Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledges $120 million to help struggling Bay Area schools

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife pledged $120 million to help schools in low-income Bay Area communities in what amounts to their biggest publicly announced donation to a local cause.

"The world's most innovative community shouldn't also be a home for struggling public schools," Zuckerberg said. "There are many heroic educators doing their best to serve students here," Zuckerberg wrote. "But the challenges are much greater than the resources they receive." The couple donated stock worth more than $1.5 billion to a fund administered by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation -- which made them the nation's biggest charitable donors in 2013. The latest gift, which also comes from that fund, will help "improve education for underserved communities" over the next five years, Zuckerberg said. Some of the $120 million will help start new public and charter schools in the Bay Area while the rest will pay for equipment, training and other programs at existing schools. The first $5 million will go to needy schools in the Ravenswood and Redwood City school districts and other "high-need" neighborhoods of San Francisco. Priscilla Chan, Zuckerberg’s wife, is a children's doctor who once worked as a schoolteacher.