Southside Elementary School

Southside Elementary School in Lake Providence, LA, serves 359 students from Pre-Kindergarten through 5th grade within the East Carroll Parish school district, a community where nearly 97% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating very high economic need.

Southside Elementary is currently ranked in the 0th percentile statewide, placing it among the lowest-performing elementary schools in Louisiana. This marks a troubling downward trend over the past decade, as the school has fallen from a 41st percentile ranking in the 2017-2018 school year to its current all-time low. Academic proficiency rates are critically low, with only 21% of students proficient in Mathematics and 32% proficient in English Language Arts for the 2025-2026 school year. In stark contrast, the nearest comparable school, Oak Grove Elementary (just 12.98 miles away in West Carroll Parish), ranks in the 51st percentile and achieves 70% proficiency in both subjects. The difference in outcomes is immense, even though Oak Grove also serves a high-poverty population (71.51% free/reduced lunch) and has a higher student-teacher ratio (18.6:1 compared to Southside's 15.3:1).

A critical red flag is the school's chronic absenteeism rate, which has skyrocketed from a low of 6.0% in the 2021-2022 school year to 25.0% in 2024-2025—far exceeding the state average of 22.5% and nearly double Oak Grove's rate of 14.1%. This recent surge in absenteeism is almost certainly a primary driver of the school's academic collapse. The school is struggling to serve all its students effectively, ranking in the 0th or 1st percentile for every student subgroup, indicating systemic challenges that require comprehensive intervention beyond just classroom instruction.