From left to right, Krisinda Lingenfelter, Laura Cervantes and Luisa King.
Courtesy of The Nichols Law Firm, PLLC
A booster club mother is suing Plano ISD in federal court after a battle with the district over who should pay for renovations to a stage in Jasper High School.
The lawsuit, filed in May, accuses the district of illegally taking over an independent parent organization, seizing its funds and having the officers — including the mother who filed the suit — falsely arrested. The lawsuit also alleges Plano ISD’s entire policy regulating booster clubs is unconstitutional and not supported by state law.
Plano ISD said in a statement Wednesday it would not comment on pending litigation.
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At the core of the lawsuit is who is responsible for funding repairs to the stage that is used by multiple groups.
The district asked the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club to pay for the repairs in 2022, and Laura Cervantes, who is the plaintiff in the lawsuit and was president of the club, declined, according to the suit. Cervantes said in the court filing that the renovations were district’s responsibility.
“We had concerns that we were being asked for something that is typically considered maintenance and operations, and which ended up being something that is explicitly asked for by Plano ISD in their 2016 bond that had passed,” Cervantes said.
Plano ISD’s 2016 bond program totaled $481 million, almost half of which was dedicated to “major renovations” at Plano campuses, including Jasper High School, but whether any of that money was earmarked for the stage is unclear.
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After Cervantes refused to pay for the renovations, the lawsuit says, the district formed a new booster club with new leaders in secret and then tried to seize control of the original booster club’s funds, which totaled about $4,400. The new booster club members got the bank account holding the funds transferred to them.
In May 2023, the bank closed the account and issued a check for the balance, which Cervantes picked up and deposited in a new account, according to the lawsuit. However, more than a year later, she learned the check bounced because the account was frozen and seized by the Plano Police Department, the suit reads.
In August 2024, the lawsuit claims district officials took the matter to Plano police, leading to the arrest of Cervantes and several other booster club officers for theft of the funds. A Collin County grand jury later declined to indict them, according to court documents.
“It was a shock,” Cervantes said. “I never could have imagined that questioning and pushing back on (the district) would lead to the absolute overreach of what they did.”
Cervantes said her arrest resulted in false rumors being spread around the school about her and the other booster club mothers, hurting her reputation.
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“It really did get very ugly,” she said.
A Plano municipal court awarded the funds to the district in May 2025, but both booster clubs still exist independently of each other, according to the Texas Comptroller’s Office: the original booster club is under the name of Jasper High School Choir Booster Club, and the new one is called Jasper HS Booster Club.
Booster clubs operate as nonprofit, private organizations, meaning they are not under district control, but Plano ISD regulates them heavily through district policy and reserves the right to dissolve them in some circumstances, according to district policy. Justin Nichols, Cervantes’ lawyer, said Plano ISD does not have the legal standing to regulate booster clubs the way it did in this instance.
According to the lawsuit, Plano ISD’s policy around booster clubs stems from a state law that says districts must “cooperate” with at least one parent-teacher organization.
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“They adopted this booster club policy that derived all from this one little statute,” Nichols said. “I cannot imagine a world where that means they have the right to regulate independent nonprofits.”
Cervantes asked the court to declare the policy unlawful and prevent the district from enforcing it. She also asked the court to award her an unspecified amount of money in damages.