Mark Zuckerberg is worth billions. Why is his nonprofit school closing due to lack of funding?

San Francisco Chronicle​

29-04-2025

Two of the richest people in the world made a slew of promises to low-income families when they opened a nonprofit school in East Palo Alto in 2016.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his pediatrician wife Priscilla Chan vowed that The Primary School would give their children a free education, with a long list of extras on top to overcome the odds the families faced.
No one thought the promises had an expiration date.
Last week, hundreds of families learned The Primary School would close at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year. Then they were told why: There wasn't enough money to keep it open.
Zuckerberg and Chan, worth an estimated $200 billion combined, were walking away.
The news shook the families of the 443 students attending The Primary School in East Palo Alto, who tried to make sense of it.
A week later, they were still waiting for a solid explanation.
The story line that money ran out didn't sound right to many parents and observers, and alternatives quickly emerged, such as that the couple had shifted priorities away from projects focused on real people to focus almost exclusively on artificial intelligence, while also eliminating all association with diversity, equity and inclusion.
"They said there isn't enough money to keep the school open, but I don't believe it," said Spanish-speaking parent Estrella Perez. "When the school opened, they were here, but now that the school is closing, they don't want to show up.'
School officials did not respond to the Chronicle's requests to provide additional information, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative did not respond to requests for comment.
The Primary School board chair Jean-Claude Brizard sent a brief text message: 'I don't think there's anything else to be said."
Preschool parent Brooke Koka, who is also a Primary School board member, said the near unanimous decision to close the school happened at a recent board meeting following a presentation on the school's financial challenges.
The school had been struggling financially for a couple of years, with conversations about cuts or reducing staffing, she said. The annual cost of the school, which includes a smaller preschool site in San Leandro with just over 100 children, was $12.4 million in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, the most recent numbers available from federal filings.
That's about $28,000 per student, which is just over the $25,000 budgeted per student in San Francisco Unified, with all local, state and federal funding included.
Financial contributions to the school, which is operated as a nonprofit, dropped significantly from 2022 to 2023, tax filings show. The Primary School brought in nearly $8 million in contributions in 2022. In 2023, the school brought in just over $3.7 million, tax filings show. The filings do not show the specific sources of the contributions.
Students had access not only to academics, but also medical, dental and mental health care, to address trauma, asthma, developmental delays, homelessness or other barriers to learning. But one former administrator said those add-ons did not produce immediate academic gains as hoped, in part because of the pandemic.
Koka said her understanding was that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the nonprofit set up by the couple to fund its philanthropic endeavors, had planned to fund the school only for a certain amount of time and that the expectation was always that the school would find other public or private funding to support it long term. But those partnerships never materialized, she said, perhaps due to a lack of fundraising or visibility.
'We've just been slowly heading towards this, and I guess trying to hang on for some super person to come in and just pick up all of that slack,' Koka said. 'And it just never got there.'
Koka, whose daughter has autism, said the school offers a supportive model for students with disabilities. She said many parents will struggle to navigate special education services in the public school system with fewer resources.
'Now families are going to have to figure it out on their own again,' Koka said.
Longtime education philanthropists and nonprofit leaders questioned the idea of a new school becoming financially viable and self-sufficient on donations or other support in less than a decade while building out the leadership, curriculum and structure from scratch.
'Great schools take time. Progress takes time,' said Phil Halperin, who has spent nearly three decades in education philanthropy as president of the Silver Giving Foundation. 'And it's our responsibility to be in there for the long haul.'
Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, an education policy and advocacy nonprofit, echoed the idea that education is complicated, but that shouldn't deter billionaires from getting involved.
'We need all hands on deck to help kids,' he said. 'We need that support if it's done well and people stick with it. The last thing you want is philanthropy to say, 'it's too messy, it's too controversial and we'll just go elsewhere.''
Lempert said the decision to close the school lacked sufficient transparency and that families deserved a fuller explanation of what happened.
'Yes, education is hard,' he said. 'What's wrong and upsetting is when you're not there for the long term —– or you say here's the answer and suddenly shift gears.'
