Letter from our new principal

I am Xiaohe Cao, the new Principal. It is a great honor and privilege to serve Northwest Chinese School (NWCS). Sixteen years ago, a few new immigrants from mainland China founded this non-profit organization. After many years of effort from faculty, staff, board members, parents, students, volunteers, and numerous supporters, our school has become one of the best in the U.S. Today’s success of our school resulted from everyone’s hard work! While we are proud of our past accomplishments in Chinese education, we have also clearly realized that it is also our responsibility to keep working hard to enhance the success of NWCS and make it a harmonious Chinese community in the Greater Seattle Area.During the past couple of months, many parents had been actively involved in finding a new principle of Northwest Chinese School. Many great comments and suggestions were provided by NWCS parents and employees during the open hearing process. I was very pleased to see the passion, frankness, energy, and wisdom demonstrated in the NWCS community during this process. I believe that we can continuously working together to further NWCS’ success.We have many things to accomplish. Among them, improving teaching quality is definitely of common interest and is always on the top of our priority list. I am working with teachers now to make sure that we are well prepared for the new semester. A stable campus is the foundation of our community. We are used to the current school location in Kirkland. It is a great convenient and pleasant campus to have our school for now: close to freeway, large facility, good place for community gathering. The good news is that we had our next school year reserved with the Lake Washington Technical College. I am working with the school board Strategic Development Committee to plan for a longer term campus solution. We have lots of other projects to work with. I will keep you posted. If you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to let me know. Thank you very much and I am looking forward to working with you!Xiaohe Cao

Have a wonderful summer

What a ride! All I can say is that we are unbelievable. 20000+ hit in less than one month. It truly tells us no one, no one except people of this beloved NWCS are the owner of this school.

We still have a lot of work to do. ZL is still threating us by using her famous tactic. Our new principal and our board need our help and support. To continue this endeavour, I promise to keep you updated via this blog so please come back often whenever you can.

To celebrate our 20000+ hit, I start to compile all famous /infamous documents for you as a souvenir or something you can share during your summer vacation.

I need your input and your recommendations. If you receive any email that we never see before, if it does not violate any of your or other's privacy, you can send to me via dwnwseattle@gmail.com

Have a wonderful summer!

DW

周琳到底该奖，还是该罚？

大家还在讨论是否追回周琳在位时多拿的那部分工资和奖金的同时据说周琳还在跟学校要这个学期奖金。董事会该怎么办？ 你觉得该怎么处理？

Anonymous said...
要求置顶

听说周琳还在问董事会要奖金。请大家讨论，该不该给她发奖金。

是该发奖金，还是该追回她不该得的钱(比如去年暑期)。

爱心校长不拿报酬，学校如何奖励？

曹校长提出不取酬劳，义务为学校服务。学校该如何奖励校长呢？董事会在研究"incentive plan"，老金提出成立校长奖学金，你怎么看？

Jerome Jin said...
Yesterday, the Board picked a new principal for us, starting a new chapter for the NWCS. Let’s all move on by not looking back at what has happened in the past couple of months.

To my surprise and delightfulness, Ms. Cao has decided to take on this important role without pay. I am proud of her for her decision and commitment. In our community, there exists an role model that values volunteer service and personal contribution more than the monetary compensation. Her decision is visionary and more than money can buy. Way to go, Ms. Cao!

With that being said, I am much puzzled by the Board decision as stated in Peter’s last email. Despite of Ms. Cao’s willingness to work for free, now the board insists on considering an“incentive plan” to reward her service. For what purpose? Clearly, Ms. Cao is not money driven. Therefore, I think using money as a mechanism to regard her is an out-dated and inappropriate approach in her case. While Ms. Cao could be worth every penny had she asked for and I have no problem to pay her whatever she deserves for doing a good job, we must cherish Ms. Cao’s high moral standards and honor her aspiration and do something accordingly. Don’t weigh her down with the heavy load of ”incentive plan”! Good in its intention, The Board’s plan, on one hand, reflects us parents’ desire to fairly compensate her for her upcoming valuable service. But on the other, this remarkable individual who has forced us to come up with a new compensation model other than the conventional one now challenges us.

What can we do to recognize her contribution?
I am here again to throw out my idea on the table for discussion and consideration. Why don’t we use the money intended for Ms. Cao to establish a “Principal Scholarship” at NWCS to honor her instead? I look at it this way:
a) Payment for service is fair. But the service recipient tends not to have any feeling of indebtedness afterwards.
b) The scholarship program cherishes a higher moral standard and produces a legacy with lasting effects in the community.
c) The scholarship program will have good ripple effects: recipients could attend the school otherwise they won’t be able to and it sets a good example for students and recipients alike and nurtures them with the same aspiration to give back to the society in the future.

Thanks for your attention!

Congratulations to NWCS, we have our new principal Now

"Dear NWCS Members,

I am excited to announce that the board has chosen Ms. Cao Xiaohe as our next school principal! Please join us to congratulate Ms. Cao and help her and her future team to be successful in our school! The most significance of this hiring is that Ms. Cao decided to take this position as a volunteer position without any base salary. Our board has decided an incentive plan (detailed to be disclosed) to honor her future high performance!

I want to also thank Mr. Zhang Yuehua and other candidates for their contribution to this selection process. I am participating their continuous support!

