East Baton Rouge Parish School Board elects members and three runoffs

Voters in East Baton Rouge Parish handed down a split verdict Tuesday night, electing two newcomers, returning three incumbents, and sending three races into December runoffs that will decide the final composition of the board overseeing Louisiana’s second-largest traditional school district. The seven winners will take office in January on four-year terms running to December 2030, stepping into a system of more than 36,000 students and nearly 6,000 employees that has shed roughly 4,000 students over the past four years and now operates 74 schools, 63 traditional and 11 charter, under an overall C letter grade that ranks 55th of the state’s 70 districts, WBRZ reported.

The night’s clearest result came in District 1, where Democratic candidate Kimberly Bainguel defeated Republican Megan Garretson with 8,121 votes. Bainguel, a licensed clinical social worker who teaches at Walden University while working with families facing anxiety, depression, trauma and conflict, has said those same pressures follow students into classrooms and shape their ability to learn. She mentored through the Big Buddy Program and developed the Cultivating Awareness, Life Skills and Mindfulness program, which carries social-emotional learning tools into K-12 schools.

Three races head to a December 12 runoff

Three districts did not produce a winner Tuesday and will be decided December 12. In District 2, Democrats Tristan J. George and Vereta Lee finished a nose apart, George with 4,373 votes and Lee with 4,405, while Robert Signater Sr. took 3,834 and is out of the race. District 3 produced a runoff between Carla Powell, with 4,764 votes, and Thomasina Joseph, with 2,866; Stephen “Stewart” Stewart drew 542 and Eugene “Rico” Williams III trailed as well. In District 7, Michael Vincent led with 4,321 votes and Hannah Amoroso followed with 4,104, sending them head-to-head while Chris Spalatin’s 3,558 left him on the sidelines.

Districts 1 and 7 will have new representatives regardless, since incumbent Mark Bellue is term-limited and Michael Gaudet did not run again. All three District 2 candidates and both District 7 finalists are newcomers to the board.

Incoming board president defeats challenger

Three sitting members survived Tuesday. In District 4, board president Shashonnie Steward crushed challenger Tebbe Jackson, winning 10,932 votes to Jackson’s 14 percent share, an 86-to-14 margin the Advocate recorded. District 6’s Republican Nathan Rust, on the board since 2023 and a former appointee to the BREC Commission from 2023 to 2025, took 59 percent of the vote against Nicole Fitzgerald and Tristan Yperman. And in District 8, Republican Emily Soulé, first elected in a 2024 special election after helping the district tighten campus security with a rigorous check-in process, defeated Democrat Melissa Altazin by just 134 votes.

The returning members will join two incumbents who faced no opposition: Cliff Lewis in District 5 and Patrick Martin V in District 9, both of whom won second terms unopposed. Under new district maps approved in May 2022 but delayed by a court challenge that has since ended, the lines were drawn to preserve a White majority on the nine-member board, five White members, all Republican, and four Black members, all Democrats. Of the 19 candidates on Tuesday’s ballot, four were Republican, 11 were Democrats and four had no party affiliation.

Why this election matters for the parish’s classrooms

About 78 percent of East Baton Rouge Parish schoolchildren qualify for public assistance, and by race and ethnicity the student body is 68 percent Black, 11 percent Hispanic, 11 percent White and 4 percent Asian. The seven races covered 191,765 registered voters across much of the parish, though not Baker, Central and Zachary, which held their own school board elections the same night.

Tuesday’s outcome is a quieter affair than the fall 2022 election, when voters replaced six of the board’s nine members in a contest fueled by an avalanche of outside interest group spending. Spending this time still topped $500,000 leading up to the vote, with more to come before the runoffs, the Advocate reported. Still, the district these new and returning members will govern is under real strain: steady enrollment losses, several recent school closures, and a C grade that places it in the lower half of Louisiana districts.

Whether the December runoffs send more newcomers to the board or incumbents such as Powell win in District 3 remains the open question. What is settled is the calendar: runoffs December 12, new terms beginning in January, and four-year terms ending in December 2030 to govern a district where 78% of students qualify for public assistance and whose board map was drawn to favor maintaining the current White majority.