What are the differences in a private vs. public education for students in Shreveport and Bossier City?

Which option is right for your children?

Among those obstacles may be deciding between private vs. public education for students in Shreveport-Bossier City.

Tracey Locke, director of advancement at Southfield School in Shreveport, offers insight into private school benefits.

“The benefits of going to Southfield are that we offer an opportunity for every type of child to excel in whatever area they are gifted or talented in. We don’t just push academics solely to where they have to fit into a cookie cutter mold, but we offer such a blended curriculum that the children are able to learn in their way, and they excel because it’s a much smaller group of children,” Locke said. “We have smaller class sizes. They get more individual attention from each teacher and students in a collaborative way.”

Educators who come to Southfield School tend to stay there long term. “We don’t have a lot of turnover in faculty; once people come to Southfield to teach they typically don’t want to go anywhere else. A very large percentage of our faculty hold an advanced degree beyond their certification, and many have master’s degrees or higher,” she said. “We take care of our faculty and staff in a way that a public school can’t. We make sure they get a lot of professional development outside of their opportunity of teaching. We also allow our teachers to make decisions in their classrooms that are best for that curriculum. They teach beyond the textbook. It’s very interactive.”

Financial aid and scholarships are available for those who need assistance. “We hold financial aid in high regard and have a healthy endowment and scholarship program as well as a very robust financial aid. We have a specific program for Barksdale Air Force candidates as well as scholarships, and we do a lot of outreach for that. We hold a very diverse student body,” Locke said. “We are held to a higher standard through our accreditation, which is the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest, so we do have some specific requirements, which are across the board. We tend to look at the individual child and their needs and where they are and see if there is a fit for them at the school.”

Sonja Bailes, public relations liaison for Bossier Parish Schools, feels the benefits of attending Bossier Parish Schools are numerous and starts off by keeping children in the community. “Our strength is that we have neighborhood schools, which most of us attended as children ourselves. Instead of a child having to go across town to take advantage of certain opportunities, they can remain in their neighborhood school with their friends and still be offered the full spectrum of learning opportunities at that school,” she said. “Whether they are advanced, career and technical education, AIM, and then we also have courses designed for those students that might have some weaknesses and may need additional help or remediation. They can attend school with their friends and be able to have that community relationship and feeling. Whatever their talents are, they are given the opportunity to broaden those talents at their neighborhood school,” she said.

Bailes said Bossier Parish is preparing students to be relevant in today’s technical society. “Because of our size, the opportunities that we have to offer our children. We have an excellent STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] that begins in kindergarten that goes through 12th grade,” Bailes said. “The investment we put into our STEM program is so important because we know a child today has to be technologically relevant for today’s global society that we are going to be competing in and the type of jobs that the workforce demands.”

Last year, Bossier Schools ranked No.1 in the state for highly effective teachers. “We have daily workshops going on for our teachers this summer,” Bailes said.

Bossier Parish is also embarking on a $210 million construction project that includes Kingston Elementary in Benton and the Bossier Parish School for Technology and Innovative Learning opening fall of 2015.