A potential court battle looms if the nine members of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board are unable to settle on a new, permanent superintendent by July 23, the day the contract expires for interim Superintendent Adam Smith.
A courthouse fight would complicate an already messy controversy.
On Monday, three teacher groups threatened a sickout on Aug. 8, the first day of school, if the board fails to make Smith superintendent. On Friday, supporters of Smith filed paperwork with the Louisiana Secretary of State to start recall petitions targeting the five board members opposing Smith.
Smith and finalist Kevin George each have the support of four members of the board; board member Michael Gaudet is supporting neither. If Smith or George cannot line up one more vote, the board will need to devise a legal way to establish temporary leadership for the school district until it can move past the current impasse.
George is director of LSU Lab School in Baton Rouge and former superintendent of schools in St. John the Baptist Parish. The other finalist is Andrea Zayas, former chief academic officer of Boston Public Schools.
The board plans to try again to pick a superintendent when it holds its regular monthly meeting on July 18, five days before Smith’s contract expires.
General Counsel Gwynn Shamlin told school board members Thursday that if they can’t settle on a new leader soon, the district is heading toward “untested waters.”
“There’s always the potential for a lawsuit against the board,” Shamlin said.
Smith was hired on Jan. 23 to serve as interim superintendent for six months. He replaced former Superintendent Sito Narcisse, who had just accepted a voluntary buyout.
The state law that sets the rules for the hiring and firing of school superintendents specifies that an interim superintendent like Smith cannot hold that job for longer than six months in any given 12-month period. That provision was added to the law in 2020. Prior to that legislation, sponsored by state Rep. Buddy Mincey, R-Denham Springs, the law had no rules for interim superintendents.
That 2020 addition to the law means the district can't legally extend Smith’s contract as interim superintendent past July 23. The law, however, does not spell out any consequences for employing an interim superintendent for too long.
One short-term workaround is to hire Smith as permanent superintendent — or another willing, qualified educator — but only for a short term, and in the meantime to continue searching for a long-term district leader.
In an interview with The Advocate, Shamlin said the state’s superintendent law sets a limit on how much time someone can serve as superintendent — four years — but does not set a minimum. He said a short-term superintendent contract that checks all the boxes required for permanent superintendents, including performance objectives, would likely pass legal muster.
Shamlin said he is waiting on a written opinion from a district-hired attorney, which will provide further guidance.
The law in question has provisions that might affect the minimum length of a superintendent’s employment contract. For instance, if a school board is not going to renew a superintendent’s contract, it has to give that individual at least 90 days' notice of that determination prior to the contract’s expiration date.
The poisoned debate may make it impossible to get five votes for even a brief continuation of Smith’s tenure.
Smith supporters continue to say there will be consequences if the board fails to hire Smith.
“Let me make this very clear: This is not a threat,” Angela Reams-Brown, president of the parish chapter of the Federation of Teachers, told board members Thursday night. “We will not report to work on the first day if we don’t have Adam Smith as superintendent.”
Storm Matthews, a teacher and active member of the parish chapter of the Association of Educators, went a step further Friday, officially launching recall petitions against holdout member Gaudet and the four board members who voted for Kevin George: Mark Bellue, Patrick Martin V, Nathan Rust and Emily Soulė.
“If you are not going to listen to the people who put you in office then we will actively work on removing you from office,” Matthews said at a news conference.
Matthews was flanked by several fellow Smith supporters.
“For me, it’s about the school board members not listening to the people,” said Tyler Colson, a middle school social studies teacher. “It could have been Joe Blow. If the people said, ‘We want Joe Blow,’ then let it be Joe Blow.”
Recall organizer David Ramsey, a district employee, said he personally plans to pursue a recall no matter what.
“Even if they go with Mr. Smith, we should keep on with the recall effort because another issue is going to come up and they’re not going to listen,” Ramsey said. “They need to understand that we put them in office, and we can take them out.”
For election districts the size of those on the parish School Board, Louisiana law says the signatures of at least 25% of the district's registered voters are needed to hold a recall election. These five recall efforts have until mid-January 2025 to obtain these signatures.
Twenty-five percent is a high bar. It took supporters of the city of St. George a year to gather that same percentage of signatures before they could hold the October 2019 election to incorporate that city. Barely 16% of the voters of School Board District 8 cast ballots in the March 25 special election that vaulted Soulė into office over Steve Crump.
Historically, many more recall petitions are filed than ever make it onto the ballot. Over the past decade, eight elected officials have faced recall elections. Of those, four were recalled, one resigned ahead of the election and three fended off recall. The most recent was on April 27 when voters in Elton recalled their Mayor Kesia Lemoine.
In June 2020, then East Baton Rouge Parish School Board member Connie Bernard faced a recall effort after causing a national stir for comments she made sympathetic to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and after she was caught shopping online during a board debate that led to renaming Lee High to Liberty High.
Even though the recall was endorsed by four fellow school board members, the effort soon fizzled, with recall organizers obtaining only about a quarter of the needed signatures.
That said, support for current members of the School Board can be very thin. Bellue won his 2022 reelection by only 21 votes, Gaudet won his 2022 race by only 124 votes, and Soulė won her recent election by just 499 votes.
