Pharrell Williams To Open Private Schools For Low-Income Families In Virginia

Super producer Pharrell Williams and his non-profit YELLOW are working to develop small private schools for low-income students in his home state of Virginia. 

The Virginian Pilot reports that the first school is set to open in the Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk this fall. The school is named Yellowhab, named after Williams’ non-profit and combining it with “hab,” the name of the Mars habitat in the movie The Martian. The school will be tuition-free for the first year and will be for students in grades three through five. 

“If the system is fixed and unfair, then it needs to be broken,” Williams said in a news 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.”

Expanding on the summer programs the non-profit has put on in the city, the school’s curriculum will heavily emphasize STEAM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and math. Learning will be collaborative and hands-on, and students will be grouped by skill level instead of grade level. In its inaugural semester, the school will enroll between 40 and 50 students from anywhere in the city.

The first location was chosen due to the current housing segregation and the future redevelopment of three public housing communities in the city, resulting in an increased number of displaced families. Plans are to expand next year by opening a middle school, in addition to other schools.