Catholic schools of the Diocese of Lake Charles

The arithmetic of the funnel

The five elementary schools reported 1,529 K-12 students across nine grade levels, roughly 170 per grade if you spread them evenly. St. Louis Catholic High School reported 486 students across four grades, roughly 122 per grade. Those are rough averages from a single year, and some St. Louis students come from public and other private schools, but the shape is clear enough: most Catholic eighth graders in this system have a natural next step, and the high school is sized to receive them.

For LA GATOR purposes the transfer is clean. The account belongs to the student, not to the school, so it follows a child from Our Lady Queen of Heaven or Immaculate Conception to St. Louis without a new application, provided you renew in the spring window like every other year. The one exception is a family still on a protected amount from the old Louisiana Scholarship Program: that amount ends with the last grade of the school where it was used, and the student moves to the standard tiers at grade 9.

Staffing, from the federal survey

The federal Private School Survey gives a second look at each school. It counted 49.6 full-time-equivalent teachers at Our Lady Queen of Heaven School, 36.3 full-time-equivalent teachers at St. Louis Catholic High School, 29.3 full-time-equivalent teachers at Immaculate Conception Cathedral School, and fewer at the smaller campuses in Sulphur and Jennings. Every one of the six lists membership in the National Catholic Educational Association. The survey figures are a year or two older than the state's enrollment numbers, so treat small differences between the two as timing rather than error.

After the 2020 storms

Hurricane Laura came ashore near Cameron on August 27, 2020, and Hurricane Delta made landfall near Creole six weeks later. The diocese reported damage to churches and schools from both storms and in 2021 announced the architects it had chosen to rebuild them. We mention it because it explains why a campus may look newer than the school's history, not because it changes anything about the account: what matters for LA GATOR is that all six schools are on the current approval list.

Questions only a Catholic family here needs to ask

1. What does the parish require for the registered-parishioner rate, and how long do we need to be registered before it applies?
2. Does St. Louis give any admissions or scheduling preference to students coming from the diocesan elementary schools?
3. Is the LA GATOR deposit applied before or after the parishioner discount and any diocesan assistance?