Zuckerbergs to start school mixing learning and health

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are starting a school in Palo Alto, California.

Chan will be the CEO of the school, which ties free health services to each child’s education thanks to a partnership with nearby Ravenswood Family Health Center.

When the Primary School launches next year, it will offer full-time classes for 4-year-olds and support programs for parents of infants and two-year-olds.

Chan is a pediatrician at San Francisco General Hospital and a former teacher. The overarching mission is to build a support system families can depend on when things get rough. “These are delays associated with socialization and the environment that they’re in and their access to knowledge and resources that other children and who have better incomes, frankly, (have)” she added.

Curriculum will draw from the Common Core State Standards so if children leave The Primary School for the local public school district or elsewhere, their academic transition will be smooth, Buada said.

Chan meanwhile bring experience having worked as a tutor for disadvantaged youth in college, and later as a science teacher. Liu will serve as The Primary School’s president and chief operating officer. Most recently, he was the principal at Rocketship Education, a K-5 blended-learning public charter school in San Jose.

‘It’s inspiring to see Priscilla grow as an entrepreneur and leader’.

Zuckerberg and Chan are no strangers to philanthropy. AltSchool – a Bay Area-based network of “micro-schools” founded by ex-Googler Max Ventilla – raised 0 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and Zuckerberg himself earlier this year.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that once the school is finished it will be able to serve 700 children and their families. Located near the school, Ravenswood will provide comprehensive health and dental care to children from the school and their families. And there will be more, she said.

“We will be designing with them”, Buada said, “rather than at them”. At full capacity, Chan’s school could take up to 15 percent of East Palo Alto’s current enrollment of about 4,000 kids – more than a $5 million hit for the district. Parents are asked to contact the school to apply.

East Palo Alto is a small city that is mostly Latino and much less affluent than neighboring communities in the surrounding Silicon Valley.