Indian Bayou Elementary School

Indian Bayou Elementary School is a small, rural PK-5 school in Rayne, LA, serving 217 students within the highly-ranked Vermilion Parish School District, and it has earned a 5-star rating from SchoolDigger for six of the last seven school years, placing it among the top 10% of elementary schools in Louisiana.

This school stands out for its exceptional academic proficiency, which is significantly higher than both district and state averages. In English Language Arts, 94% of students are proficient, which is 12 points higher than the district average and 24 points higher than the state average, and it is 10 points higher than the next best nearby school, Cecil Picard Elementary School at Maurice. In Mathematics, 91% of students are proficient, which is 14 points higher than the district and 29 points higher than the state. The school also excels in Social Studies, with 74% proficiency, the highest score among all nearby schools with comparable grade spans. With a low student-to-teacher ratio of 13.3:1, Indian Bayou offers a more intimate learning environment than larger schools like Ridge Elementary School (19.5:1) and Vermilion Charter Academy (19.1:1).

Indian Bayou is also notably effective with students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, ranking in the 97th percentile statewide for this subgroup, despite a moderate free/reduced lunch rate of 42.4%. This contrasts sharply with nearby schools like Martin Petitjean Elementary School, which has a much higher poverty rate (87.9%) and ranks near the bottom of the state. The school’s success challenges the idea that larger schools with more resources are inherently better, as it outperforms much larger schools like Vermilion Charter Academy (919 students) in core subjects. However, a key watch item is a recent rise in chronic absenteeism, which has more than tripled to 18.4% in the 2024-2025 school year, though this is still better than the district average of 27.9% and many nearby schools like Kaplan Elementary School (32.5%).