When LaShawnDa Noel was a little girl, she had two plans for her future. First, she would become an opera singer. Second, no matter how far away her travels took her, she would always come back home to Arkansas. Though the Little Rock native did attend Henderson State University on a voice scholarship, she opted for a career in higher education rather than performance. Still, the other idea was spot on. Noel has traveled all across the country for her work, and with a few twists along the way, that path led her to her current role as CEO and Superintendent of Arkansas Lighthouse Charter Schools.
Fresh out of college, Noel worked as a special projects manager for Century Campus Housing of Houston. She served as liaison between the company and various universities, and that meant flying out to every city where the group had a building project underway. She worked for Century Campus Housing until 2001, but after the events of 9/11, her mother was afraid of the prospect of constant air travel and convinced Noel to come home. Back in Little Rock, Noel held a variety of positions, from nonprofit to profit, in public, charter and higher education.
“Ironically, if you had told me years ago that I would end up in education, I would have told you no,” Noel said. “I was a political science major. I have always been on the operations side of the house.”
Before taking on her current role, Noel again found herself traveling, this time as vice president of operations for a national charter management organization, or CMO. In 2020, she, along with the rest of the country, was grounded for a while. It was in this in-between period that she made her way to a more permanent position with Arkansas Lighthouse Charter Schools.
“Under the old structure, I served as executive director and superintendent,” Noel said. “It just so happened that the superintendent at the time was moving to be with her husband in Texas. It left this opening, and they needed someone to sit in the space temporarily. So, I said, ‘I’m here in Arkansas, and I can’t do anything else. Why not?’ I’ve been here ever since.”
As if running a school district through a global pandemic wasn’t challenging enough, Noel has also overseen huge changes to ALCS in her short tenure. One of those was combining three Lighthouse districts – Pine Bluff, North Little Rock and Jacksonville – into Arkansas Lighthouse. Also under her administration was the separation of the district from the national CMO in 2022. Though Noel was initially a part of the larger organization, the local board asked her to stay on with ALCS.
“I believe that no CMO should stay in perpetuity,” Noel said. “You plant it, you teach the folks how to fish, and then you go on to plant elsewhere. That concept speaks for itself, because if the work is great where you are, other communities will want you to come in and do the same thing.”
Noel helped the district take the training wheels off, so to speak, and prove it can manage on its own. The added benefit is ALCS can put money it would have spent on national membership back into the coffers for the benefit of its local programs. Leveraging the district’s finances to make the most impact on the scholars it teaches is a major part of Noel’s dual role as CEO and superintendent.
“One of the things I think people don’t really understand is that charter schools are typically public charters. We receive some of the same public funding as your traditional public schools,” Noel said. “The CEO piece is because we don’t receive all of the funding, or as much of the funding, that a traditional public school does. We’re always ready to tell our story and talk to people about why they should give us money so we can continue educating the scholars in Arkansas.”
Noel not only balances the needs of the board with those of teachers, staff and students, she is constantly promoting the district to outside groups, working to secure the support and partnerships that keep the district growing in a positive direction. In November, Noel and other representatives of ALCS traveled to Miami to participate in the second annual YASS Prize Accelerator and Pitch Contest. The district is one of 32 semifinalists competing for the $1 million prize.
“Most of the time, people say not to mix industries,” Noel said. “But I think when you can integrate different industries and different styles of leadership, it’s the best of both worlds. And let’s be clear: The world is integrated. When we look around, you see that different industries and different types of organizations are coming together to move systems and processes forward. So why not think about education in the same manner?”
Partnerships have allowed the district to invest in financial literacy programs that teach students and their families how to start saving for college. ALCS also has a strong relationship with the Department of Defense, as one of its schools sits on the Little Rock Air Force Base – one of only 11 schools in the country housed in a military installation. In another of its programs, the AgriSTEM initiative, ALCS sent students to the University of Arkansas for a week over the summer. Students donned lab coats and got hands-on experience with the agriculture program, from livestock to planting.
“Oftentimes, the scholars that we’re working with would never have those types of opportunities presented to them,” Noel said. “To be able to see that, and to see their faces when they are there experiencing it, it’s just major.”
Wearing both the CEO and superintendent hats has come with its share of challenges. During the separation from the national organization, reassuring teachers and staff of the stability of the district and its plan for the future was a key part of Noel’s role. Coming into the position during the pandemic was no small feat, either, and she is proud the district never closed, even as it transitioned to virtual learning and back. Noel works to make space for conflicting interests in service of the district’s greater good, oftentimes explaining business decisions to educators and educational needs to businesspeople.
For Noel, all those hurdles have been welcome ones. In fact, it was probably because of the added difficulty that she took the position at all.
“If you ask my mom, she would probably say I’ve always been that way — the kid who was going to climb to the top of the jungle gym and try to jump,” Noel said. “I guess I have always been up for a good challenge.”
Noel also admitted that a lot of the obstacles she faces tend to be self-inflicted. As with many women in leadership positions, she has had to learn to overcome the urge to second-guess herself.
“There are still days where I think, ‘Should I be in this room? Am I capable of sitting at this table?’ That negative speech can sometimes get the best of us,” she said. “The more I can get out of my own way and say, ‘I can do this; I’m supposed to be here,’ the more successful I am.”
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