Thanks!
Peter"

他山之石，可以攻玉

What a similarity. I was totally amazed by this news and can not wait to post it for people who really care of this school. Also, I did a simple search and find some additional news.
http://blog.chinesenewsnet.com/?p=6192
http://blog.chinesenewsnet.com/?p=2277
http://blog.chinesenewsnet.com/?p=1418

So what it teaches us? How we can learn from that fall off? Close the blog? Let financial situation run the course by itself? Keep ZL and pay her according to contract so she will be coorperated? Or fire ZL and do the damage control ASAP? Don't you think our board has done very less damage control in the past month except organizing a principal candidate hearing?
What the top priority our board should do in the next week, month or three months? I think our board is eager to hear from you all.

Here is the original post from our parent, I put the news at the beginning for easy access:
http://www5.chinesenewsnet.com/gb/MainNews/Forums/BackStage/2007_6_17_22_42_5_215.html

华夏中文学校博根分校查帐风波上法庭多维社记者吕贤修报导／徐小兵律师对多维社指出：华夏中文学校博根分校查帐风波上法庭这个事件，可提醒许多其它华人社团，要知法守法。尤其是非营利组织的帐目，要保持透明。华夏中文学校新泽西博根分校，近日因年度查帐工作，家长理事会会长以“华夏中文学校”名义，将博根分校校长告上法庭。对於此案，原告表示，自己代表全体家长，此举也是给自己一个交代。至於被告，除怀疑对方的代表性，也相信事实会还自己清白。目前，被告已同意交出完整帐目，博根郡高等法院6月28日将为此再度开庭。事件进展，多维将持续追踪。详细见链接：http://www5.chinesenewsnet.com/gb/MainNews/Forums/BackStage/2007_6_17_22_42_5_215.html
June 17, 2007 9:08 PM
Anonymous said...
他山之石，可以攻玉。报导的新泽西这所中文学校，和西北中文学校发生的情况有着惊人的相似性，都是校长不交账目1财经运作不透明，而且还干涉董事会的选举。不同的是，他们的董事会已经把校长告上法庭。BLOG主人可以看看能否把那条新闻登在主页，也好引以为戒。谢谢。

TOP TEN questions to everyone

Another top 10 from a parent:

非常感谢这个BLOG的主人给大家一个畅所欲言的地方. 希望今后能保留这个BLOG, 能让西北中文学校的家长和老师们能有了一个交流信息, 献计献策的地方.”
I too really appreciate BLOG的主人给大家一个畅所欲言的地方. It has attracted a lot of readers and contributors who posted many constructive ideas, suggestions as well as valid questions and comments for the most part. As BLOG 主人 stated, “We know everyone is caring our children's future, caring our community and like to make this great Chinese school a better place.” IT seems to me that there are still plenty of valid concerns and questions raised by the parents and teachers in this blog that remained unanswered. Yes, we all want to put the saga behind and move on and build a better and brighter future for NWCS and its community it served. But to do so, we all need to fully aware of and understand what and why went wrong in the past. 增加监督和透明性. Based on my reading of comments posted in this blog so far, here is the list of top ten questions we will like to hear answer from the Board and the top ten action items the board should put on its agenda now. Some of them are direct quotes from earlier post comments by others;
TOP TEN questions, in no particular order:
1. What is the most important factor the board considered in making its new principal hiring decision?
2. What issue(s) the board has identified regarding the school payroll and other expenses based on the recent review and audit conducted by the board and outside auditor. And what action the board plan to take to address the issues. “学校的帐户不清（参考5月7日周琳转发的电子邮件）到底是怎么回事？ 我们所有家长和老师要求董事会给我们公开学校账务。
3. What are the PTA fund raising expenses consist of?
4. On what basis did past board handed out HUGH bonus to the principal ZL? “ZhouLin said board acknowledged her work and performance level and gave her bonuses for the first 3 semesters (1.5 years?). If so, what is board expected principal to do (the roles and responsibility), and how is the work of principal measured (balanced budget, reduce tuition, higher parents satisfaction, enrollment number, test passing rate, teacher/student ratio, etc.) What were the factors that board considered to give out bonuses to Zhou Lin?”
5. Did School strictly following not for profit related governing laws and regulations in terms of financial and tax reporting to the federal and state government? i.e. has the registration with the State of Washington been timely renewed yet? Payroll and information tax returns properly and timely filed and can face possible examination and inquiry by the watchdog agencies?
6. Why there are huge cash surplus sitting on the bank in the first place? “Why didn't these money spend on the education of our children? Just because we parents want our children learn Chinese and the culture, so we'd have to pay higher tuition such that they can save these money for God know what for?"
7. Has the past election of board members followed the School Bylaw and met the quantum requirement?
8. Did school admin and board follow the finance guidance to avoid conflict of interest and personal benefit, when dealing with outside venders and suppliers, did reimbursement policy properly followed? “I wonder whether we have some kind of internal control in place so that abuse of power would be prevented. for example, do we have dual signature in place for NWCS checks? or do we have a Finance Committee on the Board that will oversee the financial management of NWCS? do we have someone from the Board/Finance Committee review bank reconciliations?”
9. Why was the School directory consisting of complete list of admin member and teachers taken out of the NWCS webpage?
10. Who is the OWNER of NWCS?

To be continued