This story appeared in the April 23 edition of the Daily Post, to be sure you get the news first, pick up an edition at one of our locations.
BY ADRIANA HERNANDEZ
Daily Post Staff Writer
Parents are outraged after an East Palo Alto school founded by Priscilla Chan and funded by her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that it’s closing down, forcing over 400 kids to find a new school.
The Primary School at 2086 Clarke Ave. will close in June 2026, according to a blog post from the school on April 17. The school was founded in East Palo Alto in 2016 with a focus on combining health care, education, and family support.
“The resources [Chan] has, we don’t have. We are poor,” Nuvia Alborado, a parent at The Primary School, said in Spanish. “With the Trump administration in power and this closure, we feel like this is discrimination.”
The announcement was posted after school officials met with families on April 17. The Primary School has told parents like Alborado that the closure is due to a lack of funds, but hasn’t given any details. The school has not given a reason for its closing to the media.
“I feel like it’s this discrimination for us Hispanics. [Chan] should come and show her face the same way she did when she founded the school and tell us the reasoning behind the closure,” Alborado said in Spanish.
Alborado has a 6-year-old child with autism and diabetes, who is in first grade. During the announcement that school officials made on April 17, she couldn’t attend and heard the news through a video recording of a Zoom meeting. She wasn’t sure what to expect when watching the video and had it on high volume. Her son overheard the news, causing him to break down crying, asking what was happening with his school, teachers and friends he had made over the three years he had attended.
“It’s frustrating because [administration] is saying that this school was Priscilla’s dream and that she doesn’t want to support anymore and has another project where she will be investing in,” Ana Laura Coronado, a parent at the school, said in Spanish. “This is affecting the dreams of the parents whose kids attend the school.”
Coronado has a son with autism who has been attending the school since he was 3 and is now 6 years old. It was important to her that the school her child was going to attend would accept him wearing a diaper.
“The most important thing for him since he was small was to attend a regular school,” Coronado said.
Her son was accepted into another school in Menlo Park for kids with special needs, where she had to pay $500 a month, but came across The Primary School.
“Everything was going well, but this is a step back because Ravenswood doesn’t support kids with special needs as well,” Coronado said. “This school has had a very good program that no other school has in the area.”
The Primary School provided nurses and teachers who would attend to her child’s needs, gaining the trust of Alborado, Coronado and many other parents.
The school has 443 children enrolled in its elementary school and early childhood education programs and 58% get specialized support, such as social-emotional development and parental navigational support. The school is 61% Latino, according to its website.
“I hope [Chan] takes consciousness of how many families will be affected,” Coronado said. “She is also a mother. I ask her to put herself in our shoes. There are many kids who need this school because of the support it provides. We all have dreams and maybe she has a better one, but there is nothing better than helping kids with their education.”
Chan, 40, of Palo Alto, started the school after working as a pediatrician and educator and learning that in both roles, she couldn’t provide the support children needed to do well in school, according to the school’s website.
“Over the next few months, we will be working closely with The Primary School to ensure a thoughtful and seamless transition for every child and family joining our Ravenswood community,” Ravenswood Superintendent Gina Sudaria said in a statement. “We’ve worked closely with TPS since its founding, and will work to integrate the most successful elements of its model into our district. It builds on the school district’s strong foundation of health programming and parent engagement.”
The Primary School leases the former Brentwood Academy campus from the Ravenswood district.
The Primary School is also closing its second campus in San Leandro in the East Bay.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative said it will make a $50 million investment over the next few years in the East Bay, East Palo Alto and the Belle Haven neighborhood of Menlo Park.
That investment includes education savings plans for current students — $10,000 for elementary school students, $2,500 for preschools and $1,000 for children under 3 years old. The money can be used to cover tuition, books and academic services.
The new investment seems more like shifting to individual grants model. Are there other schools in EPA besides the failing District? Or parents have to go elsewhere?
The situation is truly heartbreaking for the families affected by the school closure. It’s disappointing to see such a significant initiative come to an end, especially one that combined education, health care, and family support. Parents like Nuvia Alborado feel abandoned and unheard, which only adds to their frustration. The lack of clear communication from the school administration has left many questioning the true reasons behind this decision. Why wasn’t more transparency provided to the parents and the community?
I’m wondering if some of our wonderful elected leaders have approached the school and said that if they want this school to close without protests, they should give them some cash. “This could get really ugly if I don’t get some walkin’ around money.”
Too bad the school can’t stay open. They could be treating the parents for TDS before it spreads to their kids.
I’m a board certified psychologist in Palo Alto who treats TDS. If you have a relative who you think is afflicted by this disease, don’t waste any time — get them into treatment. I realize this is a humiliating disease, but the sooner you’ve been treated, the happier you will be. It’s difficult to admit that you have TDS, but acknowledging you have this disease is the first step toward overcoming it.
What are the odds that something truly horrific happened in that school, and Zuck is shutting it down now to avoid the publicity and get out ahead of the story? It’s East Palo Alto. Use your common sense.
Guess she had advanced notice that Trump and Musk were going to end education grants for the disabled this week.
They’re going to end grants for the disabled? Really? Got any proof of that? Sounds like a scare tactic, trafficking disinformation. I remember during Trump’s first term, his opponents constantly warned he would cut social security, medicare, medicaid and help for the disabled. Guess what? It never happened.
Since we can’t post outside links here, do a search on “disabled education funding” or “disabled education grants” and see what’s happening and what’s planned. In Trump’s first term he hadn’t appointed the weirdo incompetent clowns like RFK Jr who’s ignoring the measles outbreak because he hates vaccines and started a registry for kids with autism and the head of the Education Dept who thinks AI (Artificial Intelligence) is A1 (the steak sauce with the number one).
He also didn’t have Elon taking a chain saw to everything like the FAA so we know have regular plane crashes and dismantling FEMA during fire and hurricane season.
PS: You may have heard there’s a huge push against DEI which of course includes the disabled? You may have heard that META and so many other companies, schools and universities have been threatened with loss of funding if they don’t comply?
You may have heard the Zuckerberg and his companies are being sued by the federal government and he wants to appease Trump lest it costs him more money?
Check the New York Times article and so many others on this and see if they mention the anti-DEI push that’s censored references to Rosie The Riveter, Anne Frank and Enola Gay (because Musk’s boys found the word GAY and assumed Enola was gay)!
Thanks for offering zero proof that Trump was going to end grants for the disabled. Trump talks to the press for an hour or two every day. Don’t you think it would have come up before? But here we are a week later and they still haven’t cut grants for the disabled. I think you need to get help for TDS immediately.
Chan and Zuckerberg under attack for closing down the school that they voluntarily paid for for the last 9 years? As the old saying goes “No good deed goes unpunished”.
We’ve got a jobs crisis in East Palo Alto. None of our five council members or school board members has a real job. This is a crisis! None of them has the experience or education to get them a job other than manual laborer or retail clerk. But they need jobs. Elected office in this town has always been a pathway to wealth. Mark and Priscilla, forget about these kids and their parents and provide the help that’s needed. Mark, you hired one of our former council women at your company. You bankrolled the nonprofit that paid the salary of a Belle Haven council woman. Please, give the rest of us jobs. It’s tough out there!