Jackson Purchase News

There were 29 African American students enrolled in Marshall County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 3.3% decrease from the 30 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Marshall County welcomed a total of 4,900 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 0.6% of the student body to be the third least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the 11 schools in Marshall County, Purchase Youth Village recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of seven students, making up 8.3% 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
Purchase Youth Village	8.3%	84
Central Elementary School	0.4%	511
Mc Academy	0.6%	168
Calvert City Elementary School	0.6%	308
Jonathan Elementary School	1.4%	276
Marshall County High School	0.2%	1,312
North Marshall Middle School	0.4%	525
Sharpe Elementary School	1.5%	344
South Marshall Middle School	0.6%	490