Parents at the Primary School, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s tuition-free private school, learned during a meeting last week that it will shut down at the end of next year. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is moving its money elsewhere, they were told, and the funding for the school, in operation since 2016, would no longer be there.
“We both wanted to cry,” said Angeles Gutierrez, referring to herself and her 7-year-old daughter, Abigail. “I wanted to have [my kids] complete all their grades here.”
With locations in East Palo Alto and the East Bay, the Primary School was one of the ways Zuckerberg and Chan tried to give back to the community that was home to — and much of which was displaced by — Facebook, later rebranded as Meta. Cofounded by Chan and funded by the couple’s foundation, the school serves 443 low-income students from preschool through seventh grade.
Zuckerberg announced the school’s founding in a 2015 Facebook post, promising to create a “new kind of school that brings education and healthcare together” and pledging to offer families prenatal support and provide on-site healthcare for children. “The goal is to support families and help children from underserved communities reach their full potential,” Zuckerberg wrote at the time.
A statement posted to the school’s website Monday said both sites would close at the end of the 2025-26 school year. No reason was provided for the sudden closure, but three parents told The Standard on Tuesday that it was due to CZI pulling funding.
“This was a very difficult decision,” the statement said. “We are committed to ensuring a thoughtful and supportive transition for students and families over the next year.”
The statement added that CZI plans to invest $50 million over the next few years in the East Palo Alto, Belle Haven, and East Bay communities, including transition specialists to help families move to other schools.
When asked about the CZI funding being pulled, a spokesperson for the Primary School declined to comment beyond the statement. A CZI spokesperson referred reporters to the school’s statement.
For parent Isabel Vargas, the impending closure feels like a promise broken.
“It was highly publicized as a gift to the community,” she said. “They were already taking our homes because of Facebook, landlords pricing us out. Now they’re gonna take this away too. It seems unfair.”
Vargas said she opted to have her kids, Emilio, 9, and Alexander and Eric, 11, go to the Primary School because of its focus on child and family welfare, including parent coaching and free healthcare for kids. When Eric was hospitalized for pneumonia, Vargas’ coach and the school nurse helped her make an appointment that she said saved his life.
Alexander, who is in the fifth grade, called the closure “a slap to the face.”
“I’ve been going to this school for a long time,” he said. “I never thought this would happen.”
While Zuckerberg and Chan have not commented publicly on the school’s closure, the Meta CEO has recently transitioned away from liberal causes in an apparent attempt to curry favor with President Donald Trump. In recent months, Zuckerberg shuttered Meta’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and significantly reduced its platforms’ restrictions on hate speech. CZI has also effectively ended its longstanding DEI efforts.
The Primary School serves a majority Latino population and has a section of its website dedicated to its DEI plan. The school’s website says it values the “cultural and community identities of all of our students, families, and staff” and promotes an “anti-racist approach to combat historical narratives and a deficit mindset.”
Veronica Van Leeuwaarde, who starred in a promotional video for the school, called the closure “a huge loss to our community, especially for the low-income families like myself.”
Her son and daughter attended preschool at the East Bay site. While both have moved on to public elementary schools, Van Leeuwaarde said the Primary School had a lasting impact on their lives. Employees at the Primary School arranged an appointment for her at Kaiser Permanente to discuss her son’s learning difficulties, which were later diagnosed as ADHD.
“Honestly, just talking about it makes me want to cry, because it’s just impacted my family so much,” she said.
Outside the East Palo Alto site Tuesday afternoon, parent Sal Marquez said the after-school day-care program is essential, since he usually can’t pick up his son Liam, 5, immediately after class. While his son Evan, 13, will graduate from the Primary School by the time it closes, he’ll have to figure out where Liam and Aiden, 7, will go next.
He and other parents said the Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto doesn’t have the same resources and academic rigor — especially important for Aiden, who is above grade level in his studies, Marquez said.
“It’s a shock,” he said. “It was our pride and joy to say our family went to the Primary School.”
Van Leeuwaarde said the East Bay location, which offers programs for kids age 1 to 4, had recently announced it would be expanding to grades beyond preschool. She immediately contacted the school asking to re-enroll her children, 6 and 7.
Asked if she had a message for Chan and Zuckerberg, she said, “I would hope that they know that they are taking a huge piece of our community. This school has helped in so many ways that I just could not even put into words — not just with the kids, but with the community, and also with the families.
“They’re sacrificing the community,” she continued. “I think it’s gonna be detrimental. And I think that it’s really unfortunate that other families aren’t going to get to experience this.”