Scandal-plagued Superintendent Holly Ferguson is retiring after 23 years working for the Prosper Independent School District.
Ferguson’s tenure with the district includes six years as Prosper ISD’s top administrator, during which she was sued for helping hush up a bus driver’s sexual abuse of two elementary school students.
According to Monday’s announcement, Ferguson will retire effective at the end of 2026.
The announcement comes as two new trustees are set to join the Prosper ISD school board in May.
Incumbents Tommy Van Wolfe, a first-term trustee, and Dena Dixon, who has served on the board since 2020, both filed for re-election then withdrew their names from the May 2 ballot, as did two other candidates.
That left John “Kiwi” Authers and Allen Rountree as the sole candidates and automatic winners.
The two new trustees will be sworn in at Prosper ISD’s May 18 school board meeting and will participate in selecting a new superintendent. They have also committed to bringing fresh transparency and accountability to the district.
Authers is a parent of Prosper ISD graduates and a businessman whose expertise is in public school construction—a subject of recent scrutiny within the district.
Rountree is a veteran and father of a student at Rucker Elementary—the site of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked Prosper ISD when it was first revealed in August 2022.
That’s when parents of the two sisters systematically molested by Rucker bus driver Frank Paniagua for most of the 2021-22 school year sued the district and Ferguson. The lawsuit claimed Ferguson told the victims’ mother to keep quiet “so as not to attract media attention to her family or Prosper ISD staff.”
Trustee Garrett Linker addressed some of the ongoing construction concerns in a February 19 Facebook post.
Construction costs are the largest line item in how we spend YOUR taxpayer dollars. Over the past two years, the Board has requested (and Admin has agreed to) specific accountability steps, including past and present audits and contract updates. Those requests have not yet been completed as discussed. A couple of months ago in open session, I asked whether our construction contracts had been updated and was told they had not. To date, we have not been notified of the contracts being updated AND available for board review.
On Ferguson’s watch, the district built some of the most expensive schools in the state and passed a $2.7 billion bond package in November 2023 that will cost local property taxpayers nearly $5 billion with interest.
“I also have concerns about how our construction dollars are being managed, specifically the degree to which we rely on a single vendor for nearly all of this work,” added Linker. “It is not common practice for Texas school districts to award all construction projects to the same vendor, but in Prosper ISD, that’s the accepted status quo.”
Linker was first elected in May 2022, on the same Mother’s Day weekend that Paniagua’s victims told their family about the sexual abuse, some of which was captured on bus surveillance video. The bus driver was quickly confronted, arrested, and charged, but no information was released by law enforcement or school officials to the public or Prosper ISD families.
When the abuse was exposed months later, trustees said Ferguson had not informed them about the crimes. Linker was the only trustee to publicly question how the scandal was handled.
Ferguson and other administrators had convinced the victims’ family and Rucker staff to stay quiet for months and failed to inform other Rucker parents that their children’s bus driver was a child molester, perhaps relying on Paniagua’s jailhouse suicide to keep the scandal out of headlines.
Local parents also accused Ferguson of failing to report Paniagua to the TEA within seven business days as required by law. The agency originally confirmed that no misconduct report had been filed on Paniagua—or any other district employee—but reversed course later after a complaint was filed against the superintendent.
Yet Linker joined other trustees in approving Ferguson’s annual contract extensions and compensation—until this year.
“It is important to note that the Superintendent already has a previously approved five-year contract that runs through 2030 and is well compensated relative to peers across the state,” Linker posted to Facebook on January 23. “I voted no on the proposed contract changes because of our district’s current financial reality and my responsibility as a Trustee to exercise good financial stewardship. I believe our most important responsibility is to steward taxpayer dollars wisely and prioritize the needs of students, staff, and classrooms over increasing the spending for upper level admin.”
Ferguson joined Prosper ISD in 1998 as a third-grade teacher, then worked her way up through the administrative ranks. She was hired as Prosper ISD’s superintendent in 2020.
Within months of the sex abuse scandal breaking, Ferguson sought an open superintendent spot in Northwest ISD. She was one of two finalists interviewed in December 2022 but was not chosen.
A month later, Prosper ISD trustees unanimously approved extending Ferguson’s contract to maintain the district’s five-year employment commitment to the superintendent.
Ferguson’s current contract—which took effect July 1, 2025, and runs through June 30, 2030—pays her an annual salary of $350,000 plus an amount equal to 40-50 percent of the maximum allowable voluntary retirement plan contribution.
Her new contract that takes effect July 1, 2026—approved in January by all trustees save Linker—includes a salary of $350,607 plus an added amount equal to 79 percent of the maximum allowable retirement plan contribution.
Other district scandals during Ferguson’s time as superintendent include a male cheer coach who disappeared amid misconduct allegations, a female middle school teacher and cheer coach who quietly resigned mid-year after students discovered her Instagram page filled with erotic photos (she also maintained an OnlyFans site), two softball coaches arrested for failing to report sexual abuse allegations, a federal civil rights lawsuit against the district for failing to accommodate a student’s disabilities, a lawsuit over a Rucker teacher physically assaulting a 5-year-old student, and high school students charged with murder over a drug deal gone bad.
In addition, Rock Hill High School JROTC instructor Michael Songy was charged with two counts of indecent assault. Prosper ISD rehired Songy after similar allegations of sexual misconduct. He has a court date on March 13.
Several other Texas school districts are also looking for new superintendents.
In nearby Allen ISD, Superintendent Robin Bullock announced her retirement at the end of this school year after six years in the position.
