Last December 23rd, a Thursday, as we were watching “The Grinch” and thoughtfully wrapping lumps of coal for certain SAA officials, one of our staff members here at Eyes On SAA checked the school’s new and improved website and to our surprise, shock, and awe.......
............................................................at long last we found a list of the SAA’s Secret School Board (SSB) members! Our holiday spirit had been outdone. We were gifting lumps of coal, and all the while SAA was gifting “the internets” a long-concealed embryo of transparency and democracy - wow! Danke schön, SAA.
So finally, after some 8+ months of Lillian Hepburn-Richmond’s Petition for Judie Rosa (in April 2021), continuous blogging (31 posts from May 2021 -December 2021), requests from delegates at the Constituency Meeting (…..in June 2021!), and repeated letters to the power structure - all of which were stonewalled….SAA’s Secret School Board finally removed a portion of its figurative full-bodied burka.
After decades of this:
(total and complete intentional secrecy by the ruling SAA aristocracy)
.....came this first reveal in early December 2021 with a premiere posting of the names of SSB’s Chair and Vice-Chair (important, but not a huge revelation, especially for all of our readers who already knew this anyway):
(🤔Hmmm, a 2-man school board? False advertising? No wonder it takes so long to get anything done - anything except retaliating against the best administrator in school history by firing her in the middle of the night within hours of her innocent goodbye message. Now that's action!)
Then sometime around mid-late December came the second reveal: a full listing of the SSB’s members (see below). So if we were to line-graph these revolutionary changes on an x-axis and y-axis, you could see that their transparency curve went from being totally flat lined for the past few decades, to almost completely vertical over a period of just a few weeks.
Why now? Could it be that Eyes On SAA’s constant drumbeat for the SSB to draw back the curtain of secrecy drew enough public attention that Head of School Bowerman, SSB Chairperson Noble, and SSB Vice-Chairperson Rodriguez were sufficiently exposed/embarrassed/cornered; and could no longer justify keeping the list secret anymore? Maybe our blogpost,Spencerville Adventist Aristocracy (SAA) on December 10, 2021, was the drop that made their cup runneth over?
Man, must they hate to admit that! In fact they probably won’t acknowledge it if you ask them. Instead they will produce some shiny, polished misdirectional word-play (e.g., “budgetary constraints”, “old website lacked bandwidth”, “it’s always been available but you had to ask 70 x 7 times”) for their refusals and delays. Sure, whatever - but it’s hard not to notice when a group of 27 ladies (and lords) living next door to you suddenly go from their decades-old trademark burkas to Amish-style long skirts cut just above the ankle.
No matter the misdirection folks, there’s no other logical explanation than the pressure put on SAA and SSB leadership by delegates, community members, and this pithy blog. We quote our prior posts:
“If positive change does eventually happen at SAA post-Judie Rosa, it should be credited in part to those persons whose names courageously appeared on this Petition. If the pen is mightier than the sword, then the internet must be mightier than the silence at the CC and SAA. So going forward, Lillian Hepburn-Richmond is considering an interactive online forum to continue to publicly hold the CC and SAA accountable to its constituents and customers, so stay tuned.” Petition Update - April 30, 2021
“[W]e are all witnesses of your collective disenfranchisement of our voices and the trampling of all semblance of democratic systems. And Lillian Hepburn-Richmond will ensure that there is a permanent public, online record of what was done.” Epilogue & Lessons Learned, May 10, 2021.
So even though molasses moves much faster, though forest moss and fungi grow far quicker too, and heck, April through December is almost the length of a full-term pregnancy - but it’s better late than never. No matter that actual wars have waged lasting less time than it took for SAA's SSB to be dragged to the edge of its own Pool of Bethesda and dip its pinky toe into the cleansing waters of transparency, we say: Good on you, SAA.
Before our “Eyes On SAA” blogsite premiere unveiling of the SAA Secret School Board membership, let’s put this unprecedented and brand new development in some context, folks. When we published Spencerville Adventist Aristocracy (SAA) (back on 12/10/2021) that SSB list was not there. In all the history of SAA’s website, never has an SSB list been posted to our knowledge. So in reality, the wait has been so much more than 8+ months, but in fact decades. Decades without a school board list since there was an SAA website, and perhaps even decades before that, assuming a school board list wasn’t published in a school newsletter or yearbook. Anyway, the wait is over now, folks. Here is a screenshot of your list of Secret School Board members, courtesy of SAA’s website:
In case that’s too hard to read, we’ve reproduced the list here:
Mark Noble, Board Chairperson
German Rodriguez, Vice-Chair & Personnel Chairperson
Walt Fennell, Finance Chairperson
Seelan Abraham, Governance Chairperson
Heidi Wetmore, Secretary
Tissiana Bowerman, Principal (ex-officio)
Kelly Bock, Vice-Principal (ex-officio)
Joram Regis, Vice-Principal (ex-officio)
Chad Stuart, Senior Pastor (ex-officio)
Matthew Piersanti, Youth Pastor (ex-officio)
Lerone Carson, Children’s Ministries Pastor (ex-officio)
Melissa Reinhardt, Home and School President (ex-officio)
Janesta Walker, Chesapeake Conference Superintendent of Schools (ex-officio)
Renee Humphries, Chesapeake Conference Associate Superintendent of Schools (ex-officio)
Jacqueline Messenger, Columbia Union Education Representative (ex-officio)
Brittany Thorp, Business Manager (ex-officio)
Amanda Perry, Member
Bob Burrow, Member
Chris Esveld, Member
Doug Zinke, Member
Hetty Khan, Member
Julia Holm, Member
Karen Miranda, Member
Kevin Krueger, Member
Leighton Kennedy, Member
Ruth Satelmajer, Member
Silvio Pionatto, Member
Tony Zappia, Member
So we say: Bravo, SAA! Congratulations to Mrs. Bowerman, SSB Chairperson Mr. Noble, and SSB Vice-Chairperson Mr. Rodriguez - you’ve finally…………finally taken your first real incremental toddler steps to raise the SSB to a material degree of transparency - one that virtually every other school surpassed decades ago when “the internets” were invented (by Al Gore).
But why the decades-long wait for something so basic and standard provided at just about every other school you find online? Was that really so hard to do? Apparently so. But why? Well that’s a question for Mrs. Bowerman, SSB Chairperson Noble, and SSB Vice-Chairperson Rodriguez.
So after you’re done toasting yourselves with (veggie?) champagne, and patting each others’ backs too hard and for too long, realize that there is still much more work to be done to continue your thousand mile journey to transparency.
In the meantime, we’re not yet ready to change our pet name for the SSB until much, much more unmasking happens. We will follow this post with a multi-part series dedicated to SAA’s Secret School Board on the following topics:
SSB Composition: Where is the electoral center of power? How are members chosen?
SSB Body of Work: What decisions and actions has it taken?
SSB Communication: How do I get in touch with members individually, or as a whole? May I submit an agenda item? Is there a “public comment” portion of SSB meetings?
We invite our readers to follow these posts. We also invite the members of the SSB to follow as well - you may find out stuff you didn’t even know, and you can check us if we get something wrong. Who knows? Maybe the SSB will beat us to the punch and tell you before we do? Go right ahead Mrs. Bowerman, Mr. Noble, or Mr. Rodriguez - be our guests!
Shining Light. Breaking Silence. Holding Accountable.
We’ve got Eyes On SAA.
-Lillian Hepburn-Richmond
(A Cohort of Concerned Parents)
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