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. 
 
 Bloomberg News Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive officer of Facebook, at a news conference last month. 
 
 Newark spends about $22,000 a year on each of its 40,000 pupils, but only about half of its students graduate. Of those who do, only one-fifth go on to four-year colleges. More than 85% of the Newark students at community colleges need remedial help in math and English. 
 
 The state took control of the troubled Newark system in the 1990s, and this month Gov. Chris Christie informed the city's superintendent that his contract wouldn't be renewed after June 2011. Mr. Christie has vowed to implement forceful changes, portending an agenda that includes stronger teacher evaluations and merit pay. 
 
 Mr. Zuckerberg is setting up a foundation with $100 million of Facebook's closely held stock to be used to improve education in America, with the primary goal of helping Newark. 
 
 Mr. Zuckerberg has had a long-standing interest in education, particularly teachers' low salaries, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Over the last year, he had a series of meetings with people involved in education and developed a relationship with Newark Mayor Cory Booker. 
 
 Mr. Zuckerberg attended public high school in Ardsley, N.Y., before transferring to the private Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. 
 
 The donation comes at a time when foundations and wealthy investors are increasingly funneling large amounts of money to public education—but with strings attached. In Washington, D.C., this year foundations pledged millions of dollars to pay for an increase in teacher pay that is tied to teachers' abilities to show they can help students improve. 
 
 While Mr. Zuckerberg has made charitable donations in the past that have not been widely reported, this is by far his largest and represents his debut as a major philanthropist. According to the person familiar with the discussions, Mr. Zuckerberg decided he did not want to wait until he was near his career's end before getting involved in major philanthropy. 
 
 The announcement of the gift has been planned for Friday on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" show, which has been using this week to draw attention to education. The timing of the announcement was driven by the Mr. Christie and Mr. Booker, over the objections of Facebook executives, said the person familiar with the discussions. 
 
 Mr. Zuckerberg's pledge comes as the company he founded confronts a Hollywood film's scathing depiction of the executive. "The Social Network," which opens in wide U.S. release Oct. 1, suggests Mr. Zuckerberg may have stolen the idea for his social-networking site 
 
 Mr. Zuckerberg was not available, a spokeswoman for Mr. Christie couldn't be reached, and Mr. Booker declined to comment. 
 
 A $100 million donation to a school district is rare, but not unprecedented. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pumped almost $5 billion into K-12 education, awarded Tampa' Hillsborough County School District $100 million last year to overhaul how teachers and trained and evaluated 
 
 No plans have yet been finalized on how the gift to Newark will be spent. Mr. Booker is supposed to draw up those plans and get community support for them, said the person familiar with the discussions. 
 
 The donation has the potential to be matched by another $100 million that Mr. Booker has been working on raising from private foundations and others. The $200 million that could be raised would amount to more than 20% of Newark's budget of $940 million. 
 
 Under terms of the understanding between Mr. Zuckerberg, the Republican Mr. Christie and the Democratic Mr. Booker, the mayor would become the governor's representative to devise plans for the schools. according to a person familiar with the announcement 
 
 Mr. Booker plans to make education the focal point of his second term, just as he made crime the centerpiece of his first 
 
 Mr. Zuckerberg will fund for the foundation with his private stock in Facebook, and will arrange for a transaction on the secondary market for the foundation to turn the shares into cash as needed, said the person familiar with the discussions. The move will represent a relatively small dilution in his stake in the company, the person said. 
 
 Facebook has over 500 million users world-wide. Investors value the company at more than $20 billion. Mr. Zuckerberg owns more than a quarter of Facebook's stock, say people familiar with the matter. 
 
 —Stephanie Banchero contributed to this article. 
 
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 Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive and a founder of Facebook, has agreed to donate $100 million to improve the long-troubled public schools in Newark, and Gov. Chris Christie will cede some control of the state-run system to Mayor Cory A. Booker in conjunction with the huge gift, officials said Wednesday. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The three men plan to announce the arrangement on Friday on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” 
 
 The changes would not formally relax the legal power the state seized in 1995, when it declared Newark’s schools a failure and took control of the system, replacing the elected school board with a mostly toothless advisory board. Rather, Mr. Christie plans to give the mayor a major role in choosing a new superintendent and redesigning the system, but to retain the right to take control back. 
 
