Priscilla Chan’s Primary School Closes After a Decade Despite $125 Million in Funding
A decade after it was founded to transform education for low-income families, The Primary School in East Palo Alto, California, has closed its doors, bringing an ambitious experiment backed by more than $125 million in philanthropic funding to an end. When Dr. Priscilla Chan, physician, philanthropist and wife of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, co-founded The Primary School in East Palo Alto in 2016, the vision was far bigger than simply creating another school.
The tuition-free private school was designed around the idea that children’s educational outcomes cannot be separated from their health, emotional wellbeing and family circumstances. Instead of focusing solely on classroom instruction, the school sought to support what it described as the “whole child.” Students were offered a range of wraparound services, including dental care, wellness coaching, early-intervention screenings and other health and family-support programmes. The ambitious model was intended to address some of the barriers that can prevent children from low-income families from succeeding academically.
For years, the school became one of the most visible education-focused philanthropic projects associated with Chan and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), receiving more than $125 million in funding. Yet after roughly a decade of operation, the experiment has come to an end.
The Primary School shut its doors in June 2026 after its board voted to close the institution, following the decision by CZI not to continue funding the school beyond the 2025–26 academic year.
Why was the school closed?
According to people familiar with the situation, the school’s board voted unanimously in April 2025 to wind down the institution after learning that CZI would not provide funding beyond the 2025–26 school year. Board president Jean-Claude Brizard said the board explored several possible options for the school’s future, including gradually winding down operations. He also indicated that the board would not have voted to close without alignment from the school’s primary funder.
CZI, however, maintained that the ultimate decision to close belonged to the school’s board and said its evaluation had focused heavily on academic results rather than simply the amount of money being spent.
The closure also comes as CZI has undergone a broader change in its philanthropic priorities, increasingly shifting its attention away from some social initiatives and toward scientific research.
An ambitious model with mixed academic results
The Primary School’s approach was innovative, but its academic performance became one of the biggest challenges facing the experiment. The school’s long-term ambition was not simply to operate as an independent private institution. It hoped to demonstrate that its model could eventually be replicated in public and charter schools.
However, academic results did not consistently reach the levels expected by the school’s leadership or state benchmarks. A Stanford University report found that in spring 2025, about 26% of Primary School students in third grade and above exceeded state literacy standards, compared with 47% statewide. The figure was nevertheless higher than the 14% recorded among local students in the surrounding area.
The school also pointed to improvements among its older students. It said that more than half of its eighth-grade students demonstrated grade-level proficiency in their final year, with many of those students having spent nearly a decade at the school.
School officials and staff also highlighted progress in areas beyond standardized academic testing, including students’ wellbeing and social-emotional development, particularly following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The school’s health-focused approach also produced measurable results. Around 85% of Primary School students completed their annual well-child visits, compared with about 55% of children on Medicaid in the county.
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Families describe the closure as devastating
For the roughly 540 children enrolled across the school’s two campuses, the closure was more than the loss of a classroom. For many families, The Primary School had become an important support system that combined education, healthcare and other services under one roof.
Mele Fakapelea, whose daughter Telesia secured a place in the school’s founding class through a lottery, eventually enrolled four younger children at the school as well. She described the institution as a “godsend school” and said losing its support system was devastating. But not every parent was satisfied with how the closure was communicated.
Angelica Cardenas, whose three-year-old daughter and five nieces and nephews were enrolled, said she learned about the school’s closure through news reports rather than directly from the institution. She questioned why families were not informed earlier if the funding situation had made closure a possibility.
The closure has therefore left families facing the difficult task of transitioning their children into other schools while also losing access to some of the additional services that made The Primary School distinctive.
Students to move into the public school system
Following the closure, students from The Primary School are being absorbed into the Ravenswood City Elementary School District. The district has been preparing for the additional enrollment and renovating a campus to accommodate the incoming students.
Officials are also working to prevent the increase in enrollment from forcing children into portable classroom trailers, highlighting the logistical challenge created by the sudden transition of hundreds of students.
CZI commits additional $50 million during the wind-down
Although CZI decided not to continue funding The Primary School as an operating institution, the organization has committed significant resources to help manage its closure. CZI pledged $50 million following the announcement, including funding to cover the remaining balance of the school’s lease with the district and support local organizations that can continue providing some of the services previously offered by the school. The organization also committed $3.6 million toward education savings accounts for affected families.
Under the programme, elementary school students were allocated $10,000 each, preschoolers received $2,500, while children participating in early-childhood education programmes were allocated $1,000. These measures are intended to soften the impact of the closure and give families additional resources as they navigate the transition.
Chan’s hands-on involvement
Priscilla Chan played a significant role in the school’s development. She served as co-founder and board chair for approximately eight years, stepping down from the chairmanship in 2023. Throughout much of the school’s existence, CZI remained its primary financial supporter. The original vision, according to CZI, was never to create an institution permanently dependent on a single wealthy donor. Instead, the long-term goal was for the school to develop a model that could eventually be sustained largely through public investment. The school also reportedly worked to keep its spending per student broadly comparable with public-school levels.
Brizard said Chan personally worked to attract additional financial support and used her network to seek other donors. However, securing outside funding was challenging, partly because potential donors viewed the institution as already having the backing of one of the world’s wealthiest families.
A difficult admission for an ambitious experiment
Chan was also reportedly candid about the school’s academic challenges. She acknowledged that the results were not where those involved with the project would have wanted them to be, underscoring one of the central difficulties facing philanthropic education initiatives: significant financial investment and extensive support services do not automatically translate into the academic outcomes expected.
The Primary School’s experience raises broader questions about how much money and additional services can improve educational outcomes, particularly in communities facing deep socioeconomic challenges. It also highlights the difficulty of taking an experimental model developed with private philanthropic funding and successfully transferring it into the public education system. The end of an experiment, but not necessarily its legacy
The closure of The Primary School marks the end of a decade-long experiment that sought to rethink how education, healthcare and family support could be integrated into one institution. Its failure to continue operating does not necessarily erase the impact it had on the families and children who passed through its classrooms.
For some parents, it provided opportunities and services they could not easily access elsewhere. For others, the manner in which the school eventually closed exposed the vulnerabilities that can come when a major institution depends heavily on a single philanthropic funder.
Ultimately, The Primary School leaves behind a complicated legacy: an ambitious vision, more than $125 million in philanthropic investment, measurable improvements in some areas, disappointing academic results in others, and hundreds of families now transitioning back into the traditional public school system.
Its story may serve as an important case study for educators, philanthropists and policymakers seeking to determine whether privately funded innovations can produce sustainable, scalable solutions to longstanding problems in public education.
