Deion Sanders Prime Prep charter school closed down this week.

[madfloridian]

There are several articles about it, and he sounds very angry about the way things happened.

This version from the Dallas Observer has some upsetting language from a recording at a meeting.

Deion Sanders Demanded a Raise, Threatened to Break Prime Prep CEO's Neck (Audio NSFW)

The audio comes from a meeting that included Sanders and D.L. Wallace, his Prime Prep co-founder, former business partner and the ex-CEO of the two-campus charter school. It's unclear from the audio when and where the meeting took place, and the source who provided it declined to provide those specifics. But Wallace has previously described a meeting that took place between him, Sanders and two members of Prime Prep's board in June 2013, at the field house on the school's southern Dallas campus. The content of the recordings matches Wallace's description of that meeting.

.....But as the school struggled in its first year-plus, and after Sanders was briefly fired for assaulting an employee, he began angling for a bigger share of the responsibility, and taxpayer-funded compensation to go with it. Records show that Sanders was making $40,000 while Wallace, who has since resigned, was paying himself $120,000.

"I'm going to get more money, or there ain't going to be no school, that's just flat out how it's going to be," Sanders tells Wallace in the recording.

He admits he doesn't really need the money. "Forget me, because what I do with the money I'm getting, I turn around and stipend my coaches," he says, apparently referring to the small stipends usually paid to high school sports coaches. "Because God has blessed me, I don't really need it. But I'm going to get it because it's mine and my name is on the building. OK, that's just fair."

When his partner asks what position Sanders wants to take on...Sanders responds:

"What position?"

"HNIC," Sanders shoots back. That's "Head Nigga in Charge."

From DFW CBS station:

Prime Prep, Charter School Started By Deion Sanders Closed

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Prime Prep Academy, the charter school co-founded by Deion Sanders, closed today. The Texas Education Agency said the school doesn’t have the money to continue one more day. The announcement has left families scrambling to figure out where their children are going to go to school.

“While there was hope this charter could survive through the end of the school year, the financial resources simply aren’t there,” the state’s education commissioner said in a statement.

The commissioner lashed into Prime Prep’s previous leadership Friday. He said the upheaval could have been avoided if school leaders acknowledged their financial problems earlier – and worked toward a transition that put students first. Students like the school’s star quarterback Micheal Curtis, who left early Friday when he realized it was his last day at the school.

More at Deadspin. I don't know this site, but the report seems straightforward.

Deion Sanders's Disaster Of A School Is Being Shut Down

The school was founded by Sanders and Damien "D.L." Wallace, who handled the logistics while Sanders mostly brought the star power. It went poorly from the very beginning:

"The initial charter application claimed corporate partnerships that didn't exist, plagiarized other schools' applications and included a scam by Wallace to pay himself rent with taxpayer money. State regulators caught the problems and approved the charter anyway."

Prime Prep was always intended to be about sports—Sanders and Wallace pitched it as a way for the top local (and not-so-local) athletes to get into college. But the school's stated mission backfired almost immediately. Because many of the athletes, recruited from Sanders's sports camp and leagues, transferred from other schools, they ran afoul of University Interscholastic League eligibility rules. In the first season, four top basketball recruits were declared ineligible, as was the entire Prime Prep football team.

..... Things weren't much better for the rest of Prime Prep's students.

"Parents expected Prime Prep to be a polished college preparatory school, as the name suggests. Instead, Henderson says, they found the lights in the hallway were dim and sometimes flickered, reminding her of a less odorous Abercrombie & Fitch. The paint on the walls was peeling away. A sign on the side of a building, attached by duct tape, warns visitors that a side door is broken."

Like all charter schools Prime Prep was getting taxpayer money while open, money which came from traditional public schools. As resources are taken from public schools the new ed reform policies demand more and more from them.

Something is wrong with that picture.

[TexasTowelie]

1. It never was a surprise to me.

This story always comes to mind when I hear his name mentioned:

Sanders may owe $5,000 in auto repair lawsuit
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1797385

and the there was a earlier suit that Deion won when he only paid $1,500 of a $4,200 bill.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2003-07-14-deion-car_x.htm

I have a feeling that Deion isn't as well off as he would lead others to believe.

[alp227]

2. And Sanders doesn't even have a college degree.

Edit: found this 1995 AP article:

When Deion Sanders intercepted a pass to preserve Florida State's 13-7 Sugar Bowl victory over Auburn in 1989, the flamboyant two-time All-American unwittingly changed college football in Florida.

