Lindsay Smythe, school leader at École Saint-Landry in Sunset, says she’s heard it too often: “We didn’t know you were there.”
But not for long. The K-5 French immersion, Type 1 charter school is forging its way forward and expanding, offering St. Landry Parish children the chance for a superior public-school education that includes mastering a language spoken globally and revered across Acadiana.
When St. Landry parents and local francophiles discover École Saint-Landry, she said, “They are blown away.” Word gets around, she suggested, because her students are “doing French all day.”
The school, now in year 2, broke ground for a three-classroom, 2,800-square-foot addition last week that will enable it to expand in the fall. École Saint-Landry has 57 students and may grow to 380 with creation of a second campus in the historic Sunset High School building, which was built in 1926 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Imagine the irony: Smythe’s students may master French where their ancestors were once forbidden to speak it.
École Saint-Landry is developing by adding one school year at a time; while K-5 is in the works, Smythe says she’s keeping one eye open toward expanding through grade 8, if locals demand it.
Faculty include teachers recruited through the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana — four from Europe, one from Senegal — and one local French speaker, as well as two English teachers. Cajun musician Sarah Savoy is the music teacher.
The school enrolls only St. Landry students, so the local school board oversees it and gets to claim its test scores. Immersion students oftentimes outpace other students in scholastic achievement.
For many St. Landry Parish students, École Saint-Landry represents their best chance at a superior public-school education that honors their local and family cultures.
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