Four Black candidates are competing for a single East Baton Rouge Parish School Board seat next week, with incumbent Carla Powell-Lewis trying to fend off three challengers in a district that is 89% Black and 71% Democratic. The race unfolds as the school system grapples with a sharp enrollment slide and a sweeping realignment that is closing and consolidating campuses across the parish.
Powell-Lewis, 47, joined the board in January 2023 and later rose to vice president and then president, holding that post for a year, according to The Advocate. She teaches high school civics at the online Cypress Connections Academy, based in Gonzales, and has a son who graduated from Scotlandville High. Her opponents are Stephen Henry Stewart, who works at Louisiana Rebirth Blended Learning Academy; Eugene “Rico” Williams III, a dean at Helix Aviation Academy; and Thomasina Joseph, who spent six years as a guidance clerk at Scotlandville High and now serves as executive director of the Clean Green Neighborhood Alliance.
A District Still Rattled by Turnover and Turmoil
The board Powell-Lewis sits on has weathered years of upheaval, including the tenure of former Superintendent Sito Narcisse, a fall 2023 transportation crisis, Narcisse's forced buyout and a chaotic search for his replacement, the report notes. That search ended with the board hiring Lamont Cole as superintendent after he submitted a last-minute application. Education reform groups had opposed promoting Adam Smith to the permanent post, and Smith ultimately withdrew from consideration.
Cole was indicted in August on multiple public corruption charges stemming from his prior role on the Metro Council, per the same Advocate report.
Enrollment Keeps Sliding as Schools Shrink
The backdrop to this race is a school system that keeps losing students. Parish enrollment stood at 38,244 on the 18th day of the 2025-26 school year, down 1,452 students from the day after Labor Day 2024, a decline of about 3.7% year over year that would amount to roughly 14% over six years if the trend continues, according to The Advocate. Replacement operators at the former IDEA Public Schools campuses are now teaching 1,123 fewer students than those schools once enrolled.
Scotlandville High, where Joseph once worked, has felt the drop acutely. The school lost 168 students compared with the prior year, a roughly 30% decline since before the pandemic, and now enrolls 650 students — half what it had a decade ago. Not every campus is shrinking, though: Tara High added 72 students this year and now has almost 1,100, part of growth of nearly 48% since fall 2021. Joseph has said schools lose students in part because they are unwelcoming and fail to adequately address community needs, while Williams has said closure decisions should weigh both financial rationale and educational opportunities. Stewart wants a public information campaign aimed at drawing students back.
Nine Schools Closed Under Cole's Realignment Plan
The board voted in 2025 to close nine schools and revamp others under Cole's realignment plan. The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board unanimously approved that plan, which moves more than 10,000 students, though the staffing impact has been reported differently by two outlets: WBRZ put the number at about 1,000 staff members, while a separate Advocate report on the 28 affected schools cited roughly 1,400 district employees. Powell-Lewis wants the district to study patterns of student movement, including transfers to and from charter schools, if she is reelected.
The board has also moved to shore up its workforce. It approved a large employee pay raise in June that Cole championed. The budget the board unanimously approved raises starting pay for teachers with a bachelor's degree by $6,000, to $56,000, according to WRKF. The lowest-paid bus drivers saw their annual pay climb by about $1,260, to roughly $22,140 for a 180-day work year.
Candidates Lay Out Their Pitches to Voters
If reelected, Powell-Lewis says she will push to add parent-teacher associations at schools that lack them, launch a citywide literacy initiative called Zero to 100, and revive subsidized driver's education programs at local high schools. She has previously disavowed the education reform groups that backed her 2024 campaign, telling the paper that board actions one contentious night were about money rather than children.
Joseph has picked up several campaign endorsements, including one from Tramellle Howard, and has three children who graduated from Scotlandville High. Williams, who has worked full-time at Helix Aviation Academy since it opened in 2021 and also works on Southern University's library staff focusing on technology and information services, founded a nonprofit called Men and Women of Empowerment Inc. in 2014 that he says remains active, though it has not posted online about its activities since spring 2023. He has four children, the youngest of whom attends Southern University Lab School, and previously ran for Metro Council in 2020, finishing last in a four-candidate field won by incumbent Chauna Banks.
Outside Money Loomed Large in the Last Race
Stewart, who has one grown child, unsuccessfully applied in 2020 to become Louisiana's state superintendent of education. Unlike his three rivals, who are registered Democrats, Stewart is not registered with a political party.
Outside political spending shaped the last District 3 race in a major way: in 2022, outside groups spent at least $14 on Powell-Lewis's behalf for every dollar she spent from her own campaign funds, per the Advocate's reporting. This cycle, Education Reform Now Advocacy — described as the political arm of Democrats for Education Reform — has reported spending $6,000 attacking Powell-Lewis through digital ads and mailers, and another $6,890 opposing District 2 candidate Vereta Lee. Voters in District 3 will decide the race on Nov. 3.
