SamIt should come as no surprise that the people who thought it would be a good idea to start a hip-hop high school are completely disorganized and spent too much on a De la Soul feature. Plus how is the hip-hop high school going to be successful? Just attracts kids who smoke too much weed and make mediocre beats/raps. I mean I would want to go to hip-hop high school, but I also sucked at school. Coincidence? I think not. According to Oregon Live:
An innovative public high school designed to engage students with a hip-hop-centered curriculum is in jeopardy of being shut down before it ever opens because of logistical and financial lapses by its leaders.
REAL Prep Charter Academy, more than three years in the making, is scheduled to open Monday in Portland’s Pearl District to serve students in grades nine through 12. The school’s designers have spent $500,000 in federal grants to get the school and its curriculum up and running.
With Jayasuriya at the helm, the group spent most of two federal grants totaling $450,000 to pay a small group to design curriculum, get relevant training, sign on industry and artistic partners to help out, and reach out to students and families to get them to enroll. The state awarded and monitored the spending of that grant.
From March 2010 to this July, for instance, Jayasuriya got $68,000 for her work trying to get the school off the ground. And Troy McNair, the Florida-based brand manager for the Grammy-winning hip-hop trio De La Soul, was paid $79,000 to design curriculum units to help students create a record label and to sign on artists including De La Soul’s Maseo to endorse and advise the school.
That left school organizers without money to buy desks, textbooks, computers or more than a smattering of recording equipment. They were hoping a hip-hop label or philanthropist would make a hefty donation, school leaders say, but none came through. They hoped to get donations of used desks or chairs but didn’t.
Leadership has also been unsteady.
