Facebook has been in the news quite a bit lately. A new movie about the website, called The Social Network, will be released later this fall and is already generating significant Oscar buzz. Now, the film's inspiration, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is keeping his site in the news by donating $100 million to charity.
Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook as an undergraduate at Harvard, is the world's youngest self-made billionaire thanks to his 24 percent stake in the site. At 26, he is worth an estimated $6.9 billion. Now, the programmer and developer has donated $100 million of his personal fortune to the much-maligned Newark, New Jersey, public school system.
Zuckerberg wanted to keep the donation anonymous, but was convinced to publicly announce his contribution on the Oprah Winfrey Show earlier this month.
"I've had a lot of opportunities in my life, and a lot of that comes from … having gone to really good schools," Zuckerberg, a graduate of the elite Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, said. "And I just want to do what I can to make sure that everyone has those same opportunities."
Though he has no personal ties to Newark, Zuckerberg was touched by the school system's troubles after a meeting with mayor Cory Booker at a summer conference. The Newark school district has one of the worst records in the state, with only 40 percent of students able to read and write by the third grade. It was declared a failure and taken over by the state in 1995.
Booker has high hopes for the school district following Zuckerberg's generous contribution.
"I think that Newark is going to change the paradigm for urban education," he told Oprah.
I wonder how long it will take for Christie to either use some of those funds elsewhere or cut the Newark school budget by the same amount?