PORT ALLEN — West Baton Rouge Parish Schools says that this school year is about continued improvement and building on the successes of last school year.

One of these improvements was in their LEAP Test scores and rankings in the state for Mastery+.

"Mastery+ means the state has five achievement levels: Unsatisfactory, approaching basic, basic, mastery, and advanced, so Mastery+ is anything in those two higher achievement levels. Mastery or advanced," WBR Superintendent Dr. Chandler Smith said.

According to the district, the largest area of growth in LEAP tests for its district was math, which saw major gains in grades three through eight. The district also says its Mastery+ level in math rose from 31st to 25th in the state. Science went from 16th to 12th.

"We also saw a lot of growth with literacy in K-3. We grew from 57% to 68% in proficiency, so extremely proud there," Smith said.

Smith credits their increase in performance mainly to the work of their teachers.

"Their impact in the classroom is with quality instruction, loving all the kids, and delivering common assessments. That was a big push for us this year as a district. Awesome high-quality curriculum," Smith said.

Lukeville Elementary Principal Shannon Girod says the work to improve their LEAP scores even more starts the first day of school on Thursday.

"Getting students ready for LEAP tests starts day one. It doesn't just start in third grade; it actually starts in second grade. Getting them used to the testing format. Getting them used to computer-based assessments is a big deal because having an eight-year-old on a computer taking a major test is a little bit difficult," Girod said.

The 2024-25 school year also saw several achievements that the school district is celebrating. They broke ground on Cohn Intermediate School, which will combine Cohn Elementary and Port Allen Middle schools into a single facility in the next few years.

The WBR Career Academy also opened last October, which is already utilized by hundreds of students in the parish.

For this year, Smith says that new curricula will be implemented.

"Social studies is new for us this year in grades three through eight. We also have some new curriculum with ELA, just a little bit of change in K-8 this coming year, but otherwise we're refining our common assessments and just refining our practices," Smith said.

Girod says one area they are going to focus on improving is science.

"We're going to focus a lot on science. We have some improvements to make there. We had a new curriculum last year and just a couple of changes, and I think we were getting used to a couple of things, so now we kind of know where our line is and we're only going to go up from there and then focusing on maintaining and growing in ELA and Math," Girod said.