North Bluegrass News

There were 232 African American students enrolled in Bourbon County schools in the 2022-23 school year, a 2.5% decrease from the 238 African American students in the previous school year, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Data showed that Bourbon County welcomed a total of 3,862 students during the 2022-23 school year. Among them, African American students comprised 6% of the student body to be the third most represented ethnicity in the county.

Among the eight schools in Bourbon County, Paris High School recorded the highest enrollment of African American students in the 2022-23 school year, with a total of 51 students, making up 21.8% 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
Bourbon Central Elementary School	4.4%	518
Bourbon County Preschool Headstart	2.5%	241
Cane Ridge Elementary School	2%	502
North Middletown Elementary School	0.6%	156
Bourbon County High School	3.7%	917
Bourbon County Middle School	2.4%	697
Paris Elementary School	14.5%	338
Paris High School	21.8%	234
Paris Middle School	16.5%	170
Paris Preschool Center	14.6%	89