 For now, at least, the arrangement tightens an already friendly relationship between the governor, a Republican, and the mayor, a Democrat who was once seen as a likely challenger for the State House in 2013. It also promises to be a rare happy moment in a state troubled by budget crises, scandals, political infighting and, most recently, the loss of a $400 million federal education grant because of a clerical error. 
 
 Mr. Zuckerberg, 26, who grew up in Westchester County and now lives in California, has no particular connection to Newark. But in July, he and Mr. Booker met at a conference and began a continuing conversation about the mayor’s plans for the city, according to people familiar with their relationship. 
 
 Mr. Booker, an advocate of school choice, has been traveling the country, meeting business leaders and celebrities, proselytizing and raising money for Newark. Ms. Winfrey has been one of his biggest supporters, and has given millions of dollars to schools and other organizations in Newark over the last few years. 
 
 The $100 million for Newark is the initial gift to start a foundation for education financed by Mr. Zuckerberg. This would be by far the largest publicly known gift by Mr. Zuckerberg, whose fortune Forbes magazine estimated last year at $2 billion. 
 
 Mr. Booker, Mr. Christie and Mr. Zuckerberg all declined to be interviewed on Wednesday. The officials who spoke about the plan did so on the condition of anonymity because it was two days before the scheduled announcement. 
 
 The gift is many times larger than any the system has received, officials said — an extraordinary sum not only for a district with an $800 million annual operating budget, but also for any publicly financed government agency. It is not yet clear how the money would be used, or over what period. 
 
 Despite 15 years of state control, the Newark schools have test scores and graduation rates that are among the lowest in New Jersey. 
 
 Mr. Christie has said that he generally does not approve of state takeovers of local agencies, and he supported the elimination of state oversight of Camden early this year. But he had given no sign of backing away from control of the schools in Newark. 
 
 Less than a month ago, the governor informed the city’s schools superintendent, Clifford B. Janey, that he would not be rehired, and that the state was looking for a successor. There has been speculation in Trenton about the possibility of hiring Michelle A. Rhee, the hard-charging schools chief in Washington, whose political patron, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, recently lost his bid for re-election. 
 
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 Officials said Mr. Christie planned to announce that he and Mr. Booker would jointly select a new superintendent, a decision the governor has the power to make on his own. And they said he would instruct the mayor to come up with a reform plan for the system: in effect, asking Mr. Booker to redesign it. 
 
 “We can’t speculate too much at this point about what the specifics would be,” a person briefed on the plans said. 
 
 But on issues like expansion of charter schools, rigorous testing and rewarding teachers and administrators whose students succeed, this person said, “their vision is very much in step.” 
 
 Under Mr. Christie, the state has rewarded schools that made aggressive changes, like awarding grants to a group of Newark high schools that replaced half their staffs. 
 
 The announcements could win points for Mr. Christie with local officials and school advocates who have chafed under state control, and take away some of the sting of his cuts to state aid for schools. It also ties him more closely to a popular Democrat in a state that usually favors Democrats. But the move could damage his alliance with the mayor if, in the end, their visions do not match. 
 
 It also puts Mr. Booker in a situation not occupied by his predecessors, who had little overt influence over the schools. The mayor has said many times that he wants the state to cede control, but critics have charged that he did little to make that happen. If his reform plan fails to transform the system, it could deal a blow to his reputation.
– Newark's cash-strapped public school system is getting some help from a wealthy friend. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is planning a $100 million donation to improve the system, officials tell the New York Times. Zuckerberg, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker will announce the donation on the Oprah Winfrey Show tomorrow. Zuckerberg—who is now richer than Steve Jobs, according to Forbes—has no strong personal connection to the New Jersey city, but insiders say that he has a long-standing interest in education. Zuckerberg has, over the last year, held a series of meetings with people involved in education and developed a relationship with Booker, who will gain some control over the state-run system in conjunction with the gift, say sources. The gift, Zuckerberg's largest charitable donation by far, will come in the form of Facebook stock that will be used to establish a foundation, the Wall Street Journal reports.