A series of contentious marathon meetings led up to the selection last week of LaMont Cole as top schools leader in Baton Rouge. By contrast, it took only five minutes Thursday to approve Cole’s employment contract.
pays him $285,000 a year as superintendent of the East Baton Rouge Parish school system, plus he can earn as much as $68,400 more in incentive pay.
His base salary is $30,000 more than the $255,000 a year Cole’s predecessor, Sito Narcisse, made during his three years on the job. But he is making much less than what Narcisse sought last year when he strove unsuccessfully to stay as superintendent. Narcisse’s proposed renewal package called for an annual 4% pay raise and would have made him the top-paid superintendent in the state.
The highest-paid superintendent in Louisiana is James Grey, to run the Jefferson Parish school system, the biggest school district in the state.
The School Board voted 7-0 in favor of Cole’s contract Thursday. It takes effect right away and expires June 30, 2028. Board members Dadrius Lanus and Cliff Lewis were absent at the time of the vote.
Cole has pledged to step down both from his District 7 seat on the Metro Council and his administrative job with CSAL Inc., a Baton Rouge-based charter school network. After the meeting, Cole said he will resign Friday morning from his two other jobs.
Cole has already withdrawn from the Nov. 5 ballot; he had been planning to seek a third term representing District 7.
James Finney, a frequent commenter on school matters, objected to entering into a contract with Cole before he quits his other jobs, even if there are just a few days of overlap. Finney pointed to that Cole is “required to devote his entire time to the office of superintendent of schools.â€
“The message you’re sending is, if you get powerful enough that it’s OK to break the law just a little bit,†Finney told the board.
In , Cole reported earning $137,734 at CSAL and $42,000 for serving on the Metro Council.
Cole’s superintendent contract was negotiated over the past week by Cole, Board President Carla Powell-Lewis and Vice President Patrick Martin V. Negotiations began after the board on July 24 unanimously selected Cole for the top job.
“Everybody involved was focused on what’s right for our students and our district,†Martin said. “And I’m really proud of the result.â€
The new contract shifts the focus from paying a superintendent more to stay in the job to paying more based on performance. Here are a couple of the new, annual performance targets Cole to which has agreed:
- A 3% increase in percentage of students earning Mastery and above on annual LEAP tests in math and English.
- Decrease by five the number of schools receiving "D" and "F" letter grades from the state.
Board member Nathan Rust has long pushed for such performance targets. He said he expects the targets will be updated once the board has a chance to review and update , which was adopted in 2021.
“This is a great start, and it places emphasis on a lot of the things that really make a difference for our district,†Rust said.
Cole receives no percentage-based pay raise in his contract. Unlike Narcisse, though, Cole will receive much smaller $1,000 annual step increases awarded to top district administrators.
Serving as East Baton Rouge Parish superintendent is a big career leap for Cole. He has no previous experience as superintendent or a top administrator for a school district.
The first half of was with the parish school system, serving as principal of Capitol and Park Forest middle schools.
Cole has spent the past 13 years as chief academic officer of CSAL Inc. East Baton Rouge has 80-plus schools and more than 40,000 students, while CSAL operates four schools that serve about 3,000 students.
Narcisse had never been a district superintendent when he was hired in January 2021, but he had been a top-level administrator in several districts before coming to Baton Rouge.
Overall, Cole’s package is not as generous as the compensation package Narcisse negotiated last year. That failed when the board voted in December not to renew Narcisse’s contract. Six weeks later, he agreed to a voluntary buyout.
If he had been renewed under the proposed contract, Narcisse’s pay would have jumped immediately from $255,000 to $310,000 a year, a $55,000 pay raise. Thanks to automatic 4% annual pay raises, Narcisse’s base salary would have grown a lot subsequently, maxing out at $362,656 by 2027 — almost $108,000 more than he was making previously.
Cole’s proposed starting salary of $285,000 is roughly equivalent to what Narcisse would have made by now if Narcisse had received 3% annual pay raises.
Cole can make substantial extra pay if he meets one or more of the 12 performance targets in his contract. Each target pays out the equivalent of 2% of Cole’s salary — $5,700 at present. Achieving all of them would generate an additional $68,400 a year for Cole.
By contrast, Narcisse made at most $10,000 more based on his performance. His proposed renewal contract would have increased his maximum performance pay to $20,000 a year. Narcisse had 10 targets he was tasked with meeting.
requires that public school superintendents who are overseeing districts with an academic letter grade of "C", "D" or "F" must include academic performance targets in their employment contracts. East Baton Rouge Parish has a "C" letter grade.
Also on Thursday, the board put off until Aug. 15 considering an employment contract with Adam Smith as the district’s new deputy superintendent.
Martin said he and Powell-Lewis opted to wait to allow the new superintendent the chance to participate in Smith’s contract negotiations. Cole’s contract also calls for him to evaluate and supervise Smith.
"We’ll have two weeks to do it instead of one, so I think we can safely come back," Martin said.
Being named deputy superintendent is a consolation prize for Smith, who spent the past six months as interim superintendent and unsuccessfully pursued the job permanently.
