Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s long-time desire to teach students how to think creatively could soon be fulfilled. Oracle on Monday unveiled plans to build a public high school on its Silicon Valley campus.
Design Tech High School (d.tech) is a 64,000-square-foot charter school that's slated to be completed in the fall of 2017. It will be free and open to any student living in California, and is intended to nurture and inspire future science and technology leaders.
"Seventeen years ago, Larry Ellison told me that he’d love to have a school where students learn to think," Oracle CEO Safra Catz said in a statement. "Our support of d.tech reflects Larry’s vision for a unique high school founded on principles we believe in: innovation, creativity, problem-solving and design-thinking. We couldn’t be more excited to build this school on our campus and to see the positive impact it will undoubtedly have on the students, teachers, Oracle employees and the Bay Area community."
Oracle didn't say how much it was spending on the school, which will have up to 550 students and 30 faculty.
Related: Facebook 101: Priscilla Chan to Head New Palo Alto Private School
Ellison stepped down in 2014 after 35 years as CEO of the company he founded in 1977 as a college dropout.
Oracle’s announcement comes a week after Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician and wife of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced she was starting a primary school for underprivileged students in East Palo Alto, California.
