Horseshoe Drive Elementary School

As a low-enrollment elementary campus in Alexandria, Louisiana, Horseshoe Drive Elementary School works with 243 students from grades pre-K through 5, run under Rapides Parish. That puts it 46% leaner than the typical public school in Louisiana, which averages around 453 students.

Rapides Parish runs 43 schools in total, collectively educating 21,340 students. Horseshoe Drive Elementary School is one of those campuses.

Looking at the student body, Horseshoe Drive Elementary School shows that nearly all students (88%) are Black. Beyond that, the school shows 5% multiracial, 3% White, 2% Hispanic. By comparison, Rapides Parish as a whole is about 31% Black, so the school skews considerably more Black than its surroundings.

In terms of school funding signals, On paper, Horseshoe Drive Elementary School has 24 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 10.0:1. The state averages around 14.0:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. An estimated 96% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. That share is higher than Rapides Parish's rate of about 77%.

With demographic context factored in, Horseshoe Drive Elementary School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 15.6%, the actual is 8.0%, a residual of -7.6 points.

Around the school, community-level numbers for Rapides Parish indicate the typical household earns roughly $54,967 per year, 23% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and roughly 15% of residents live below the federal poverty line. Across Rapides Parish's 51 public schools (combined enrollment of about 21,481 students), Horseshoe Drive Elementary School is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Martin Park Elementary School, roughly 1.0 miles away. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Horseshoe Drive Elementary School comes 6th of 6 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 36.7%.

The school occupies a metropolitan site.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Horseshoe Drive Elementary School has edged down 12%, going from 276 students in 2018 to 243 in 2025. Over the same period, the Black share contracted from 93% to 88%. The student-to-teacher ratio fell from 17.3:1 in 2018 to 10.0:1 today.

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