Editor's note: The facts and descriptions in the following story come from a report compiled by Harry Jones, a Dallas lawyer hired by the McKinney school district to investigate allegations of unequal discipline at McKinney North High School. The report is based on interviews with 75 school administrators, teachers, current and former coaches, students and parents, among others.

McKINNEY – It often seemed as if the "Fab Five" ran McKinney North High School.

They walked out of classes. They wore low-cut tops banned by the dress code. They posed for salacious pictures and posted them on MySpace.

And the adults in their lives – from parents to teachers to administrators – did little to stop them.

A confidential report obtained by The Dallas Morning News tells the tale of five "ultra-cool" cheerleaders who took control of their squad, their classes and ultimately the adults around them.

Two school leaders could lose their jobs over the investigation into failures to discipline cheerleaders at McKinney North. But the report spreads plenty of blame among other administrators, parents and faculty members.

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

Harry Jones

Mr. Jones investigated with one question in mind: Did principal Linda Theret use her power to protect her daughter and other cheerleaders from discipline?

Mr. Jones puts blame on both Ms. Theret and lead assistant principal Richard Brunner, both of whom remain on paid leave pending a decision on their fate by the school board. Their attorneys deny wrongdoing.

His report also points to parents who attacked each other by e-mail, obsessed about "image" rather than "substance" and lobbied for their children out of shrewd self-interest rather than a desire to send a message about good behavior.

It describes a culture of rebelliousness among a small group of cheerleaders that boiled over this year with misbehavior in class, inappropriate pictures on the Internet, truancy and many public squabbles over punishments.

"It reads like a novel," Robert Hinton, Ms. Theret's attorney, said of the report, "But it's a lot about very little when it comes to the business of education." He supplied the document to The Dallas Morning News. The school district declined to release the report and referred the newspaper's request to the attorney general's office.

Daniel Ortiz, Mr. Brunner's lawyer, denies any favoritism or inappropriate behavior.

"Some folks at the district are trying to justify the district's investment in this investigation," Mr. Ortiz said. "I think someone is trying to make Mr. Brunner a scapegoat."

The report includes interviews with some of the teens at the center of the controversy and their parents. They cited inconsistent enforcement of the rules and said news reports blew their behavior out of proportion.

"I'm not saying these five girls were saints – they definitely weren't – but they're not near as bad as they're being made out to be," said one parent, who spoke to The News on the condition his name not be published.

Ms. Theret started as an associate principal when North opened in 2000. Three years ago, she took the reins as principal.

Linda Theret

Cheerleading was a nightmare for its sponsors from the very beginning. Girls got caught drinking and were not always disciplined. Others skipped school. Cheerleader moms fought any demerits. The "faction of five," or "gang of five," as they were known to some on campus, ran the show.

"The general consensus is that these girls have not been punished properly since the seventh grade," one staff member said.

This year, the girls were seniors.

Four cheerleading sponsors left by the end of 2005. One of them quit after several girls were caught drinking and not properly punished under cheerleading rules. Another left after the principal's daughter made an obscene gesture at her during a game.

Ms. Theret "tried to ruin my life over this," the sponsor told the investigator. "I was called a liar, crazy, on meds. I was evaluated unfairly."

Mr. Hinton said just because Ms. Theret has a strong-willed daughter, doesn't mean she did anything wrong.

Parents and former sponsors warned Michaela Ward about the "Fab Five" when she started as the cheerleading sponsor last spring. If nothing else, document everything, they said.

Michaela Ward

Nevertheless, she was excited.

"This truly seemed like an opportunity of a lifetime," she told the investigator.

Ms. Ward had her first clash with Ms. Theret in May when Ms. Ward tried to discipline a girl who used a cellphone during another teacher's class.

"She told me, 'Do not do that,' " Ms. Ward told the investigator.

The next month the problems continued at camp. Some of the girls sent racy text messages from Ms. Ward's phone to her husband and another coach. They didn't receive any demerits.

One night, Ms. Ward drove several of them to a Wal-Mart to buy duct tape. The girls taped their teammates' door closed.

"At camp, Ms. Ward was buddy-buddy," one of the girls told the investigator. "She was being funny with us. ... She broke curfew with us."

The girls would later accuse their sponsor of being immature and flirting with other athletic coaches, which she denies.

When Superintendent Tom Crowe came down to camp, he wasn't happy to see that many of the girls hiked up their shirts and rolled down their shorts to their hipbones.

Tom Crowe

"He was shocked at the less-than-wholesome outfits of some North" cheerleaders, the report states.

Mr. Crowe's wife, an associate principal at McKinney Boyd High School, spoke to Ms. Ward about it.

Back at school, the girls said Ms. Ward told them that "sex sells" as they prepared for a pep rally. Ms. Ward later said her comments were taken out of context. Ms. Ward set up a "Mr. and Ms. Gorgeous" contest so kids could vote on the most attractive teachers at the pep rally.

Meanwhile, girls continued to misbehave. When caught on a cellphone during class, one girl told a teacher, "Shut up, I'm talking to my mom."

One teacher said the principal's daughter told him to "pull my panties out of a wad."

"Gang members were nothing compared to these girls," the teacher said. "They believe they cannot be touched. They treat people however they want."

In early September, a parent sent Ms. Theret dozens of pictures of cheerleaders and other young people she found on MySpace.com.

The photos show teenagers holding alcohol. One girl is held upside-down on top of a keg. Another is wearing a bikini top sharing a bottle with another girl. One picture shows five girls in their uniforms posing in a condom store.

