Interim Superintendent is out of the running. Baton Rouge school board opts for 3 finalists. (2024)

In a shocker, interim Superintendent Adam Smith failed to make the cut Friday as the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board selected three other veteran educators, one from Louisiana and two from out of state, to advance as finalists to become the next superintendent of the state’s second-largest traditional school district.

The vote left a full board room at 1050 South Foster Drive aghast; almost all in the crowd had come to speak on behalf of Smith, a 28-year-old veteran of the school district.

Voting along racial lines, all four Black board members voted for Smith— board members Dadrius Lanus, Cliff Lewis, Carla Powell-Lewis and Shashonnie Steward.

Meanwhile, all five White board members all voted in lockstep for the three other candidates to advance as finalists. That's board members Mark Bellue, Mike Gaudet, Patrick Martin V, Nathan Rust and Emily Soulė.

Those three candidates advancing as finalists are Kevin George, director of the LSU Lab School; Krish Mohip, a chief education officer for the Illinois State Board of Education; and Andrea Zayas, former chief academic officer of Boston Public Schools.

Patrick Jenkins, chief operations officer for the Jefferson Parish school system, earned no votes.

The field started with 17 candidates who submitted applications by a June 10 deadline.

The lockstep voting Friday looked coordinated. If any one of the five prevailing board members had opted for Jenkins it would have forced a revote.

Afterward, Martin, the board's vice president, denied the vote was settled beforehand, but said the board members have discussed internally who they would support, and he said several employed similar logic.

"Part of the decision is clearly Adam (Smith) or somebody else, and if the decision was not Adam, then better to do that sooner rather than later," Martin said.

The exclusion of Jenkins is also notable. Jenkins is the only semifinalist who has worked for the school system previously, and he currently is a top administrator for the largest district in the state. And he has the most experience as a school superintendent, having spent 6½years as the top schools leader in St. Landry Parish, a little longer than George who previously spent six years as superintendent of St. John Parish.

The result was even worse for Smith than in January 2021, when in a very similar situation, the School Board rejected the impassioned pleas of dozens of speakers to pass him over in favor of Sito Narcisse of Washington, D.C., in a 5-4 vote.

"They didn’t listen to us last time, and they didn’t listen to us this time," said disgusted teacher Storm Matthews afterward —she helped organize support for Smith.

Dozens of people came out Friday and spoke in favor of Smith, and more posted comments online. A few speakers urged the board to consider all the semifinalists, but none mentioned any of the other candidates by name.

Phyllis Crawford, a 51-year veteran of the school and former principal of Sherwood Middle School, was typical of many of the speakers. She offered personal stories attesting to Smith's talent and character. For example, she said Smith has on more than one occasion used his own money to buy children's books and then presented them to a newborn mother in a local maternity ward, saying he looked forward to that child attending school in Baton Rouge.

"You don’t know what kind of jewel you have with Adam Smith," Crawford said.

Crawford also contrasted Smith's "deep, deep, deep ties to Baton Rouge," with the more limited, or nonexistent, ties of the other finalists.

"They don’t need another superintendent who is using Baton Rouge as a stepping stone to advance his or her career," Crawford said.

John Haymon, principal of Tara High, was one of several current employees who praised Smith. Haymon said Smith is the first administrator who helped him a decade ago when he was a struggling teacher at an alternative school, and thought enough of him years later to promote him to high school principal.

Like many speakers, Haymon spoke highly of Smith's professionalism and how he has promoted a positive work environment, which Haymon said hasn't always been the case.

"The last leadership team made some pretty radical shifts and moved some amazing principals from their positions," he said. "Some not-so-nice and not-so-professional people were hired, and a lot of loyal people have been treated very poorly and unprofessionally over the last three years."

The ongoing search was necessitated by the departure of Narcisse, who had never lived or worked in Louisiana before 2021. In January, Narcisse accepted a voluntary buyout, six weeks after the School Board voted 5-4 to not renew his contract.

Smith, who first began with the school system in 1996, immediately stepped in as interim superintendent, a job he can legally hold for only six months, until July 23. This is Smith's second go-around as interim superintendent; he held the post for a few months before he was edged out by Narcisse for the top job.

Seven board members supported Smith becoming one of five semifinalists, but board members Bellue, Gaudet and Martin weren’t willing to let him advance to the finals.

After the vote, Lanus, who was a supporter of Narcisse in 2021, said he will not be voting at all on the final selection of a superintendent. He urged his colleagues to set aside politics and support Smith.

"Give him a shot, give him an opportunity," Lanus said.

Martin is the only one of the five board members that rejected Smith who spoke Friday during the meeting.

Martin said it was a very hard decision for him personally because he said he really likes Smith and has great respect for him as a person. At the same time, Martin said he is more impressed with the other candidates' potential to improve a school district that academically historically ranks relatively low compared to other school districts in the state.

"My criteria for a superintendent is who is most likely to dramatically improve the education that we provide to our kids," Martin said.

The vote occurred during a rare late Friday afternoon special meeting. George, Mohip and Zayas will return in person in the second week of July for rounds of community and board interviews. A final vote is scheduled for July 11.

Smith’s exclusion is part of a pattern that goes back decades.

Charlotte Placide, who served as superintendent from 2004 to 2009, is the only one of the nine most recent superintendents who was a veteran employee promoted from within. Warren Drake, who held the job from 2015 to 2020, was a veteran employee of the school system but spent 13 years elsewhere, including 10 years as superintendent of top-ranked Zachary schools.

The next leader of the East Baton Rouge Parish school system, which has more than 40,000 students, will face an array of challenges.

Academically, the school system has recovered some after falling behind during the pandemic, but its growth is slower than the state overall, and it has two middle schools in danger of state takeover.

Financially, the school system is in good shape at the moment, thanks to a strong local economy and tens of millions of dollars in COVID relief funds. Those COVID funds, however, expire this summer. And there is a still-unresolved school transportation crisis that marked the start of the current school year, plus ongoing efforts to significantly boost pay across the board for the district’s roughly 6,000 employees to keep pace with the job market.

An April 26 decision by the Louisiana Supreme Court greenlighting the formation of a new city of St. George also renews the possibility of the future formation of a companion St. George school district, carved out of the parish school system.