Notable alumni
 | This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy.(September 2021) |
- Elijah Thomas (born 1996), professional basketball player
- Emmanuel Mudiay (born 1996), professional basketball player
Prime Prep Academy was a grouping of charter schools in Texas cofounded in 2012 by Deion Sanders, a former American football and baseball player (the school's name is derived from his "Prime Time" moniker), who has also coached at the schools. [1] [2]
Initial enrollment was more than 1,100 students. [3] Prime Prep had campuses in Oak Cliff, Dallas and Fort Worth. [4] The school was established with the goal of giving every child a free laptop supported by the VSCHOOLZ program. [4] In January 2014, Superintendent Ron Price turned over documents to the Tarrant County District Attorney's office alleging that hundreds of laptops had been stolen from Prime Prep. He later gave the information to the FBI. The school was closed January 30, 2015, due to financial insolvency. [5]
Journalist Phil Mushnick said of Prime Prep Academy: “After 2½ years, the school closed amidst an avalanche of unpaid administrators, faculty contractors, dilapidated buildings, allegedly misspent public funding and broken promises to black parents and hundreds of their children, mostly with an eye on college athletic scholarships.” [6]
Prime Prep athletics had an initial setback in its first year when the program was unable to field an eligible football team based on the rules of the University Interscholastic League (UIL), which governs interscholastic activities of public schools (including charter schools) in Texas. [7] It had recruited significant portions of existing championship teams [8] and "league hopping" athletes. [9] After the issues were worked out, the school had problems finding opponents for their football team. [10] Ultimately Prime Prep would withdraw from the UIL and participate as an independent program.
The school was accused of racism and influence peddling. [11] [12] In December 2013, Sanders pressured cofounder D.L. Wallace, a local minister, out of the leadership of the schools [13] over accusations of fraud [14] [15] and assault. [16] [17] [18] Shortly afterwards Sanders was fired from his head coach position, [1] [19] sparking an attempt by the school board to oust the superintendent who had fired Sanders. [20] The school then received further negative press for violations of the state's board meeting laws, [21] theft, [22] eviction, [23] [24] and staff members failing to follow established policies. [15] The school was featured in local news coverage again in 2014 for failing to hold open meetings [25] and ranked as the lowest performing elementary school in North Texas as judged by Children at Risk. [26]
In July 2014, it was announced that the Texas Education Agency was going to revoke the school's charter for inconsistencies with the National School Lunch Program and fiscal mismanagement to which the school responded that they were going to appeal the decision. In October 2014, the school stopped forwarding paycheck withholdings to the IRS, which had been averaging $25,000 to $28,000 per month. The IRS would later file a tax lien of $56,625. [27] [28]
In 2012, Prime Prep served as a backdrop for a reality TV series starring Sanders titled Deion's Family Playbook . [29] [30]
Since 2013, Prime Prep and its nonprofit sponsor, Uplift Fort Worth, have been the subject of a federal lawsuit alleging wrongdoing in the National School Lunch Program. As of March 24, 2018, the case was still pending.
The concept was birthed in 2009 as an elite NFL Scouting Combine training facility boasting the name Prime U, and its program was aired on NFL Network for two seasons. Notable members of the original Prime U were Sanders, Kevin Mathis, Omar Stoutmire, Duke Rousse, and Lucas Chizzonite.
| This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy.(September 2021) |
Deion Luwynn Sanders is an American football coach and former professional football and baseball player. Sanders serves as the head football coach at the University of Colorado Boulder. Nicknamed "Neon Deion" and "Prime Time" during his playing career and "Coach Prime" during his coaching career, he played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, the San Francisco 49ers, the Dallas Cowboys, the Washington Redskins, and the Baltimore Ravens as a cornerback, wide receiver, and return specialist making him a triple threat. He is the original "shutdown corner". Sanders also played nine seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the New York Yankees, the Atlanta Braves, the Cincinnati Reds, and the San Francisco Giants. He won two Super Bowl titles and made a World Series appearance in 1992, making him the only athlete to play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series.
Paul Quinn College (PQC) is a private historically black Methodist college in Dallas, Texas. The college is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). It is the oldest historically black college west of the Mississippi River and the nation's first urban work college.
