Celebrating ESA's Successes

Can you feel it? The excitement in the air? I love the start of a new school year—the energy of the students and teachers is at its highest. Frankly, there’s a lot to be excited about!

I wanted to start off this year of Headmaster Vision Blogs with a celebration of some of the great things that have been happening at ESA. We ended last year with the graduation of 42 seniors who spread their wings at universities and colleges across the country. Here are some highlights of the year:

This year’s senior class was offered over $6,000,000 in scholarships to college.
We finished the year with the highest ACT average in ESA History at 29.
We had a National Merit Finalist, National Achievement Semifinalist, National Achievement Scholarship Finalist and two National Merit Commended Students.
ESA gave 207 AP tests with an average score of 3.6. We had 6 National AP Scholars (students who have taken at least 8 AP Exams and scored a 4 or better on each of them.
We have more students participating in Academic Contests than ever.
We added 2 State Championships in Cross Country and Golf to our total (73).
We made a $3,000,000 payment on the Bond that built the Lafayette Campus. The remainder is amortized in our Operating Budget. This will allow us to move forward with additional capital projects (finishing the LS Enrichment Center and developing a master plan for the Cade campus).
Tates-Tutwiler Endowment is approaching $1,000,000. This endowment helps fund need based scholarships for ESA families.
Annual Giving finished at the highest level ever, very nearly meeting our goal of $300,000.
ESA was ranked as one of the top 3 private schools in Louisiana.
We completed some great facilities upgrades this summer: the lower school courtyard and erosion control in the backyard, putting ceiling fans in the lunch areas, replacing roofs in Cade, painting the gym, replacing the skylights, upgrading locker rooms, complete remodel of the College Counseling Building, new signs at both campuses, repair and repainting of lockers in Cade and dozens of other small projects. The campuses have never looked better.
We started the Falcon Club, a booster club for Arts and Athletics. The first big projects were to redo the baseball backstop, purchase a kiln for pottery, and provide equipment for theatre and music and cameras for the Art Department.
We hosted the Buddhist Monks of the Drepung Gomang Monastery.
ESA’s lower school LEGO Robotics team got off to a great start, winning locally and placing regionally against older students.
LS students presented research projects on bee keeping and the use of stools instead of chairs. These projects will receive funding for continued research.
Both campuses produced phenomenal musicals this year, Seussical and Hairspray.

There are pages and pages of highlights that I could include, most of which you will find throughout the year in our amazing weekly newsletter, Falcon Forecast. I even included some financial highlights as well as programmatic and enrichment highlights. To borrow a phrase, it really does “take a village” to provide the unique educational experience that we do at ESA. Every student, faculty member and parent is critical to our mission. Without parent volunteers and financial support from all of our constituencies, we would not have such a list of accomplishments to celebrate. We thank you for your continued trust in us and we renew our pledge to live out our mission every day.

As a final celebration, ESA is opening with our highest enrollment ever, and we are only 20-30 students short of being full on each campus. A student body at or near capacity provides a range of benefits, not the least of which is the financial resources to equip our faculty members with everything they need to create the best educational experience possible. Your enthusiasm about ESA is the biggest factor in our increased enrollment, so please continue to brag about our school to everyone you know! You will be hearing more from me this year about the future plans for both campuses as we continue to work on our strategic plan. I’ll end this post with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Seuss. We use it to empower students, and I believe it applies to our school. “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”

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Celebrating ESA's Successes

Episcopal School of Acadiana

Episcopal School of Acadiana (Lafayette Campus)

Episcopal School of Acadiana (Cade Campus)