Stand For Children, a prominent national school choice organization, has shuttered its chapter in Louisiana after 12 years of wielding great influence over state and local education policy and spending about $4 million to help elect school choice-friendly leaders to state and local posts.
Of late, the group, however, found itself at odds with other charter school groups, particularly over former East Baton Rouge Parish school superintendent Sito Narcisse. It spent nearly $1 million in 2022 on behalf of school board candidates who supported Narcisse, but, in an unusual occurrence, was outgunned by spending by other charter school friendly groups.
Jonah Edelman, Stand’s founder and executive officer, said closing the state chapter was necessitated by the chapter’s inability to continue to raise sufficient funds to maintain its work in Louisiana.
“I don’t see it as a function of any one event or any one decision,” Edelman said.
Meanwhile, New Schools for Baton Rouge, also about 12 years old, has a new chief executive officer. The group parted ways Ken Campbell, a veteran school choice leader in Louisiana, replacing him with Noemi Donoso, a Los Angeles native who made her name on a variety of philanthropic education initiatives in California’s Central Valley.
Changes in education landscape
Stand For Children and New Schools for Baton Rouge have been key players for years in education in Louisiana.
Stand, which is based in Portland and opened its Louisiana chapter in early 2012, is mostly an advocacy group, pressing its case on a wide range of school issues, but also is one of the heaviest spenders on school elections, especially in Louisiana. New Schools, by contrast, weighs in periodically on local education issues, but focuses primarily on financing new and existing charter schools in Baton Rouge.
Charter schools are public schools run privately via charters, or contracts. Charter schools educate 22% of the public schoolchildren in East Baton Rouge Parish and 11% of the children in the Baton Rouge region.
The election of Gov. Jeff Landry, however, has seen state education policy shift away from charter schools to universal private school vouchers, known as education savings accounts, that would pay for all parents, with little restriction, to send their kids to the private school of their choice.
In Baton Rouge, recent elections saw the replacing of all but three of the nine members of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board. Within its first year, the new board opted not to renew the contract of then Supt. Sito Narcisse. The board on July 24, the board replaced Narcisse with LaMont Cole, a veteran educator who has split his career between the traditional education and charter school world.
Narcisse division
Narcisse had mixed relations with the charter school/education reform community. While publicly supportive of charter schools, he increasingly opposed charter school approvals and renewals as his three-year tenure progressed.
Local school reform groups divided over Narcisse and relations were often testy. Stand For Children, however, was notable in its outspoken, unflagging support of Narcisse.
Led by an active group of parents, Stand’s Louisiana chapter supported many Narcisse initiatives, including a districtwide literacy push, student internships and expansions of early childhood and dual enrollment.
“Narcisse. That was our guy,” recalled Tony Jones, a faith-based organizer for Stand from 2017 to 2023. “It was painful for me when everything happened and he left."
Jones said he was surprised when Stand was closing, saying he had no idea that might happen. He has fond memories of the people in that office.
“They just had a passion towards making things better for the students,” Jones said.
Diverging election spending
Those differences came to a head in the fall 2022 school board elections.
Stand endorsed seven candidates, five of them incumbents who supported Narcisse. Stand-funded advertising focused on the improvements associated with Narcisse. All told, the group reported spending almost $850,000.
The Baton Rouge Alliance for Students, funded by other national school choice donors, backed nine candidates, most of them committed to change in the school district. The Alliance, formed in 2021, spent more $1 million through its political arm as well as supporting another school choice group, Democrats for Education Reform, or DFER.
For Narcisse-supporting incumbents Jill Dyason, Mike Gaudet and David Tatman, advertising turned starkly negative. Only Gaudet survived, barely winning reelection.
Memories of those bruising races have not faded since.
Gaudet, who joined the board in 2017 and had previously received lockstep support from the local education reform community, has repeatedly attacked The Alliance. Meanwhile, Nathan Rust, who defeated Dyason in 2022, has attacked Stand for its local political work.
Final Stand
Narcisse accepted a voluntary buyout in January. A few months later, Stand began its departure as well. It officially closed July 16 and announced the move in an Aug. 8 post on its Facebook page.
Stand is continuing its Center for High School Success, which is working with 20 high schools in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and St. Landry Parish on ways to keep teenagers on the graduation track during the critical early years of high school.
Edelman, the Stand founder, said he maintains high regard for the work done by Stand’s Louisiana team, led by former state director Carrie Griffin Monica.
Edelman chalked up the decision to close to a number of factors: the pandemic, changing priorities of donors and problems raising money nationally for education policy groups. He did not deny that the 2022 school board election clash was a factor but would not say how much of a factor.
“It was no one thing,” Edelman said.
In a statement, Adonica Duggan, founder of The Alliance, said she’s aware of the dissolution of Stand for Children in Louisiana but did not say anything further.
“In all these changes, our goal is to continue to ensure that the needs of students and families are amplified in the local public education conversation,” Duggan said.
New Schools, New Face
New Schools for Baton Rouge was founded in 2012 by Chris Meyer, who spent a decade running the influential nonprofit. In 2022, he left to become chief executive officer of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
His replacement, Ken Campbell, spent two years in the job. Well known in the Louisiana school choice community, Campbell had held several prominent posts previously, including seven years as the Louisiana director for the Texas-based IDEA Public Schools as it opened four schools in Louisiana — two have since closed.
Campbell, who made a surprising departure in April, did not return a phone message this week seeking comment.
Campbell's replacement, Noemi Donoso, was hired in July and started work Sept. 3.
“I attended my first LSU game and then (Hurricane) Francine hit. So I feel like I’m fully immersed,” she said jokingly.
Donoso's career has mostly been in Southern California, but she also held high-profile jobs in Chicago, Denver and New York City. In Denver, she worked for a year as chief of innovation and reform and in Chicago she worked for a year as chief education officer.
From 2012 to 2020, Donoso was an executive vice president for the educational work of The Wonderful Company, a Central Valley-based set of agricultural businesses run by Stewart and Lynda Resnick. Within a few years, Donoso led the formation of large, popular charter schools in the Valley and extensive partnerships with higher education that expanded college attendance and the number of graduates with associate’s degrees and other career credentials.
“I am looking for that home like I had at the Wonderful Company, so that I can do great work here as well,” she said.
New Schools has been best known for persuading charter school networks that had found success elsewhere to expand to Baton Rouge. Donoso plans to focus on expanding existing successful schools here and perhaps bringing in more players from the all-charter New Orleans school district.
“I feel now we have a number of operators who have figured it out, whether they are local or national,” Donoso said.
