John F. Kennedy Elementary School, Lake Charles LA

Original Research by School Decision on John F. Kennedy Elementary School

John F. Kennedy Elementary School is a school that no longer exists. It served students in Lake Charles, Louisiana as part of the Calcasieu Parish district, but its operational status is listed as closed. The available data comes from the 2018-19 school year, the last year it appears to have been active before closing. For a family looking at this school, the most immediate fact is that it is not an option.

The academic picture from that final year is one of a school where students, across the board, struggled to meet state proficiency benchmarks on Louisiana’s LEAP 2025 assessments. In math, the share of students scoring proficient or above was low in every tested grade. In English language arts, the results were somewhat stronger in third and fourth grade, where about a third of students met the bar, but fifth grade saw a sharp drop to a small fraction. Science proficiency rates were in the single digits or low teens. Social studies results were the weakest, with one grade showing no students reaching the proficient level. These are difficult numbers regardless of the starting point, and a parent considering this school in its last years would have had significant academic concerns to investigate.

No enrollment or demographic data is available for that year, so the size and makeup of the student body are not part of the record. The school was a regular elementary school, not a charter or magnet, and it served a grade band listed as "M through M," which may indicate a non-standard configuration or a reporting anomaly. Because the school did not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report, which is expected for an elementary campus.

The school was located on Russell Street in Lake Charles, a mid-sized city that functions as a major industrial and educational center for southwest Louisiana. Lake Charles is home to petrochemical plants, a casino tourism sector, and two higher education institutions, McNeese State University and Sowela Technical Community College. The city has faced severe hurricane damage in recent years, including Hurricane Laura in 2020, which contributed to a population decline from the 2020 census to a 2024 estimate. The Calcasieu Parish district itself has been navigating that recovery, passing a large budget in the 2022-23 school year driven by FEMA reimbursement and rebuilding funds for damaged school facilities. Voters also renewed two property tax millages in 2024 to continue funding teacher salaries and operations without a rate increase, and the district launched a literacy initiative that won a statewide award in 2025.

Because John F. Kennedy Elementary is closed, none of these district-level developments apply to it as an active school. The housing context in the area shows home values that are below the state and national benchmarks, and the typical commute is car-dependent across a sprawling city. But the only relevant question for a parent today is what school now serves the attendance zone that Kennedy once covered. That information is not included in the available data, so a family looking at this address would need to contact the Calcasieu Parish School Board to find out which elementary school currently serves that neighborhood.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 325%

School 25% · district not reported

even with state median

Grade 410%

School 10% · district not reported

▼ 18 pts below state median

Grade 59%

School 9% · district not reported

▼ 10 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 335%

School 35% · district not reported

▲ 5 pts above state median

Grade 432%

School 32% · district not reported

▲ 1 pts above state median

Grade 514%

School 14% · district not reported

▼ 15 pts below state median

Science

Grade 310%

School 10% · district not reported

▼ 5 pts below state median

Grade 415%

School 15% · district not reported

▼ 5 pts below state median

Grade 59%

School 9% · district not reported

▼ 14 pts below state median

Social studies

Grade 35%

School 5% · district not reported

▼ 9 pts below state median

Grade 411%

School 11% · district not reported

▼ 9 pts below state median

Grade 50%

School 0% · district not reported

▼ 23 pts below state median

This schoolCalcasieu Parish, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income33%Higher-income50%17 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income28%Higher-income67%39 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income14%Higher-income0%14 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income22%Higher-income50%28 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income9%Higher-income0%8 pp gap