.9%	566
Ballard Memorial High School	White	89.1%	411
Ballard County Middle School	White	88.2%	289
Ballard County Preschool/Headstart Center	White	87.9%	215