Can Deion Sanders save Prime Prep Academy from closing?

DALLAS — Deion Sanders has trust issues.

Within 20 minutes of arriving at Prime Prep Academy on a 96-degree July evening, Sanders stepped away from the herds of young players he was coaching and met with us on the edge of the school’s football field to set conditions for an interview he previously agreed to. Sanders, an NFL Hall of Famer and color analyst for the NFL Network, had agreed to an interview about the history and future of the charter school he founded in 2012.

The two-sport star known as “Prime Time” is a careful man. Wearing the black and red colors of the school and holding a whistle, Sanders summed up a new condition for any interview about Prime Prep in six words.

“You do me, I do you,” he said, pointing to the crew of his reality TV show shooting nearby.

Sanders retreated to his coaching, loudly encouraging young running backs and linemen to play through the whistle. Families sat in lawn chairs to watch a legend coach their sons. Many players at Sanders’ football camp — and a majority of the school’s students — come from some of the most impoverished areas of the Dallas–Fort Worth area. For a select few, there’s hope that the children’s talents will give them a chance to play at the college level, earn a degree and have an opportunity for a better life.

This is the promise presented by Sanders and, by association, Prime Prep — his vision to marry tuition-free academics for underprivileged youths with big-time high school athletics. The school has established itself as an athletic powerhouse, with its nationally ranked men’s basketball team and the long list of athletic scholarships awarded to its basketball and football players.

But a litany of issues — from fraudulent financial management to administration infighting, from being dropped from a federally funded lunch program to questions surrounding the academic integrity of its prospective NCAA student-athletes — have plagued Prime Prep from the beginning.

Sitting side by side in 2012, Sanders and D.L. Wallace flashed grins from ear to ear. The business partners had come a long way in two years. In 2010, investors sued the pair for $1.8 million over a high school recruiting directory that was never released. (The plaintiffs did not move forward with the suit because it became too expensive.) But with the advent of Prime Prep, it was a chance to wipe the slate clean and help change what Wallace called an unwritten rule that inner-city kids can’t get the kind of quality education that everybody enjoys in “the nice suburbs.”

“It started from a vision,” Wallace, then the school’s CEO, told Sanders in an informational video about the school featuring the partners, “and most of that vision came out of your head. And we took that vision, put it down on paper.”

“We! ‘We’ is the key word,” Sanders interjected. “I couldn’t do this without you, man.”

From the start, the school’s vision under Wallace was dicey at best. Even though the Texas State Board of Education approved Prime Prep’s charter school application in February 2012, it shut down the lease agreement that would have had the school renting its Fort Worth campus for $10,000 a month from a company that had Wallace as its director.  

While the school saw success in some areas, the past two years have seen an array of well-documented issues. More than $45,000 of federal meal money — funds intended for students’ lunches — has yet to be properly accounted for. As of December 2013, parent organization Uplift Fort Worth owed contractors such as PepsiCo hundreds of thousands of dollars. In January at least 200 laptops were reportedly stolen from the elementary school and sold.

For most of its existence, bad press has haunted the school, most notably when the entire Prime Prep football team confronted a local reporter in 2012.

But at the heart of Sanders’ trust issues is the dissolution of his relationship with Wallace. In one exchange, Sanders questioned Wallace’s six-figure salary and vision and told his partner he wanted to take on the position of “HNIC,” slang for “head n---- in charge.” Another exchange had the two men allegedly coming to blows in front of state Sen. Royce West, with Wallace accusing his then-partner of attempting to choke him. (According to Dallas Police, Sanders was issued a ticket for assault by contact, a class-C misdemeanor.) In November 2013, Wallace resigned. Sanders, who was dismissed from his role at the school twice in a three-month span in late 2013, returned under the new administration of superintendent Ron Price.

Shortly after the TEA’s recommendation to close down the school, Sanders eviscerated Wallace on Twitter, calling his former partner “a crook” and “heartless.”

Sanders, who admitted that he was distracted by his divorce proceedings during the school’s first two years, has offered to pay back the $45,000 debt that he says was created by Wallace. “This is a whole new management,” Sanders told Roland Martin on his radio show last month. “We’re getting punished for what [Wallace] did back in 2011.”

Wallace did not respond to repeated interview requests.

While the new administration has pointed the finger at Wallace and the old administration, some officials remain suspicious of Sanders’ role. Okey Akpom, an attorney and a member of Prime Prep’s board of directors, said he was sold by the school’s vision. But he soon heard stories that the school’s athletes were out of control, from acting out at the teachers to leaving campus whenever they felt like it. When school officials moved to discipline student-athletes, Akpom said that Sanders stepped in to keep them from being suspended, afraid it would stain the school’s reputation.

