Five Teenage Girls Terrorized a Texas High School in Real Life ‘Mean Girls’

Imagine if there were five cheerleaders at your high school who did absolutely anything they wanted, without any consequences. That's exactly what happened in the small town of McKinney, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas.

It's the scandal that went under the radar for Texans, but made headlines across the nation. In late 2006, a frustrated former cheerleading coach reached out to the media to share eyebrow-raising stories of the outrageous behavior exhibited by her squad of five teenage girls and the lackadaisical, permissive administration that enabled them.

A Gang of Five

The coach, Michaela Ward, painted a concerning picture of mayhem caused by the cheerleaders within the halls of McKinney North High School.

“They skipped school, broke dress code, cheated on tests, and told teachers off,” Ward told The New York Post.

They also allegedly showed up to Homecoming in a limo, drunker than skunks and wearing skimpy, outrageously out-of-dress-code outfits. Nothing was said about the Fab Five (as they would come to be known as), while other students were reportedly given demerits for wearing earrings, according to The Post.

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For Ward and many others at the school, it wasn't the shenanigans that were the issue, it was the total lack of consequences.

In fact, in one glaring anecdote told to Newsweek, one of the girls had been chatting on her cell phone during class. When told to put her phone away by the teacher, she snapped back, "Shut up! I'm talking to my mom!".

Reportedly, no further action was taken by the teacher.

How did she get away with that, you may ask? Good question, here's the answer.

The Principal's Daughter

The alleged ringleader of the unpleasant cheer squad was also the daughter of the principal for McKinney North High School. It was thanks to this familial relationship that the Fab Five eluded consequences and gradually became notorious for being 'untouchable'.

The straw that broke the camel's back in the case of the Fab Five in McKinney, Texas was when the girls took a racy, inappropriate photo of themselves at a Condoms to Go store. As you can imagine, many eyebrows were raised as the pictures gained notoriety on Myspace.

At that point, Ward resigned her position at McKinney North and went to the media out of pure frustration with what she said was the administration's failure to guide the youth they were entrusted with.

The District Makes a Move

In the wake of the furor caused by the girls' inappropriate photo op, the school district made an unusually wise decision. They scraped together $40,000 and hired an independent investigator, lawyer Harold Jones, to come evaluate the debacle.

His resultant 70-page report did not bode well for adults at McKinney North, especially for the principal who had intervened on her daughter's behalf for a tad too long.

"Kids will be kids, but adults have to be adults," Jones states in his report. "Sadly, in this saga, I was struck by the reticence of many adults to accept the role of 'being the grown-up'."

The Outcome of the Fab Five Scandal

Well, people resigned. That includes the principal/mom and the assistant principal. Teachers and school employees came forward to report intimidation tactics deployed by the principal.

There were legal suits and there was also a Lifetime movie, FabFive: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal.

As for the five girls themselves? A brief google shows that they seem to have gone on to do well for themselves.

Perhaps they learned something valuable from the few adults who saw the situation for what it really was.