The Zuckerbergs founded two schools in the Bay region. Now they close.

The primary school opened in 2016, a few kilometers from the Facebook headquarters. Its mission was to serve as a hub at without tuition fees where children of low -income families could be educated and have access to health care and social workers under one roof.

Dr. Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician married to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, worked with Meredith Liu, an educator and friend, to build the school of East Palo Alto, California, a diversified city that rarely harvested the advantages of its much richer Silicon Valley neighbors.

They talked about how low -income children were more likely to have undergone trauma at the start of life and how this trauma would have lasting effects. The primary school, said its website, has tried to overcome systemic racism and poverty that harm the colored communities.

This week, however, school officials amazed families when they told parents that the campus would close in the summer of 2026.

Emeline Vainikolo said that she and other parents were invited by school administrators to a bagel breakfast, fruit and Starbucks coffee and were suddenly informed of the closure, but did not give any reason. They were left by looking at each other “stunned,” she said. His son, a kindergarten, later relayed a reason he had gleaned from his teacher, she said.

“” Mom, the guy who gave money to our school no longer wants to give it to us, “he told him.

The guy in question is Mr. Zuckerberg, the director general of Meta, who joined many of his colleagues technological leaders in Silicon Valley trying before President Trump this year. This has included a decline on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in their businesses and their philanthropic organizations.

The closure of the primary school and a sister campus in East bay led families to wonder if the moment was a coincidence. Their schools were established in a different time when heads of technology poured resources in racial justice and diversity measures that were intended to reduce societal inequalities.

The primary school was one of the first beneficiaries of the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, which was founded by Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan 10 years ago and is still jointly led by them as co-chefs. The initiative granted around $ 100 million in school grants and related groups from 2018 to 2024.

The school started with just preschool children, but possibly served toddlers through the eighth students, adding a note each year. The school year of 2025-2026 will be the first time that it will offer the eighth year – and the last.

When 35 students end the eighth year, primary school, as well as the East Bay campus, a more recent counterpart in San Leandro, California, will closure. The two sites serve around 550 children.

The heads of schools and the Chan Zuckerberg initiative said little about the reasons for the closures. Primary school Published Les Nouvelles on his website Monday after parent breakfast, but did not express the reasons.

He said that the Chan Zuckerberg initiative will invest $ 50 million in affected communities, as well as account education for school students and “transitional specialists” to help families find new schools. The Chan Zuckerberg initiative managed the journalists of the school declaration.

If school was an experience, it did not go well. Parents have said that teacher’s turnover was high, although school officials said retention in the past two years. The community was saddened in 2023 when Ms. Liu, the school co-founder, died.

The program also struggled to attract donor funds other than the Chan Zuckerberg initiative. Jean-Claude Brizard, former superintendent of the Chicago school system, chairman of the primary school board of directors, said the program had requested public funding for its operations so that it is not completely funded by the Zuckerberg family.

“If something depends entirely on philanthropic financing – or even frankly 50% – it is not long -term sustainable,” said Brizard in an interview.

But the school had struggled to make enough progress demonstrable to convince public funders, or even additional donors, to support it, he said.

“I am the one who recommended that we also put the table in the nuclear option,” he said. “Is it time to dissolve?” Is it time to start keeping the assets towards the community away? ”

Carson Cook, the main director of the strategy and the advancement of the primary school, refused to say a lot in an interview at the central office of the school, located in a strip shopping center anchored by a nordstrom rack a few steps from the campus.

“Yes, we will relax,” he said. “But there is a lot of motivation to make it a great year.”

Asked when the administration learned that the Chan Zuckerberg initiative was withdrawn, Cook said: “No comments.” And asked if he thought that Mr. Zuckerberg was getting his money because of the accent put by the president on the elimination of Dei’s initiatives, Mr. Cook replied: “I have no comments on this subject.”

In 2020, primary school has made several commitments of antitiraisism, including teaching “development of identity, cultures and various ideas” and the design of means for students to engage in social justice work, according to its website. He also created a working group that year to make sure that the school was up to its commitments.

Mr. Cook did not allow a journalist to enter school. Her administrative offices include a sign with a rainbow proclaiming it “a safe space” and a large poster with words from Amanda Gorman’s poem, “The Hill We Climb”, which she read during the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2021.

Mr. Brizard stressed that the closures were not part of a dismissal of Mr. Zuckerberg. And those responsible for the Chan Zuckerberg initiative underlined their continuous investment of $ 50 million to support families in the Palo Alto and San Leandro regions as an example that he remained attached to the same cause.

The speal arrives more than a decade after Another education experience by Mr. Zuckerberg. In 2010, he contributed $ 100 million to the renovation of public education in Newark, an amount equaled by other contributions. This effort benefited the charter schools but Also frustrated Parents, activists and teachers.

The parents of East Palo Alto said on Thursday that they did not know what was behind the school closure, but they were frustrated by the announcement. A mother, who asked not to be appointed because of her immigration status, said that the school had designed a good choice for her 6 -year -old son, who is autistic. She said that the teachers had paid him special attention and made sure that he had not been intimidated.

She was particularly grateful to Mrs. Chan to have started school and keep her promises to provide high quality education to all children. Until this week, anyway.

“Obviously, she gave us a complete reversal that none of us could have imagined,” she said in Spanish. “That’s all we ask for with our heart – that she supports us and does not leave us halfway with our children.”

Ms. Vainikolo and her two sisters send a total of six children to school. She is pregnant with a little boy, in June, and had hoped until the announcement of the closure to send him to school with her brothers and sisters and cousins.

“It’s a billionaire,” she said about Mr. Zuckerberg. “Why would he want to close this?”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.