Report: 'Principal' Rapper Paid $192K Salary to Lead Nonexistent NYC High School

An educator in New York City has reportedly been taking a handsome salary of over $192,000 for not running a school that was never opened to students. The man was identified as 33-year-old Caleb Haraguchi-Combs who is also a rapper and was the vice principal at another school when he was chosen earlier this year to be the project director for Next Generation Technology High School, the New York Post reported Sunday. The outlet noted that being put in charge of such a project meant that individual typically took on the principal’s role. However, Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels in April cut the proposal for Haraguchi-Combs’ new campus that was supposed to focus student learning on artificial intelligence and computer technology. The Post article said the move was due to “woke backlash over its merit-based admissions model and general fear of AI in schools.” Indeed, the city’s education officials announced a new policy in September banning generative AI tools for students from early childhood through eighth grade, according to Breitbart News. Haraguchi-Combs no longer works as the assistant principal for the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, where his pay was over $140,000 a year, the Post article continued: The DOE said that Haraguchi-Combs is currently “developing new proposals and supporting in-progress proposals,” a typical role for project directors whose schools don’t exist. However, a DOE source strongly refuted that claim. “Unless a principal has tenure, they get bumped back to AP if their schools don’t open,” the source said. Officials “never should have named a principal before the school was approved.” As to his career as a rapper, Haraguchi-Combs appeared to have written a song featured on Apple Music titled “War Propaganda.” “Every politician out there losing it, what the hell they doing with all that power… why is revolution always met with so much callousness… there’s a war going on outside no one is safe from,” the lyrics said. Meanwhile, teachers in New York City’s public schools were reportedly passing nearly 100 percent of their students even though a large number of them were struggling to learn math and reading.