‘Anti-Racist,’ Tuition-Free School Founded By Mark Zuckerberg’s Wife Announces Surprise Closure

A tuition-free “anti-racist” private school founded by Mark Zuckerberg’s wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, will close its doors at the end of the 2025-2026 school year after nearly a decade in operation, the school has announced. The California-based school, called The Primary School, has campuses in East Palo Alto and the East Bay and is financially backed by the billionaire couple’s charity, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The school opened in 2016 with the stated goal of providing both education services and physical and mental health care to low-income families in Silicon Valley. Diversity, equity, and inclusion — which President Trump is seeking to eradicate — appears to be central to the school’s ethos. According to its website, the school seeks to identify its students’ “barriers to learning” and to work with their families “to overcome them.” Such obstacles include “poverty, housing insecurity, racism, and other stressful and traumatic situations” as well as “untreated physical health barriers — like cavities, asthma, or hunger,” the school says on its website. The school also employs an “anti-racist” approach to learning that is meant “to combat historical narratives and a deficit mindset.” The curriculum is designed to teach students “about other cultures and ways of thinking” as well as help them “explore and share their own cultural identity,” the school notes. The school’s website highlights the diversity of its staff, which, in 2024, was 85 percent people of color. The school also notes that 60 percent identify as black or indigenous. The school announced the news of its shutdown on Monday on its website, though it failed to offer an explanation for its sudden closure, stating only that the “very difficult decision” was made after “much deliberation.” The school did note that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is planning to donate $50 million in the wake of the closure to support the “future learning” of students in the East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, and East Bay communities. Parents told NBC News that they felt blindsided by the decision and that the school leaders did not provide any additional information during a meeting last week. More than 95 percent of the students enrolled in the East Palo Alto campus are minorities, according to the school’s most recent tax form. The closure comes as Mr. Trump has taken measures to gut DEI from both the public and private sectors. Although the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative initially assured its employees that it would remain committed to DEI, in February, the organization announced that it was ending such programs due to “the shifting legal and policy landscape.” In the meantime, Mr. Zuckerberg has been tailoring his businesses — and his persona — to be more MAGA-friendly. In the wake of President Trump’s election, Mr. Zuckerberg implemented several significant policy reforms at his social media conglomerate, Meta, including winding down its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and overhauling its fact-checking regime that was criticized for disproportionately silencing conservative voices.

‘Anti-Racist,’ Tuition-Free School Founded By Mark Zuckerberg’s Wife Announces Surprise Closure

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