As the buses began rolling up at the rear of Capitol Middle School on Thursday morning, the first day of school, LaMont Cole shook the hands of the kids as they disembarked.
“Who’s the best?” Cole asked students before answering himself: “CMS!”
It’s no accident that Cole chose this Baton Rouge middle school as his first stop on a long day. The new superintendent of the East Baton Rouge Parish school system was first a student at the school, and in 1998 got his start in education here, spending five years here as an English teacher.
Back then, the school was down the street, where Capitol Elementary is located now.
In August 2006, Cole returned to Capitol Middle, spending two years as its principal. He was rarely in his official office. Instead, he relocated to the school lobby. It’s a spot where you can see down almost every hallway.
“I put my desk right there,” Cole said, pointing to the middle of the lobby, “during the day so I could see what was going on.”
Cole spent two years as principal, but never really left. In 2015, he joined the Metro Council representing District 7, representing the Capitol area during his nearly nine years on the council. He recently resigned from the council after being named on July 24 as superintendent of the state’s second-largest school district.
Cole said he normally gets about five hours of sleep a night but does not bother to sleep at all before his first day of school each year.
“I get dressed, prepared. Iron my clothes,” he said. “Think about what I want to say to parents, what I want to say to students.
He said he went to the Central Office at 5 a.m. Thursday to write a welcome back email to school employees and then arrived at Capitol Middle at 6 a.m.
“It's a good feeling, it’s exciting to be back in the community where I grew up,” Cole said Thursday, “in the school where I attended, taught and lived.”
First days of school in East Baton Rouge are always tricky affairs, with lots of moving parts. The stakes this year were much higher due to a disastrous start to school a year ago, largely due to the meltdown of the district’s transportation department.
The firestorm lasted for more than a month, and led to a two-day sickout by bus drivers, multiple changes in school schedules and widespread community outrage.
The fallout was part of what led to the early departure of then-Supt. Sito Narcisse, who took a voluntary buyout in January.
This year promised to be a mess again when, in early July, three employee groups said they would not show up for work on the first day of school and perhaps longer if then Interim Supt. Adam Smith was not named permanent superintendent.
An ugly impasse on the parish School Board was broken only after the three finalists for superintendent withdrew and Smith agreed to drop out and throw his support to Cole, who applied for the job at the 11th hour.
In the two weeks since landing the job, which he has described as his “dream” job, Cole has busied himself with a round of public appearances and visited schools and departments. He said he’s visited twice this week with the beleaguered Transportation Department. He said he’s spoken with Interim Director Rob Howle, who took over the department in March, and other department leaders.
“They assure me they are going to do much better and have much less challenges than they had last year,” Cole said.
He said he spent four hours Monday talking with bus drivers, hearing a litany of concerns going back decades.
“They were excited I came and spoke but they were even more excited that I stuck around,” he said.
Cole said he will reassess midday Thursday and have a better idea of how well things are going.
