SAA will hold its Annual Constituency Meeting at the SAA Auditorium on June 15, 2021 at 7:00 p.m. It's not the Town Hall Meeting that 144 petitioners respectfully asked of SAA's Administration and School Board back in early April, but if you are a member of Spencerville Church, then hopefully you submitted your 3 nominations for delegates by the tight 4-day deadline. According to the message from Pastor Chad Stuart on 5/19/21, your nominations would be reviewed by the church board for its approval and the forming of a delegation (see prior post for more about this process). We do not know the standard or basis that was applied to your nominations, but the church has now published the names of the delegates chosen by its board in the last church bulletin. You may access that church bulletin list through the church's weekly e-mail newsletter, or at a list that we have reproduced here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eMJ370DgIlsAn5sJ56Hph5NrFzHchU5wm4ip2Hho4E/edit?usp=sharing
At least we now have names of delegates, which cannot be said of any of the members of the SAA School Board, which is a closely-held secret from members of the SAA Community, including members of the Spencerville Church. Withholding the names of the people on the highest governing body of the school? Well, that's the condescending SAA-style "democracy" and "transparency" which leads to terrible results (e.g. Elementary Principal Judie Rosa's unexplained disappearance and firing), broken trust, and the outcry of 144,000 figurative petitioners for openness and accountability. It still has not happened yet.
Past Constituency Meetings have been fairly dull affairs with interesting information flashed on the screen faster than one can absorb it (repeated requests by constituents for informational handouts have been refused), but no real probing questions asked. Will this year be the same?
This is a very important test of representative democracy and constituent oversight for the Spencerville Church. Does SAA truly belong only to the one last administrator currently presiding at the school*? Or only the Board Chairperson? Or only the SAA Board's secret Executive Committee? Or only to the distant Chesapeake Conference Department of Education? Or only to the Spencerville Church Pastor and Church Board? Or does it actually belong to the constituent members of Spencerville Church?
If you are not a delegate, then you should contact those who are and respectfully ask them to transmit, represent, and advocate for your concerns at the Constituency Meeting. This is entirely appropriate and exactly how a representative democracy is supposed to work. This is how it should work at the SAA School Board level too. But sorry folks - as intelligent adults and paying customers, or even constituent members of the Spencerville Church, you are not deemed worthy to know who represents your child's best interests on the secret school board, other than the board chairperson who is the only officially confirmed member.
Anyway, it is now the moral and ethical duty of these 81 delegates to directly represent the concerns of the entire Spencerville Church, and indirectly the entire SAA community. They must advocate for democratic enfranchisement, transparency, and accountability for the important issues the school faces. We trust that these delegates will prove to be persons of courage and tenacity who will ask the crucial questions that need to be asked about SAA, and insist on clear and substantive answers - not the corporate game of dodgeball that we have grown accustomed to from SAA's Admin and Board.
We will continue to report on and cover important developments leading up to the Constituency Meeting, including a list of questions for SAA leadership to address at the meeting. Stay tuned for that, but for now here are 2 obvious questions that should already have been answered:
Will non-delegates be allowed to attend the Constituency Meeting in-person?
Will the Constituency Meeting be live-streamed and recorded for whoever is interested?
- Lillian Hepburn-Richmond (a cohort of concerned parents)
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*See our previous post "SAA Administration Operating at 1/3 Capacity"