Katherine Carter, a former administrator at The Primary School, said the school board — and many faculty members — were not satisfied with the academic outcomes. The school saw significant gains in the lowest test scores, she said, but students struggled to reach proficient or above-proficient levels.
'There was a mistaken belief that the wraparound programming … would show up in dramatic test scores,' she said.
Carter said COVID-19 shutdowns and high principal turnover at The Primary School caused disruption in student learning.
'It takes a long time when you have an innovative school model,' Carter said. 'It takes three to five years of stable leadership. We were never able to get that.'
Carter said The Primary School attempted to partner with Hayward Unified School District to expand the San Leandro preschool into an elementary school, but it was called off as the district closed two schools amid a budget shortfall and declining enrollment.
It's unclear why the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative wouldn't continue to financially support the school or why it would expect a startup education initiative to be financially independent and academically successful while it's still growing. The East Palo Alto school, which grew by a grade each year, planned to serve up to 700 preschool through eighth grade students at full buildout, which was expected to be next year.
This was not Zuckerberg's first foray into education reform. In 2010, he gave $100 million to the Newark, N.J., public schools to overhaul the system, closing low-performing schools and welcoming charters. Critics said the effort yielded mixed results and created turmoil. Zuckerberg later admitted he learned hard lessons from the experiment.
His later efforts through the initiative included funding existing nonprofit education programs and research.
But when Chan and Zuckerberg launched The Primary School they hoped it would be a success, with the long-term goal of opening three to five sites across the Bay Area with public schools replicating the model across the country, officials said early on.
Chan, in an October 2016 video interview, , said the plan was to bring together health and education 'to work together to improve the lives of the kids.'
'That's our vision of what we can hopefully accomplish in the decades to come,' she said.
Less than nine years later, Chan was in tears while on a conference call with school staff and parent leaders speaking about the closure.
'She was sad,' preschool parent Koka said. 'I know she had a lot of passion for this project.'
Koka couldn't remember 'word for word' what Chan said.
'I just remember her apologizing to the families who were on the call, saying she was sorry,' Koka added. 'This is not what she expected to happen.'
While the announcement has left families devastated, the decision reflects Zuckerberg and Chan's shift in recent years in their philanthropic focus. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has been moving away from funding social science research, school-based programs or hands-on work, much of it focused on diversity, race and equity issues.
Grant recipients in the last few years have included the Black Teacher Collaborative, the Equity Initiative, Black Voices for Black Justice Fund and the Liber Institute, which supports Indigenous communities.
The initiative's education team has started focusing more on technology, specifically artificial intelligence, to fuel classroom learning.
In January, Zuckerberg — who has worked to develop closer ties with President Donald Trump — announced Meta, Facebook's parent company, would eliminate DEI. His and Chan's initiative followed suit in February.
By March, there appeared to be only one DEI light left on in the Zuckerberg empire: The Primary School.
The school had deep roots in diversity, equity and inclusion, vowing to teach about diverse cultures and anti-racism while helping students do social justice work and providing opportunities for families to discuss racism.
The East Palo Alto school is primarily children of color with 61% of its students identifying as Latino, 7% as Black, 11% as multiracial, 7% as Pacific Islander, 1% as Asian American, and 13% not provided.
In addition, a quarter of students qualify for special education services and another third receive other specialized support — meaning nearly 60% have significant needs.
Parent Margarita Perez said she enrolled her daughter at the school when she was six months pregnant to ensure they both received support. Her daughter, who is now a first grader, has two teachers in her classroom with a parent coach available for extra support. Then there is dental care, mental health counseling, speech therapy and more.
It's the kind of education and support that experts say is needed to bring some equity between the children in East Palo Alto, where the average median household income is $105,000 and its neighbor Palo Alto, where the average median income is $220,408.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative said it will invest $50 million over five years in East Palo Alto, Belle Haven and the East Bay to help families navigate the transition through education savings accounts, early childhood programs and family engagement services.
Families were told they would receive money to help them find another school: $10,000 for each K-8 student, $2,500 for each preschooler and $1,000 for each child under 3.
Perez said that money is an attempt to placate parents. She doesn't believe that Zuckerberg and Chan don't have enough money to keep the school open. She wondered whether Zuckerberg's connection to the Trump administration influenced the decision to shutter the school.
"I'm disappointed because they made promises,' she said. 'And now they're leaving.'