At these Lafayette elementary schools, extra money, ACE program, improves scores, relationships
Photo caption: Kindergarten students eat lunch Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, at J.W. Faulk Elementary in Lafayette, La. Photo by Leslie Westbrook.
By Ashley White
The start of the school year at J.W. Faulk Elementary was starkly different this year than last.
The building was virtually unchanged. The administrative team all returned to the front office and most of the teachers and staff returned.
The difference was with the students.
“It’s night and day from last year to this year,” said fourth grade teacher Marley Turner. “This year, the kids know the procedures, they know the people.”
“It just makes the environment feel so much more happy and upbeat like the kids feel very at home here,” she added.
The change is credited to several factors, said Principal Alysia Messa: The hard work the school’s adults poured into the campus and students last year, and the students’ willingness to grow with the newly rolled out Accelerated Campus Excellence, or ACE, program.
The program, which focuses on whole-child development, is the first of its kind in Louisiana and was brought to Faulk and Dr. Raphael Baranco elementary schools last year through a partnership between the Lafayette Parish School System and the Pugh Family Foundation. Alice Boucher Elementary implemented the program this year.
The funding was guaranteed for three years.
At Faulk, they aren’t only seeing behavioral improvements. Students had “dramatic” academic growth, according to a report from Steady State Impact.
Data shows more students on or above grade level
Beginning-of-the-year data in fall 2024 “scared us,” Messa said. By midyear, Messa said, data showed students were starting to show academic growth and a boost to their confidence. And end-of-year data shows students closed learning gaps from previous years and are now performing at or above grade level.
In reading, beginning-of-the-year data for kindergarten through second grade students at Faulk showed about 73% of students were below or well below benchmark. By the end of the year, about 26% of students moved from that category to test at or above benchmark.
The greatest growth in reading was with kindergarteners. At the beginning of the year more than 90% of students were below or well-below benchmark. By the end of the year, 76% of kindergarteners were at or above benchmark.
In math, when looking at all students K-5, only about 2% of students were on or above grade level. By the end of the year, 35% of students were on or above grade level. And the percentage of students who were two or more grades below level decreased significantly from about 55% to about 20%.
When looking at the school’s state testing data, across all subjects and all grades, the percentage of students who scored mastery or above increased year over year from 16% in 2024 to 20% in 2025.
Reaching grade level or above has been more tangible in the lower grades. There are oftentimes fewer barriers to growth for younger students, Messa said. And the longer a student is behind, the harder it is for them to catch up because the standards continue to get more rigorous and their confidence tends to diminish.
Students at Baranco, which also implemented the ACE program last year, also saw significant academic gains. In reading, about 62% of K-2 students ended the year at or above grade level, a 19% increase from the beginning of the year. In math, only about 2% of K-5 students started the year at or above grade level. By the end of the year, 39% of students were on or above grade level.
The data shows one thing clearly to Nick Pugh III, co-founder and chair of the Pugh Family Foundation: With the right tools and support, students can succeed regardless of where they live.
“When it all gets said and done, these gals and gentlemen are going to prove that kids on the north (side) are just as smart as the kids on the south (side).”
‘The kids deserve that’
The academic growth of Faulk’s students is one of the things Messa is most proud of. And it took a lot of work from staff and students.
One of the biggest hurdles was building relationships with students and ensuring they understood everyone had the same goal in mind – wanting to see them be successful.
Those relationships center around trust. The way to create that trust was to follow through.
“If we said we were going to do it, we did it,” Messa said. “We learned early from them that there had been times when people would say they would do things and didn’t show up or didn’t follow through.
“If (students) made the goal, they earned the incentive,” she added. “And we didn’t take it away.”
Students’ behaviors also needed to be addressed. They needed structure and boundaries so they could focus on learning when the time called for it.
The ACE program implements a social-emotional learning component, something that was key for working through students’ issues. At the beginning of last year, most students had issues with conflict, negativity and correction. Social workers and the school’s behavior team helped children understand how to handle those situations.
In the classroom, teachers worked with students to understand where they were academically and to set goals for them. Expectations were never lowered, Turner said. Instead, teachers focused on what each student needed to succeed and reiterated that with the right tools, they would be able to meet their goals.
Gradually, students began to trust the school’s adults and believe that they all wanted students to thrive emotionally and academically.
All that hard work has paid off, school officials said. Students returned to Faulk this year ready to continue growing.
“It’s a team effort,” Turner said. “It takes the administrative team, the community, teachers. And the kids deserve that. They are just as capable as any other kids when they’re given the right tools.”