But it wasn't for the game-saving interception in the end zone. Sanders played in the game even though he had not attended classes or taken his final tests the previous semester at Florida State.

When state education officials discovered Sanders' classroom misconduct later, they were so angry they rewrote the academic standards to ban college football players at state universities from playing in bowl games if they failed to successfully complete the previous semester.

[madfloridian]

4. Okay how could officials NOT know he had not gone to classes?

Thanks, I had not heard that. I forgot he had played for FSU.

[madfloridian]

3. Wow, thanks for those articles. Surprising...I thought he was really rich.

Thanks.

[DeSwiss]

5. ....

[center][/center]

[AwakeAtLast]

9. Best one of those I have seen

I just might have to get that on a shirt.

[madfloridian]

6. More. Update today.

http://www.thecoli.com/threads/deion-sanders-prime-prep-school-is-closing-today-due-to-financial-problems.288899/

The scandal-plagued Prime Prep Academy is insolvent and will close at the end of school today, the new state-appointed administration announced.
Parents will be given lists of public schools in their attendance areas as well as names of other charter schools that have immediate openings.
Texas Education Agency commissioner Michael Williams said he agreed with the decision to cease operating immediately.

“While there was hope this charter could survive through the end of the school year, the financial resources simply aren’t there,” Williams said in a news release. “It is unfortunate that those who remained committed to learning on these campuses -- the students and teachers -- are the ones who will be affected most by circumstances out of their control.”
Williams said that the action today could have been avoided.

“In light of what we now know, such upheaval could have been avoided by the previous school leadership had they acknowledged their financial issues and worked with us toward an orderly transition that put students first,” he said.

The school, co-founded by former Dallas Cowboys star Deion Sanders, opened in 2012 and is more than halfway through its third school year. Attendance at its two campuses has dropped to fewer than 300 students, down nearly 50 percent from last year. The school gets most of its funding from the state based on attendance.

[madfloridian]

7. School was nearly $700,000 in the red when closed.

Seems like all the public taxpayer money sent its way was just lost. And public schools were deprived of the use of it.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2015/01/prime_prep_closes.php

Friday was the last day of school at Prime Prep Academy, according to state administrators assigned to pull the plug on the charter school founded by ex-Cowboy Deion Sanders. After two and a half years of legal fights, actual fights and assorted controversy, the Texas Education Agency finally said enough was enough. The school, whose funding came mostly from taxpayers, closed at least $650,000 short in cash need to pay overdue salaries and a number of other debts.

TEA's School Governance Director Ronald Rowell defended his agency's timing. "They've only been open for two and a half years," Rowell said today, and the school had turned in all the right paperwork until this year. "I think we acted fairly quickly," Rowell said.

The TEA appointees made their announcement during a board meeting Friday afternoon at Prime Prep's Fort Worth elementary school campus. Prime Prep operated a school in Dallas that also closed.

School officials said that Prime Prep has only $60,000 cash at hand but needs $200,000 to cover the January payroll and an additional half million for expenses that include rent, food, security services, attorney fees and payment owed to the Internal Revenue Service. Despite being short on January's payments, Prime Prep's teachers have continued to show up for work each day.

Those shortfalls may not even include athletic expenses. At the high school campus, in Dallas, Prime Prep's sports teams often traveled long distance to play their opponents. The TEA appointees said today that those travel expenses are not accounted for anywhere.

Sanders was still on the payroll, but they "still don't know what his salary was."

[Starry Messenger]

8. K&R

"Instead, Henderson says, they found the lights in the hallway were dim and sometimes flickered, reminding her of a less odorous Abercrombie & Fitch. The paint on the walls was peeling away. A sign on the side of a building, attached by duct tape, warns visitors that a side door is broken."

Someday I am going to do an urban charter school photo essay. I don't think people know that some of these school are jammed into the absolute seediest buildings.

[Initech]

10. Another day, another charter school gets caught doing something corrupt.

Can we all as a country just admit these were a bad idea to begin with?

[Starry Messenger]

11. Ha, that would involve very wealthy and powerful people admitting to a mistake.

Never going to happen. Sadly.

[FloriTexan]

12. K&R...

This is what happens when people do things for greed.

[madfloridian]

13. So true.

[Octafish]

14. Public Education should be the pride of democracy.

Instead, it's the grifters' latest mark.

"I'm going to get more money, or there ain't going to be no school, that's just flat out how it's going to be." -- "Neon" Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, football personality

[madfloridian]

15. Wasn't that an amazing appalling statement?

After he was given taxpayer money?

[Oilwellian]

16. I'm stealing that...

as a Facebook intro...thanks!