FRIENDED: Facebook's Zuckerberg Gives $100M To New Jersey Schools

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder and chief executive of Facebook Inc., plans to announce a donation of up to $100 million to the Newark schools this week, in a bold bid to improve one of the country's worst performing public school systems.

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Comments

[BobJacobson]

03:42 PM on 09/24/2010

...Or, he could have spent the $100 million lobbying the Congress and in the NJ state house to change the way education is funded in this quirky state, alternately Democrat and then Republican, so mixed up that no one knows what's up -- except that the minority kids in Newark will absolutely not get ahead. But to lobby for, say, fairer taxes and more of them going to the schools would have been disloyal to Zuckerberg's new circle of the ultra-rich. So he resorts to bread and circus. Sad.

[McMillan]

09:32 AM on 09/24/2010

Money is not the solution. Parents, desire, ethics and employees are the issues that
drag down these under performing schools. Give me half the budget of an under performing school and let me work on making parents be involved, make employees accountable and I can
improve that under performing school.

[mattwg440]

01:25 AM on 09/24/2010

Booker is the man.
I'd feel good about my country if I could vot on a presidential ticket with his name on it

[bgofca]

06:52 AM on 09/24/2010

maybe someday; the president is required to be at least 35 yrs old

[mattwg440]

11:21 AM on 09/24/2010

Booker was born in1969, I'll leave the math to you

[kopanko]

07:00 PM on 09/23/2010

Nice to be able to simply, quite painlessly buy one's way out of a public relations nightmare of one's own making, huh?

[mattwg440]

01:27 AM on 09/24/2010

Nice for the kids that benefit at least.

Seriously, what's up, are you doing ok?
It seems you may be in a grumpy mood, going to a possible negative where boundless positives are

[Max Shaw]

01:56 PM on 09/23/2010

Bold move Zuck...but utlimately a massive waste of time and money. There is no way those kids will ever see a penny of it going into their education. Plus its not just about the teachers and facilities---unless your handing each a check for a few grand for showing up and giving a crap, then your not going to change a lot of students minds about school in the first place. Maybe offer every student who graduates from high school a scholarship to go to college as an incentive. Dont just hand over a check and expect things to change.

[yoli647]

08:58 PM on 09/23/2010

So agree with you 100%

[vind]

12:35 PM on 09/23/2010

As someone from New Jersey, it was a good thing to do, but ultimately a stupid thing to do. The money will all disappear into the rat hole of the corrupt NJ education cartel and the Newark school system won't show a jot of improvement.

The annual Newark schools budget is 950 million dollars right now and it is still the worst school system in the country. And that was after the budget cuts by the Governor. Almost a billion dollars a year and still having the worst performing schools in the country, people losing their homes not because of mortgages going bad but because they can't pay the property taxes, and still Newark complained that it wasn't enough money.

It will never be enough for the Newark school system because the money never makes it to the schools.

[zamkam]

10:52 AM on 09/23/2010

What a waste of money. Newark Public Schools is a very inefficient and corrupt system. Their problem is not money, Bill Gates could donate his entire fortune and it wouldn't fix anything. Public schools spend more than $30,000 per student and have little to show for it. Most private schools cost less than half that amount and outperform public schools on every test. And before you say "but public schools are free and private ones are expensive", think again: about half of all property taxes go to the Education Board of every city, whether you own or rent, that's money YOU are paying.

[mattwg440]

01:23 AM on 09/24/2010

Goodness forbid we should invest in the FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.

By all means fix the school system, but keep it public, better that students being left behind is a problem we can keep solving than a neccessary feature of for profit education.

[Ajita Kamal]

03:42 AM on 09/23/2010

'nd just like that, HP creates the new MSM.