The top reported proficiency rate is 35% in English language arts. The lowest is 8% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Brentwood Elementary School
Brentwood Elementary School, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, is a regular public school in the Calcasieu Parish district. The school's enrollment is small for an elementary school. The student body is overwhelmingly Black, with a very small share of white students and a small share of students identifying as two or more races. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, near the highest end of the economic-need scale, placing the school in a high-poverty context.
Brentwood Elementary is part of a district that has made a few notable moves in recent years. In late 2024, voters in Calcasieu Parish renewed property tax millages that generate a meaningful annual sum for teacher salaries and school operations, a vote that did not raise the tax rate but locked in continued funding for staffing and programs. The district has also implemented a districtwide literacy initiative over recent years, centered on structured literacy and reading intervention, an effort recognized with a Magna Award in early 2025. In the wake of Hurricanes Laura and Delta, which caused severe damage in Lake Charles, the district passed a budget that was far larger than its typical annual budget, driven by FEMA reimbursement and rebuilding funds, and used it to rebuild or renovate at least ten school facilities. These district-level actions matter for Brentwood families because they affect teacher pay, the approach to reading instruction, and the condition of the physical school building, though the data for this school does not indicate whether Brentwood itself was one of the renovated campuses.
The school's academic results on Louisiana's LEAP 2025 assessments provide a mixed picture with notable soft spots. In English language arts, the share of students scoring at the proficient level or above is in the middle range, a result that, while below what many families hope for, is the strongest subject for the school. In math, the proficiency rate is low, and in science and social studies, it is lower still. When compared with other schools serving tested grades within the Calcasieu Parish district, the school's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades places it in the bottom quartile. A single year of data is available, so there is no trend to assess. The participation rate on all four tests was full, meaning the results are a complete count of tested students, not a sample. A parent considering this school may want to ask the school directly about the literacy initiative the district is promoting and how it is implemented at Brentwood, and about any math or science intervention programs in place, because the assessment results suggest those subjects are areas where students as a group struggle.
The school is located in Lake Charles, a mid-sized city that functions as a major industrial and educational center in southwest Louisiana. The local economy is anchored by heavy petrochemical refining, casino-based tourism, and higher education institutions such as McNeese State University. The city experienced severe damage from hurricanes in 2020 and has faced population decline in the years since. The housing market in the area code for Brentwood shows home values modestly below the state benchmark and well below the national benchmark, while rental costs have risen noticeably year over year, though the estimated rent-to-income ratio remains moderate. The school is an older neighborhood campus on Brentwood Avenue, within a network of established residential streets in the southern part of the city.
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