Local schools are a bright spot for Whitley County

Whitley County certainly has its share of problems from drugs to poverty, but fortunately our local schools aren’t one of these problem areas. In fact, they are quite the opposite.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

Last week, the Kentucky Department of Education released 2022-2023 school report card data, which gauges schools on several criteria, such as test scores and student readiness.

I won’t pretend to understand all of it, but the bottom line is schools received a color rating based on that criteria with blue being the highest followed by green, yellow, orange and red, which is the lowest rating.

Overall, our local schools did well. Some did really well.

Out of the three school districts in Whitley County, the worst rating that any school had was yellow with the remainder of schools scoring either blue or green.

Kudos to our local school districts and the educators at these schools for a job well done.

A few of our local schools really knocked it out of the ballpark.

Corbin Middle School placed second in the state out of 318 middle schools, and Corbin High School placed 12^th out of 228 high schools across Kentucky. Corbin Elementary School placed 22^nd out of 719 elementary schools, according to a Corbin Independent School District release.

A Lexington Herald-Leader analysis of the testing data showed Whitley East Elementary School with the eighth highest test scores for elementary schools in the state.

Whitley East has always done well in regards to state testing, which has always been particularly impressive, in my opinion, when you factor in the impoverished area where its students live.

Report card data shows that 87.6 percent of students at Whitley East are classified as economically disadvantaged.

Typically, a high economically disadvantaged area usally coincides with lower test scores, but not in the case of Whitley East. Several other Whitley County schools also have 80 percent or more of their students from an economically disadvantaged area, including: Pleasant View (green) 88.7 percent, Whitley North Elementary (blue) 88.4 percent, Boston Elementary (green) 87.3 percent, and Oak Grove (green) 81.2 percent.

Also, Williamsburg Elementary School ranked 91^st out all elementary schools and Williamsburg High School ranked 26^th out of all high schools, according to a school district release.

Our local schools aren’t perfect by any means. There is still plenty of room for improvement, but overall I think most of us can agree that they are all doing pretty well.

Now to touch on a few other topics before I conclude this column.

• Congratulations to the Whitley County High School Volleyball Team for a great season. They advanced to the elite eight for the second consecutive year in the state tournament before their season came to a close.
• I had the chance to check out Corbin High School’s football team Friday night for the first time all season, and this is an impressive group of Redhounds. A state title is certainly in the realm of possibility for this team. Friday night was also my first time checking out the newly renovated football stadium up close, which is equally impressive.