It was precisely one year ago today, March 31, 2021, at 6:10 p.m. when the SAA community received a simple, dignified, heartfelt goodbye letter from Mrs. Judith Rosa, former Elementary School Principal at SAA.
Mrs. Rosa faithfully, tirelessly, and lovingly served the teachers, students, and parents of SAA from Summer 2016 until the evening of March 31, 2021. Why March 31? Wasn’t the academic year to continue until May 28, 2021? Well of course Mrs. Rosa was intending to finish the rest of the school year, even writing in her goodbye letter that she would serve until June 30, 2021.
But that never happened.
That's because sometime between 6:10 p.m. on March 31 and the very next day, April 1 (fittingly April Fool’s Day) SAA’s Head of School Mrs. Tissiana Bowerman, Janesta Walker (Chesapeake Conference Education Superintendent), and what we concluded in our report (see link below) was either the direction, approval, and/or complicity of SAA’s Secret School Board (chaired by Mark Noble, vice-chaired by German Rodriguez) and possibly several other of its politically powerful aristocrats, almost certainly including Spencerville SDA Church Senior Pastor, Chad Stuart, all conspired together in an executive coup d’etat to recklessly, arrogantly, and stupidly, and clumsily, inflict great damage to the students, teachers, and families of Spencerville Adventist Academy, and to its name and reputation by the figurative midnight massacre of its beloved Elementary Principal.
We are witnesses.
So beginning on April Fool’s Day 2021, SAA’s 5-Time All-Pro Elementary Principal was never again seen within the walls of the school. Even several weeks later, at the 8th grade graduation exercises for students whose education she had overseen for as many as 5 years, her existence was not even acknowledged.
Make no mistake, this sudden disappearance was not in Mrs. Rosa’s plan or even in SAA’s plan. Both SAA & Mrs. Rosa planned for her to serve until June 30, 2021, and we defy anyone to prove us wrong. So this figurative abduction of SAA’s Elementary Principal on April Fool’s Day was nothing less than a knee-jerk retaliatory punishment for Mrs. Rosa’s goodbye message to SAA. Anyone who tells you different (Mrs. Bowerman, Mrs. Walker, Mr. Noble, Mr. Rodriguez, or Pastor Stuart) is either dissembling or just plain lying. We have the receipts.
We are witnesses.
Notice how many other SAA Staff have sent out goodbye letters to the school community either before or since Mrs. Rosa’s letter: Mrs. April Nixon (Middle School Teacher), Mrs. Amanda Walter (Middle School Teacher), Mrs. Sharon Williams (Middle School Teacher), Mr. Joram Regis (High School Principal), Mrs. Rachel Fuentes (2nd Grade Teacher), among others. Were any of those education professionals “abducted” from the classroom or stopped in their tracks prior to the end of the school year? No.
So what was the difference between their goodbye letters and that of Mrs. Rosa?
The difference is this: all those other teachers likely had to get public relations editing and pre-approval of their letters from SAA’s internal “Pravda” bureaucrats (Mrs. Bowerman and/or Mrs. Walker) before publishing them. We figure those other letters had to be sanitized and neutered of any untoward hint or suggestion, regardless of the truth of its content. This tight control is to ensure SAA’s image would ne’er be tarnished or come into question, even if something very wrong had been done in the lead up. By contrast, Mrs. Rosa’s letter told the truth - at least too much truth for SAA to handle. She paid a high price, the ultimate professional price, for telling the SAA community the truth - which is why we believe her. You might even disagree with her sending the letter, fine, but she took a risk to tell you the truth. You should honor that truth. We always will.
The truth is that in February 2021, SAA’s Secret School Board chose not to renew her contract for 2021-22 and the reason given to her was “administrative unity” (that is, a brazen, harmful, zero-sum political circling of the wagons around Mrs. Bowerman). A bad decision to be sure, but not an immediate termination. It would not affect anything until the next school year because Mrs. Rosa wasn't immediately relieved of her duties in February 2021 when the SSB made its dumb move to not retain her for the next school year. So what was left was for Mrs. Rosa to finish out her final term of duty at SAA through June 30, 2021 - that's the normal course of things.
But all that changed on March 31, 2021 when Mrs. Rosa told us the truth in her goodbye letter. That's the date on which SAA and Chesapeake Conference escalated from dumb to dirty. From clueless to calculating. From malpractice to malice. From stupidity to sabotage.
All because truth was exposed.
Not even that much really, simply that the non-renewal was not for underperformance, malfeasance, or lack of merit - but to maintain "administrative unity." That's fancy word-smithing for a political decapitation if ever there was one. In communist countries they would charge "crimes against the revolution." At SAA it's termed "administrative unity."
And has such "administrative unity" been achieved since then? Hmmmmm. We'll take a closer look at that in another post.
Anyway, since SAA "can't handle the truth", Mrs. Rosa had to immediately be disappeared in the middle of the night for her dignified message on March 31.
Was that disappearance executed for our children's good? Or their teachers good? Of course not. No, it was to follow the strategy of failed damage control by SAA's and the Chesapeake Conference's miserably incompetent "public relations" machine. Ironically, and deservedly, that broken machine only made things worse - much worse.
We are witnesses.
In fact SAA has still not recovered from the harm done to it one year ago today by Mrs. Bowerman, Mrs. Walker, Mr. Noble, Mr. Rodriguez, Pastor Stuart, and the rest of the Spencerville Adventist Aristocracy. Not only was there no replacement for Mrs. Rosa for the remainder of last school year, but SAA's elementary and middle schools have been limping around with an interim substitute administrator for the entire 2021-22 school year. It's not Dr. Kelly Bock's fault, who graciously came back out of retirement as a "favor to an SAA alumnus" (according to SAA's own email introduction in July 2021). Dr. Bock simply answered the impossible call to jump in and fill the gigantic empty shoes left behind when Mrs. Rosa was forced out. That's because administrators of Mrs. Rosa's caliber are not available from the shelves of the nearest pharmacy. Those of us who have been around for a while, or even just last school year, have noticed a precipitous drop-off in communication, organization, service and just plain charisma in the elementary and middle schools this year. Anyone who looks closely will see this as well. SAA used Dr. Bock as window dressing to mask the damage from its own self-inflicted bomb blast in removing Mrs. Rosa. So we don't blame Dr. Bock any more than we would blame a fireman who is called to a house that's already burned down. No, we hold accountable Mrs. Bowerman, Mrs. Walker, Mr. Noble, Mr. Rodriguez, Pastor Stuart, and the rest of the Spencerville Adventist Aristocracy.
We are witnesses.
Eyes On SAA could not let March 31 pass without memorializing that dark day in SAA’s history.
We must never forget the harm done to our children, their teachers, and us parents on March 31, 2021; or who did it; or the complete lack of justification for it; or how our voices “144,000 strong” were ignored for 35 days, and then again ever since; or how our simple requests for an explanation and the remedial action of “letting Judie finish” were never even acknowledged by SAA in its institutional, systemic hubris and silence.
We must never forget how much darkness can be done by powerful persons who attempt to veil their incompetence, cutthroat politics, and abuse of power under a cloak of weaponized religion.
We are witnesses.
As a memorial, we refer you to our posts:
We are witnesses.
-Lillian Hepburn-Richmond
(A Cohort of Concerned Parents)
Shining Light. Breaking Silence. Holding Accountable.
We’ve got Eyes On SAA.
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