I’m here to contribute my student perspective on the Bauer v. SPA case. Although the school is currently facing several issues regarding sexual assault and censorship, I want the public to understand how wildly inaccurate Bauer’s original letter of no confidence was. It is so inaccurate and under researched that it is effectively an act of racial bias against Ottley, who stands as the first and only black head of school in SPA’s history.

I find Bauer’s use of the Star Tribune to be frankly gross. Because of my disagreement with the narrative that is being pushed, this reddit post is the only way I could have my voice heard. I wrote a complete Letter to The Editor and was not featured. By contrast, the articles against the school just keep coming and there has also been a pro-Bauer Letter to The Editor that was featured.

The Star Tribune has been putting words in the mouths of the students and parents of SPA, and any discontent is silenced. If you really disagree with media censorship, you should most certainly consider the actions of the Star Tribune itself.

Attached below is my Letter where I explain in further detail:

As a student who recently graduated from St. Paul Academy (SPA), I feel compelled to speak about the ongoing case, Bauer v. Saint Paul Academy. 

There is a distinct racist overtone in how the situation unfolded. This situation was precipitated by a letter of no confidence, written by SPA parent Matt Bauer that targeted Dr. Luis Ottley. When Ottley asked to meet with Bauer to discuss his concerns, Bauer refused. It’s important to note that Dr. Ottley is the first Black Head of School in SPA’s 125-year history. His rejection by these parents, led by Bauer, reflects a deep-seated systemic issue within the SPA community. If Bauer wanted these concerns to be addressed, the appropriate course of action would have been to meet with Ottley and the Board of Trustees to discuss how the school is run rather than targeting the head of school so overtly.

In the drafted letter, there are multiple claims that even a high schooler can tell are inaccurate, exaggerated, and uninformed. This includes an unsubstantiated claim that the school has not been meeting financial goals, even going so far as to speculate, “If twenty students were to leave, drastic cost cutting measures would be required; if fifty students were to leave, the school’s viability would be seriously threatened.” In a later response from the school, this statement proves entirely false. Additionally, Bauer falsely claimed that the Faculty Council, a touch-point between teachers and parents, was shut down under Ottley, even though it had been disbanded in 2018, long before Dr. Ottley came to SPA.

Ottley has made significant efforts to integrate into the SPA community. Just this year, he began hosting advisory dinner events in order to connect with graduating seniors. Over the course of several weeks, every student was invited to one of these events, and if you were busy during the time of your original invite, you could always come to the next one. He also has held events to directly connect with parents such as “Lattes with Luis.”  Ottley has tried in numerous ways to interact directly with the community, even though some may say otherwise. It has always been a priority for him to hear about the student experience as directly as possible.

Personally, I feel that this entire situation has become concerningly overblown. I fear that this attention being drawn to our school may drive vitriol from those uninvolved in the situation. Under instagram posts about the issue, I read many unsettling comments “SPA needs to be closed.” ( al_ghurab6) or a different user referring to SPA as a "Fascist Factory.” (mcde_rigueur) 

I find these statements offensive as someone who has enjoyed my time at SPA. My education has helped learn how to think critically about issues such as this one in an encouraging and safe environment. When issues have arisen for me in the past, I’ve always felt supported both by faculty and admin. 

It’s important to solve the concerns raised by Bauer, but the only way to do that is to have respect for the staff that makes what we have possible. 

I posted this as a comment on Pleasant_Contest2174's post, but I wanted to post it on its own. I changed a few things to make it make sense as a stand-alone post. I'm a high school student at SPA, and this is my experience at the school and perspective on the sexual harassment incident.

It was really hard for me to watch my classmates and friends be harassed and treated terribly. And when the administration did little to address it, many people grew frustrated, and trust in Ottley's leadership eroded. It hurt our grade at the time, and Ottley's attempt to improve the situation completely missed the mark. I'd like to say that the teachers at SPA are wonderful and great at their jobs. I don't think SPA is perfect, but I think the education is high quality, thanks in large part to the teachers. Another thing I like about SPA is my friends and classmates. There are really awesome people there, and our junior retreat this spring really brought people together in a meaningful way. So while Ottley and some people at our school have damaged our community, I think we've been able to create a supportive environment as much as possible. I've felt the curriculum has been good. As for the censorship, I witnessed Ottley remove the Rubicon article covering the sexual harassment and administration's response from the website, which was highly concerning to me and felt like an overreach of power. Free speech is incredibly important for a functioning democracy, and by silencing voices, Ottley is creating a terrible leadership example for SPA students. I believe that what makes my SPA experience valuable is the strong education, the teachers, my friends, and the community. That's what matters. Ottley is not helping our high school experience, but we are making it meaningful anyway. The strength of a community lies in the students, teachers, friendships, and bonds.

