The top reported proficiency rate is 50% in English language arts. The lowest is 34% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Maplewood Middle School
Maplewood Middle School serves the historic Maplewood neighborhood in Sulphur, a residential area originally built to house workers at the local oil refineries. The school is a regular public middle school serving grades six through eight within the Calcasieu Parish district. The student body is relatively small for a three-grade middle school, predominantly white, with a moderate presence of Hispanic, Black, multiracial, and Asian students. A substantial share of students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch.
On the Louisiana LEAP 2025 assessments, Maplewood’s academic picture shows a split. In English language arts, half of all students scored proficient or above, the strongest subject result for the school. Social studies and science proficiency rates were more modest, and math was the weakest area. When compared against other schools across Calcasieu Parish using an index that averages proficiency across subjects, Maplewood falls in the top quartile among the small number of districts in the county for which data was available, which places it above the midpoint locally. There is no year-over-year trend data available from the state, as only a single year of results was reported.
Maplewood sits within a city where the local economy remains heavily tied to oil refining and petrochemical plants, with Citgo and Sasol as major employers. Most new residential development in Sulphur is happening south of town near Carlyss or around the Interstate 10 corridor rather than in the older core neighborhoods. The Maplewood area itself is established, not a growth zone. Housing in the school’s zip code is priced below the state and national averages, and the median rent has been rising at a moderate pace relative to its own base but remains below what a typical household in the area would consider expensive.
The district that operates Maplewood has made two recent moves that matter for a parent. In late 2024, voters renewed property tax millages that generate ongoing funding for teacher salaries and school operations without raising the tax rate. That renewal secures the district’s ability to maintain current staffing levels. The district has also rolled out a districtwide literacy initiative over the past several years, shifting toward structured literacy approaches and reading intervention programs, and the effort earned a Magna Award. This change touches every grade and subject, so a parent may want to ask how the approach looks in the middle school classes specifically. Separately, the district passed a large budget in the 2022-23 school year driven by FEMA rebuilding funds after Hurricanes Laura and Delta, which has funded major reconstruction of at least ten school facilities across the parish. It is not clear from available data whether Maplewood Middle School was among those facilities, but a parent could check with the school directly about any recent building improvements.
State testing data for special education and English learner populations is not available in the profile, and neither is information on discipline rates, chronic absenteeism, or staffing ratios, all of which are common concerns for middle school families. A parent may want to request that information directly from the school to get a fuller picture of the daily environment. The school’s affiliation with the district’s new literacy focus and its established neighborhood context suggest a stable setting, but the math results in particular are an area a family would want to explore further with the school to understand what support structures are in place.
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