Handcuffed teacher wants apology
Louisiana governor laments how incident ‘cast a negative light’
A Louisiana teacher who was handcuffed and arrested after questioning school board members about the superintendent’s raise will not be prosecuted, but she demanded an apology Thursday, saying her First Amendment rights had been violated.
The episode, which drew national attention, has led to death threats against the district school chief and “cast a negative light” on the state, the governor lamented.
Deyshia Hargrave, a fifthand sixth-grade English language-arts teacher at Rene Rost Middle School in Kaplan, La., was taken into custody Monday night at a meeting of the Vermilion Parish School Board after she asked why Superintendent Jerome Puyau was getting a nearly $40,000 raise when teachers had not received a pay increase in years.
A video of the meeting by a crew from KATC-TV shows a city marshal ordering Hargrave to leave — at one point putting his hands on her — and then, in the hallway, handcuffing her while she was on the ground. He arrested her and put her into a police vehicle, the video shows. She was booked into jail but released, and authorities said she will not be prosecuted.
But that isn’t the end of the incident, which was seen around the globe after the video went viral on social and mainstream media.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said on his statewide radio show that he doesn’t believe Hargrave should have been arrested and that he was alerted to the arrest by his wife, Donna Edwards, who was a music teacher. The governor said his wife told him she was “personally offended.”
He also said, “I know there is going to be an investigation, but that was terribly unfortunate. It should not have happened and it cast a negative light on our state and, you know, it’s very regrettable.”
Puyau told the Daily Advertiser newspaper that he, his family and others in the school system had received death threats. School board offices were closed briefly a day after the meeting.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana said the episode raised serious constitutional questions and that it was investigating.
In a video posted by the Louisiana Association of Educators on its Facebook page, Hargrave said, “My voice was silenced. By silencing my voice they have also taken away — or tried to take away — my First Amendment rights to speak and I am appalled at this and you should be, too.”
“Hargrave told NBC News she is owed an apology from the marshal who arrested her and from the superintendent. “I was seriously panicked,” she said. “I’ve never been handcuffed in my life.”
During Monday’s meeting, at which the board was voting on the superintendent’s raise, Hargrave was called on to speak by board President Anthony Fontana. She asked board members why they were raising the superintendent’s pay, which was about $110,000 before the raise was approved at the meeting, when teachers had not received a raise for years.