Pharrell Williams will be opening up a school for poor children in Norfolk, Virginia this upcoming fall, Sept. 7.
The producer-turned-rapper-turned-mogul has just revealed that the private school will be located in the historic Ghent District, an area established in the late 1800s.
A grammar school, the institution is an extension of the nonprofit’s decade-long summer camp programming and will be opened to students in the third and fifth grades.
“If the system is fixed and unfair, then it needs to be broken,” Williams said via press release. “We don’t want lockstep learning where so many kids fall behind; we want bespoke learning designed for each child, where the things that make a child different are the same things that will make a child rise up and take flight.”
The school will be called Yellowhab, have a concentration on S.T.E.A.M., start with 40 to 50 students, welcome children from all parts of the city, and will be (at least for the first year) tuition-free and paid for by Williams’ fundraising efforts.
One of the earliest donors is the Walton Family Foundation.
Yellowhab will be in good hands as the executive director Mike McGalliard has experience starting schools.
He founded the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York and several charter schools in Los Angeles.
Families can apply to the school online at www.teamyellow.org/yellowhab until July 1 and students will be picked through a lottery process.