Jackson Purchase News

There were 23 African American students enrolled in Ballard County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 28.1% decrease from the 32 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Ballard County welcomed a total of 1,120 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 2.1% of the student body to be the third most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the four schools in Ballard County, Ballard Memorial High School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 10 students, making up 3.6% 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
Ballard County Middle School	0.9%	228
Ballard Memorial High School	3.6%	275
Ballard County Elementary School	1.8%	499
Ballard County Preschool/Headstart Center	1.7%	118