A Family Directory at a school is a wonderful tool for communication with one another and for building community.
Want to know who your child’s classmates are? No problem, just look them up in the Family Directory on RenWeb.
Want to contact parents of your child’s classmates to invite them to a birthday party? No problem, just look them up in the Family Directory on RenWeb.
Want to see if you can carpool with another family living near you? No problem, just look them up in the Family Directory on RenWeb.
Maybe you forgot the names of your child's classmate's parents, or maybe you'd like to introduce yourself to a new SAA family, or better yet be friendly and show love by inviting them to your home. All of this is good stuff and a great way to build community. No problem, just look them up in the Family Directory on RenWeb.
SAA’s Family Directory makes all this possible - except that it doesn’t anymore - because it has been quietly scrubbed from RenWeb.
We’ve looked and looked all over RenWeb, and cannot locate it anywhere. Neither can we locate it on the new SAA website. Neither has there been any announcement that it has been relocated from RenWeb to some other place.
It's not here...
Or here...
Or here...
Or here....
Or here...
Or here...
Or here...
Or here....
Or here...
And the "Resources" tab you see on RenWeb? Well, that just takes you here:
Perhaps you’ve already noticed this phenomenon of the missing Family Directory, but if not, by all means - go ahead and take a look for yourself. Maybe it was conveniently removed right when SAA’s Secret School Board list was finally published, to prevent us from emailing SSB members.
We’ve been checking back for several weeks trying to find it, thinking "Gee, it must just be a new website snafu." Or maybe we here at Eyes On SAA just need a vision check and some reading glasses and a tutorial on how to point and click the mouse. Anyway, if you happen to find it then please post a comment letting us know where it is - other than stuck in our memory. After the passage of several weeks, the disappearance of the Family Directory doesn't appear either temporary or accidental.
But wait a minute - unless they requested to opt-out, then EVERY SINGLE FAMILY CONSENTED to being listed in the Family Directory when they enrolled. So what happened, SAA? Did every single family contact Mrs. Bowerman demanding to be removed from the Family Directory? Doubtful...
That leaves just one likely alternative: Your consent to be listed in the Family Directory has been nullified. Overruled. Canceled. By SAA leadership.
So let's just imagine that sometime over the past several weeks or months you needed to:
a. Directly contact the parents (unknown to you) of another child who may be bullying yours? Well now you’ve got a problem, because SAA took away the Family Directory.
b. Forward a unique extra-curricular learning or enrichment opportunity to that classmate (whose parents you don’t know) that your child mentioned who is really gifted in computer coding? Well you’ve got a problem, because SAA took away the Family Directory.
c. Reach out to other parents (for whom you don’t have contact info) to address a matter of mutual concern, (like objectionable material or bias in the classroom, or the revealing of it at the CM, or a teacher who was hostile to or assaulted your kid (real-life, folks)? Well you’ve got a problem now, because SAA took away the Family Directory.
Now, you might be thinking "Calm down, Lillian, what's the big deal?" Parents can still use their existing Outlook or Google list of personal contacts (whether the list is really large, kinda small, or barely there at all) to communicate with other families, right? And there's no harm done if you’re especially outgoing and already well-connected, right? Sure, but what if you're not? Or you don't have time to track someone down in person in the dismissal line?
Here's the bigger question: Who benefits from placing obstacles in the way of families in a Christian school community from being able to freely communicate with one another, sharing concerns, or organizing? Do you? Or your kids? Or the newer and less-connected SAA families that might welcome the communication and friendship of others? No, of course not.
Our answer to “who benefits” is this:
A school administration that wants to monopolize communication in the community.
A “Board of Directors” that wants to operate as much as possible in secret (by the excessive use of “executive session” secrecy).....
.....and, by virtue of scrubbing the Family Directory, wants to remain incommunicado and unbothered by constructive, questioning or dissenting voices in the school community.
3. A regime so desperate for self-preservation and self-perpetuation that it must hoard all the oxygen in the atmosphere to keep the serfs and sharecroppers in silence, ignorance, and isolation.
Eliminating the Family Directory and obstructing the SAA community from being able to fully and freely communicate within itself is a deliberate act of control and secrecy. As we have said before, secrecy is not simply an oversight or snafu in SAA’s system of governance, but has been designed, engineered and groomed at great effort - it has been baked-in.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
-Lillian Hepburn-Richmond
(A Cohort of Concerned Parents)
Shining Light. Breaking Silence. Holding Accountable.
We’ve got Eyes On SAA.
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