Ms. Nguyen Thi Hai, former principal of Minh Luong Kindergarten, in Lao Cai, has just been proposed for consideration of disciplinary action against officials after functional agencies determined that there were violations in the management of assets contributed by parents and financial and accounting work.
According to the published conclusion, Ms. Hai violated financial and accounting regulations by arbitrarily deducting money from the catering staff.
Previously, she was disciplined by the Party in the form of a warning, then resigned from the position of principal and is currently being proposed for consideration for discipline as an employee.
Notably, among the concluded violations, there is one thing that sounds very unbelievable, which is that Ms. Hai brought a chicken belonging to the "1 tree - 1 chicken" model to her private house.
A chicken, in terms of material value, is clearly not a large asset, but if you only look at the value of the chicken to think that the matter is small, it is very easy to ignore the nature of the problem.
Because property that parents have contributed to the school, whether large or small, must be managed and used for the right purpose. The head of the school cannot arbitrarily consider it as personal property.
In the educational environment, that principle needs to be even more valued.
Schools today receive a lot of parental companionship, from green trees and pets for experience to equipment, facilities and other contributions.
That companionship can only be maintained when parents believe that what they contribute is managed transparently, for the right purpose and for the benefit of students.
Trust is sometimes hurt not from cases of hundreds of millions or billions of dong, but starting from the arbitrary behavior of a very small asset.
The lesson from the "bringing a chicken home" case is not only for an individual or a specific school, but a common lesson.
All money and assets contributed by parents to the school, whether large or small, need to be received, managed and used by clear regulations, with books, public and supervised.
It is not advisable to let any property fall into a blurry gap between property contributed by parents, assigned to the school for management, and personal property, especially not to allow school leaders to "voluntarily" use it.
More importantly, the leader, not only in the educational environment, must be the first to uphold the principle.
Because arbitrariness from management levels easily creates the mentality that small deviations can be overlooked. While many major problems in governance often start from those seemingly insignificant exceptions.
Returning to the story of "bringing a chicken home", transparency from the beginning is the best way to protect schools, managers and parents' trust.
The value of a chicken can be small, but the principle of management and use of assets contributed by parents, if violated, will become a big deal, causing prolonged consequences.
