Joint School Committee and Board Meeting Minutes
Date: Nov. 18, 2007
Time: 12:15 PM – 4:30 PM)
Attendees:
School Board (7): Jesse Zhou (Chair), Xiaohong Shi, Jin Liu, Sophie Qu, Peng Zhang,
Guanghui Liu, Changqi Li
School Committee (6): Dehua Sun (Principal), Yongyu Zhao, Zhengquan Peng, Wen
Huang, Elana Wang, Wenchuan Hu
Dehua gave a brief overview on the overall status of the school operations.
Zhengquan went over 2007 Fall to 2008 spring school budget plan.
The school committee members left for school services at about 1 PM after the budget
presentation. The board members continued the meeting.
The budget plan sheet projected a negative net income of -$4060 for this school year.
After an extensive discussion, the board concluded with the following decisions to ensure
a positive balance of the class-income and expenses:
1. Cut the $ 1.00 per survey reward to result in a saving of around $2000. The
Survey will be made mandatory at the next semester registration.
2. Reduce the planned purchase of laptop number from 2 to 1, $600 saving.
Wenchuan will continue to use his own laptop for School service.
3. Reduce teacher and staff compensation increase from planned average 6% to 3%,
producing a saving of about $1500.
The total saving of all 3 categories above suffices to cover the deficit in the budget sheet.
Further cut to consider may include but not limited to the appreciation and gifts ($60 each
teacher, committee, board member).
Board discussed several issues brought up from Jesse’s presentation slides.
1. Class/teacher contributions to the school financials.
Several classes (3 of the 17 Chinese classes, 2 of the 8 math classes, 2 of the
10 special skill-building classes, and all 3 contract classes), are currently
negative in net income, as well as the senior classes. The positive income
classes subsidize more than $4700 to keep those negative income classes
running just for this semester alone. This amount does not include the
expenses of more than $2000 per semester associated with the senior classes
yet. Of the total subsidy, about 2/3 go towards teachers’ compensation pay. It
was found that the number of the enrollments primarily determines whether a
class can break even or not. The break-even point is 7 to 8 students. The class
size varies from 3 to 33 students with an average of 14.
2. Teacher compensation vs. contribution
The present compensation rate of the teachers appears to be independent upon
teacher/class financial contribution. The factor that showed impact to the pay
rate is seniority only. Xiaohong commented that the class/teachers in lower
grades have an obvious advantage in this comparison due to the higher
numbers of enrollments. Taking this into consideration, the teachers’ financial
contribution is a very important measure but should not be the only criteria of
determining the compensation.
3. Comparison of course structures among Fenghua, Xilin and Ray.
We are similar to Fenghua in all aspect, and show strength in math category.
We somewhat less emphasize on Chinese and special skill building trainings,
and obviously on SAT related trainings when compared to Ray.
Lots of discussions went on how to handle those classes with insufficient tuition funds to
cover the expenses. These classes commonly have a fewer numbers of students, varying
between 3 and 7. The board brainstormed some options that require additional careful
considerations without reaching definitive decisions.
1. The school must pay attention to the issue that the tuition incomes from 26% of
the classes (excluding the two senior classes) are insufficient to cover their
expenses, creating a significant financial burden to the school. It may be
considerable that the school subsidize at a reasonable level in a very short term,
i.e. the first rollout of the new classes critical to the long term growth of the
school. However, as a general guideline, all classes must be self-financially
sufficient through tuitions. The tuitions of those classes with income loss may
have to be increased to achieve breaking even. Otherwise, those classes should be
canceled if the conditions don’t improve appreciably.
2. For courses with higher levels of difficulty because of increasing grades (main
example, higher grade Chinese courses), although the enrollments are lower, the
school still needs to maintain these courses to encourage our children to go to
higher level. (Peng’s idea)
3. The Senior Programs are strategically required and it is currently 100% funded by
the school. What is going to be the long term plan? One option is to encourage
the sons and daughters of those seniors campaign fund rising to cover the costs,
especially the $500 expense for spring outing. There appears to be consensus on
this among the board members.
4. All three contract classes are currently subsidized by the school at different levels.
The hourly pay rates of these contractors are higher than that of the regular
teachers, with 2 of the 3 being significantly higher. Correction of this abnormality
must be of high priority for the school. There appears to be a consensus in this
among all board members.
5. For the few courses that don’t contribute positively to the school due to reasons
other than above (example, poor teacher performance), the school needs to cancel
them.
There have been numerous requests from some businesses that want to rent
classroom/space for seminars which are perceived to have potential commercial interests.
Upon consideration of the legal aspects for non-profit organization, school’s focus and
long term objectives, the board passed a sponsorship guideline for the committee to
follow. The school will only consider sponsors who wish to conduct adult level seminars
upon school committee’s review and approval of the materials. All seminars must be
educational without overt commercial promotions. The sponsorship is categorized as
following:
1. $1000 or more (Platinum sponsorship)
2. $500 to $999 (Gold sponsorship, examples, Book Fair, Piano Demo, Art Fair?
Sport Fair?).
3. $300 to $499 (Silver sponsorship)
4. $100 to $299 (Bronze sponsorship)
The sponsorship will be reviewed and renewed annually. All the sponsors are recognized
contributors to our school. To appreciate their participation in the effort of bettering our
school, they will all receive free web posting of different page sizes at the school website
with links to their business websites. The Gold and Silver sponsorships will also have a
privilege of using classroom or space for one seminar per school year when such
room/space is available. Sponsors with contribution above $1000 will be provided with
special organizing services from school to conduct one or more seminar sessions agreed
by the school and sponsors.
Contributions of less than $100 are considered as individual donations, not sponsorship.
The donors will be listed in the individual donation appreciation section of the webpage.
For generic fund raising, Jesse proposed to form a Social Resources Utilization
(Development?) Committee which will champion the fund raising activities on behalf of
the school. The implementation details remain to be worked out. The board talked about
how to take the full advantage of the company match program of donations and charitable
contributions.
The school committee members returned to the meeting at about 3 PM. Xiaohong
presented to the school committee the board recommendations on correcting the budget
deficits. Jesse went over those slides the board reviewed earlier with the School
Committee members. Dehua presented improvement in Accounting and Asset
management plans.
The board and school committee discussed and agreed on the guideline for the school
committee to follow when calculating teachers’ compensation increase: survey weighs
80% (the survey team will work with Wenchuan and validates the survey data), and
school committee evaluation 20%.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 PM.
Minutes taken by: Changqi Li
PS. this document was initially written by Changqi and updated with inputs from
Xiaohong. Jesse updated it significantly to reflect the meeting agenda more accurately &
thoroughly. Sophie enhanced the writing.