The philanthropic and education sectors were rocked by the sudden closing of one of the most respected institutions founded by Dr. Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician and wife of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The Primary School was never a normal school so much as it was a model to help kids in poverty and in underprivileged families to learn and get better. It was funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), which invested more than $125 million in its operations over the years; it was supposed to eradicate the obstacles that put children in childhood at risk of poverty.
The classroom and education system at the school were based on Dr. Chan’s medical education background and the idea that the child’s academic success is inextricably linked to their physical health, emotional well-being, and family stability. Besides the standard classroom curriculum, the campus provided free dental care, health evaluations, mental health education, and treatment services for children that all children needed. The model was also able to offer parents direct and targeted assistance through wellness coaching, training, and parenting workshops. By bridging the historical gap between local medical practitioners, social services, and educational systems, the project was to offer a safe space for vulnerable communities in which many of the families spoke languages other than English.
With the array of wraparound services and the good intentions of the project, the institution had a long-running struggle to operate. External evaluations and internal reports showed that the school’s students’ performance on some basic academic measures (reading and writing) often lagged far behind the state. And administrators and educational experts admitted that a holistic health and social infrastructure-based approach was an incredibly challenging administrative feat. The school also had many operational challenges such as leadership transition and turnover in principal officials, which created a challenge to strategic planning and consistency.
The turning point was when the school board learned the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative would stop its financial support after the 2025-26 year when CZI began to concentrate its philanthropy on science and artificial intelligence. With its main donor in the past and now gone from the school board, the school board thought of various alternative options and decided to terminate the school. Board members said it was very difficult to find other sources of funding and attract outside funds because prospective investors assumed the school was going to be run by one of the richest families in the world forever. The closing of The Primary School means the end of a major billionaire-backed school experiment, and families and communities have to deal with what happens when the school closes.
