Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to donate $US100 million ($A104.64 million) to the troubled public school system in Newark, New Jersey, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The donation was to be announced on the Oprah Winfrey television show, the report said.
The Times said the gift would be the first instalment in an education endowment to be started by Zuckerberg.
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It would be by far the largest publicly known gift by Zuckerberg, whose fortune was estimated last year by Forbes magazine at $US2 billion ($A2.09 billion).
The gift is many times larger than any the system has received before, and amounts to one-eighth of the $US800 million ($A837.08 million) annual operating budget.
It was not yet clear how the money would be used, or over what period of time.
The Times said the gift would be made with the condition of giving back some control of the school system to the mayor of the city, Cory Booker. The state currently runs the system in the troubled city.
The report said Zuckerberg has no connection to Newark, but in July he and Booker met at a conference and began a conversation about the mayor's plans for the city.
