Paradise Elementary School

Paradise Elementary School is an elementary campus of low-enrollment scale in Ball, Louisiana, one of the schools within Rapides Parish, enrolling 369 students in grades pre-K through 6.

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

For racial and ethnic makeup, Paradise Elementary School logs that White students make up the majority at 69%; the rest breaks down as 21% Black, 5% Hispanic, 3% multiracial. That is meaningfully more White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 61%.

On the resource side, The school reports having 31 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 11.8:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 14.0:1 average. Around 78% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Paradise Elementary School ranks in the top 10% of Louisiana public schools. The BeatsExpectations model, a per-state regression of composite proficiency on FRL share, predicts schools with this student profile to land around 28.1%; Paradise Elementary School posts 52.3%, +24.3 points above that line.

In the area at large, ACS estimates for Rapides Parish put the typical household earns roughly $54,967 per year, 23% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 15%. Across Rapides Parish's 51 public schools (combined enrollment of about 21,481 students), Paradise Elementary School is one campus in the mix.

Tioga Elementary School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 1.0 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Paradise Elementary School comes 1st of 7 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 42.8%.

The school occupies an outer-ring site.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Paradise Elementary School has contracted 24%, going from 483 students in 2018 to 369 in 2025. The Black share of enrollment decreased from 35% to 21% over that span. Class-load math has fell: from 18.4:1 in 2018 to 11.8:1 in 2025.

On the community side, posts here usually surface around classroom updates, athletics, and weather closures. Parents, students, alumni, and staff are welcome to weigh in.