Lafayette’s school board-wide elections aren’t until next year. But one district is on the ballot next week, in a special election for a one-year term: District 2, encompassing Carencro and North Lafayette.
In the running are Ted Davidson, who was appointed interim board member in April to take the place of Chad Desormeaux — who resigned after an allegation of theft became public — and Dr. Stasia Herbert-McZeal.
Davidson, running as a Republican, is a retired Acadiana High School teacher and coach. Herbert-McZeal, a Democrat, is the dean of liberal arts and humanities at South Louisiana Community College. She is running for the fourth time.
The Current spoke with both candidates about their reasons for running, their thoughts on recent school board and superintendent tensions, ongoing lawsuits, and challenges facing the Lafayette school district.
After 36 years teaching, Davidson says, he’s accustomed to working in public service. Davidson was recruited to step in for Desormeaux’s seat in the spring, and decided to run. Now, “I want to complete what I started,” he says.
This is the fourth time Herbert-McZeal is running for the school board. She first decided to run years ago, when her daughter was an elementary student in District 2. Friends encouraged her to send her daughter to magnet schools outside the district, because the neighborhood schools had worse reputations. Herbert-McZeal, who herself went to school in Carencro, felt conflicted at the time.
“You know, I should not be bussing my child to another school when she lives within walking distance,” she recalls. “But there were problems at those schools, so we did.”
Ensuring the equitable distribution of resources for students in Lafayette’s lower-income areas would be a priority Herbert-McZeal says. She points to the 2024 decision to move Paul Breaux Middle School’s French and Spanish immersion programs, as well as the school’s gifted program, to other schools.
Both candidates highlight the challenges of falling enrollment across LPSS. But around questions of accountability and transparency, especially regarding the board’s relationship with the superintendent and its communication with the public, they differed.
Davidson attributes falling enrollment in part to declining birth rates. Charter schools are another source of competition, and the SpaceX development may draw teachers away from Lafayette and into Vermilion Parish.
In order to better compete with charters, Davidson highlights renovation projects across the district. “The new shiny things oftentimes draw people,” he says, an approach that’s in line with the superintendent. He also calls for wider certification of teachers in the district, to encourage long-term teacher retention.
To encourage teachers to remain, he also calls for greater support for them in their roles — like hiring more administrators to alleviate teachers’ paperwork and expanding performance-based financial rewards beyond simple test metrics. “Basic test scores can give you some answers, but we’ve got to find a way to reward those that are helping these more challenged students,” he says.
Moving the district’s career center into the old Ovey Comeaux High School, Davidson says, was a necessary step to compete with potential growth in manufacturing jobs stemming from SpaceX.
“I’ve got 80 kids in my district out here that wanted to go to the Career Center that were unable to,” he says. “They’re on a waiting list. So, that’s a priority for me.”
Herbert-McZeal says the school board should focus on maintaining existing facilities like Northside High, rather than launching costly and lengthy rebuilds, like the conversion of the Comeaux buildings into the new career center. Focusing on magnet academies, and the unique offerings of existing schools, should be a priority, she says.
“We have to stop looking at the shiny new things and start thinking about professional development. We need to stop moving people from school to school,” she says.
She cautions against over-emphasizing the Jump Start pathway, which prepares students for technical careers while dissuading them from taking tests, like the ACT, that they would need to apply to an academic university. That can make it more difficult for students — especially athletes — to attend university if they later decide to.
“Are we doing our due diligence in the high schools?” she says. Or, she poses, “are we just using them to win football championships?”
Davidson acknowledges that his time on the school board has not been the smoothest, from lawsuits stemming from the Comeaux closure to litigation over public comment policies. “It’s been several issues in the last few months,” he says.
Herbert-McZeal emphasizes unity and communication between members of the board. “I think we have to have some honest conversations and stop bullying each other and stop with the snide remarks,” she says. “We just really have to come together and be accountable. Not only to districts that we serve — be accountable to the system as a whole.”
In response to how the school board should handle its relationship with the superintendent — given last year’s forgery and corruption investigations, as well as a recent allegation of payroll fraud — the candidates had different answers.
“There’s got to be some accountability,” says Davidson, who also praises the district’s gains in math scores and other positive academic metrics. “We’ve got to somewhat take those things in account as well as some of these financial issues,” he says. An audit released earlier this year showed a $124 million deficit in the school system’s net position as of June 30, 2025, along with several other issues.
The board’s relationship with the superintendent, he says, is “pretty good.”
“He keeps us informed on things that are going on within the district and his communications with the board; it’s pretty good.”
At the same time, Davidson says, he would like the superintendent to be more communicative about changes he wants to implement, “and the reasons behind the change.”
Herbert-McZeal also calls for greater accountability, both for the superintendent and the board. “The person who’s been tasked with running the day-to-day of LPSS was put there by the board. The board should be held accountable for some of the decisions that they’re making,” she says. “It looks like at first the superintendent is just running amok. But you’ve got to circle back and say, ‘who controls him? It’s the board.’”
Both candidates said that removing the superintendent would be an unlikely conclusion.
The school board has also come under fire in recent months, with two lawsuits and criticism of its process for public comment. One lawsuit stems from the Comeaux closure, which occurred without the public hearing mandated by Louisiana law.
When asked about the closure, and the board’s process of handling public comments and complaints, Davidson declined to comment on ongoing litigation; the recent lawsuit names the full school board as defendants.
But he emphasizes that consent agendas are a typical component of public bodies and are used regularly for routine matters. “The question is, how do you define routine issues? Is financing a routine issue? Is that something that should be pulled out and have a lot of public comment?” he says. “The courts may tell us.”
Davidson says the public had enough opportunity to comment on Comeaux, anyway. “There was a lot of opportunity on that Comeaux issue for [the public] to make their case and then the day we voted on it, they had the opportunity again to come back and have their particular questions answered,” he says.
Herbert-McZeal says she would have called for more transparency, for example by sharing reports about Comeaux’s underutilization, and more communication with the public. The public “didn’t feel like they were part of the process,” she says. “And to keep saying, ‘We had this meeting. We had this.’ How many did you have? When did you have them?”
Davidson called attention to his decades-long experience working in the public school system. “I’ve been behind the lines there, so to speak, and I have a lot of experience,” he says. “I think I have more of a connection with the public school teachers and that understanding [of] what they have to go through.”
While Herbert-McZeal does not share that experience, she says her background in research would enable her to pursue the accountability the position calls for. “As someone who’s got a PhD, I like to research,” she says. “And that’s important to me, that we have the documentation to support the decisions that are being made. Not only will I listen, but I will investigate.”
