Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts (LSMSA)

A fleeting surge of oil money in the late 1970s funded a risky idea: Louisiana's brightest teenagers would leave home and live on Northwestern State University's campus in Natchitoches, studying from college textbooks, keeping college schedules, their residential life resembling that of their university counterparts. State Representative Jimmy D. Long, Robert A. Alost (then Dean of the College of Education at Northwestern State), Democratic State Senator Donald G. Kelly, and Governor David C. Treen conceived the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts to offer the state's most talented students an experience no traditional high school could match — and to bring commerce and attention to Natchitoches. Governor Treen approved the funding. The first class enrolled as juniors in the fall of 1983, making LSMSA the second state-supported residential school of its kind in the United States, after North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, which had opened in 1980. Classes met on the ground floor of Prudhomme Hall, an unused dormitory. Female students lived upstairs; male students lived in Bossier Hall. In 1984, the renovated High School Building — formerly the campus of Natchitoches High School — opened, and Governor Edwin Edwards cut the ribbon. Students applied from across Louisiana, selected from a pool representing at least 65 percent of the state's public school districts as well as private schools. The student body represents the ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity of Louisiana residents. Daily schedules mimicked college: no traditional class periods, courses taught from college textbooks. The curriculum covered mathematics, science, humanities, and an arts program offering music, theater, visual art, and dance. Student musicians performed works special to Louisiana through the Louisiana Composers' Consortium, founded by LSMSA's Dr. Al Benner. For most of the school's history, students lived in Caddo Hall (girls) or Prudhomme Hall (boys), both long-term loans from Northwestern State. In August 2021, students moved into the Living Learning Commons, a four-story, 110,000-square-foot residence hall designed by Ashe Broussard Weinzettle and Tipton Associates. The $25 million facility, funded by the State of Louisiana, houses 360 students across three towers and ten independent neighborhoods. Each neighborhood includes a Hall Commons for sharing meals or socializing, a glassed-in study lounge for quiet focus, laundry facilities with costs included in the student fee, and an apartment for the Student Life Advisor. The building also holds a grand lobby, health clinic, demonstration kitchen and dining area, craft room, covered porch, and an outdoor firepit. Students sign an honor code pledging to refrain from lying, cheating, stealing, plagiarizing, or vandalizing — a promise belonging to an institution dedicated to the pursuit of learning. In 2016, Niche ranked LSMSA the ninth-best public high school nationwide. The school remains a member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology. You visit to see what Louisiana believed its brightest teenagers deserved, and what the state built when it briefly had the money to do it.