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.  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. “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. "The whole issue, from day one, was that they were not going to give him a contract." "She wasn't lashing out at anybody and they did that because she's a woman." 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 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. 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. Hargrave issued a statement in a video Wednesday afternoon on the Louisiana Association of Educators' Facebook page.
– 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."