Another photo shows girls pulling their pants down to reveal their underwear in suggestive poses.

"It would be an overstatement to describe any of the photographs as pornographic, but it would be an understatement to describe them as harmless high jinks," Mr. Jones wrote. "Quite frankly, I personally found it 'creepy' to look at the photographs."

Ms. Theret sent the pictures, which included her daughter, to a McKinney police officer who works at the school to determine whether criminal activity occurred. No charges were filed.

"I can probably find thousands of pictures of kids smoking and drinking," said Capt. Randy Roland of the McKinney Police Department. "What would you expect the officer to do? We wouldn't have gotten a conviction."

Ms. Theret said she felt the girls should be kicked off the squad. But she referred the case to other administrators, who put the photos into four categories: alcohol possession, in-the-presence-of alcohol, tobacco and "unladylike" behavior.

They doled out 30 days suspension for the condom photo, 15 days for a drinking photo or 45 days for both. Every parent, except Ms. Theret, appealed the ruling, which ultimately went to Mr. Crowe.

Mr. Crowe said he felt the condom photo shouldn't be more severely punished than drinking. He dropped it to a 30-day maximum for all incidents.

Ms. Ward told the girls they would be kicked off the cheerleading squad for any other violations.

"Good luck with that," one girl replied.

Three days after the punishment was doled out, four of the girls were caught leaving school without official permission.

"The skippers knew they were flouting the rules – they had flouted the rules for so long, they had come to feel 'bullet-proof,' " Mr. Jones wrote.

Some of the girls said they thought they were allowed to leave class. But most of them thought they were off the team by this point. They made a video on a cellphone singing that they knew they were off the squad.

Mr. Brunner kept the girls informed as officials decided their fate, the girls told the investigator.

"Every day Brunner kept us in the loop, as a group," one of the girls said. "He let us make arguments. But we were kind of resigned to being kicked off."

Ms. Theret said Mr. Crowe ordered her to issue the punishment to gain credibility at the school.

"I tried to get out of the chain," Ms. Theret told the investigator. "But Tom kept [it] in my lap."

Mr. Crowe declined to comment through a school district attorney Friday. Mr. Jones said he believes Mr. Crowe was trying to be fair.

"She was a principal of the building, and it was her time to execute leadership in a fair and equitable manner," he said.

The girls, who remained cheerleaders, eventually received 10 demerits and three hours of Friday school, an after-hours detention. Mr. Jones said that was clearly not enough.

"These girls were on a special probation – a "second" chance they might not even have deserved," Mr. Jones wrote. "Arguably, any girl in the 'condom photograph' should have forfeited her right to be a North cheerleader forever."

Not long afterward, Ms. Ward resigned from the squad, saying she was not supported by administrators in her discipline decisions.

Later in October, the homecoming dance brought a new incident.

A limo with more than 20 kids, including some cheerleaders, pulled up late to the dance. Officials suspected that the students might be drunk. Although parents were called, no one was issued a citation or given a breath test.

"They weren't a danger to themselves or others," said Capt. Roland, who noted that the dance was outside the department's jurisdiction. "Our officers didn't witness them drink anything." Many of the parents denied their children had been drinking.

After that incident, Ms. Theret assigned her daughter to an alternative school. She later told the investigator she wished she had been assigned to another school – away from her kids.

"She had a blind spot, and there was only so much of her to share," Mr. Jones wrote.

Some of the other girls have also left the squad. Many other cheerleaders will not be listing the squad on their college applications, Mr. Jones said. They seem as surprised as the adults that it came to this.

"I felt," Mr. Jones said Friday, "like the kids were amazed at the adults' lack of willpower and discipline."

E-mail kayres@dallasnews.com

LINDA THERET: Principal of McKinney North High School. She is on paid administrative leave, and the superintendent has said she will not return to the school or any other campus.

RICHARD BRUNNER: Assistant principal at McKinney North. He is also on paid administrative leave. He is described as handling much of the discipline related to the cheerleading squad.

MICHAELA WARD: A cheerleading coach who resigned in October because she said administrators thwarted her efforts to discipline the squad.

TOM CROWE: Superintendent. He was involved in some of the appeals related to the cheerleading squad and made some decisions related to discipline.

HARRY JONES: A Dallas lawyer hired to investigate the handling of discipline at the school. His investigation took about 200 hours and cost the district about $39,000.

The investigation listed the following as "failures":

• The district failed to write and amend a coherent constitution.

• North failed to recruit and keep a qualified cheerleading sponsor with longevity.

• Some parents failed to transmit solid values, beyond "success" and "individual rights."

• Most teachers failed to take a stand on principle, preferring career advancement.

• The administration failed to implement and assess discipline equitably.

• Many students failed to understand how the rules could get so twisted.

• A small group of "ultra-cool" cheerleaders at the top of the North "food chain" resisted all authority and failed to recognize how they were hurting their community.

• A few parents failed to see discipline as a loving instruction about life – instead they enabled children to a profound degree.

• The media failed to get the story straight: broadcasting it as a sensationalized battle between an upright crusader and "girls gone wild" and "teasing" with a risqué photograph.

• Previous cheerleading sponsors at North failed to give the real reason they quit.

• The most recent cheerleading sponsors at North failed to give the real reason they quit.

• The most recent cheerleading sponsor failed to embrace or thoroughly follow the constitution – and quit in a very untimely fashion.

• The principal failed to properly juggle two of the most important responsibilities in her life: principal and mother. She must be held principally accountable.