St. Joseph Catholic School

What LA GATOR covers at St. Joseph Catholic School

St. Joseph Catholic School is on the Louisiana Department of Education's 2025-26 list of BESE-approved nonpublic schools, classified as accredited. Approval is the gate: without it a school cannot be paid tuition from a LA GATOR account at all. It is not the same as being signed up, because schools register in Odyssey year by year and the state does not publish who did, so put that question to the office. Its Brumfield v. Dodd nondiscrimination approval, required of any school taking state-funded students, dates from 1976.

On that list the school reported 273 K-12 students plus 41 children in pre-K, making it the 9th-largest of the 21 approved schools we rank by enrollment.

Because the school ends at grade 8, the account has a second act: it follows your child to any approved high school that admits them. The nearest approved schools serving grade 9 are Loyola College Prep, Word of God Academy, Providence Classical Academy, Riverdale Academy.

Locally it ranks 7th by enrollment of the 14 approved schools in Caddo Parish, with Calvary Baptist Academy the largest. Its pre-K program, 41 children, is the usual path into kindergarten, which is the first year the account can pay anything.

The school also appears on the state's 2024-25 list of schools accepting Tuition Donation Credit scholarships. For a household at or below 250% of the poverty line that is worth real money here: since Act 403 an STO award stacks on top of LA GATOR up to the school's actual tuition and fees, and at north Louisiana prices the two together can cover most of a bill.

The federal Private School Survey (2023-24) recorded 265 students, 24.6 full-time-equivalent teachers and about 10.8 students per teacher. The school reports membership in National Catholic Educational Association.

The multi-year figure

Kindergarten through grade 8 is 9 funded years at this school. Held at 2026-27 levels the whole way, that is roughly $47,187 at the standard amount, $68,634 at the 250%-of-poverty amount, and up to $137,277 for a student with an IDEA disability, before any STO scholarship. Awards reset every year and depend on what the Legislature appropriates, so treat it as a planning number, not a guarantee. Pre-K years are not eligible; the account starts at age 5.

Closing the gap

Ask for the parishioner rate before anything else; the gap between the parishioner and non-parishioner rate at a Shreveport parish school can be larger than the fee schedule. Then ask how the business office bills Odyssey, whether the quarterly deposits line up with the school's billing cycle, and whether an STO award or diocesan assistance can take the remainder.

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Questions for the office

1. Are you registered with Odyssey for 2026-27, and do you bill tuition quarterly to match the deposit schedule?
2. What is the parishioner rate, and what does the parish require for us to qualify for it?
3. What is the all-in cost for this grade with fees, and what would a family at the $5,243 and $7,626 levels still owe?
4. Do you take STO (Tuition Donation Credit) scholarships, and is the STO award applied before or after LA GATOR?
5. Which high schools do your grade 8 students usually move on to?
6. Does a pre-K seat carry over into a kindergarten seat, which is the first year the account pays?

Closest other private schools

Straight-line distance between campus coordinates, which in this metro usually understates a drive across the river.