School Board Meeting Minutes, April 5, 2009
Time: 2009-04-07 11:54:29 -- Number: 94
The school board held a board meeting on April 5, 2009. The attendances were: board members: Fei Huang, Jiayuan Li, Jianfeng Mei, Ming Yuan, Yanyun Wu, Shaowei Zhang, Liping Zhao; PTA vice president: Judy Carten. Helen Tsai and Yan Zhang also attended the meeting. The meeting was led by Liping Zhao, Board Chairman. The followings are the decisions and discussion topics covered in the board meetings: 1. Board leadership change: Liping Zhao was elected as the chairperson until the end of this term based on a simple majority vote. The board approved the requests by Junqi Ding and Jin-Hua Sun for not participating in the school board function until the end of the selection of the next school principal to avoid potential conflict of interest. 2. By-law changes regarding Principal's term: The following by-law change was approved based on a two-thirds majority vote: principals term will be 1 year, with a maximum of 2 consecutive terms. This change is pending approval by the next general member council meeting. 3. Principal definition, principal hiring process review: a) Principal definition drafted by Shaowei Zhang was reviewed and approved based on a simple majority vote. The document is to be filed and became a school board policy until further changes are noted. b) In particularly the following individual point was voted and approved based on a simple majority vote: For application requirements: three reference letters are preferred for principal candidates. c) The following point was added to the principal advertisement: Southern Connecticut Chinese School is an Equal Opportunity Employer. d) The following point was added to the principal recruit policy: candidates shall have a legal permit to work in US, otherwise she or he can choose to have a non-paid volunteer position. e) The following timeline was determined for principal hiring process: i. 4/26/09: School board interview and vote (between 4/26/09 and 5/3/09) for a final candidate to be presented to the general member council for approval. ii. 5/03/09: general member council meeting vote for the approve of the boards appointee of the school principal. iii. 5/10/09: announcement of the appointment if approved by the council 4. School Structure final review and vote: the school structure proposal submitted by the board school structure subgroup was approved based on a simple majority vote. The document is to be filed and became a school board policy until further changes are noted. In addition, a) It was decided by the board to still use the term of provost, instead of vice principal, as this position has a different pay rate comparing to vice principals. b) It was also discussed and agreed upon that the school principal will have the same pay and benefit as the school Chinese language teachers. 5. The following Bylaw change issues were raised and will be discussed in a future board meeting: a) Set a PTA board (5 directors elected by general member council, then five elected members vote for PTA president and first vice president.) b) Set vice chairperson for the board c) Set first vice principal 6. Set honorable principal position: due to time limit, this topic will be postponed to a future meeting 7. The following was discussed at the meeting and agreed upon: in the future, email communications to general members should be reviewed by the board and sent in the name of the school board, other than emails in regards of the board meeting notifications.
