It was supposed to be a generous gift to finally sort out some of the nation’s worst performing schools.
But six months after Mark Zuckerberg pledged to give $100million to educators in Newark, New Jersey, $99million is still sitting in the bank.
A catalogue of problems has meant that the money from the Facebook founder has not been spent on improving teaching standards.
$100million: Mark Zuckerberg announced his donation on Oprah last September and was joined by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, left, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker
The superintendent was fired and has not been replaced, a school closure plan was shelved when it enraged parents and the $1million which has been spent went on a survey of parents’ thoughts on reform.
The problems have left parents feeling as if there had been a concerted attempt to ‘screw it up’, so numerous are the blunders.
It was last September that Zuckerberg, 26, announced on the Oprah Winfrey Show that he would be making the surprise donation to Newark.
He lives in Palo Alto in California and grew up in Westchester County, New York, so had no ties to the city, but could have been moved by it repeated failure to sort itself out.
The gift was many times larger than any Newark had ever received and a huge amount considering the district has an $800million annual operating budget.
Things started promisingly when Newark Mayor Cory Booker managed to raise $43million in matching donations.
But then Clifford Janey’s contract as Newark’s school superintendent - a replacement has still not been named.
A plan to shut down some sites and let charter schools share space with public schools was shelved when parents complained about it.
It later emerged the plan had been written by a consulting firm which had been founded by New Jersey’s acting education commissioner.
Zuckerberg gave the massive donation to public education in New Jersey even though he and girlfriend Priscilla Chan live across the country in Palo Alto, California, and he went not to public school but to boarding school
Then criticism then turned on Booker amid allegations he had not fully explained who had donated the $43million - and he blew $1million of Zuckerberg’s money on the consulting exercise.
So far five grants of the Facebook money have been awarded to start new public high schools, including one for gay students.
In a further sign of problems to come, however, the school advisory board voted against the plan, whilst the school district said it would press ahead anyway.
‘It's like they have somebody trying to figure out how they can screw this up the most,’ Richard Cammarieri, a former school advisory board member told USA Today.
‘Everything they've done is totally tone deaf’.
The problems of Newark’s school system are manifold.
New Jersey state formally took legal control of the system in 1995 when it declared it to be a failure - it has retained control ever since.
Only about half of Newark's high school students graduate, and half of those do so through a special test for those who flunk the standard proficiency exam.
Test scores and graduation rates have remained amongst the lowest in the state despite plenty of money being spent on education, about
$20,000 a year per student, more than tuition to elite private schools.
Zuckerberg is worth $13.5billion which, according to Forbes magazine, makes him the 52nd richest person in the world.
He started Facebook in 2004 whilst still a computing student at Harvard and has seen it grow to become the largest social networking site in the world with more than 500million members.
Last year he signed up to The Giving Pledge, a commitment by dozens of American billionaires to give away at last 50% of everything they own.
The brainchild of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett, it aims to encourage a new wave of philanthropy by America’s super-rich.
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