‘It was just a free-for-all’: What happened to Kanye West’s Donda Academy?
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Former employees alleged in the lawsuits that West compared himself to Hitler, “minus the gas chambers,” refused to allow faculty to teach subjects such as Black history and made lewd comments to them. Further, West sought to force kids to shave their heads, lock them in cages and make them sit on the floor because he didn’t like chairs, another former staffer alleged in a lawsuit.
Chekarey Byers, a former fifth-grade teacher at Donda, sued West and Donda Academy, claiming that she was wrongfully terminated in 2023 after she reported a series of health and safety violations at the school. She and two other former teachers who joined the suit settled last month.“It was a lot of disorder and chaos,” Byers told The Times before the settlement, echoing claims in her lawsuit. “Donda didn’t really have any structure. They had books that they had bought that were just sitting on shelves. Kids were just playing all day. It was just a free-for-all.”
“The founder had a tremendous amount of vision and commitment,” said one former educator. The school was an “incredible place,” with “tons of potential,” said this person, who declined to be named because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement, as did many staffers and some students’ families. Money appeared to be no object. At Donda more than $1 million was spent annually on school trips, according to a federal tax filing. Engineers, music executives and fashion designers were tapped to teach students technology, business and design. The school’s gospel choir performed with West’s Sunday Service, his series of invite-only worship concerts.
Beulah McLoyd, a former principal from Chicago lauded by President Obama, began working with Donda in 2020 and was named the school’s executive director. “I’m all for supporting students and creating approaches to education and ingenuity, that is what attracted me. I landed there to support that effort,” she told The Times. ”I was given an amazing opportunity by West to do some really great work with the students, that’s why I was even there.” A year and a half later, McLoyd walked away. She declined to elaborate on her decision to resign beyond saying, “I’m a professional educator. At one point, philosophical differences arose.” She added, “I respected those [differences] and we parted ways.”
Dr. Tamar Andrews, another veteran education consultant, was hired to help build the school’s infrastructure and curriculum. She too would leave abruptly after less than a year, following one of West’s public antisemitic tirades. The departure was part of a churn of administrators and teachers that contributed to a sense of unpredictability, former teachers said.
Isaiah Meadows uprooted his family and moved to Calabasas from North Hollywood in November 2020, when West hired him to be an assistant principal at what was then his Yeezy Christian Academy. In addition to a $165,00 salary for the nine-month school year, West promised Meadows his rent would be paid, he said. Less than two years after he began working at the school, Meadows said West fired him in retaliation for flagging a raft of health and safety violations: Rain fell through an empty skylight, soaking the floor and leading to a moldy smell for days; the building had exposed telephone and electrical wiring; there was no working hot water for the kids to wash their hands; and the septic tank frequently overflowed, according to the lawsuit he filed. Three months after Meadows raised these concerns with West and the school’s then-principal, he alleged in his suit, his salary was cut, his rent was no longer paid for and he was demoted to working as a teacher’s assistant and physical education teacher.
In fall 2021, Donda moved from Calabasas to Simi Valley for a period, where, Meadows said in the lawsuit, the school was plagued with similar safety and health issues, including a lack of electricity that caused teachers to conduct lessons using commercial flood lamps powered by a generator to light the classrooms during the first few months there. After flagging these and other problems, in August 2022, two weeks before the new school term was to start, Meadows was informed that he was being terminated without explanation. A lawyer representing West, and the three other defendants in the suit, denied “each and every allegation of Meadows complaint,” in a 2023 filing.
In addition to alleged safety problems, former employees asserted in lawsuits and interviews that Donda was a hostile work environment.
When the school moved once again — to an industrial warehouse and offices in Chatsworth that had housed a cosmetics company — Benjamin Deshon Provo, who worked as a security guard at the Simi Valley site, was enlisted to also transport children and teach nutrition classes. Provo alleged in a wrongful termination lawsuit that West “frequently screamed at and berated Black employees” like himself and regularly expressed “hostility and hatred toward various religious groups.”
The rapper did not allow books about or relating to Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and others at the school, according to the suit, filed last April. The case is pending. Provo, who wears dreadlocks, said West demanded that he and others, including staff and children, shave their heads, telling them, “Alright y’all, it is time for you to shave your heads. I am not messing around,” the lawsuit states. When Provo refused, he said, he was fired.
