Founded by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, the tuition-free school is suddenly closing its doors for the low-income community in the Bay Area.
Founded in 2016 by the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, the primary school sought to provide free schooling, healthcare and social work resources to families in the East Palo Alto area, just a few miles from Meta’s headquarters.
It condemned the systemic effects of racism and poverty, and Zuckerberg-married pediatrician and her late educator friend Meredith Liu often discussed how low-income children are likely to experience impactful trauma early in their lives.
But East Bay primary schools and their sister campuses sent shockwaves throughout the community last week.
It didn’t provide a reason for the closure, but it comes as Zuckerberg tried to curry favor with the Trump administration, so it comes as Zuckerberg did about the strong political side.
The primary school and Chan Zuckerberg initiative did not immediately respond to requests to post comments.
Earlier this year, weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Zuckerberg killed Meta’s DEI program and supported the fact-checking policy of social media platforms with the “Community Note” model. Trump’s ally Elon Musk uses a similar memo system in X, claiming that content moderation policies violate freedom of speech.
Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s first fund through Meta, and alongside Chang, he paid upfront at the inauguration ceremony.
Meta also agreed to pay a whopping $25 million to resolve the lawsuit brought against the company after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. That figure roughly $22 million will help fund the Trump Presidential Library.
Emery Vainicolo, parents with children in the district, He told the New York Times She and other parents were invited by school administrators to breakfast bagels, fruit and Starbucks coffee when they dropped the news of the closure, but were not given a reason.
Her son, a kindergartener at elementary school, later shared what he had collected from his teacher.
“Mom, the guy who gives money to our school doesn’t want to give it to us anymore,” he told his mother.
CZI, a nonprofit for Zuckerberg and Chan, plans to invest $50 million in the school’s surrounding communities over the next few years, donating to all elementary school students’ education savings plans, and supporting families as they move into the new district.
The initiative was announced in February Focus on science and “decline” its social advocacy efforts, including immigration reform, granting racial equity and investment in internal DEI programs.
However, elementary school families said CZI’s sudden departure was another face slap from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who contributed to the housing shortage thanks to an influx of well-paid technical workers.
The elementary school was “very publicly published as a gift for the community,” one parent told San Francisco Standard. “They already had our home on Facebook, because the landlords were priced us. Now they’re going to take this out too. That seems unfair.”