Robert Elliott Wilonsky is an American journalist, and the former host of Higher Definition, an interview program on the cable television network HDNet.
La Madeleine de Corps, Inc., operating as La Madeleine, is a restaurant chain of 86 locations in the U.S. states of Georgia, Kentucky, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Virginia. Its headquarters is in Dallas, Texas.
Greg "Greggo" Williams is an American former radio personality. Williams was most recently co-host of the sports talk program RAGE with Richie Witt. It aired at 2pm-7pm on KRLD-FM, "The Fan" 105.3, in Dallas, Texas. Williams first became popular as 'The Hammer', Mike Rhyner's partner on KTCK's top-rated The Hardline drivetime show, but his tenure there ended abruptly in 2008 after 13 years on the air.
The Backsliders is a rock and roll band from Dallas, Texas.
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Little Mexico is a former neighborhood in Dallas, Texas, encompassing the area bordered by Maple Avenue, McKinney Avenue and the MKT Railroad. Formerly a Polish Jewish neighborhood, it was settled by a wave of Mexican immigrants beginning about 1910, and was recognized as Little Mexico by 1919, becoming a center of a Mexican-American community life in the city that lasted into the early 1980s, with a peak of population in the 1960s. Pike Park and a few structures are the remnants of the historic neighborhood, redeveloped as Uptown, including the Arts and West End Districts.
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Randel (Randy) Hershel Skinner is a political, judicial and criminal justice consultant.
The Dunham and Miller Show is a morning drive-time radio show on KTCK The Ticket, broadcast in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The show, active since 1994, airs from 5:30 am to 10:00 am on weekday mornings. The Dunham and Miller Show features George Dunham and Craig Miller as the two primary sports hosts, along with Gordon Keith, who adds cultural and comedic commentary. The three hosts are collectively referred to as the Musers, and two of them have been called comic geniuses by Hector Saldana of the San Antonio Express-News. The show has been nominated for the prestigious Marconi Award on seven separate occasions. This seventh time they won the Marconi for Major Market Personality's of the Year 2021. They also have received the Dallas Observer's Best Local Sports Radio Show award for 2011.
Mark Birnbaum is an American producer, director and editor, who has made a number of documentaries. Birnbaum began making films while serving in the United States Army as a photographer and filmmaker in Vietnam.
Trees is an American live music venue opened in 1990 in the Deep Ellum district of downtown Dallas, Texas. The venue has hosted international touring musical acts such as Nirvana, Snoop Dogg, The Flaming Lips, Death Grips, Daughter, The Wailers, Nick Jonas, and Run the Jewels. It has received numerous accolades from the Dallas Observer.
Dallas–Fort Worth is the most populous metropolitan area of Texas, and the Southern United States. Having 7,637,387 residents at the 2020 U.S. census, the metropolitan statistical area has experienced positive growth trends since the former Dallas and Fort Worth metropolitan areas conurbated into the Metroplex. By the 2022 census estimates, its population grew to 7,943,685, and if the metropolis was consolidated into a single city, it would be the second-largest by population behind New York City.
Irma Carrillo Ramirez is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She previously served as a United States magistrate judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas from 2002 to 2023. She is a former nominee to be a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
The Factory in Deep Ellum, formerly the Bomb Factory, is an American music venue and event space located in the Deep Ellum district of downtown Dallas, Texas. It originally operated from 1993 to 1997 and was reopened in March 2015 under new management. Since its reopening, the venue has hosted acts including Erykah Badu, Sturgill Simpson, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Disclosure, Don Henley of the Eagles, Future, D'Angelo, Brand New, Hardwell, Chvrches, Kraftwerk, Ludacris and Hatsune Miku.
Susan Hawk is an American attorney. She was the Dallas County District Attorney, elected as a Republican in 2014, until her resignation on October 1, 2016. Her opponent was Democrat Craig Watkins. She is the first female district attorney elected in Dallas. She was previously a state criminal district judge for nine years.
The Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex has 1.2 million African-Americans, the 2nd-largest metro population of African-Americans in Texas.
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