A Tuition-Free School Will Close Shop

Way back in 2016, there was a lot of excitement and anticipation when 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.

A few days ago, 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 US$ 50 million to the communities and families affected by the closure, the school said in its note this week.