Forest School

Forest School is an unified-grade school of middle-of-the-pack scale in Forest, Louisiana, one of the schools within West Carroll Parish, enrolling 460 students in grades pre-K through 12.

West Carroll Parish runs 3 schools in total, collectively educating 1,483 students. Forest School is one of those campuses.

Looking at the student body, Forest School lists that the largest single group is White, at 75% of enrollment; the rest looks like 17% Black, 5% Hispanic, 2% multiracial.

On the resource side, On paper, Forest School has 32 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 14.3:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 52.1:1 average. About 80% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, Forest School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 26.9%, the actual is 21.3%, a residual of -5.5 points.

In the surrounding community, the surrounding county (West Carroll Parish) logs that the typical household earns roughly $49,134 per year, roughly 15% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. Forest School is one of 5 public schools in West Carroll Parish (combined enrollment of about 1,483 students).

The closest other public school is Oak Grove Elementary School, roughly 4.6 miles away. 2 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Forest School comes 4th of 5 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 34.0%.

Geographically, the school is in a small-town area.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 16%: 547 students in 2018 compared to 460 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share shrank from 83% to 75%. The student-to-teacher ratio fell from 17.8:1 in 2018 to 14.3:1 today.

On this page, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.