More on that arrest of a teacher who objected to a pay raise for an administrator.

Deyshia Hargrave previously spoke out against the Vermilion Parish School Board (VPSB) for voting to give the standing superintendent nearly $30,000 raise, which she claimed was a “slap in the face” to hard-working teachers who haven’t seen a boost in pay in years.

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Since those in attendance at Monday’s board meeting were allowed to comment on superintendent Jerome Puyau’s pay raise, Hargrave chose to make mention of the “serious issue” she had with such action occurring.

“I have a serious issue with a superintendent or any person in a position of leadership getting any type of raise,” Hargrave said before the board and others in attendance. “I feel like it’s a slap in the face to all the teachers, cafeteria workers and any other support staff we have. We work very hard with very little to maintain the salaries we have.”

Hargrave also questioned Puyau directly on why he was willing to essentially take a pay hike that would affect the salaries of Vermilion Parish teachers, to which a school board member claimed her comments weren’t “germane to what’s on the agenda.” Hargrave continued to press the board members further, but she was eventually escorted out of the meeting by an officer on site.

And then the officer on site handcuffed her for no apparent reason, not to mention pushing her to the floor.

But the board still thinks she had it coming.

“Everybody wants to side on the poor little woman who got thrown out,” Anthony Fontana, the VPSB president, said to WAFB. “Well, she made a choice. She could have walked out and nothing would have happened.”

Erm. She made a choice to ask the school board questions at a public hearing. Is there some compelling reason she should be forbidden to do that, and roughly arrested if she does do it? A member of the board said her question was not germane to their agenda, but it’s far from clear why it wasn’t.

It’s true that people can always make a choice to avoid asking troublesome questions in order to avoid being roughed up, but that shouldn’t be necessary in a free society.