BATON ROUGE — Louisiana's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education appointed a new board of directors for the Impact Charter School on Friday after state auditors alleged its director used school money to fund an elaborate lifestyle that included trips to Europe and Egypt and payments for expensive cars.

State schools Superintendent Cade Brumley said board members from a broad cross-section of the Baton Rouge community would govern Baker-based Education Explosion, which operates Impact Charter School.

The new Impact board includes:
- Perry Daniel, Vice-President of Business Development at educational consulting company Stride
- Marguerite Mack, Planning and Zoning Commissioner for the City of Baker
- Mikki Matthews, public finance banker at JP Morgan Chase and member of City Year Baton Rouge board
- Pheriche Perkins, Executive Director of Pointe Coupee Early Childhood Coalition
- Achilles Williams, Senior Advisor at the Caerus Accounting and Tax Firm
- Torrence Williams, Director of Teacher Advancement and Executive Director of Ready to Teach Louisiana at the Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana
- Willie Williams, Jr., Baker community member and paper company employee

"There is...a tremendous amount of responsibility when one choses to serve on a board in the sector of education," Brumley said at the meeting.

Attorney for Impact Charter Ron Haley called the action illegal and said he would challenge it.

"This is an unfortunate day where we had a state agency completely overreach and reconstituted the board without any public comment on who these board members are, without any consideration for the school, the students," Haley said. "This was an ambush, this was a plot, this was a plan."

This meeting was scheduled in response to an audit published by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office. The audit alleged Impact Charter chief executive Chakesha Scott misused school funds for personal trips and purchases. 

"Members must comply with and carry out all applicable federal and state laws and policies governing the school. They must carry out the visions of a charter school contract," Brumley said at the meeting. "And when any of these core responsibilities are not being met, as an authorizer, BESE has an obligation to take action."

Impact Charter officials said the audit was full of misinformation and fueled by a political agenda. That audit came after a raid at the school in May 2024 by the Legislative Auditor's office.

When the audit was initially published, Haley took up the case for the charter school, saying the report was full of factual errors and requesting a restraining order on the audit being released to the public. After that was thrown out, Scott threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against the auditor's office.