One of two teachers, a mother and daughter pair, who was fired from Kanye West’s Donda Academy is speaking out about her wrongful termination. She claims she and other strong African American women were let go because of their uncompromising stances on educating the students.
She also has issued a warning to parents who still may have children enrolled in the unaccredited school: your kids aren’t being educated and you might be trapped at the school because there are no transcripts.
In an interview with TMZ, Cecilia Hailey said, “[Parents] need to consider that it’s going to be very hard for them to be able to transfer their kids out of that school next year or later because there are no grades.”
“They can’t get transcripts,” she continued. “And that they’re not getting what they need. They’re absolutely not getting what they need. The kids are being suppressed because of all the constant changes that go on at the school.”
Many of the changes have been connected to West’s controversial statements last year.
Hailey said there are programs set up that, on paper, look great, but the teachers are not consistent in teaching the curriculum.
“We have something in place called ‘Educate’ that we haven’t even been keeping up with,” she informed. “But since I’ve been there have been no report cards given to the students or progress reports … [and] because [Donda] is not accredited, you really can’t get any documents from the school to show where you’ve been. We can tell you about things that we graded but for it to be legitimately documented with the Department of Education, they don’t have that.”
Hailey says new public and private schools will have to test students to assess exactly what grade the students should place in.
However, if the students should be on a 6th-grade level but test lower— they will be placed in the lower grade or receive an IEP, an Individualized Education Program is a legal document under United States law that is developed for each public-school child in the U.S. who needs special education.
One of the most shocking allegations is that students at the Donda Academy are not taught about the Holocaust or African American history. Hailey said that was one of her major issues with the school.
The former Donda teacher says she does not believe Kanye West is totally at blame for the school, even though she has named him in the retaliation and wrongful termination lawsuit. She believes it is the administrators who are chiefly at fault.
She did have words for the founder, “Ye West, I’m so thankful to you for having the opportunity to be at your school but things are not going the way they should: academically, socially, or spiritually.”
Adding, “You need to back it down and retry again with people who know what they’re doing, who can execute a vision, and who can help you understand that we don’t know anything about producing albums, but we know how to educate.”
Hailey told the rapper the “children’s lives” are in his hands and if he is really “trying to carry out the vision” of his mother, Donda West, a college professor, he is sorely off track.
