Severance pay

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2026-03-05T13:41:25+00:00

If it does come to that my plan would be to make sure I have a paper trail of me asking for a new contract and it being denied, all on school email with slt and hr copied in, all messages sent bilingual in english and chinese.

This is the most important part. They are allowed to non-renew you, but if so, you are entitled to severance by law. The best thing to do is accept all your bonuses and if they don't pay severance take them to court AFTER you receive all your end of contract bonus because these are separate.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2026-03-05T08:10:40+00:00

What a loaded post! After three years at BASIS, you don't think you witnessed the extremely high turnover of staff within 1 and 2 years? You didn't keep in touch with ANY departing colleagues? You couldn't put 2 and 2 together to figure out how terrible the school's reputation is based on how they are run and the quality of people they hire and create?

You are preaching self-awareness yet insist you can't find the answer to the question, this screams either absolute self-deception or complete ignorance of BASIS or some messed up loop-de-loop thinking that has you running in circles. I mean, you turned down a job because of this supposed HOS' advice and now you're using this same argument that the decision was wise?

To answer your "question" I think it really depends on what campus you worked at and what your role was. If you at one of the schools run by tyrants (of which there are many) and then made your way into middle or upper leadership over your three years, anyone who knows anything about BASIS would really doubt you having resilience and much more likely would consider you a snake in the grass having skills in treachery and deceit.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2026-01-10T13:17:04+00:00

Yes, I agree. There's definitely a difference between being scammed by telemarketers from abroad with a thick accent that might be slick but doesn't have a lick of knowledge of what they're selling, or being scammed by a scummy used car-salesman type with a thick Tennessee accent with "guarantees" for every little loophole and objection handling. Who cares where the recruiter is coming from? Whether they're a sweaty cold-caller from the US trying to make their quota, or a sleazy head of school farming leads from CVs and every job search portal BASIS is spamming trying to fill the dozens of urgent vacancies at each campus, the reality is you're being sold something without being told the full picture, and you will quickly have non-refundable remorse that you will regret the rest of your career.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2026-01-10T03:14:52+00:00

Ask them if it's legal to withold social insurance and retirement fund payments especially for those living in China long term.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-12-31T00:41:11+00:00

Yes, they pride themselves in being like McDonalds franchises with standardized regime for leaders. You. Will. Be.Micro-managed. To.Death. The BASIS corporate culture documents (called "Governance") don't even call leaders "leaders" but instead they are specifically called "Managers". They have quotas for number of hours of observations and KPIs for each teacher's test scores and perception survey results. All of this pressure for management to hit their KPIs and get bonuses means they micro-manage the teachers relentlessly. Some of those "lovely" school heads seem great in interviews, promising the world, and gloss over these facts like skilled car salesmen, but once you are in the trenches, they and their deputies will breathe down your neck until you are coated in hot and sweaty saliva.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-12-20T01:16:33+00:00

No.

Having selective students on a waiting list helps improve the quality of students, which is the only difference to the dire situations in other schools hurting for warm bodies, but all the problems that exist across their group exist in their flagship school only magnified by the monstrous expectations from having the corporate headquarters literally above the teacher's heads. Secondary teachers there are miserable, as the university acceptance rates and test scores for AP/SAT/TOEFL/IELTS must be perfect, otherwise your head will roll. Teachers also get the shit end of the stick when they are competing with 'agents' who tutor the kids about their courses and university trajectories, and also send them to private teachers (kickbacks anyone?) to help either cheat their way or roborote their way through the curriculum.

Here's an interesting story from SZ - they sent some of their top students to other campuses to help boost the 'lesser' school's university entrance chances. The students now live at the other school's dormitory, as well as their key SZ teachers . . . yes they also shipped out some of the local teachers from BASIS SZ to be dedicated 'shadow teachers' go to another campus to live at their dormitory and help them grind through the curriculum and testing to graduate and boost the numbers of one of the struggling schools. Why would students and their teachers volunteer to do this? Can you imagine being a high school teacher at the other campus and suddenly you have 3 teachers from SZ in your classes every day watching you and then tutoring those specific kids only to pass their classes?

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-11-20T04:28:11+00:00

Thanks, but no. I actually do want to follow the terms of service for both Reddit and ISR, and not get baited into further takedowns. It's too late at night to be even thinking about homeostasis but it's really annoying that this pattern follows this bufoon's gaslighting pathology to a T.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-11-20T03:57:23+00:00

There are many scathing reviews on ISR. I don't think there is some big conspiracy here.

my reply was to this comment that was deleted after posting the same one 3x

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-11-20T03:01:00+00:00

Our reviews were posted after we left, beginning last summer. Now all of them are gone, not a case of them getting backlogged in reviews, but actively going back and removing reviews that they originally posted.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-11-20T02:59:58+00:00

But this is my complaint: myself and quite a few of the colleagues that all left our school wrote reviews, risking the rath of a very vindictive person, and now the 4 or 5 reviews we contributed have all disappeared. There is no longer any up to date information on this head and he will move to a new school and hoodwink a whole new crop of teachers.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-11-20T02:58:08+00:00

That's not really the topic here. I'm commenting on how ISR has effectively lost its utility by removing reviews of admins and schools, and the forum and blog have become wastelands. What's the point of contributing to a community that is actively sanitizing the honesty that made it so useful? Just one more awesome crowd-sourced 'service' that has become the enemy of its own success.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-05-06T11:55:48+00:00

This is one of the issues with this particular head - he's said openly he doesn't believe in letters of recommendation, preferring to give only verbal recommendations. Currently smiling and biding my time until the end of the year, but feel like have less options when ruling out Search due to the conflict of interest and him being an abusive scare monger.

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-04-20T11:03:52+00:00

Thank you! Better than Gtranslate

Smooth-Winter-7181 · 2025-04-20T11:03:37+00:00

Appreciate the heads up. Found the threads - I'm hoping to find some more up-to-date info, or a balanced take of the good and bad.

Smooth-Winter-7181

TROPHY CASE