Jada Pinkett Smith donated $1 million to her high school alma mater. Pinkett Smith attended the Baltimore School for the Arts with classmate Tupac Shakur. She asked that its new theater be dedicated to Shakur, who was shot to death in 1996.

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

The Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation, which had previously given $112,500 to the school, is based in Baltimore. The donation will be used for expansion and renovation of the existing structure. The school’s new theater will be named for Pinkett Smith.

Pinkett Smith, 35, was last seen on screen in 2004’s “Collateral”. She is married to Will Smith, who stars in “The Pursuit of Happyness” with the couple’s 8-year-old son, Jaden.

The school will increase its enrollment from 316 to 375 students once a $30 million expansion program is finished in late 2007.

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

The theater will be named for Shakur because of the friendship that Pinkett Smith and Shakur developed at the school. The rapper was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas.

The actress has appeared along side her husband Will in “Ali” and she was the voice of the hippo Gloria in the animated film “Madagascar.”

“The Pursuit of Happyness,” starring Will Smith, opens in theaters Friday December 18^th 2006.

Your Therapy:

Yo, this is great deed and it’s great to see people giving back to the community. It doesn’t hurt to promote your own project at the same time. A million dollars of publicity might help Will’s new joint blow up proper.

I don’t know why they won’t name the theater for my brother Tupac but the “Pinkett Smith Theatre” sounds good too.

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