A tuition-free school founded by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, for low-income communities of color in the Bay Area is abruptly shutting its doors — only a decade after it opened. The Primary School, founded in 2016 by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, sought to provide free schooling, health care, and social work resources to families in the East Palo Alto area, just a few miles from Meta’s headquarters. It decried the systemic effects of racism and poverty, and Chan, a pediatrician married to Zuckerberg, and her late educator friend Meredith Liu often discussed how low-income children were more likely to experience impactful trauma early in their lives.
But The Primary School, and its sister campus in the East Bay, sent shockwaves throughout the community last week when it announced it would close at the end of the 2025-26 school year. Though it did not provide a reason for the closure, it comes as Zuckerberg has executed a strong political about-face as he tries to curry favor with the Trump administration. The Primary School and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
Meta also agreed to pay a whopping $25 million to settle a lawsuit Trump brought against the company for suspending his account after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. About $22 million of that figure will help fund a Trump presidential library. Emeline Vainikolo, a parent with children in the district, told The New York Times that she and other parents were invited by school administrators to a breakfast of bagels, fruit, and Starbucks coffee when they dropped the news of the closure, but were given no reason. Her son, a kindergartner at The Primary School, later shared what he had gleaned from his teacher. Mommy, the guy who’s been giving money to our school doesn’t want to give it to us anymore, he told his mother, according to the Times.
Zuckerberg and Chan’s nonprofit, CZI, plans to invest $50 million in the school’s surrounding communities over the next few years, donating to education savings plans for all Primary School students, as well as support for families transitioning to new districts. In February, the initiative announced it would focus on science and “wind down” its social advocacy work, including investments in immigration reform and racial equity grantmaking, as well as internal DEI programs.
Families at The Primary School, however, said CZI’s sudden departure is just another slap in the face from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who have contributed to a housing shortage thanks to an influx of highly-paid tech workers. The Primary School “was highly publicized as a gift to the community,” one parent told the San Francisco Standard. “They were already taking our homes because of Facebook, landlords pricing us out. Now they’re gonna take this away too. It seems unfair.”
Mark Zuckerberg is shutting down schools he launched for communities of color. Earlier this month, The Primary School, a private school launched by Zuckerberg and his partner Priscilla Chan nearly a decade ago, announced that it would close for good next year. “After much deliberation, our schools in East Palo Alto and the East Bay will be closing at the end of the 2025–26 school year,” school officials said in a release. “This was a very difficult decision, and we are committed to ensuring a thoughtful and supportive transition for students and families over the next year. To sustain The Primary School’s legacy, [Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI)] will make a $50M investment over the next few years in the East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, and East Bay communities.”
Immediate support through this investment includes the 529 education savings plans for all of the school’s students to support future learning and transition specialities to help families as they attempt to find other schools. In 2016, Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, opened The Primary School, a tuition-free private school that endeavored to help low-income families and people of color have greater access to education, healthcare, and other social services.
According to the statement, the school was founded “on the guiding principle that raising a child is a team effort,” and brought together all of the adults in a child’s life, including healthcare providers, to further empower families. The closure of both locations, currently upending the lives of families who had come to rely on the school and its resources, is reportedly due to funding problems. After the $50 million donation to help the families transition, CZI is ultimately pulling its funding. The school’s closure also comes in the midst of the Trump administration’s attack on anything deemed to be in service of diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially among schools and universities.
The Trump Administration has taken an aggressive stance on eliminating DEI in K-12 schooling, the government, on college campuses and in the business sector. In the beginning of the year, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would be ending its DEI initiatives. While he does not have a formal role in Trump’s Administration in any capacity, the tech CEO clearly expects to spend more time in Washington as he recently purchased a home in the Nation’s Capital. “Though The Primary School as it exists today will be coming to an end, we sincerely hope that what we have learned and shown to be possible will live on,” the school’s statement continued. “We will entrust our partners in this work — both our direct collaborators and our compatriots across the education and health fields — to carry the torch for all families, but especially the most vulnerable. Our belief in our guiding principle has not wavered, and we know that it will take all of us to work toward a future where our children and families can grow, learn, and thrive no matter the circumstances.”