The president of the Vermilion Parish School Board is standing behind the decision of a resource officer to remove and arrest a teacher who spoke out during the public comment period of the school board meeting Monday night. 
 
 Deyshia Hargrave, an English teacher at Rene Rost Middle School, spoke out against the pay raise for Superintendent Jerome Puyau. KATC-TV reported, the school board voted 5-3 during the meeting to give Puyau a new contract that increased his salary from $110,190 to $140,188. 
 
 RELATED: La. Assoc. of Educators releases video statement from teacher after dramatic arrest at school board meeting 
 
 “A superintendent, or any person in a position of leadership getting any type of raise, I feel like is a slap in the face to all the teachers, cafeteria workers, and other support staff we have,” Hargrave told the board during the public comment period of the meeting. 
 
 Hargrave reportedly asked the board several questions and was ruled “out of order” by school board president, Anthony Fontana, who tells 9News he had warned her the public comment portion of the meeting was for comments, not questions. After attempting to ask one more question, a city marshal, who also serves as a resource officer, approached Hargrave and began attempting to remove her from the meeting. The marshal handcuffed Hargrave and video shows a brief struggle in the hallway outside the meeting as the educator screamed, demanding to know why she was being arrested. 
 
 “What are you doing? Are you kidding me?” Hargrave screamed. 
 
 “Stop resisting,” the marshal said. 
 
 “I am not! You just pushed me to the floor!” Hargrave screamed. 
 
 Hargrave was booked into the Abbeville Police Department Monday night on charges of remaining after being forbidden and resisting an officer. She soon bonded out. The Abbeville city prosecutor said he would not file charges against Hargrave because the school board did not want to press charges. 
 
 In a phone interview late Tuesday evening, Fontana told WAFB’s Scottie Hunter he stands behind the officer’s actions, saying he believes the real blame actually falls on the teacher. “This is not about the board, it’s about the teacher and everybody wants to side on the poor little woman who got thrown out,” said Fontana. “Well she made a choice. She could have walked out and nothing would have happened.” 
 
 Fontana told KATC-TV he believes the incident was “set up.” 
 
 "The other four board members, now three, have been committed to getting rid of the superintendent. No matter how good the policy might be, they would be against it to cast disfavor on the superintendent to prevent him from getting a contract," Fontana told the Lafayette TV station. "The whole issue, from day one, was that they were not going to give him a contract." 
 
 Fontana told KATC Hargrave was not following the rules of the school board meeting. 
 
 "If a teacher has the authority to send a student, who is acting up and she can't control, out of the classroom to the principal's office, under our policy we have the same rules," Fontana said. "We have certain rules: three minute speech, it has to be civilized, it can't get off target, it has to be related to the issue before the board. That's not what was happening last night." 
 
 "The marshal did his job. He went over there to settle it down. He couldn't settle it down. She's the one who made the choice to continue speaking," Fontana said. "He was taking her out. He wasn't arresting her. He was escorting her out, telling her don't come back tonight. It escalated out in the hall and she ended up getting arrested. "He did exactly what he was hired to do. He followed the procedures completely. She's the one who made the choices that got her arrested." 
 
 RELATED: Teacher arrested after speaking out at Vermilion Parish school board meeting 
 
 The school board president also told KATC that he had to lock down the Vermilion Parish School Board office Tuesday because of death threats. The local police, sheriff’s office, and FBI were notified of the threats. 
 
 Fontana said he had to lock down the school board office Tuesday because of death threats. He said he had called local police, the sheriff's office and the FBI about the threats. 
 
 "I told my staff not to answer the phone unless they knew who it was. My staff was scared to death, because they got a call that a man said he was on his way to the school board office, making threats," Fontana told KATC. 
 
 Hargrave was booked into the local police department Monday night and soon bonded out. Ike Funderburk, Abbeville’s city attorney and prosecutor said he would not be filing charges against Hargrave because the school board did not want to press any charges against her. 
 
 The city prosecutor said the office that arrested Hargrave has been at board meetings over the past several months after board members requested security at the meetings. He told KATC that the marshal "was not acting in any official capacity on behalf of the city of Abbeville" at the time of Hargrave’s arrest. KATC reported that the Abbeville City Marshal’s Office said there has been no change in the employment for the marshal. 
 
