Rosie Perez is headed back to the halls of learning…

The 49-year-old Puerto Rican Oscar-nominated actress, dancer and community activist will star opposite Jack Whitehall in ABC’s single-camera comedy pilot An American Education.

Based on the BBC Three series Bad Education, British actor-comedian Whitehall – who created and starred in the original series – is reprising his role as Alfie Wickers, now a British transplant and an unorthodox young teacher in the San Diego public school system. Alfie loves his students but his youthful, often naive enthusiasm and unconventional methods put him at odds with the test-obsessed administrators.

Perez will portray Rita Gomez, the school’s hard-assed Vice Principal, a terrifying force that grew up in a bad neighborhood who intimidates Alfie by her no-nonsense, bullish, self-righteous, by-the-numbers approach to ruling the school, or how she sees it, her kingdom.

Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory wrote the script from a story they co-wrote with Whitehall and Ben Cavey.

Perez, who got her big break in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in 1988, last appeared on television on Showtime’s Nurse Jackie and Fox’s The Cleveland Show in 2012.