School Board Service
In 1994, Thibodaux was elected without opposition to the District 7 seat on the Lafayette Parish School Board. In 1998, he was reelected over a fellow Republican, Michael H. Gallagher, having polled 60 percent to Gallagher's 40 percent. In 2002, he defeated the Democrat James A. McGehee, Jr., 58 percent to 42 percent. He was unopposed for his fourth term in 2006. Thibodaux was elected by the board to serve twice as board president, and had been elected to serve as vice-president in January 2007, just weeks before his death.
He worked for a reduction in teacher student ratios, pay increases for teachers, and for additional construction and maintenance of parish schools. He was integral in procuring unitary status in the lingering 40-year-old desegregation lawsuit against the school board. He made an impassioned plea for unitary status before U.S. District Court Judge Richard Haik, a brother of another Louisiana Republican leader, Suzanne Haik Terrell of New Orleans.
Thibodaux stressed the need for money in the classroom, rather than expanded administration, which frequently placed him at odds with Lafayette Superintendent James Easton.
Soon after his death, at the request of Thibodaux's family, the Lafayette Parish School Board appointed Mark Cockerham (born 1976), a former student of Thibodaux's who had worked in the 2004 Thibodaux congressional campaign, to fill the District 7 vacancy until a special election could be held in conjunction with the regular primary elections scheduled for October 20, 2007. With the support and endorsement of Thibodaux's family, Cockerham was re-elected to serve a full term in the election that fall.
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