 Hargrave issued a statement in a video Wednesday afternoon on the Louisiana Association of Educators' Facebook page. In the video, she told others not to be afraid to speak out against what they think is wrong. She also encouraged other people to get involved in their local communities and attend school board meetings. 
 
 A spokesperson for the Louisiana Association of Educators said Hargrave returned to her classroom on Wednesday and did not plan to speak to any local media about the matter until after she appeared on a national network news morning program. 
 
 Copyright 2018 WAFB. All rights reserved. ||||| Published on Jan 8, 2018 
 
 Teacher Deyshia Hargrave was questioning the school board how they can vote to give the superintendent a raise when school employees have not gotten a raise in years. Security officer from the parish Marshal’s Office told her to leave the room and he would soon arrest her in the hall and call the city police and put her in a patrol unit. The school board members in the video are (left to right) Laura Lebeouf, Chris Hebert, School Board President Anthony Fontana (doing most of the talking), Superintendent Jerome Puyau and school board member Chris Gautreaux. ||||| In the aftermath of the Deyshia Hargrave's arrest, some are raising concerns about the treatment of women. 
 
 Amid a national women's movement, some are looking at this case very closely and posing a question 'would there have been a different outcome if it were a man?' 
 
 Moments after Hargrave's arrest the issue was raised. 
 
 "I have never seen a man removed from this room," Laura LeBouef, a Vermilion Parish school board member, said after the arrest. 
 
 Along with LeBouef, some have implied that Hargrave may have been targeted because she's a woman. 
 
 The video has caused concerns, not just locally. Daytime show, The Talk, weighed in on the viral video. 
 
 "If that had been a male would he have been handcuffed and ordered out? She wasn't being violent," Sharon Osbourne said. "She wasn't lashing out at anybody and they did that because she's a woman." 
 
 Now some online are pointing to a recent video of a Vermilion Parish School Board meeting. 
 
 During the meeting, the son of a former board member addresses the board with an impassioned plea regarding his father, who had died a few days prior. 
 
 Noticeably, no marshal appeared to intervene. However, board president Tony Fontana stands by the arrest of Hargrave. He says gender isn't the issue. 
 
 "The board member on the other side forgot that we banned the husband of one of the board members from coming back on board property because of acting out in an incident," Fontana stated about Lebouef's comment. "We couldn't ban the board member so we banned the husband who was involved in it. So all this stuff about this is a woman's issue is B-S'" 
 
 On the topic of gender, Fontana is now facing even more criticism over an interview concerning Hargrave's arrest. 
 
 "Everybody wants to side on the poor little woman who got thrown out," Fontana told WAFB during a phone interview. "Well, she made a choice. She could have walked out and nothing would have happened." 
 
 President of the Louisiana Association of Educators, Debbie Meaux, disagrees with Fontana. "This didn't have to happen to this 'little woman' as he calls her, but her name is Deyshia Hargrave." 
 
 
 
 Click here to read the full story and more on this incident from KATC 
 

– The story of the Louisiana middle school teacher arrested after speaking up at a school board meeting continues, now with a closer look at how women in the district are treated. When Deyshia Hargrave was carted off in handcuffs Monday after calmly questioning the $30,000 raise for Vermilion Parish School District Superintendent Jerome Puyau, Laura LeBeouf, one of the two female members of the school board, noted, "I have never seen a man removed from this room," per KATC. Critics of the school board point to footage of another recent board meeting, where a man made "an impassioned plea" about his recently deceased dad and wasn't removed as Hargrave was. Even celebrity host Sharon Osbourne backed up Hargrave on The Talk, noting: "She wasn't being violent. … They did that because she's a woman." Stoking the fire are remarks made by school board president Anthony Fontana, who told WAFB Hargrave was "the poor little woman" whom "everybody wants to side [with]." "She could have walked out and nothing would have happened," he said. (In a video of the incident, Hargrave had indeed picked up her purse and walked out, only to be handcuffed in the hall.) Fontana also says Hargrave broke rules, including keeping her speech "civilized," and refuted any gender disparity, noting a board member's husband had once been banned. "All this stuff about this is a woman's issue is BS," he said. In a video posted on the Louisiana Association of Educators Facebook page, Hargrave says, "They … tried to take away my First Amendment rights to speak, and I'm appalled at this, and you should be, too." She tells NBC News that "it's sad that a woman has to be forcibly, violently removed from a board meeting for people to start caring."