Four years after falling short against Shashonnie Steward, veteran educator Tebbe Jackson is back on the ballot for the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board's District 4 seat — but this time there's no runoff to catch a late surge. Steward, the board's current president, is running on what she calls a stay-the-course platform built around rising test scores, a new employee pay raise and a $42 million bond for high school improvements. Jackson, a civics teacher at University View Academy, says Steward's agenda looks less like her own vision and more like an extension of outgoing superintendent Lamont Cole's.
The 2022 contest wasn't close in the way a rematch might suggest. According to The Advocate, Steward led a field of three candidates that year and went on to win the runoff, while Jackson pulled just 25 percent of the vote and never made it past the first round. This fall there are only two names on the District 4 ballot, meaning whoever draws more votes wins outright with no second chance to consolidate support.
Jackson isn't new to this race or to the district. She placed third in the 2022 election, as theadvocate.com reported at the time, after spending a decade working inside East Baton Rouge public schools as part of a career in education that stretched past 20 years, according to WAFB. Back then, all three District 4 candidates, including Steward, said they wanted more social and emotional learning services, better student literacy and bigger teacher raises — common ground that hasn't entirely disappeared from this year's rematch, even as the two candidates diverge sharply on tone and strategy.
Money Gap Narrows, But Outside Groups Still Favor Steward
Steward has raised more than $17,000 for her 2026 campaign — eight times what Jackson has brought in, though Steward has reportedly spent less than her challenger has, per the seed reporting. Outside education reform groups are once again backing Steward specifically. Red Stick Leaders for Students, which the Baton Rouge Alliance for Students operates, reported spending $5,500 on digital ads and texts on her behalf, while Democrats for Education Reform, working through Education Reform Now Advocacy, reported spending $13,280 on ads and mailers supporting her candidacy.
That outside spending echoes the pattern from 2022, when the Baton Rouge Alliance for Students was the biggest spender working to reshape the board, dropping nearly $1 million that fall, according to the same Advocate reporting. In that race, Steward led candidate fundraising with more than $19,400 compared with almost $2,100 for Jackson, and she also pulled in almost $84,000 in direct support from well-financed outside groups — the only District 4 candidate to receive that kind of backing. Two of those groups, Red Stick Leaders for Students and Stand for Children Louisiana, together paid roughly $186,000 to a consulting firm called The Core Group, about $26,000 of which benefited Steward's campaign. Jackson, notably, was part of a coalition of six school board candidates who pledged not to be swayed by outside money. Anyone curious about the current filings can check them directly through the Louisiana Board of Ethics campaign-finance portal.
A District Still Shrinking, A Realignment Still Unfolding
District 4 sits within a broader landscape where East Baton Rouge Parish schools have around 20,000 more seats than students, a gap the district cites as a driver of its realignment efforts, according to East Baton Rouge Parish School System. The district has been losing students steadily for years, and it closed nine schools in 2025 as part of that contraction. The most recent phase, known as Realignment 2.0, is affecting six schools with new start and dismissal times — younger children now starting earlier, older students later.
Four elementary schools are shifting from an 8:25 a.m. start to 7:45 a.m., with dismissal moving from 3:25 p.m. to 2:55 p.m., while Belaire High and Park Forest Middle are moving their start from 7:10 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and dismissal from 2:25 p.m. to 3:40 p.m., per details reported by WBRZ. Grade configurations are shifting too — Greenbrier and La Belle Aire are becoming third- through fifth-grade campuses, while Park Forest and Villa Del Rey are becoming pre-K through second-grade schools. Two elementary schools have also become foundational learning centers and doubled their number of teachers in core classes, though several schools reportedly lost both students and teachers once the changes took effect.
Belaire High, the largest high school in District 6 and a key anchor for neighborhoods north of Florida Boulevard stretching from the former Cortana Mall to the Livingston Parish line, saw its five feeder schools go through changes this year as part of the realignment process, with some of those adjustments driven by Louisiana's school accountability system. No District 6 schools were closed in the process, though four elementary schools did receive new grade configurations and larger attendance zones. Steward says the changes have been very positive overall and that her constituents are adjusting, pointing to foundational learning centers and expanded early childhood education as steps she predicts will help attract students back. Jackson sees it differently, criticizing what she describes as insufficient public information before the changes rolled out and saying she respects the need for change but not how this one was carried out. She wants the district to study why students are leaving in the first place to head off further closures, and has floated improving school facilities, adding public services at individual campuses, and leaning on community groups for support.
Charter Schools, Buses and a Superintendent Under Indictment
Charter expansion remains a fault line between the two. In past comments, Jackson said she worried about the rush to let in more charter schools and wanted to keep the focus on neighborhood schools, while Steward said she was open to charters but not to being inundated to the point that traditional schools get pushed out. This cycle, Jackson has softened that into a suggestion that the district adopt some of the programs charter schools offer, arguing those options aren't currently available within East Baton Rouge's own system.
Transportation has also become a flashpoint. Jackson says the district's fixes haven't been sufficient and that recent employee pay raises were too small to attract more bus drivers and support staff, even as the district continues losing drivers. She argues the board needs to act. Looming over all of it is the indictment of former superintendent Lamont Cole, who served during Steward's presidency and was indicted in August on multiple corruption charges stemming from his time on the Metro Council. Steward and fellow board member Cliff Lewis issued a joint statement the day of the indictment saying the legal process should proceed without premature judgment or distraction. The board has since initiated an external review of past school contracts and arranged for deputy superintendent Adam Smith to sign contracts alongside Cole. Jackson praised the board's response but argued Steward's broader agenda is indistinguishable from Cole's, and said the board's focus should stay on children rather than treating the indictment as a distraction.
Party Labels and a Rematch With No Safety Net
Steward, who is registered with the Democratic Party, is running in a district where 64 percent of voters are registered Democrats — a demographic reality that could matter in a race with no runoff. Jackson, who is registered with no political party, has argued that partisanship gets in the way of getting things done and that Baton Rouge too often puts party over children. Both candidates are Black, and both are vying to represent a community that has watched years of enrollment decline collide with a sweeping campus overhaul. At an election forum, Steward said the school district has accomplished tremendous things, even as she's acknowledged schools are improving academically without having reached their goals yet. Jackson, for her part, says she simply wants to represent the people and hopes voters elect her and other change-minded candidates, adding that she still believes it's possible to turn the schools around.
