Jada Pinkett Smith gives $1 million to school

Associated Press

BALTIMORE -- Jada Pinkett Smith donated $1 million to the high
school from which she graduated and asked that a theater there be
dedicated to one of her classmates, Tupac Shakur.


The Baltimore School for the Arts announced the donation for a
renovation and expansion on Monday, and said it will name its new
theater for her.


The donation comes from the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation,
which is based in Baltimore. They had previously given $112,500 to
the school.


When a $30 million expansion program is finished in the fall of
2007, the school will increase its enrollment from 316 to 375
students.


"It means a lot when you're a teacher and your most famous alumnus
comes back to give a donation," said Donald Hicken, head of the
school's theater department since its founding in 1980 and Pinkett
Smith's former theater teacher. "It really says a lot to the
community that the school matters in people's lives."


Karen Banfield Evans, executive director of the Smith Family
Foundation, and Pinkett Smith's aunt, said the actress was moved by
the school's advances since she graduated in 1989.


Pinkett Smith wanted the theater named for Shakur because of the
friendship they developed at the school. Shakur died in 1996 after a
drive-by shooting in Las Vegas.


Pinkett Smith has appeared in such movies as "Ali," "Collateral" and
the Matrix series. Most recently, she was the voice of the hippo
Gloria in the animated film "Madagascar."