Facebook founder and Chief Executive Producer, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan are opening a private school and mix education with healthcare services in East Palo Alto.
According to Times of India, Zuckerberg voiced out his pride in his wife for her plan to create a primary school in the working-class city of East Palo Alto. Chan is working as a pediatrician at San Francisco General Hospital and also has been a teacher. Tutoring in inner-city Boston how poor health hinders learning in classrooms is what she has witnessed first-hand.
Over the past year, Chan has been working with the community to advance early childhood through 12th grade education with on-site healthcare services for children and also prenatal support.
The opening of Chan's private school will be soon in August 2016. This school aims to alleviate the effects of poverty on children, as reported in Fortune. Its main target is the deprived families and residents of East Palo Alto and Eastern Menlo Park. This school will be able to serve 700 children plus their families when it is fully built. It is larger than one-quarter of Luther Burbank School District in San Jose, which runs on an annual budget of $4.9 million.
East Palo Alto has a long reputation for crime, gangs, and poverty even though it is being positioned between high-income Palo Alto and Thriving Menlo Park where Facebook headquarter is located.
Zuckerberg even posted something on his Facebook page stating that health and education are closely connected. He added that when children are not healthy, they cannot easily learn the lessons in class. NBC Bay Arena reported that in 2010 Zuckerberg made a $100 million donation to the school system in Newark, New Jersey and $5 million to the Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto.
The couple announced earlier this summer that they are expecting a baby girl. They have been happily married since 2012.
