Prosper Independent School District announced that a state agency has closed its investigation into Superintendent Holly Ferguson’s handling of a sex abuse scandal involving a district bus driver.
But parents say their investigation is far from over, and Ferguson remains embroiled in a two-year-old lawsuit filed by the family of two students sexually abused by the driver throughout the 2021-22 school year.
Prosper ISD Board President Bill Beavers made the announcement during Monday night’s school board meeting.
Reading from a prepared statement, Beavers said the Texas Education Agency had “fully cleared” Ferguson’s educator certificate following a “thorough review.”
The TEA opened its investigation into Ferguson in April.
Neither Beavers nor a news report published minutes after his announcement mentioned why the agency was investigating Ferguson’s certification: complaints that the superintendent had failed to report the bus driver’s sexual abuse of students to TEA as required by law.
Failure to report carries criminal penalties and could result in superintendents losing their state educator certification.
Two Prosper ISD parents addressed the board just before Beavers’ announcement.
Aileen Blachowski and Janelle Davis asserted that documents they’d received from the TEA—and shared with trustees in early 2023—showed Ferguson had not reported the bus driver to the TEA’s misconduct reporting portal.
Public information requests to the TEA revealed that Prosper ISD had never used the portal until the past six months.
“So it appears somebody’s recreating history,” Blachowski told the board.
“There’s a lot going on here that we don’t know, that we need to get to the bottom of, and I will make it my business to ensure that we continue to do that until we have the answers,” she said. “There’s only so much covering up and covering up and covering up you can do. The truth will be revealed.”
Davis, an education attorney who advocates for parents, told trustees, “I continue to be shocked at the level of corruption when it comes to protecting public schools in Texas at the expense of innocent children.”
“In early 2023 several of you were sent evidence proving that Prosper ISD had never reported anybody to the misconduct reporting portal, including Frank Paniagua. That evidence consisted of two separate PIR responses from the TEA, and both confirmed the same thing: Paniagua’s abuse was never reported by our superintendent, as required by law.”
None of you did anything with that information except take her word that she reported the abuse. That can’t be true given the PIR responses, and also given two separate law enforcement agencies who have separately confirmed our district’s refusal to perform standard due diligence in reporting the molestation of children to the affected public to identify additional potential victims.
The seven of you were elected to protect the children in our schools, to ensure that the superintendent is following all applicable laws, and you have abdicated that responsibility over and over again. Instead, you have created an environment where parents who ask questions are bullied into silence and ostracized.
“I wish I could tell you more of what I know, but I am bound by ethical obligations that prevent me from doing so,” Davis added. “Rest assured that I get messages regularly from parents with nowhere else to turn, from teachers who agree with what I say but are afraid of being blackballed. And as the seven people responsible for ensuring the protection of all children in this district and the good teachers who work here, you are failing them. You failed the Janies, and your continued unwillingness to hold a single person responsible for what happened to those children is reprehensible.”
In addition to remaining a target of citizen investigations, Ferguson is a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed in August 2022 by the parents of two little girls victimized by bus driver Paniagua—identified in court documents as Janie Doe 1 and 2.
Prosper ISD and the district’s former transportation director Annamarie Hamrick are also defendants in the lawsuit.
The victims’ mother claimed Ferguson suggested she keep quiet about the abuse “so as not to attract media attention to her family or Prosper ISD staff.”
Ferguson hid Paniagua’s arrest from families of other children who rode his bus.
In March, a federal judge denied Ferguson’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, rejecting her claim that she is entitled to qualified immunity, but Ferguson appealed the ruling, which has further delayed discovery in the case.
“More to be revealed is all I have to say,” Blachowski said after Monday’s school board meeting.
“We will get to the bottom of the corruption here,” added Davis. “This is far from over.”
The next Prosper ISD board meeting is scheduled for August 26.
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