Three months after the exit of Sito Narcisse, the slow-moving hunt for his replacement as superintendent of Baton Rouge public schools is accelerating with eight scheduled gatherings this week over the course of four days, including community meetings at Tara, Glen Oaks and Liberty high schools.
It all starts Monday night with a community meeting at Tara High and ends Thursday night with a special meeting of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board.
The board is working on twin tracks. It is developing strategic goals along with a fresh vision for the state’s second-largest school district. At the same time, it is starting to look for the person who can make those goals and that vision a reality.
The latter has taken a back seat to the former since Jan. 23 when Narcisse accepted a voluntary buyout, ending his three-year tenure as superintendent. Longtime district administrator Adam Smith was immediately appointed interim superintendent, but by law can serve no more than six months in that role, or until mid-July.
The School Board spent weeks in debates before spending $32,000 to hire Atlanta-based Cognia on April 12 to engage the Baton Rouge community, so residents can offer their thoughts on what the priorities of the school system should be. Originally, the board hoped to complete that process before starting a formal superintendent search. That timeline slipped, though, so now both are happening simultaneously.
Cognia, which is best known for accrediting schools and colleges, has organized six, hourlong community engagement meetings between Monday and Wednesday. Four meetings are intended for the general public — three of them in person and a fourth virtual. An in-person gathering for local business is also scheduled, as well as a virtual session for community groups and nonprofits.
Cognia is also asking Baton Rouge residents to complete a quick online survey, http://bit.ly/ebrstakeholder. Residents are asked to select three out of six priorities for the school system: improve student performance/outcomes; equitable use of resources; safety; staffing quality and retention; culture and operational efficiency; and communication and transparency. There is a place to write in any priorities not listed.
Cognia is supposed to complete a report of its findings for the board by May 17. The board plans to use the findings to settle on its top priorities as well as finalizing a job description for the superintendent’s job.
And if that were not enough sessions this week, two meetings focused on the superintendent search also are on tap.
The first, at 1 p.m. Wednesday, is the inaugural meeting of a newly formed committee of five board members that oversees the search. The second is a special meeting of the full board Thursday to consider the recommendations issued the day before by the ad hoc committee.
Using a special committee of board members is a departure from past searches for Baton Rouge school superintendents. In most cases, the board hired an outside search firm to do most of the work. In a couple of cases, only board leadership handled the search.
This new ad hoc search committee is chaired by Board President Carla Powell-Lewis. It also includes Board Vice President Patrick Martin V and fellow board members Mark Bellue, Emily Soulé and Shashonnie Steward.
Bellue, who took office in 2015, is the longest-serving board member, and Soulé is the newest, winning her seat in a March 23 special election.
In picking the committee lineup, Powell-Lewis said she sought out board members who she considered “neutral” and who weren’t already in leadership positions and consequently “underutilized.”
In December, Martin and Powell-Lewis voted not to renew Narcisse’s contract, while Bellue and Steward supported Narcisse. Soulé was not yet on the board.
The meetings of the ad hoc committee, she said, will be held at the School Board Office and be open to the public, though there is no plan to do a livestream.
On April 25, when Powell-Lewis announced the ad hoc committee, board member Mike Gaudet suggested that it hold private, as opposed to public, meetings.
“I personally would recommend against (public meetings) so you could have committee meetings where frank and free discussions could be had,” Gaudet said.
In 2018 and 2019, the school board convened several “task forces” that met privately with no more than four more board members at a time attending to avoid a quorum. The task forces were disbanded amid concerns about their legality and complaints of board members who could not attend the meetings.
The first duty of the new ad hoc committee will be to decide when to start advertising for Narcisse’s old job and the extent of that advertising. In February, the board voted to start advertising “no later” than Monday, May 6, but Powell-Lewis said she wants the ad hoc committee to consider the matter before actually placing an ad.
Louisiana law says that vacancies for school superintendents have to be advertised in the official journal of the parish — in this case, The Advocate — and that advertising has to continue for at least 30 days. There is no limit, though, on how many other places the job can be advertised.
Powell-Lewis said the ad hoc committee will also discuss what kind of outside help the board needs in conducting the search. She said the district’s Procurement Office is gathering information on potential search consultants.
She said she would like the board to pick a superintendent by late June so “that means that we would have to move pretty quickly.”
Smith’s term as interim superintendent ends about July 22. He is expected to apply for the permanent position — he served briefly as interim superintendent before Narcisse took the job and narrowly lost to Narcisse in January 2021 — but Smith has not made a formal announcement of his plans.
While the job will be open to anyone qualified who applies, Powell-Lewis said she would love to see good applicants with Louisiana school experience. She said too many past searches have passed over standout local educators for leaders unfamiliar with Louisiana.
“We have very talented people who have spent their careers in education in Baton Rouge or in the entire boot (of Louisiana),” she said.
By waiting until May to start advertising, the school board is searching relatively late in the hiring cycle for top school leaders. Powell-Lewis, however, said she is not worried that the late start will hurt the applicant pool. She said she thinks the people most interested in the job know about it and are still on the market.
“They are still going to apply.” she said.
Powell-Lewis said all board members and the public will see all the job applications submitted. She said the ad hoc committee will pick a handful of applicants for a first round of interviews, subject to approval by the full board. The best of those in the first round will be invited back as finalists for final interviews, she said.
