This is a parent-run non-profit school. All school staff are volunteers without pay, each putting in hundreds of hours every year to keep the school running on top of their day jobs. And they pay tuition for their kids just like everyone else. That's how they keep the tuition low. The only paid personnel are the teachers. The best way to describe Rainbow is that it is a community of parents working together to educate their children the Chinese language & culture.
The classes are on Saturday mornings from 9-11am offering traditional, simplified, CSL for K-12, plus adult conversational classes. From 11am to 12/1pm, the school also offers after-school programs like arts & sports.
The school has been around for decades. And there is a strong network of similar school around the country. What set these 1st generation Chinese schools apart from others is that these are parent-run community schools.A major part of the school charter is that families are required to participate in running the school. I think that message often gets lost in the shuffle. Most parents like the fact that they only have to pay very little, but at the same time are not willing or too enthusiastic about sharing the load to run the school.
My take:
It's a parent run school. Parents have a lot of leverage and input on how the school is run, teaching material, etc. The are not like a public school where the government funds and dictates how you should learn.
The school offers a good variety of programs as well as after-school classes in arts, sports, and others. They review teachers every year and keep quality teachers around. Even parents could learn conversational Chinese while their kids are in school.
The staff are just regular parents like you and me. They are not professional educators running a school full-time for pay. They also have full-time jobs and they are doing this just to serve the community. People try to implement what they learn from their kids' regular school and bring it to the Chinese School as well, such as emergency drills.
The only reason I did not give it a five-star is that I think parents have wrong expectations and the school is not doing a good job setting the right expectations, or maybe this parent-run model from the 1970s/1980s has become out-of-touch with reality. As a school, it could use more resources, provide more programs. But without more parents participating to help solving problems, I feel it is very unfair to say that the school (someone else) should be responsible to solve all the problems. Most parents don't want to get involved. So only a very small dedicated numbers of parents trying to do a lot of things. A major headache has always been trying to get enough people to help out at school for everything from directing traffic to organizing events to helping out with school administration duties. Or maybe the school need to evolve to better suite people's busy schedule in today's society.
Your kids only get 2 weeks of Chinese class a week during school year. They all speak English to each other. So you need to set your expectation accordingly. They are not going to ace the AP test, and be able to have a fluent conversation if they get dropped in the middle to Beijing or Taipei by going to this school. At best, this can only be a supplement to what you teach your kids at home. If you want your kids to be fully fluent in Chinese, send them to a full-time Chinese immersion program where they speak Chinese all-day long. And those schools will be full-staffed with professional educators that can deal with issues you typically see at schools. But last time I check, those school will cost you at least $15k a year, not $400. read more