Upset Parents Accuse High School Cheerleading Coach Of Mistreating Students

A group of Eastwood High cheerleaders had little to cheer about on Friday. Their parents said they were unfairly kicked out of the squad and suspended from performing.

“I went to the school and she said, ‘Oh, mom I feel sad because I want to wear the uniform, this is the first day’ and I feel bad for her,” said Dinora Marquez, whose daughter Alexis is a sophomore at the school.

Marquez and other parents are banding together to protest the cheerleading suspension and alleged mistreatment of their daughters by the school’s new cheerleading coach, Kymberly Rodriguez.

One of the mothers, Laurie McGoldrick, filed an offense report against the coach last week at the UTEP Police Department. In it, McGoldrick alleges Kymberly Rodriguez grabbed her daughters arm and pushed her.

ABC-7 briefly spoke to Rodriguez over the phone but she did not want to comment on the incident. A spokesperson for the Ysleta Independent School District released this statement on the matter:

“Student safety is a top priority of Ysleta ISD. The District takes all allegations seriously and immediately initiated a full investigation regarding this current accusation. The preliminary results of the District?s investigation indicate that there has been no wrong doing on the part of Coach Kymberly Rodriguez . Therefore, Coach Rodriguez should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. YISD does not believe there is any risk to student safety.”

A spokesperson for the UTEP Police Department confirmed the incident is under investigation.

Parents said tensions are high within the cheerleading squad because of a money issue. Parents told ABC-7 their daughters were told to pay a $350 fee for a cheer camp with a private company over the summer. Some families weren’t able to pay the camp fee. Now, they say the cheerleading coach kicked some of the girls off the squad without warning– and they won’t be let back on until they pay that company for the camp.

“I said ‘Wow, why am I having to pay a private compan, for something that has to do with a public school activity?'” said Terry Gomez, a mother with two daughters in the program.

But now, they said, the issue is deeper than that. Though students ABC-7 spoke to outside the school said they haven’t noticed any ill will within the cheerleaders, some moms said the squad is split.

“There’s a group of girls who are known as the non-payers who are being harassed and they’ve encouraged their behavior by separating the payers from the non-payers,” said mother Sonia Reynosa.