Oprah surprises high school principal with $500K donation for students

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey surprised a New Jersey school principal on Friday with a large donation to help students after school.

ABC 7 reported that Winfrey arrived at West Side High School Friday night and presented principal Akbar Cook with a check for $500,000 to fund his program, Lights On, which provides a place for young adults to safely hang out with friends after school.

{mosads}Cook said the program has been a major deterrent for keeping kids off of dangerous city streets where gun violence and gang activity is rampant.

“I haven’t lost any more kids to gun violence since the start of the school year,” he said in April, according to ABC 7.

Winfrey, previously a special contributor for CBS News’ “60 Minutes” flagship news magazine, announced in late April that she would step down from the broadcast, citing its effect on her personality at the time.

“It was not the best format for me,” Winfrey told The Hollywood Reporter last month.

“How should I say this? Never a good thing when I have to practice saying my name and have to be told that I have too much emotion in my name,” she said at the time. “I think I did seven takes on just my name because it was ‘too emotional.’ I go, ‘Is there too much emotion in the Oprah part or the Winfrey part?’ I was working on pulling myself down and flattening out my personality — which, for me, is actually not such a good thing.”