Zuckerberg and Chan Commit $120-Million to Bay Area Schools

Photo by Gary He/Insider Images / Polaris/Newscom

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, will give $120-million over five years to school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Associated Press reports.

The donation, which the couple announced Thursday in a San Jose Mercury News column, represents the largest allocation to date from the $1.1-billion Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Chan, a pediatrician, pledged late last year to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

The first $5-million of the gift will go to the San Francisco, Ravenswood, and Redwood City school districts to train principals, improve classroom technology, and help students make the transition from eighth to ninth grade. The couple’s foundation. Startup: Education, set the spending agenda based on discussions with local leaders and school officials.

The donation comes amid renewed discussion of Mr. Zuckerberg’s $100-million gift in 2010 to the Newark, N.J., school system, the results of which were critically detailed in a recent New Yorker article. The Facebook CEO said he believes it is too early to fully judge the Newark effort but added, “I think there are some things that are going generally better than we’d expected and some things that we’ve definitely taken as lessons.”