Kanye West in London, England on September 26, 2022.GC Images
Kanye West’s circus is collapsing inexorably. While his public image has been tarnished by his anti-Semitic remarks and his association with the far right (and even his airs of running for the US presidency), his professional aspect has also fallen out of favor, leading to the failure of his career and his connections to Adidas and GAP, as well as his most intimate part, were destroyed after his multi-million dollar and controversial divorce from Kim Kardashian. Now it’s his educational side that is being questioned even more. The school, which opened in California in honor of his mother, is once again facing a lawsuit from its former teachers.
Donda Academy was the private Catholic school founded by West. First called “Yeezy Christian Academy,” it was later renamed after the rapper’s late mother and moved to a new location. Located in Ventura, about 50 minutes from Los Angeles and a little under half an hour from Calabasas (the California city where many celebrities live and where West shared a home and life with the Kardashian family), he always maintained absolutes Keeping silent about their educational plans, their teaching system, or their ideals. As of last April, several teachers have denounced the center. And now another teacher has filed another lawsuit against the rapper for the way he treated him, citing the poor quality of the now-closed school’s facilities.
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According to some media outlets that had access to the lawsuit, such as the Los Angeles Times, Billboard Magazine or NBC, the complaint reached the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday. It was brought in by a former employee named Isaiah Meadows, who accused West of failing to pay him his promised salary and unfairly firing him.
The complaints are similar to those of two teachers, Cecilia Hailey and Chekarey Byers, who sued West in April, accusing him of a lack of commitment to his payments and racism for being the only two black teachers at the center, and they were paid lower salaries than their peers. Now, Isaiah Meadows assures that he was offered a salary of $165,000 a year to work at the academy and that he should also be paid the rent since he had to move from North Hollywood with his family. where he lived, to Calabasas. However, the school only paid for his house for three months. When he began complaining about the serious structural problems in February 2021, the payment (worth about $60,000 a year) was stopped. Then they cut his salary. In April, he again complained that they were not making the promised payments to him or other faculty members. The following semester, in August 2022, the school changed its name and location, he was demoted, and finally, after further complaints, was dismissed without explanation. Now he is demanding compensation, the amount of which is not specified, among other things because of “damages for non-payment, loss of income and emotional stress”.
The area surrounding Donda Academy in Simi Valley, California in October 2022. Mel Melcon (Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag)
Complaints about the school, no matter how disturbing their founder, were not trivial. Meadows reveals serious problems in his lawsuit, for example that the windows had no glass, so that when it rained water slid into the classrooms and flooded them. Apparently, the lawsuit states, West doesn’t like glass. “The water seeped into the ground, resulting in a musty odor for the next few days,” the lawsuit says. In addition, the septic tanks overflowed, “which led to terrible smells,” claims the plaintiff.
In addition, the former physical education teacher also states that the dangers for everyone who came to the center were great, since both the electric wires and the telephone wires were exposed to the air. Something that once led to a fire breaking out near a student dining room. Among the center’s shortcomings, Meadows points out, was the lack of hot water. In fact, after moving to another site close to the previous one, the facilities also ran out of power for a while, so lamps powered by a generator were used.
Meadows’ attorneys say many of the problems were caused by West’s fault. “He always changed everything,” say the plaintiff’s lawyers, also explaining that his complaints and claims were received “without any reaction” and “dismissed”. “What happened in that school was absolutely appalling,” the lawyers say.
A version that confirms what teachers Hailey and Byers disclosed already three months ago in their lawsuit, in which they also stated that they were wrongfully fired after complaining about the conditions of the place. The teachers, the only blacks on the entire staff, accused discrimination and claimed that their salaries were well below contract wages. They were released one morning when they arrived at work in the downtown parking lot.
Thanks to them and a lengthy report published by Rolling Stone magazine in September 2022, it was possible to shed some light on the opaque conditions of this school, whose confidentiality agreements, ostensibly intended to protect students’ privacy, did not allow anything known. . But then it became known, for example, that the boys ate sushi every day and other foods were forbidden. The students could only carry water. They ate lunch and studied sitting on the floor; There were no chairs and teachers had to stand or use stools. Also banned were crossword puzzles, coloring sheets and crossword puzzles, as well as clothing from Nike and Adidas, a brand West broke off his association with a few months ago. The young men had to be dressed in black. They couldn’t go up to the second floor of the center because West is afraid of stairs. There were no janitors, no housekeeping staff (you couldn’t use chemicals to clean and there were no trash cans), no orderlies, just expired and poorly stored medicines.
According to the teachers, due to the lack of clear rules and protocols, aggression both among students and boys towards teachers was common. In addition, the Holocaust was not taught and “a lot of historical information was wanted to be suppressed,” says Cecilia Hailey. There were bans and restrictions on teaching: “They didn’t want the students to learn parts of our country’s black or Asian history,” Hailey said. Their complaints resulted in a pay cut of $2,700 each and were described as “aggressive”.
Meadows’ attorneys are the same ones who work with Professors Byers and Hailey and allege that West and the Academy “broke their contracts and violated various California laws,” including wages and wrongful termination. For their part, the rapper’s attorneys allege that the statements, which portray the Academy as a “dystopian institution designed to gratify the singer’s tastes,” are completely false and are calling for the lawsuits to be dismissed. Kanye, or Ye, as he likes to be called, remains silent for the time being, as has been the case for the past few months.