École Saint-Landry, French Immersion Elementary

The mission of our school is to prepare students from the Acadiana region to be academically proficient, bilingual, and globally competent. Our school will close the gaps of academic achievement and support the local community in their efforts to preserve and revitalize at-risk cultural assets by offering an innovative, research-based French immersion education to students. Borrowing from the motto of Hawai’i’s immersion program, KaʻUmeke Kāʻeo, École Saint-Landry will be a school “inspired by our past, empowered by our identity, [and] prepared for our future” in order to play an important role in our community’s revitalization. The vision of our school is that graduates of École Saint-Landry will be citizens who possess the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors necessary to thrive in today's increasingly interconnected world. The students of École Saint-Landry will become cultural assets in their own right and will be ambassadors of global competency. Their successes will represent the effectiveness and power of biliteracy in our community and beyond. In order to realize this mission and vision, we are proposing a school that, in addition to having a rigorous program guided by high expectations, is made unique by characteristics that are both shown to be beneficial to all students as well as craved by our community. Our school will be defined by the following differentiating pillars: French-Language Immersion: The use of an immersion language pathway gives students a rigorous academic training as well as both the intellectual and cultural benefits of bilingualism. Our school has partnerships with organizations such as the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana through which we will be able to recruit teachers who are native French speakers. This will support our language immersion program. Extra-Curricular Community Engagement: One of the central purposes of our use of a French-immersion program is to cultivate a strong sense of community among our stakeholders and within our school. We will reinforce this characteristic central to our school by engaging all of our students in extracurricular community service projects. Diverse Student Body: Our school is committed to having a socioeconomically and racially diverse student body. There is a large body of data demonstrating that socioeconomic and racial diversity is beneficial for all students and, in particular, at-risk students.

We are a public French immersion school that educates students from all corners of St. Landry Parish. We provide transportation from anywhere in the parish, and we participate in the federal school lunch program.