A lawyer representing West, Donda Academy and the other defendants in Provo’s suit denied “each and every allegation contained in the complaint,” according to a June 2024 filing.
Aaron Donald of the Los Angeles Rams and Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics terminated their marketing deals with West’s Donda Sports. Several prestigious high school basketball tournaments pulled their invitations to Donda. Many of the players began transferring to other programs. Kimberly Hicks said her son, starting forward Justin Johnson, was one of the last three holdouts to remain on the team, before he left for Hillcrest Prep in Mesa, Ariz. Johnson had joined Donda during his senior year after playing for Miami Dade High School, believing it would help develop him as a player. “I talked to the coaches, they were all hurt from this, they knew they were going to have a really good team,” Hicks said regarding the school’s turmoil. “It was all because of what Kanye said about the Jews and Jewish people in that manner. He started losing everything and I knew it was going to trickle down to the school and the basketball team.”
At the end of October 2022, Donda parents were notified by email that the school was shutting down: “at the discretion of our founder, Donda Academy will close for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year effective immediately.” But just as quickly as it was closed, Donda reopened within days. For much of the rest of the year, however, the school appeared to operate in a state of limbo as controversy around West continued.
Around Thanksgiving, West announced he was running for president. He claimed that he asked Donald Trump to be his running mate. “I see good things about Hitler,” he said days later during a nearly three-hour interview on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars podcast. “I don’t like the word ‘evil’ next to Nazis.”
During this time, Trevor Phillips began working at Donda. He was tasked with others to plan a conversion of one of West’s Calabasas properties into the school and to manage “projects related to the cultivation of cotton and other plants” for Yeezy’s sustainable clothing line, and to “grow food to support the development of a self-sustaining Yeezy community,” according to a lawsuit Phillips filed against West last April. Phillips said in his complaint that West mistreated Black employees like himself and routinely engaged in antisemitic diatribes during his nine months of employment. During a December 2022 meeting at the Nobu Hotel in Malibu to discuss the school’s curriculum and horticulture, Phillips alleged that West lay on a bed in the hotel room and simulated that he was masturbating, telling Phillips, “I used to have orgies every day — at least two-to-three girls. And now, man, I can’t even lay down without jacking off.”
Around this time, West traveled to Paris and when he returned he “gloated” to Donda and Yeezy staff that he “spent $2 million of the school budget on his trip,” the suit asserted.
Phillips became increasingly troubled by West’s conduct, including when West told a pair of students he wanted “to shave their heads and that he intended to put a jail at the school — and that they could be locked in cages,” according to the complaint. “The staff quickly distracted the children,” the suit said, “and escorted them out of the room.”
In a May 2024 court filing, a lawyer representing West, Donda and his businesses denied “each and every allegation” contained in Phillips’ complaint.
By the end of 2022, West scrapped plans to convert another Calabasas property to house Donda and instead decided that he would relocate the school to the Cornerstone Church and a nearby house in Northridge. In his lawsuit, Phillips described the building to be converted as “dilapidated.” He said that when West was told the project would require planning and building permits, West demanded that Phillips and his team “complete the renovations without any permits.” Phillips said he registered his concerns with the school’s new project manager, who told him that “this is how Kanye wants to do it.” Shortly after, he said, West removed him and others from the project and demoted them, according to the suit.
Eventually, West abandoned the property. In October 2024 the house that he planned to convert into Donda burned to the ground. The Los Angeles Fire Department concluded after an investigation that the cause of the fire was “undetermined.”
The California attorney general’s office sent Donda two delinquency notices in November 2023 and last September, warning that it was in danger of losing its tax exempt charitable status for failing to submit required documents including its tax returns.
In June 2024, Donda Academy closed its doors permanently, according to the California Department of Education. There was no public announcement.
“The idea of the school was magnificent,” said one former educator. “The execution was chaos.” Malik
'It was just a free-for-all': What happened to Kanye West’s Donda Academy?
Lawsuits and interviews The Times conducted provide a fresh glimpse into the extraordinary dysfunction inside Donda and the erratic behavior of its controversial founder that led to its unraveling.
www.latimes.com