Other parents haven’t been as sympathetic about the challenges ahead for the school.

“They made that bed,” said a parent of a current Prime Prep basketball player, who also asked not to be identified. “Now they have to sleep in it.”

With Prime Prep in the headlines for its on-the-field success and off-the-field issues, the school has been a ripe target for formal complaints.

From October 2011 to September 2013, nine complaints concerning Prime Prep were made to the TEA and the state attorney’s office, according to a public information request filed by “America Tonight” with the TEA. The summary of complaints includes allegations of financial impropriety, assault and child abuse, as well as concerns about the school’s role in the reality show.

The most significant of those complaints is in the form of a federal lawsuit accusing Wallace, Sanders and Uplift Fort Worth, among others, of knowingly making fraudulent claims “for the purpose of obtaining large payments under the federally funded National School Lunch Program and the federally funded Summer Food Service Program.” The lawsuit was filed by Lawrence Smith, a former investor in Sanders’ failed recruiting directory project.

While the school is trying to create distance from the previous administration, emails from parents obtained by “America Tonight” show that they continue to question why Sanders is still involved and whether anything will change if the state keeps the school open.

In December 2013 a meeting took place to discuss whether Sanders should remain involved, according to an email from a Prime Prep parent to the TEA. There another parent reportedly asked Sanders about his “physical attacks on staff members,” a reference to his alleged assault on the school’s former CFO.

“Deion [who was present] replied, ‘If I really wanted to attack someone, I got people that will do dirt for me,’” the parent wrote.

Another parent was originally hopeful about sending a child to the school. But that excitement turned to disappointment, anger and accusations that Sanders verbally and physically abused students and encouraged bullying behavior. The parent wrote that the child would soon fall behind in all the child’s academics.

“We were all so proud, excited and supporting [student’s name redacted] natural desires and talents to go beyond the norm,” the parent wrote about the child in a December 2013 email to the TEA. “Now, there is nothing but sports, sports, sports and nothing else at that poor example of a school.”

Thomas, a rising senior in Lancaster, Texas, said the attention Prime Prep was receiving over its academics did play a part in him transferring. Though he only speaks highly of his time at the school, Thomas said he saw firsthand the scrutiny that his cousin endured to become eligible to play at the next level. His cousin is Jordan Mickey, who along with Karviar Shepherd, were originally declared ineligible last year from playing on the men’s basketball teams for LSU and TCU, respectively. They were later cleared to play after the NCAA reportedly granted them a waiver for having spent just one year studying at Prime Prep, according to a CBSSports.com report.

“It was a hot scene for the NCAA,” Thomas said. “I don’t want to say it was an issue, but it was a thought like, ‘Wow, we may not get to play in college.’” 

While there weren’t enough data for a comprehensive review of the high school’s academics, Sanborn said there’s a strong indication from the data that are available that the standards for those students remain “pretty poor.” Meanwhile, Sanders and Prime Prep officials tout the high school’s 100-percent graduation rate in its two years, as well as the 15 college athletic scholarships that have been awarded in that time.

Even with the controversy surrounding Prime Prep’s academic standards, students and their families say the academic standards are much better than what has been reported. Standing 6 foot 3 and weighing about 300 pounds, John Perkins is a promising offensive tackle, already receiving looks from several Division I programs. Before going to Prime Prep, he was unhappy and struggling academically at his old school. Knowing their son wanted to play football in high school and potentially in college, his parents enrolled him at Prime Prep in December after a meeting with Sanders.

The Prime Prep coaches’ lounge was casual and nondescript, smelling like a typical Texas football locker room in the summertime: the stench of sweat, grass and more sweat emanating from helmets, pads and cleats. 

Sanders sat on a black leather couch, staring back at us. He was respectful and occasionally funny. When our cameraman told him it would take an hour to set up for the interview, Sanders asked us if we were shooting “Thriller,” referring to the Michael Jackson music video. But he was always cautious. Sanders’ need for a tighter grip on the situation at Prime Prep has only increased in the months since Wallace’s resignation.

Minutes later, the interview was called off. Sanders, despite his initial consent to the interview, said he wouldn’t do it unless his reality show was there taping it — something “America Tonight” couldn’t agree to do. We respectfully went our separate ways, with Sanders driving off in his black SUV.

Whether the school is spared by the state remains unclear. But Sanders — no matter what his supporters or critics believe he should do — will be involved in the efforts to rehabilitate the public image of Prime Prep, his vision.

“The school is called Prime Prep Academy,” Sanders told Roland Martin, referring to his nickname being a part of the school’s name. “That’s like Ronald and McDonald. They’re never separating.”

David Martin and Michael Okwu contributed to this report.