A tuition-free school created by Zuckerberg and Chan will shutter next year

Summary

New York CNN — In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, opened a tuition-free school for low-income families in California’s Bay Area, where Meta is headquartered. Created under the couple’s philanthropy, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the Primary School aimed to combine healthcare and education for students “from birth through high school.” Chan, a former pediatrician, once described the organization’s education efforts as combining her two core passions. But last week, the Primary School abruptly announced plans to shut down at the end of the 2025-26 school year. The school called the closure a “very difficult decision,” but offered little explanation, in a message to the hundreds of families that it serves across two campuses. The closure comes amid bigger shifts by CZI and its namesake leaders, and as Big Tech broadly repositions itself in the era of President Donald Trump. Parents were told that the school was shuttering because CZI was withdrawing its support, according to reports from the San Francisco Standard and the New York Times. A representative for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative told CNN that the school’s board of directors made the decision and pointed to its statement, but did not respond to an additional question about the group’s funding for the school. CZI plans to donate $50 million to the communities and families affected by the closure, the school said in its note this week. Carson Cook, the Primary School’s senior manager of strategy and advancement, confirmed in an interview with CNN that the school began meeting with parents to inform them of the closure last Thursday and said those conversations are ongoing. But he declined to comment on the reasons behind the closure or the timing. “At the Primary School, our model has always been one that carefully considers the needs of the whole family, and we want to do our absolute best to ensure that every child and their caregiver is supported,” Cook said. “And I think what we j...