Via the AP
Jada Pinkett Smith (add sound effect) is taking her role as school mistress very seriously.
She and will Will Smith (add sound effect), opened the New Village Leadership Academy last fall for pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, has 60 students.
Jada hopes to open a companion campus for upper grades.
"My plan is to eventually have a high school," Jada said. "I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm just trying to make it through this year."
She decided to open the elementary school after creating a home-school program for her children, 10-year-old Jaden and 8-year-old Willow.
"More and more parents were like, 'Can we come?'" she said. "Then my house started to fill up. We had like 20 kids and I said, 'We might as well start a school.'"
The New Village Leadership Academy generated some controversy when it was first announced because it relies on instructional methods developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The school's director has said it isn't a Scientology facility.
Hubbard's "study technology" is a secular course akin to a Montessori approach, the Web site says.
Jada said the school stresses "100 percent mastery," encouraging students to retake exams until they score 100 percent. The student body is ethnically and economically diverse, she said, "which is a very difficult thing to find in Los Angeles, Calif."
She called the school project "serious business."
"It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done," she said, "but it is really rewarding."
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