St. Landry Parish Schools is proud to highlight Dr. Esrom Pitre, who serves as the district’s District Attendance Specialist, overseeing multi-tiered interventions, compliance systems, and district-wide strategies to reduce chronic absenteeism across ten schools.
With more than 25 years of combined experience as a teacher, principal, professor, and executive school leader, Dr. Pitre has built a career transforming historically underperforming schools into thriving learning environments. He has served as principal of three high schools—Donaldsonville High, McKinley Senior High, and North Central High—each experiencing remarkable academic gains under his leadership.
At McKinley Senior High, Dr. Pitre improved the ACT index by 20 points, raised the graduation rate from 64% to 88%, and moved the school from a D to a C rating—making it the highest-gaining high school in the city during that accountability cycle. At North Central High, he increased the graduation rate from 71% to 85%, boosted the School Performance Score, and led one of the most successful rural school turnarounds in the district. At Donaldsonville High, he lifted the school from an “F” to a “B” rating and increased the graduation rate from 65.8% to 87.9%, earning the distinction of achieving the highest single-year academic gain among traditional high schools in Louisiana.
In addition to his K–12 leadership, Dr. Pitre has served as an Assistant and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at Xavier University, Southern University, and the University of Houston–Clear Lake, where he trained aspiring school leaders in equity-centered leadership and school reform. He also served as Executive Director of Athlos Academy in Jefferson Parish, overseeing charter school implementation, leadership development, and academic operations.
Dr. Pitre leads with a transformational, equity-driven philosophy—grounded in the belief that all students, regardless of background, deserve rigorous, relevant, and relationship-centered education. His leadership is defined by distributed leadership, culturally responsive practices, and data-driven improvement.
Outside of his professional work, Dr. Pitre is a husband to Dr. Twana Hilton-Pitre and father of three children. He enjoys mentoring aspiring leaders, speaking on school turnaround and equity, integrating AI into education, cattle farming, and family entrepreneurship. He is also an active voice in the educational community as a podcast host and guest, and is currently authoring a book on principal leadership and systemic injustice in public education.