Original Research by School Decision on Swartz Lower Elementary School
Swartz Lower Elementary School serves Monroe, Louisiana, a mid-sized city that is the parish seat of Ouachita Parish and the economic and cultural hub of northeastern Louisiana. Monroe mixes government, healthcare, education, and retail uses, with major employers including the Ouachita Parish School Board, Lumen Technologies, two healthcare systems, the City of Monroe, JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, and the University of Louisiana at Monroe. The city has faced population decline from a historic high, falling through the 2020 census into a 2023 estimate, indicating a mature, contracting urban area rather than one experiencing rapid growth. A significant flood and an EF3 tornado in recent years have added to the community’s challenges.
Swartz Lower Elementary is a regular public school serving pre-kindergarten through second grade within the Ouachita Parish school system. Because it serves only these early grades, the school does not participate in state testing, and no proficiency results, graduation rate, or chronic absenteeism data is available. That absence is expected for a school of this grade band. Academic performance data is therefore not a factor in evaluating this school. A parent looking for test scores or high school outcomes will need to look to the upper elementary, middle, and high schools that Swartz feeds into; this school itself provides no such measures.
The student body is roughly balanced between white students and black students, with a small share of Hispanic students and a very small number of Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and multiracial students. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic context of the area. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available.
The school is located on Swartz School Road in Monroe. This is a neighborhood school serving families in its attendance zone for the earliest grades. The community context includes a range of civic and cultural anchors such as the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo, the Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, multiple museums, and the Monroe Civic Center. The city is auto-oriented, with the oldest municipally owned transit system in the nation providing bus routes. The median home value in the area sits below the national benchmark, and the median household income in Monroe is consistent with that more affordable housing picture. A typical household would find renting or buying moderately priced relative to national averages.
Because the district brief found no recent changes that clear the four-year lasting-impact bar, there are no major district-level policy shifts, school openings or closures, or boundary changes to report for Ouachita Parish. The school operates as a stable early-elementary entry point for Swartz families. For a family considering this school, the core consideration is whether its early-grades-only scope and Monroe’s slower-growth, post-industrial city context fit their plans. The school is a straight-ahead neighborhood elementary for the youngest learners, without test-score data to evaluate, and sits in a city with a mature economy anchored by education, healthcare, and a legacy telecommunications employer.
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