2 years have now passed since the “midnight massacre” of former SAA Elementary Principal, Judie Rosa.
It was clownish and it happened on April Fool’s Day 2021, but it was not a joke.
It was an undeserved, reckless act of ungrateful brutality to perhaps the best administrator in school history. It was also a foolish, short-sighted, and retaliatory act of sabotage to the 2 remaining months of the 2020-2021 school year for the PK-8 community of parents, students, and their teachers – a huge chunk of which followed Mrs. Rosa out the door in mass exodus during the ensuing weeks and months.
This naked abuse of executive power was totally political. Our analysis concluded that it was a deliberate coup d’etat executed by SAA Head Principal Tissiana Bowerman at the behest of her patroness, Chesapeake Conference Education Superintendent Janesta Walker, with the explicit or tacit approval of SAA’s Secret School Board Executive Committee, led by then-chairperson Mark Noble (since resigned) and composed of the haughty and mightily privileged power-players entrenched in the Spencerville Adventist Aristocracy, including Senior Pastor Chad Stuart.
It was then exacerbated by the 35-day silent cover-up, including the arrogance of completely ignoring the petition of 144 Spencerville community members to account to us for their actions.
They did this to all of us. And they are unrepentant .
SAA was cheated and betrayed by its powerful elite.
Two years on, SAA still has not fully recovered.
SAA did not recover in April-May 2021 when Mrs. Bowerman “assumed the administrative duties of Mrs. Rosa” for the remainder of the school year – (insert artificial sitcom laugh-track here). Yeah, right. As if.
Illustration: You have a job. A big job. Your gigantic workload consists or providing differentiated services to about 200 unique companies - let’s call them families. Your job is really the equivalent of 2 full-time jobs and you work yourself to the bone. But you love your job, your customers, and are exceedingly good at what you do. One day, you let your 200 customer companies know you’ll be leaving in 3 months, though not by your choice. Your boss takes offense at your message and summarily fires you. Your customers never see or hear from you again on any official company channels. Your clueless boss then assures your customers that she will now be handling your entire portfolio, even though she barely knows the customers or their needs. Shaking your head yet? Chuckling yet? By the way, if your boss has the bandwidth to supposedly take on your entire 2-fulltime job customer portfolio at a moment’s notice - then what the devil does she do in her regular job duties anyway? Anything at all? Just surfing the internets on a google machine? Well then your "forward-thinking" boss and her upline protectors refuse to answer your now bewildered and unhappy customers’ legitimate questions as to what the devil is happening at the company and who is actually handling their individual accounts.
Sound familiar? That was SAA in April 2021.
So no, SAA did not recover in April-May 2021 when Mrs. Bowerman “assumed the duties of administrative duties of Mrs. Rosa” for the remainder of the school year.
SAA did not recover in 2021-2022 when SAA applied a band-aid and window dressing to the gaping hole by calling a friendly, nice, long-retired administrator out of his retirement to pretend to do Mrs. Rosa’s job.
SAA has still not yet recovered even as of this April Fool's Day of 2023, despite the replacement of the equally friendly and nice Mr. Bragaw. For the sake of the school itself, let us all hope he grows into this role and comes reasonably close to filling the shoes left behind.
Here’s an easy metric to prove our point:
Step 1: Do a simple email inbox search and count the number of messages with substantive information you have received from Dr. Bock and Mr. Bragaw from August 2021 through today. You’ll probably only need one hand to count it, or at most a few fingers borrowed from the other hand.
Step 2: Do the same for emails from Mrs. Rosa in any given quarter or semester between August 2016 – March 31, 2021.
Step 3: (Step 1) minus (Step 2) = a negative number showing how comparatively out of touch the replacements have been.
Here’s another metric (you may have to ask around the least bit):
Step 1: How many new students (or top-shelf teachers) were recruited to SAA by Dr. Bock and Mr. Bragaw from July 2021 through today?
Step 2: Count the number of new students (or top-shelf teachers) recruited to SAA by Mrs. Rosa in any given school year between August 2016 – March 31, 2021.
Step 3: (Step 1) minus (Step 2) = a negative number showing how comparatively less influential the out-of-town replacements have been.
Yes, dear readers, it is a new day now at SAA. Yes, there have been some positive changes since then - most notably the Aristocracy (in a moment of democratic institutional puberty) deigning to disclose the names of individuals who actually represent you on the formerly Secret School Board of the institution you entrust your child(ren) to, and to which you pay thousands upon thousands of your hard-earned dollars. Imagine that. This after clinging to this information for years - as if it were classified to protect national security.
But no. We will not forget the clownery, sabotage, and hubris of April Fool’s Day 2021 and its aftermath.
The newer people to SAA don’t even have a clue. Some people who were around in 2021 have not forgotten, while others may have selectively deleted it from their memories. Even the survivor herself has had to move on. Yet SAA is still in recovery mode, on the mend.
But at Eyes On SAA, we will not forget.
-Lillian Hepburn-Richmond
(A Cohort of Concerned Parents)
Shining Light. Breaking Silence. Holding Accountable.
We’ve got Eyes On SAA.
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