Where the open seats are in Shreveport-Bossier, according to the state's own numbers

Everyone asks the same two questions in this market, in this order. Can we afford it? And is there a seat? The first one has a published answer, because LA GATOR pays a fixed amount the state announces every year. The second one does not, because no Louisiana agency collects or publishes open seats at a nonpublic school.

What the state does publish is enrollment. Every school on the BESE-approved nonpublic schools list reports its pre-K and K-12 headcount, and the federal Private School Survey reports teacher counts for most of them. Those two numbers will not tell you whether a particular classroom has an empty desk this October. Read across all 27 approved schools in Caddo, Bossier, Webster, DeSoto, Red River and Claiborne parishes, though, and a usable map appears.

The four big campuses are the ones with waiting lists

Four approved schools in these six parishes report 450 or more K-12 students: Calvary Baptist Academy at 957, Evangel Christian Academy at 724, Providence Classical Academy at 617 in Bossier City, and Glenbrook School at 453 in Minden. Together those four hold a little under half of the 5,670 K-12 students enrolled at approved schools across the whole six-parish area.

A school that size with a long local reputation is the most likely to tell you it is full in the grades you want, and the most likely to have an application deadline that has already passed. That is not a reason to skip calling. It is a reason to call early, ask specifically which grades have openings rather than whether the school is accepting applications, and ask to be put on a list in writing.

The middle of the list is where families actually land

Below those four sits a band of schools reporting roughly 140 to 400 students: Loyola College Prep, Word of God Academy, Southfield School, First Baptist Church School, St. Joseph Catholic School, St. Mark's Cathedral School, Claiborne Academy, Mt. Olive Christian School, The Montessori School for Shreveport, Central School, Riverdale Academy and St. John Berchmans Cathedral School. Ascension Classical School belongs in this band too on its federal count of 147, though it reported no K-12 figure to the state.

This band is the practical answer for most families, and it is where the account goes furthest. These schools are big enough to have a real program, published tuition and experience billing a state scholarship, and small enough that one family arriving in March is not a problem. Several of them are also the only school of their kind in the metro: one Catholic high school, one Episcopal day school, one Montessori school.

Eight approved schools report fewer than 100 students

Three of those eight report none at all, and six other schools did not give the state a K-12 figure, including two that were approved in January 2025: Community First High School in Minden and Country Day Montessori School in Coushatta. The rest are small by design, run a single grade band, or had not enrolled a full cohort when the figure was collected.

These are the schools families overlook, and they deserve a phone call for exactly the reason that makes them easy to skip. A school with twenty students has room. The questions to ask are different: which grades exist this year, which are being added, how many teachers are on staff, and whether the school holds state accreditation. Nine of the 27 approved schools here carry the state's "non-accredited approved" classification, which is enough for LA GATOR tuition and not enough for every transcript or athletic situation. We walk through that distinction on the comparison table.

What the teacher numbers add

The federal survey asks schools for full-time-equivalent teachers, and dividing enrollment by that figure gives a ratio you can compare. Across the schools here that reported both, the ratios run from about 4.5 students per teacher to about 21. A very low ratio at a small school usually means a mixed-age or tutorial model rather than small classes in the ordinary sense, and a high ratio at a small school often means one or two teachers are carrying several grades. Neither is a verdict. Both are worth asking about, because the answer tells you what kind of school you are actually looking at.

One caution: these are the schools' own answers, collected in 2023-24 or 2021-22 depending on when each school last responded, so they can disagree with the state enrollment figure. Where the two numbers differ by more than a little on our school pages, it is almost always because they were collected in different years.

Four parishes with one school each

Webster, DeSoto, Red River and Claiborne parishes have approved nonpublic schools, and in most of them there is exactly one with real enrollment. For a family in Grand Cane, Coushatta, Athens or Haynesville, that single academy is the school-choice market, and it is also where LA GATOR comes closest to covering a whole bill. The flip side is that there is no second option if the fit is wrong, which makes the marketplace side of the account worth understanding before you need it.

How to use all of this in one afternoon

Pick four schools: one of the big four, two from the middle band, one small or new one.
Ask each the same three questions: do you have an opening in this grade, are you registered with Odyssey for 2026-27, and what is the all-in cost with fees.
Ask the two that answer best whether they take STO scholarships, since 16 of the schools in our directory were on the state's 2024-25 list and that second award is what closes a gap at north Louisiana prices.
Apply for the account in the spring window regardless of where you land, because the award follows the student and you can tell Odyssey the school later.

Enrollment data is a map, not a seat. But in a market this size, a map is most of the work.

Sources

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