Bethune/Oak Park Elementary

As a moderately sized elementary-level community in Shreveport, Louisiana, Bethune/Oak Park Elementary caters to 502 students from grades pre-K through 5, overseen by Caddo Parish.

Bethune/Oak Park Elementary is one of 57 schools operated by Caddo Parish, a district that works with 32,649 students overall.

On the student-mix side, Bethune/Oak Park Elementary reports that the student body is overwhelmingly Black (92%). Beyond that, the school logs 3% Hispanic, 3% multiracial. That is visibly more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 49%.

On the resource side, Staff filings list 46 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 10.8:1 students per teacher. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 14.0:1, putting Bethune/Oak Park Elementary tighter than the state norm the norm. About 92% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. That share is higher than Caddo Parish's rate of about 68%.

After controlling for student poverty, Bethune/Oak Park Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 18.0%, the actual is 12.3%, a residual of -5.7 points.

Zooming out to the county, census data for Caddo Parish shows median household earnings sit near $50,705, roughly 26% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 18%. In all, Caddo Parish runs 61 public schools (combined enrollment of about 33,851 students), of which Bethune/Oak Park Elementary is one.

Midway Professional Development Center is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.8 miles from this campus. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Bethune/Oak Park Elementary comes 5th of 8 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 22.0%.

The campus sits in an inner-city setting.

Looking at the recent track record. Bethune/Oak Park Elementary's enrollment has rose 5% since 2018, when it stood at 477 (now 502). The Black share of enrollment decreased from 98% to 92% over that span. The student-to-teacher ratio fell from 15.8:1 in 2018 to 10.8:1 today.

Within the allk12 community for this school, members of the Bethune/Oak Park Elementary community share and discuss sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.