LPSS Employee Claims Retaliation After Cooperating in Forgery Probe That Led to Director’s Indictment
LAFAYETTE, La. (KPEL News) — A veteran Lafayette Parish School System employee says he was targeted and disciplined after cooperating with the forgery investigation that eventually landed former LPSS construction director Robert Gautreaux in front of a grand jury. Now his attorney is seeking state whistleblower protection and raising the possibility that the forgery problem runs deeper than anyone has publicly acknowledged.
Huey Joseph Manshack, a licensed electrician who has worked for LPSS for more than 15 years, says he's been written up twice, subjected to workplace hostility, and possibly had his own name forged on district purchase orders. All of that came after he sat down with school investigators and later cooperated with Lafayette Police detectives working the criminal side of the case.
His Lafayette attorney, David Rutledge, sent a letter to Superintendent Francis Touchet on Nov. 6 laying out the retaliation allegations in detail. LPSS disputes key parts of the account.
What Manshack Says Happened
According to the Nov. 6 letter, the trouble started on May 27, when two of Manshack's supervisors directed him to meet with an LPSS investigator. Those supervisors were Robert Gautreaux, then the district's construction, facilities and maintenance director, and John Young, who oversees maintenance.
The session was part of the district's internal probe into alleged forgeries of contractor quotes tied to a school drainage project awarded to unlicensed contractor Bosco Oilfield Services the previous summer. Manshack's conversations that day were connected to the decision to hire Bosco for the work.
Rutledge writes that Gautreaux instructed Manshack on what to tell the investigator before the meeting. When Manshack sat down with the investigator at Live Oak Elementary later that day, things went sideways. The investigator allegedly prepared a written statement, told Manshack it reflected his words, and demanded he sign it without letting him read it first. Manshack refused and was denied a copy of the statement.
The next morning, May 28, Manshack received a disciplinary write-up from Gautreaux's department. It cited an incident alleged to have occurred more than a year earlier. Rutledge calls both disciplinary actions "demonstrably without merit" and says existing work orders disprove them.
Months later, Manshack sat for a second interview, this time with an LPD detective investigating the forgery allegations as a criminal matter. On Oct. 15, he was written up again. According to Rutledge, Manshack had never received a formal write-up before the investigation began.
"He has been subjected to ostracism, hostility, and negative treatment within his department," Rutledge writes of his client.
A Possible Forgery Involving Manshack Himself
The allegations take a sharper turn from there.
Rutledge says two maintenance purchase orders from May 2024 appear to carry Manshack's name but not his actual signature or initials. The $750 order misspells his last name as "Manshock." The $22,119 order appears to violate the LPSS maintenance spending limit policy.
RELATED: First Arrest Made in Lafayette School Construction Investigation, LPSS Responds
Manshack told his attorney he didn't sign either document.
"He doesn't know if there are others out there," Rutledge told The Current.
LPSS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the signature discrepancies, The Current reported.
What LPSS Says
LPSS attorney Bob Hammonds pushed back on the allegations in a Nov. 20 letter to Rutledge.
At the May 27 meeting, Hammonds says the LPSS investigator denies preparing a written statement or demanding Manshack sign anything. On the May 28 writeup, Hammonds says it simply doesn't exist in Manshack's personnel file and that Human Resources has no knowledge of any such action.
Hammonds acknowledges the Oct. 15 reprimand, attributing it to Manshack's failure to prioritize work orders after two prior warnings. He also notes that all craft supervisors faced the same scrutiny, not just Manshack, and that since October, Manshack has met all performance expectations without any additional negative feedback.
"Since the LPSS denies that it has taken any retaliatory conduct against Mr. Manshack, there is nothing for it to cease," Hammonds writes.
But Rutledge provided The Current with copies of both conference forms he referenced in his letter to the district. Both are titled "Lafayette Parish School System Conference Form." A former LPSS director who reviewed the documents confirmed the conference form is the district's standard write-up document.
The May 28 form cites an alleged incident involving "an overpowering tone" with a Southside school principal on April 15, 2024, and a separate "unprofessional" interaction with a librarian at Youngsville Middle School in August 2024. The exact date of the Youngsville incident isn't listed.
"I find it very suspicious that they would wait 30 days to write him up on one thing and nine months later for another thing," a former LPSS director told The Current.
The May 28 form also leaves open the possibility of further discipline at the superintendent's discretion. Unlike the October form, it carries no signatures from a supervisor, a witness, or Manshack himself.
The Bigger Picture: An Ongoing Public Corruption Investigation
This dispute unfolds against the backdrop of one of the most serious government accountability stories in recent Lafayette Parish history.
Gautreaux was indicted by a Lafayette Parish grand jury on Jan. 21 on 11 felony counts: seven counts of filing false public records, two counts of first-degree injuring public records, and two counts of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors say he fabricated contractor quotes for multiple school construction projects, used the letterhead of local companies to make the forgeries look legitimate, and then submitted the documents into district records to satisfy policy requirements.
He has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Jordan Precht, says there is "significantly more to this story than what has been disclosed so far."
Gautreaux is an elected member of the St. Landry Parish School Board and remains a teacher in the LPSS system. He was arrested by LPD in August 2025 and has been working at the W.D. and Mary Baker Smith Career Center ever since.
The Louisiana Attorney General's Office is separately investigating top LPSS officials in an ongoing public corruption probe. Sources familiar with the investigation say AG investigators are looking at whether anyone above Gautreaux was aware that contractor quotes were being manipulated.
The state licensing board first flagged the suspected forgeries in a May 21 letter to Superintendent Touchet, months before LPD took over the criminal investigation in mid-June 2025. Despite the AG's active probe, the Lafayette Parish School Board awarded Touchet a $65,000 raise and a contract extension through December 2029.
Attorney: Retaliation Against Whistleblowers Is 'Illegal, Plain and Simple'
Rutledge is framing Manshack's situation squarely within Louisiana's legal protections for public employees.
"Retaliation against whistleblowers is illegal, plain and simple," Rutledge told The Current. "My client did what the law and our community expects public employees to do to safeguard the faith and integrity in our public institutions."
Beyond state whistleblower statutes, Rutledge points to the Louisiana Code of Ethics, which prohibits reprisals against public employees who report or cooperate in investigations of wrongdoing.
He says LPSS still has an opportunity to make it right before his client takes legal action.
"We are giving the school system the opportunity to correct this," Rutledge said, "but my client is prepared to protect his rights through all appropriate legal means."
Louisiana’s Lost Stores Will Bring Back Memories
Gallery Credit: Bernadette Lee
More From 99.9 KTDY
