The Current is reporting that an electrical supervisor with the Lafayette Parish School System says he was targeted and disciplined for cooperating in a forgery investigation that led to a former district director’s January indictment. School officials dispute his account.
Here's what the newspaper is reporting:
The licensed electrician, Huey Joseph Manshack, has been employed by LPSS for more than 15 years.
His Lafayette attorney, David Rutledge, is seeking state whistleblower protection for his client.
In a Nov. 6 letter to Superintendent Francis Touchet alleging retaliation, Rutledge writes that on May 27 his client was instructed by two of his supervisors — Robert Gautreaux, then the district’s construction, facilities and maintenance director, and John Young, who is in charge of maintenance — to meet with “an LPSS investigator.”
At the time, the system was conducting an internal probe of alleged forgeries of quotes from contractors for a school drainage pipe project that was awarded to unlicensed contractor Bosco Oilfield Services in the summer of 2024; the employees’ interactions on that day were related to the decision to hire Bosco for the work.
A state licensing board notified LPSS of the suspected falsifications on May 21; by mid-June LPSS had turned the matter over to the Lafayette Police Department for criminal investigation.
Manshack told his attorney that Gautreaux instructed him on what to tell the investigator. Later in the day, Young told Manshack to meet with the investigator at Live Oak Elementary, according to the letter.
“The [school] investigator prepared a written statement, claimed it reflected Mr. Manshack’s words, and demanded that he sign it without allowing him to read it,” Rutledge writes of the May interaction. “Mr. Manshack refused to sign and was denied a copy of the statement.” The investigator is not named in the letter.
To read The Current's full article with all the details, click here.
