“We're in a much better position,” said Cole, who spoke Monday to the Baton Rouge Press Club.
He said the school system had 72 teaching vacancies as of Saturday, down from close to 200 a year ago. And overall vacancies stood at 103, down from more than 300 a year ago.
Cole said that the vacancy situation would look better if not for the roughly 200 district employees who retired in mid-July.
The current number of vacancies was reduced thanks to the displacement of about 700 school employees due to the April 29 approval of a months-in-the-making realignment plan that closed nine schools, relocated four, gave seven new grade configurations and redrew attendance zones for 12. The changes are a long time coming for a school district with almost 40,000 students, but space for about 60,000.
“We made some difficult decisions, but they were necessary,” Cole said.
He said about 98 percent of those hundreds of displaced employees have been placed in new positions.
The transition process, however, took months, delaying when schools were allowed to hire from outside that displaced pool.
The realignment plan also included a series of additional changes, including new start times at six schools. Capitol and Glen Oaks high schools are the most affected, starting 100 minutes later at 8:50 a.m. The school system may expand the start time pilot to more schools as soon as January.
“We see students standing on corners at 5 o'clock in the morning before the sun comes up,” Cole said. “That is unconscionable in my opinion.”
The start time changes are connected to a larger set of changes to the system’s beleaguered transportation system. That system cratered in August 2023 when it began the 2023-24 school year with a severe shortage of drivers and working buses, leading to many children stranded or delayed in getting to and from school.
When school starts Thursday, nearly all of the 500 buses that will take the roads will be air-conditioned — only about half that number had air conditioning two years ago — and they will be running routes that have been reworked to be more efficient with the help of Prismatic, a transportation consulting firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Cole said the new school start times are helping bus routing by allowing for more direct routes. Cole said there are high school students whose afternoon commute is shrinking from as much as two hours to more like 15 minutes.
The school system also recently started a Transportation Opt-Out Program that allows families to decline bus service if not needed.
District buses this year are also rolling with new security cameras that have live remote access, GPS tracking and motion-sensor activation, as well as clouded and on-bus video data backup.
The district is adding technology to help in other ways. Cole noted a new digital customer service platform called Let’s Talk that employs artificial intelligence to expedite complaints.
“We’ve only seen it in effect for a short few weeks. We have seen drastic improvements in the way we provide customer service, and we are really excited,” he said.
Looking forward, Cole noted that another consulting firm, Huntsville, Alabama-based LEAN Frog, is reviewing how the district pays its employees, with planned pay raises for the 2026-27 school year. He said LEAN Frog indicates some school employees can earn more simply by merging salary schedules.
“We have a very complex salary schedule,” Cole said. “We have probably the most complex salary schedule in the state of Louisiana.”
The superintendent said he would like to see Baton Rouge schoolteachers paid on a par with, and perhaps higher, than their peers across the region.
“We’re going to work extremely hard to pay them what they deserve,” Cole said.
© 2025 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
