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By KRISTIN PALPINI

@kristinpalpini

SPRINGFIELD — Trustees of the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School grilled its executive director Thursday night about what the chairwoman called a “troubling” lack of communication when he filed a prospectus with the state to start a similar school in the Cambridge area.

Richard Alcorn, the director of the Hadley school, said the filing was meant to put “political pressure” on the Cambridge school district to get moving on a Chinese language immersion school in eastern Massachusetts. He said the prospectus on which his name appeared was a “cut and paste” job using material from a template.

“This was just to kick-start things to get a prospectus going,” Alcorn said, “then pass the puck on the whole thing, to bring in more people, to participate in this and take care of it.“

In late July, Alcorn and trustee Rosalie Porter, both of Amherst, and Anne Watt of Cambridge submitted a 63-page prospectus to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in a bid to open a Chinese immersion school that would serve the Boston area.

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BEIJING — “Have you noticed how woman opinion leaders are being called ‘Mr.’ on Weibo?” asked my sharp-eyed friend Mei Zhang, referring to the influential Twitter-like microblogs.

She was right.

In scattered online references subsequently confirmed in interviews, the evidence is there: “Liu Yu Xiansheng,” or Mr. Liu Yu, a Tsinghua University politics professor and the respected author of “Details of Democracy,” an admired book about the years she spent in the United States. In February, “Mr.” Liu, 37, gave birth to a daughter, so calling her “xiansheng”  seems especially odd. She has more than 780,000 followers on Sina Weibo, the biggest microblogging platform in the country.

“Xiansheng” is the most common way to address a man today in Mandarin, replacing the gender-free “tongzhi,” which began to fade in the 1980s, after the death of Mao Zedong. Once upon a time, “xiansheng” also indicated a teacher (more on that later). It means “first born” and expresses respect for a person older, and therefore more venerable, than yourself.

Ms. Zhang, who was born in Shenyang but works in Hong Kong in finance, explained: “Historically, when a woman was called that, it really elevated her to the status of a man. It meant a brilliant woman. Not because she was pretty but because she was really respected, really clever.

“As a woman you have to be really outstanding to be called it, whereas if you are a man it can be anybody,” she said.

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By DEBRA SCHERBAN

@DebraScherban

HADLEY — The executive director and a trustee of the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School aim to open a second school near Boston, even as the Hadley school expands into the secondary grades.

Richard E. Alcorn, the school’s director, and trustee Rosalie Porter, a language educator, both of Amherst, submitted a prospectus to the state proposing a kindergarten through 12th-grade Chinese Immersion Charter School to serve Brookline, Cambridge, Newton, Waltham, Watertown and Weston. Joining them in the bid is Cambridge educator Anne S. Watt. The application states that the school would be located “probably” in Newton.

According to the prospectus, there is a dearth of Chinese programs in the northeast, and a school near Boston would fill a need.

“At this time, the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School remains the only extended sequence Chinese language and culture program in New England,” according to the documents filed with the state. The Newton-area school would serve as “a regional hub” encompassing a population on the same scale as other successful Chinese immersion programs in the United States and “is modeled on a proven program, the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School.”

Reached by the Bulletin at the Amherst campus of the Hadley school, Alcorn declined comment, saying he was too busy to be interviewed.

More here.