Trouble with Destroying and instantiating game objects on new scene

I am very new to unity, this is the first project I have worked on. I have a scene where it is the player selection scene and then they click a button to select the player and put him in the new scene. This is where I am having trouble. I can load the new scene but it seems everything im trying is not working. (I have tried DontDestroyOnLoad but I am not sure if im implementing it correctly because my models are in a list and It was tricky) Any help would be appreciated. Sorry for sloppy or bad code/unity skills. im still learning :)

public class CharCreation : MonoBehaviour {

 private List<GameObject> models;
 private int selectionIndex = 0; //default indect of the model
 private GameObject ringO;
 private GameObject FlameStrike;
 static int temp;



 void Start()
 {
     
     models = new List<GameObject>();
     foreach (Transform T in transform)
     {
         models.Add(T.gameObject);
         T.gameObject.SetActive(false);
     }

     models[selectionIndex].SetActive(true);

 }public void Select(int index)
 {
     if (index == selectionIndex)
     {
         return;
     }
     if (index < 0 || index >= models.Count)
     {
         return;
     }
     models[selectionIndex].SetActive(false);
     selectionIndex = index;
     models[selectionIndex].SetActive(true);
     temp = selectionIndex;
 } public void ConfirmButton()
 {



     //PlayerPrefs.SetInt("CharacterSelected", selectionIndex);

     selectionIndex = temp;
     
     SceneManager.LoadScene("StartMap");
     
     models[selectionIndex].SetActive(true);
    
     print(selectionIndex);
 }