Where each number comes from
The state approval list. The Louisiana Department of Education, 2025-2026 BESE-Approved Nonpublic Schools Academic Classification List & Brumfield v. Dodd Approvals (May 19, 2025) gives us each approved school's grades, classification, Brumfield v. Dodd date and its pre-K and K-12 enrollment. We took every school in the five civil parishes of the Diocese of Lake Charles: 13 in all. Vernon Parish, home of Fort Polk, sits outside the diocese and is not included, though our Fort Polk guide covers families who live in Beauregard.
STO and results lists. The Louisiana Department of Education, Tuition Donation Credit Program 2024-2025 Participating Nonpublic Schools shows which schools took Tuition Donation Credit scholarships. The Louisiana Department of Education, 2025 Louisiana Scholarship Program Scholarship Cohort Indices has no entry for any school in these parishes, so no cohort index appears on this site.
The federal survey. The U.S. Department of Education, NCES Private School Survey (2023-24 public-use file; 2021-22 where a school did not respond in 2023-24) supplies street addresses, teacher counts, ratios, affiliation and memberships. It matched 11 of the approved schools and added 2 schools that are not on the state list. Where a school has no federal record, it has no street address here; we did not fill gaps from school websites or marketing material.
Program rules and local facts. Award amounts, priority groups, the window and the spending rules come from the Louisiana Department of Education and Odyssey's 2026-27 help pages. Local facts, such as the diocese's founding, the 2020 hurricanes and the colleges' dual-enrollment programs, are drawn from published reporting and are linked from the posts that use them.
What we hold back
We publish a school profile only where there is enough verified public information to make one useful: BESE approval, a federal street address, at least 90 K-12 students and at least five reportable facts. 8 schools meet that bar; 7 appear in the tables instead. We do not print tuition we have not seen, and every dollar figure on the site is either a state award, a published price or a clearly labeled illustration.
Who runs it
Lake Charles Edu Funding is a Boss Leads project and is not connected to the Diocese of Lake Charles, the Louisiana Department of Education, BESE or Odyssey. Advisors help families build a funding plan and connect them with schools and providers that accept it. If you spot an error, tell us and we will check it against the source.