{"id":77402,"date":"2025-12-05T15:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T15:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/77402\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T15:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T15:32:08","slug":"brenda-prine-founder-of-lhhs-college-and-career-center-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/77402\/","title":{"rendered":"Brenda Prine, founder of LHHS College and Career Center, dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hilary Prine Baker and Brenda Prine<\/p>\n

Dr. Brenda Prine, founder and former director of the Lake Highlands High School College and Career Center, died last week surrounded by her loving family. She\u2019d been bravely fighting metastatic breast cancer.<\/p>\n

Prine taught English before becoming a school counselor, but she really hit her stride when she and other brilliant minds conspired to create LHHS\u2019 College and Career Center, where students could explore (with Prine\u2019s expert assistance) options on where to go to school and how to pay for it. She took particular pride in finding programs and funds for first generation students \u2014 sometimes at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and other prestigious houses of learning across the country. She also helped families whose parents held multiple degrees between them but still found the process baffling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the early years, Prine\u2019s salary was funded by contributions to Wild for Cats<\/a> \u2014 the high school\u2019s academic booster club. Wild for Cats<\/a> began by funding teacher wish lists, but educators were so committed to Prine\u2019s mission that they happily agreed to see her receive the bulk of donated dollars. After a few years, Richardson ISD officials could easily see the success of the program<\/a> and funded academic booster clubs at all four high schools (and salaries for all four directors) via district funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrenda can work with kids who\u2019ve never even thought that college was a possibility,\u201d then-principal Peggy Dillon told parents at a fundraiser for Wild for Cats. \u201cThey believed the best they could do was to work in fast food, landscaping or office cleaning jobs. Now we\u2019re seeing kids having opportunities they\u2019ve never had before. There is money out there (for scholarships and grants), but the process can be complicated and changes yearly. Through Brenda\u2019s work, we\u2019re seeing unbelievable results.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese kids are smart,\u201d agreed the late David Wood<\/a>, a legendary English teacher at LHHS. \u201cWhat happens at the high school impacts us all, and Brenda is helping to create a vision of each student\u2019s future that spreads throughout the school. She shows them where they can go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prine was born Brenda Kay Jenkins in Nashville, Tennessee, on February 26, 1951 as one of nine children. She met Bruce Prine at Baylor University, and they married in Dallas in 1977. Their children, Andrew, Hilary and Preston, all graduated from LHHS.<\/p>\n

You may read her full obituary here<\/a>. A memorial will be held at Lake Highlands United Methodist Church at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, December 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hilary Prine Baker and Brenda Prine Dr. Brenda Prine, founder and former director of the Lake Highlands High…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-77402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-plano","9":"tag-plano-headlines","10":"tag-plano-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}