Kanye West’s New Christian School ‘Donda Academy’ Raises Concerns

Kanye West has now added the unexpected title of school founder to his resume, after having founded a private school called Donda Academy in Simi Valley, California that reportedly enrolls around 100 students. The school is named after his late mother Donda West, who died in 2007 and was also the namesake of two of his recent albums.

Its website boasts small class sizes and reportedly incorporates “Full School Worship” into its daily schedule, but not much information has come out about how the school operates. Students are required to sign NDA’s for enrollment, which costs about $15,000 a year. There is also an application on the school’s website for a place in West’s choir which performs at his Sunday Service concerts.

The school’s principal, Brianne Campbell, also has limited experience in education at best. She founded a music tutoring business called the Melody Makers Academy of Music, but its Facebook page indicated it didn’t have a classroom setting and brought tutors to clients’ homes instead.

A Rolling Stone profile about the Academy also claimed that Campbell only recently began a Masters’s program in Education in January and will graduate next August.

They seem to be planning to have a full pre-k through 12th grade operation here, which is certainly a surprising challenge for West to take on. He is also doing a round of interviews where he has discussed the new venture a couple of times.

In a recent interview on the podcast Alo Mind Full, West claimed he had never read a book and said “reading is like brussels sprouts to me.” Obviously, he’s not going to be teaching English at his school or anything, but it’s still a weird thing for a school founder to say. He also said that celebrities somehow factored in the curriculum by saying “we’re also leaning into people in the industry.”

West also told Good Morning America that he wants to enroll his children with Kim Kardashian into the school “and I have to fight for a say-so.”

The school is still unaccredited and is set for an appointment to be evaluated by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges sometime next year in the spring.