Spring Education Group was born from the merger of Stratford Schools, Nobel Learning, BASIS Independent Schools and LePort Montessori and funded by Primavera Capital Group, whose website proclaims it to be “connecting global investors with China’s leading companies.” As of 2020, they had 60+ portfolio companies, such as ALIBABA, a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce, retail, internet, and technology and YUM CHINA, the multi-brand fast food restaurant chain in China that operates eateries including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
The company is run by former magnates of the specialty produce and storage facility fields in alliance with a few of the original school leadership team that weren’t ousted for the team's former colleagues that they brought with them.
The words fiasco, blunder and debacle all come to mind to describe the merge of the schools, and subsequent operations…before, during and after COVID. As a lifelong Educator and former Director, there was daily disappointment and dismay as decisions were no longer made by people that were familiar with education, or even the operations within their own schools.
The new staffing model, based on the most economical staff-to-student ratio possible, may look good on paper, but it does not hold up to daily campus life. There is absolutely no margin of error or leniency for staff absences. I can count a handful of days throughout my decades of service that any campus had 100% staff attendance on any given day. What happens when a teacher calls in sick, or we are operating in a pandemic and 10 teachers call out? The Admin Teams are sent into classrooms, classes are combined, and/or children are shuffled around to keep within ratios. Everybody works above and beyond because they care about the children, but it has become like Groundhog Day and they are faced with repeating the chaos day after day. How would you feel when you need a bathroom break, but there is no floating teacher providing breaks for the team and nobody can relieve you in the foreseeable future from a full room of toddlers? How would you feel as a parent to have to search a school of classrooms to find your child at pick-up with teachers you don’t know?
The Executives’s ignorance of educational priorities is evident in every department. Staffing issues are exacerbated by the new HR Team in charge of hiring. At first, campus leaders rejoiced at idea of centralizing staffing and strengthening outreach and resources to attract quality teachers. I am the first to admit that hiring was very difficult to "squeeze in" at the campus level, especially with openings, as the school was already short-staffed. It's obvious that the better the staff, the better the school. You would think that creating a department tasked with the responsibility to attract and select qualified teachers would be in the hands of experts, or at least managed by one. If this team is going to be a resource to staff campuses, how does Management not prioritize providing them with an understanding of what happens in a classroom and the requirements of the position? Training should be poured into the “face of the company” to know WHO they are looking for (teachers, not delivery drivers), WHAT they’ll be doing and WHERE to find them.
I know from working with fellow Directors and numerous campuses, that for the most part, the schools are staffed with dedicated and caring Educators, but how much can they take? According to low morale and high turnover, not much more. I have heard of teachers leaving because they can make more at a discount convenience store. That’s a pretty sad statement for a private school, that in many cases, the tuition for EACH child is greater than ONE teacher's annual pay.
I’m sure that the Executive Team excelled when budgeting and managing produce and storage properties, but I’m not sure that it translates to educational priorities. It’s very clear that high profit margins are the goal…But shouldn’t it go hand-in-hand with high quality education, facilities and customer/employee satisfaction?
