SW Bluegrass News

There were 105 African American students enrolled in Mercer County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 2.9% increase from the 102 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Mercer County welcomed a total of 3,497 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 3% of the student body to be the third least represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the seven schools in Mercer County, Mercer County Senior High School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 30 students, making up 3.9% 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
Burgin Independent School	1.1%	542
Mercer County Senior High School	3.9%	762
Mercer County Day Treatment	12.5%	32
Kenneth D. King Middle School	3.5%	657
Mercer County Intermediate School	2.9%	625
Mercer County Elementary School	3%	809