UPDATE October 26, 2021:
There is a follow-up to this post.
Those who still remember the long gone month of November 2020, may also recall the rather unfortunate events that went on at the EEB2 APEEE Extraordinary Board meeting that took place on the 4th of that month.
If you don’t remember… then, tough luck! I say “tough luck” because the minutes of that meeting have disappeared from the website of our association.
The reasons for such disappearance are not yet known. However, in my everlasting quest for the truth, I have asked the APEEE about it and was dully informed that my questions were being sent to the Board… While we wait for an answer – I suggest you sit while waiting – I would love to fill you into some of the details.
I believe that one could qualify what happened on 4 November as a proper witch hunt.
In that sad November meeting, two board members were accused of… brace yourselves… activism outside the board! And no, this is not a joke! It seems our parents association’s leadership thinks they are running a political party where following the party line is mandatory or that they fancy themselves the lost branch of Orwell’s thought police. Hello??? Wake up people!!! This is a parents not for profit association, where diverging opinions should be settled through debate, and discussion should be cherished instead of curtailed.
But lets refocus on the matter at hand. During the 4 November meeting, the accusation, and plenty of it there was, used and processed personal data and message exchanges it acquired from the private WhatsApp Evere Site Action group. The Evere group, which was set up by one of the two accused board members, was created as a forum to discuss and advocate for a position on the new EEB2 temporary site in Evere, a position the APEEE had officially detached itself from, when, in late September 2020, it declared it did not have a mandate to take a position.
At the time, it was no deterrent to the vast majority of Board members that, to accuse and ostracize the two board members, the data from the Evere Site Action group was illegally used and processed by the APEEE. With this in mind, if we consider that the APEEE board has been assertively pushing for a GDPR/confidentiality agreement to be instated, one word immediately springs to mind: Hypocrisy! And, I am afraid to say but it seems the APEEE has misplaced its moral compass! It’s maybe time for a quick prayer to Saint Antony, the patron saint of lost things: “St. Anthony, please look around; the APEEE’s moral compass seems to be lost and must be found.”
Anyway, at this point I ask myself: why should I bother you any further with my rant, when I can just invite you to read the minutes of that meeting in all their glory? Yes… I kept a copy to avoid 1984-like history rewriting…
Finally, I must confess that despite the obvious advantages of being a negative person: in the end you can either tell everyone “I told you so”, or you are pleasantly surprised, I am still positive and I sincerely believe that the minutes of the 4 November meeting were removed from the website by mistake. But just in case, to prevent that they are lost for good, along with my questions to the APEEE about their disappearance, I have also sent them a copy. However, if for some reason they were removed on purpose, then whoever took the decision to do it didn’t really think it through when expecting this to go unnoticed…
Fabrício Santos is a parent at the Brussels European School 2 in Woluwe.
As an engaged parent he is often involved in actions that aim at improving and increasing the transparency and accountability of the school’s parents association.