Education

Ludacris Accompanies Deal to Middle School in Riverdale

September 26th, 2014

It’s a pretty good day when the governor comes to your school. But it’s even better when he brings a homegrown celebrity with him. Gov. Nathan Deal and rapper Ludacris visited a school in Clayton County Friday.

Broadcast version.

At the Utopian Academy for the Arts in Riverdale, Ludacris was not the only entertainer on hand. Students performed an anti-bullying skit and put a new twist on an old R. Kelly song.

Utopian serves 7^th and 8^th graders. It was the lone charter school approved by a new state commission last year. The students listened intently to Ludacris. The singer and actor, whose real name is Chris Bridges, told them to set goals.

“That’s extremely important because a lot of people will tell you you’re at a disadvantage, but I feel like you’re at an advantage because you have street smarts, but when you add book smarts to that, you are unstoppable,” he said. “No one can stop you.”

But city officials did stop the school from opening on time. A dispute over the building lease delayed school for about two weeks. The governor visited Utopian shortly afterwards. Artesius Miller, the school’s founder and executive director, says that boosted morale.

“I think it helped tremendously just having support outside of this community,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of red tape in Clayton County, a lot of folks that don’t want to see charter schools, and don’t want to see charter schools successful.”

But Gov. Deal said Utopian students heard a different message from Ludacris.

“I think what he said to the students today is the type of message that I think all of us would like for them to hear,” Deal said. “They have had to come through some real struggles to get the doors of this school open, and I want to make sure they all understand how important their success really is.”

Deal doesn’t have a favorite Ludacris song, but said he enjoyed his performance in The Fast and the Furious. Ludacris started as an intern at a local Hip Hop station and from there went into rapping and acting.