In a remarkable 17-minute speech Thursday, East Baton Rouge Parish School Board President Carla Powell-Lewis accused four of her colleagues of acceding to the demands of a financially influential interest group after they again rejected interim Superintendent Adam Smith’s bid to win the job permanently.
“All of these people,” Powell-Lewis said as she waved both hands at the board members, “speaking the way they are and not allowing the community to say what they need to say, it is because they’ve been told how they’re supposed to vote.”
It was a dramatic break for Powell-Lewis, one of six new members of the board who took office in January 2023. She quickly ascended to vice president and then a year later to president of the board. She has generally supported and been supported by the local education reform community, the source of almost all the money for local school board elections.
But that looks to be over.
“I’m speaking the realities, and I can already tell you now that I won’t receive that money again,” Powell-Lewis predicted. “So if you want me to serve another term, y’all going to have to support me. You’re going to have to have my back.”
The interest group that Powell-Lewis pointed to, but did not name, is the nonprofit Baton Rouge Alliance for Students. Adonica Duggan, founder and chief executive of The Alliance, said Powell-Lewis in her speech gave an erroneous, negative spin on the straightforward interactions they have had over the past two years and how The Alliance interacts with other board members. She also said The Alliance has not picked a favorite in the superintendent search.
“It’s unfortunate that Carla has mischaracterized the relations that we have with the board,” Duggan said.
“To the extent there is some implication that we are doing something that is illegal or unethical in some way, that is absolutely false,” Duggan continued.
Deadlock and backlash
Powell-Lewis’ speech came right after the board deadlocked, unable to advance either Smith or finalist Kevin George, director of LSU Lab School in Baton Rouge. Smith and George each got four votes. Board member Mike Gaudet was the holdout, supporting neither.
Another finalist, Andrea Zayas, former chief academic officer of Boston Public Schools, received no votes.
The board is expected to try again to break the impasse when it meets again Thursday. Late Monday afternoon, George withdrew as a finalist in a message sent to Lab School parents, leaving Zayas as the only remaining finalist. Smith previously did not make the round of finalists, but four board members say they support him anyway.
The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has a long history of looking elsewhere for its top leader. Charlotte Placide, who served from 2004 to 2009, is the only one of the nine most recent superintendents who was a veteran employee promoted from within.
Powell-Lewis made it clear in her speech that she is tired of trying to persuade the board members to promote Smith, a 28-year veteran of the school system, and said she is fine if they lose their elected positions as a result.
“I stand with Mr. Smith. I stand with the community. I’m a teacher first; I stand with the teachers. And we’ve got to get this right,” Powell-Lewis said. “And if you’re not on the train to get it right then that means you might need to be recalled.”
Powell-Lewis was referencing recall initiatives threatened that night and launched officially the following day by supporters of Smith seeking to remove from office the board members opposing Smith.
Earlier in the week, three teacher groups threatened a sickout on Aug. 8, the first day of school, if the board fails to make Smith superintendent.
Powell-Lewis also urged George, who was sitting in the front row, that while he has much to commend himself, he should wait a few years and try again after Smith has had his turn.
“If I were you, I’d run the hell away from here,” Powell-Lewis said.
Alliance influence
Much of Powell-Lewis’s speech on Thursday revolved around the 3-year-old Baton Rouge Alliance for Students.
In a short time, The Alliance has built up considerable influence in the Baton Rouge education world. It endorsed and financially supported eight of the nine current members of the parish School Board. In the fall 2022 elections, it spent about $900,000 through its affiliated organizations, almost all of that via third-party expenditures independent of the campaigns of the candidates it supported.
The nonprofit also operates a range of other initiatives, including reports on what students want in schools, training for parents, grants to other community groups and the annual Red Stick Schools Guide.
One key initiative, ChangeMAKERS, an annual education leadership training program, began when Duggan previously served as communications director at the influential pro-charter group, New Schools for Baton Rouge. Before that, Duggan was communications director for the East Baton Rouge Parish school system and before that the Zachary school district.
Of late, The Alliance’s influence has receded over the past several months, particularly among the four Black members of the parish School Board, first when the board voted not to renew the contract for former Superintendent Sito Narcisse and, more recently, in not agreeing to make Smith superintendent. The Alliance had frosty relations with Narcisse during his three-year tenure.
Two of the four Black board members — Dadrius Lanus and Shashonnie Steward — supported keeping Narcisse, while the other two — Powell-Lewis and Cliff Lewis — wanted a new superintendent. Lanus in particular attacked The Alliance, claiming it helped push Narcisse out.
All four Black board members have since coalesced behind Adam Smith.
The Alliance also has been attacked repeatedly by Gaudet, a board member who was the subject of negative ads in 2022 financed by the group.
Money for something?
Powell-Lewis spent much of her speech Thursday detailing her personal story as she moved from the classroom to the boardroom. The veteran social studies teacher had long been interested in serving on the school board to represent the Scotlandville community where she grew up and still lives. But she had balked at the idea because she didn’t have enough money to run.
But she said her cousin, Metro Councilwoman Chauna Banks, urged her to meet with two people who could finance a run for school board. So in June 2022, Powell-Lewis said, she met with a “lady and a gentleman” about supporting her campaign — in an interview she made clear those two individuals were Duggan and Terrence Lockett, executive director of the group Democrats for Education Reform, or DFER. Both Duggan and Lockett are Black.
She said she did not pay close attention to all that The Alliance and DFER did for her until after the election. At that time, Duggan gave her a rundown of the roughly $60,000 its independent expenditure arm had spent on Powell-Lewis’ behalf, which Powell-Lewis said she took as threatening — Duggan said she gave similar reports to all the candidates The Alliance supported.
She didn’t mention it, but DFER spent another $53,000 on Powell-Lewis’ behalf that election. All told, in addition to her own campaign, about $130,000 was spent to help elect Powell-Lewis to represent District 3. Her chief rival, Jamie Robinson, spent only about $13,000.
In Powell-Lewis' telling, over the next two years The Alliance in particular kept up the pressure on her and the other board members.
“We received text messages, we’d have meetings, we’d have coaching to tell us what we are supposed to say and do,” Powell-Lewis recalled.
Duggan rejected that characterization, saying that her group uses a variety of ways to inform board members on issues or address their questions.
Puppets and race
The vote on Smith becoming superintendent was striking because it broke along racial lines, but it is not so racially clear cut. The four Black board members supported Smith, who is Black, but four of the five White board members supported George, who is also Black.
Powell-Lewis said it goes deeper.
“The puppet masters are Black,” she alleged. “Now they might be receiving White money, but they Black."
Duggan rejected that characterization.
“There’s some implication that I’m some puppet master and that the people (on the board) are incapable of thinking for themselves, and that’s insulting,” she said.
“We don’t tell people to recite the gospel according to The Alliance,” she added.
Duggan said Thursday’s debacle represented a black eye for Baton Rouge, inflicting damage that the members of the current board will have to work hard to repair. She said those repairs will have to come quickly since Smith’s term as interim superintendent ends July 23.
“I’m hopeful. I don’t know the path forward,” Duggan said. “And I feel they are the people who have to figure that out.”
