North Bluegrass News

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

Of the 4,222 students attending Bourbon County schools, 74.2% were white. Hispanic or Latino students were the second most represented ethnicity, making up 15%.

In the previous school year, white students were also the most common group in Bourbon County schools, representing 72.7% of the student body.

Bourbon Central Elementary School and Cane Ridge Elementary 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 5.9% 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
Bourbon County High School	White	84.2%	1,029
Bourbon County Middle School	White	81.3%	806
Bourbon Central Elementary School	White	69.4%	625
Cane Ridge Elementary School	White	81.7%	530
Bourbon County Preschool Headstart	White	68.8%	288
Paris High School	White	52.1%	215
North Middletown Elementary School	White	79.3%	164
Paris Preschool Center	White	60.5%	43