East Baton Rouge Parish voters returned three incumbents to office, elected one newcomer and sent three races to runoffs in the parish School Board races Tuesday.
The results so far are less dramatic than fall 2022 when voters replaced six of the board’s nine members in an election fueled by an avalanche of spending from outside interest groups. While less pricey this go-around, overall spending topped $500,000 in the leadup to Tuesday’s election and more spending is to come.
According to complete but unofficial results, the following four races were decided Tuesday:
District 4: Incumbent Shashonnie Steward defeated challenger Tebbe Jackson by a 86% to 14% margin.
District 6: Incumbent Nathan Rust defeated two challengers, Nicole Fitzgerald and Tristan Yperman, winning 59% of the vote.
District 8: Incumbent Emily Soulé defeated Melissa "Dani" Altazin by 134 votes.
Runoffs will take place Dec. 12. Here are the results in the three races with runoffs ahead:
District 2: Vereta Lee and Tristan George were on top of the three-person field, each with 35% of the vote. The third candidate, Robert Signater Sr., was last with 30%. All three are newcomers.
District 3: Incumbent Carla Powell-Lewis led a four-person field with 46% of the vote. Powell-Lewis is now in a runoff against Thomasina Joseph, who received 28% of the vote. Candidates Eugene "Rico" Williams III and Stephen Stewart trailed with 21% and 5% of the vote, respectively.
District 7: Michael Vincent led a three-person field with 36% of the vote for this open seat. Vincent is now in a runoff against Hannah Amoroso, who received 34% of the vote. The third candidate, Chris Spalatin, was last with 30% of the vote. All are newcomers.
The winners of these seven races will take office in January, serving four-year terms that end in December 2030.
They will join two incumbents — Cliff Lewis in District 5 and Patrick Martin V in District 9 — who won second terms after no one qualified to run against them.
Two seats, District 1 and District 7, will have new representatives since Mark Bellue and Michael Gaudet did not run again; Bellue is term-limited.
These seven newly elected individuals will govern the state’s second largest traditional school district, home to more than 36,000 students and almost 6,000 employees. About 78% of its schoolchildren qualify for public assistance. In terms of race/ethnicity, 68% are Black, 11% are Hispanic, 11% are White and 4% are Asian.
There were 191,765 registered voters eligible to vote in these seven races. They covered much of East Baton Rouge Parish. They don’t include Baker, Central and Zachary, which held their own School Board elections Tuesday.
The parish School Board election maps this year are much different than those used in 2022. While they were approved in May 2022, they were held up by a court challenge that has since ended. The new lines were drawn in a way that favors maintaining the current White majority on the board, with five White members, all Republican, and four Black members, all Democrats.
Of the 19 candidates who qualified and have remained on the ballot, four are Republican, 11 are Democrats and four are no party.
East Baton Rouge is a district that through the years has steadily lost students — about 4,000 fewer than four years ago — and of late has closed several schools. Currently, it operates 74 schools, with 63 traditional and 11 charter schools.
East Baton Rouge Parish schools have a C letter grade overall, placing 55th in the state out of the state’s 70 school districts.