Jackson Purchase News

There were 358 African American students enrolled in Graves County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 6% decrease from the 381 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Graves County welcomed a total of 6,422 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 5.6% of the student body to be the third least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 12 schools in Graves County, Mayfield Elementary School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 108 students, making up 11.2% 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
Mayfield Youth Development Center	50%	36
Gateway Academy High School	9.1%	44
Graves County Central Elementary School	2.5%	515
Fancy Farm Elementary School	4%	329
Farmington Elementary School	1%	287
Graves County Middle School	1.8%	665
Sedalia Elementary School	2.3%	398
Symsonia Elementary School	0.2%	405
Wingo Elementary School	2.7%	484
Graves County High School	1.5%	1,142
Mayfield Elementary School	11.2%	966
Mayfield High School	13.6%	581
Mayfield Middle School	11.9%	570