朱玮晶: "calling all HXNY parents"

[Molly Tang]

Dear HXNY community,

Seeing that HXNY have membership near 1000, yet less than 300 come for
recent votes, my heart cries out to all the parents on the side lines.
(I don't know how to email them, so again I sent this to class
parents. Please feel free to forward this to other parents.)

Who am I?

I am just an ordinary parent, never held any office at HXNY, but I
care deeply about the HXNY community, evidenced by my past actions,
which includes preparing various seminars, teaching a cultural class,
helping out with New Year party, donating to the school, or simply
offering smiles and greetings to you in school.

What happened to HXNY?

HXNY has been a special place filled with warmth, an oasis for Chinese
family amidst our competitive and hectic life in New York. This is
possible because HXNY has been built on trust and good will, through
sacrifices of volunteers and dedicated teachers, and we all treat each
other as a big family.

Lately the legal threats and abuse of loopholes in the Bylaws for
power grabbing has undermined these foundations of HXNY. Now our
beloved community is in grave danger.

From the start, (after the May 22 Board decision), our priority has
always been about protecting parents' ownership of the school, for
myself and many other volunteers and caring parents.

Yet the Board and various people consistently try to portray the whole
thing as a fight between 2 opposing teams, and about who has more
faults, whose idea for education reform may be better, etc. They
divert everyone's attention to small issues, personal attacks, having
a 3rd team, etc, so that everyone forget the main issue.

The actions of the Board showed its interest in maintaining power and
control, with total disregard of the voice of the majority of the HXNY
parents. All evidence is available at the HXNY Admin Archive at
http://groups.google.com/group/hxny-qnas/topics . Everyone can read
and decide for themselves. (One can also see opinions and discussions
in http://www.reddit.com/r/hxcsny/ ) BTW, please learn to disregard
the anonymous authors in all these places.

This is not about choosing sides. It is about protecting a cooperative
environment and maintaining the rights of parents, vs letting a small
group of insiders take ultimate control of the school due to a current
defect in the Bylaws.

When your computer has been hacked and now operating under a virus,
even a system restart is no longer sufficient. The whole system has to
be eradicated and a new Operating System has to be installed.


Calling all parents to take action and vote.

There are 2 aspects of America that people yearn for when choosing to
come to this land: Wealth and Freedom.

We cannot measure the worth of HXNY by the tuition we pay. Without the
trust, goodwill and sacrifices of everyone in the community, I would
have to pay private school level tuition for my kids to have similar
quality of educational environment for Chinese language and culture,
(and in no exaggeration, many American families are doing exactly that
for their kids.) So when my kids ask why they have to attend Chinese
school, one of the things I told them is that we are saving a lot of
tuition by attending.

In this respect, your vote will ensure that you don't lose such a
valuable community asset for your kids.

Secondly, when the core value of the school is at stake, may we
treasure the community that we build together as far more precious
than what each of us individually can gain from the school. Do we want
a school where parents have the freedom to make the final choice, or
should the parents be treated as mindless and incapable of making
decisions for themselves? I may have taken the lead in sending a few
emails or setting up a discussion forum for HXNY, but I always place
my faith in the parents of the HXNY community and your power to make a
difference. That is why all my recent actions in HXNY had been to
amplify the voice of the parents.

Let us have the courage to fight for what we believe, and treasure
American for its ultimate promise: the land of the free, and the home
of the brave.

No matter what interest you, at this juncture in its history, HXNY
needs your input, your voice, and your vote. We deserve the future we
choose.

Ask not what HXNY can do for you, but what you can do for HXNY, this
week!


My personal opinions for common excuses not to vote:

"I am new to HXNY. I will leave the decision to others who have been
here longer."
What better time to get involved in HXNY than the present moment
of its ultimate need! We especially need your balanced and neutral
stance to make proper judgment.

"I hate fights. I won't take side. By not voting, I keep my
neutrality."
The current vote is exactly about neutrality vs one side taking
total power. By not voting, you are acting against neutrality. Much
like WWII, sometimes war is necessary to fight for and maintain peace.

"People on the Board have been my friends. I cannot vote against
them."
Please do NOT treat the issues personally. I highly respect all
the individuals involved for their past service to HXNY, and totally
impressed by the clever ways and Bylaw maneuvers that they discovered.
But the current issue is about saving HXNY from a Bylaw loophole that
will end the parents' ownership of the school, and not about acting
against these fine individuals. I have been conscientiously focusing
on "the Board" rather than the individual names. After the crisis and
with the Bylaws corrected, if the individuals on the Board choose to
serve HXNY in anyway, I would treat them no different than other
candidates in my consideration. (Dear Board members, I hope you don't
take my action against the Board personally. I regret the potential
loss of your friendship as a result, but hope that we can continue to
contribute to our common community.)

"I cannot solve this problem. I leave HXNY to God now."
I respect your faith. Since there are different levels of
interpretations of this deliberation, I would ask:
If it is not HXNY having a Bylaws virus, but your child having a
serious virus, would you reach the same state of being, or would you
continue to seek out the right doctor and the best hospital and fight
the disease?
When facing adversity, blind faith allows us to bury our heads in
the sand, but genuine faith give us the strength to fight against
overwhelming evil and adversity and the hope to persevere, all because
our love for others' well-being overcomes our selfish desire for ease
and comfort. I hope you gain peace from resting in God, but at the
same time regain strength to fight for what is right, for your
children and for other families, to regain a vibrant HXNY community.

"I dont have time."
If there is one thing equal to everyone, it is that we all have
the same amount of time, 24 hours a day. It is what we choose to do
with it. (I penned this email from 3-6AM not because I need less
sleep.) The present moment is unique in the entire HXNY history. You
may have to give up doing some things in your daily routine, and
instead to learn about the HXNY situation and make the right decsion.
I am sure many parents in the HXNY community would be glad to provide
help finding and accessing available information. Just ask.

"I don't want to get involve in school politics."
I don't like politics either. Yet the current situation is not
about choosing sides, but about saving the spirit and environment of
HXNY that took years to build. I am not asking for your vote on either
side, but simply that you get involved, consider all the available
evidence and make the right choice that can serve and save the school.

Sincerely,
Wei-Jing Zhu
朱玮晶