BATON ROUGE - Superintendent Lamont Cole turned himself in at the East Baton Rouge Parish Jail around 11 a.m Thursday morning. Just three hours after bonding out, he walked into the school board meeting to take his seat.

Superintendent Lamont Cole was indicted by a grand jury a day before East Baton Rouge Parish students returned to school.

A few hours after classes were back in session, he turned himself in to the East Baton Rouge Parish Jail.

"Respectfully, no comment," Cole told a WBRZ reporter at the jail.

Cole faces one count of malfeasance in office, two counts each of conspiracy to commit public bribery and money laundering between $20,000 and $100,000.

The charges stem from Cole's time serving on the Metro Council. According to arrest documents, Cole participated in a bribery scheme with Erica and Terral Jackson, defrauding several publicly funded programs, like the EBR city-parish blight remediation program, and former mayor Sharon Weston Broome's "Safe, Hopeful, Healthy, Baton Rouge" initiative.

Arrest documents detail that BROAD Innovation Marketing Firm, owned by the Jacksons, received several city-parish contracts for those programs.

Text messages referenced in the court documents detail a conversation between Cole and Terral, where Cole allegedly accepted bribes from Terral in exchange for swaying those contracts in Terral's way; their company allegedly received nearly $600,000 in unlawful contracts.

One of the messages, Cole allegedly says, quote: "He knows I'm getting a kickback from both of you and he plans to expose us."

In total, arrest documents say Cole accepted $40,000 in cash bribes and gifts from Terral.

Cole bonded out of jail Thursday afternoon and headed to the school board meeting shortly after, seemingly unbothered about his arrest.

"Welcome to the first day of the 2026 - 2027, school year, first day of school. We had an extremely positive first day of school," Cole said during Thursday's school board meeting.

While Cole left the meeting before it was over, we did try to speak with some of the board members about the next steps for the school system following his arrest; they declined to speak with us.

Board president Shashonnie Steward and vice president Cliff Lewis released a statement Wednesday, saying they would stand firm behind Cole during his legal battle.

"The ones that have not spoken on it are in the right; they're smart, we got re-election, they don't know what's about to happen, so keeping their mouths shut for now is the smart move until they have legal advice on what to do next. The ones that have spoken, I think they were too fast to talk," Teacher and Education Advocate Storm Matthews said.

Now, Erica and Terral Jackson face charges along with Cole. They were also indicted earlier this year on theft and conspiracy to commit theft charges connected to a CATS fraud investigation.