Ottley’s actions might be legal, but are they the actions of a strong leader, or a weak narcissist trying desperately to hang onto his $800k job?

The previous post on this sub Reddit was from an SPA student. A BRAVE SPA student considering Ottley’s penchant for hunting down his critics. This is the type of student who represents the best of SPA. They are balanced, thoughtful, and use historical precedent to influence current interpretation of the current situation. They are not one-sided. They are incredibly thoughtful. With that, I am so incredibly sorry that the current state of affairs among the leadership at SPA is bleeding into our babies’ (yes, I know they’re young adults but my babies will always be my babies to me) experience. Perhaps, and hopefully, it will inspire our kids to stand firmly on the side of truth and justice.

This from the SPA student:

“maybe somebody is empowered like the Bauer dad to try and bring meaningful change to the community.”

For those on the fence about speaking your truth to media, to the public or your own social media: Do it. Be brave. Don’t let bullies keep you from speaking the truth.

For goodness sake, let’s model goodness in this world to our kids.

As I’ve said before, Ottley’s actions might be legal, but they are absolutely retaliatory. Retaliation is a leader’s petty attempt to strike fear into his followers’ minds. Retaliation is an incredibly weak man’s desperate attempt to control the narrative. The Reverend Doctor Luis Ottley is, despite his best efforts, an incredibly weak and petty man. He divides communities. He avoids accountability. And in his realization of his incredible shortcomings, he blames others and target families, teachers, staff and board members he deems to be his “enemies”.

Ottley will destroy SPA. A narcissist will never admit to doing wrong, and we have a weak board with an incredibly weak President in David Kristal who will cow tow to every whim of Ottley without any reasonable critical review. Kristal has zero understanding of what fiduciary duty means to an institution such as SPA. Every action he has taken shows his loyalty is to Ottley and not the institution. This is a gross violation of the fiduciary standard for a board member - especially a board char - and may open up Kristal to gross negligence accusations which may not be covered by the standard D&O policy for a non profit board.

If I were a current trustee, I would immediately resign and hire an attorney.

Uffda. Lastly - our mission: shaping the minds and the hearts of the people who will change the world.

Ottley’s mission is to beat all constituencies down into submission. This is not the SPA my children signed up for. People who will change the world are leaders. They are people who challenge the status quo. They are the people who reject authority when the authority is wrong.

This is not the SPA that Ottley wants. When challenged, he retaliates. When groups request meetings, he declines. When transparency is needed, he circles the wagons in favor of opacity.

By any measure, he is a weak man and a weak leader who is desperately trying to hold onto his $800k job. He doesn’t deserve devotion. He deserves accountability.

https://preview.redd.it/fnwieh9pwgah1.png?width=590&format=png&auto=webp&s=f989e82481d2db12e0ee560ec389a713dff59361

Link

I was surprised nobody had found this yet, it’s not exactly a huge amount of new information but there is some. I’m not expecting anybody to read this but if anyone wants to, you can, and to anybody reading this as a way to look at a students opinion for whether to sign you children up for SPA, I don’t want this to be a reason not to enroll them.

I joined SPA a few years ago after a very difficult time choosing whether to switch schools or not. I ended up choosing to switch and it was a great choice in general, but this is one of the worst handled situations ever. For a while I’ve seen the current leadership as faltering a little bit especially in their priorities, the idea that anything under maybe a B is bad is essentially ingrained in the minds of many of the kids in my grade and in general there’s a large amount of putting yourself down in terms of how good you are, but the leadership basically ignores this completely. Alongside this almost nothing actually profound besides bullying, our norms and inclusion are talked about, there are talks about important historical figures and activists, but the talks about them often miss the mark especially when it comes to anything to do with basically anything besides diversity. when the information about the sexual harassment came out, the Middle Schoolers (I was in Middle School at the time) got no information about it and never really did get talked about outside of students and the upper school.

I don’t want to say the school’s image is a façade, but the resemblance to something like Hoover’s FBI is scaring, before I joined the image of inclusivity and some elite education made SPA seem perfect, but once I was actually in the school for enough time it only sort of held up, the classes are good, but they’re not some insane elite classes, some choices in curriculum are weird (why are Math 6 and Math 7 basically the same thing? Why Do we treat a book that believes all racism stemmed from a Portuguese guy in the 1400s as complete fact? Why is there so many english courses for the most specific things ever like Asian Diaspora but no classes on poetry?) but in general it’s not bad, definitely better than my old school, not because my old school was bad, more because SPA has insane amounts of resources and many opportunities for students in basically everything besides english, and the athletics are basically perfect, I don’t find anything wrong with them, I’m not all that athletic but I do sports and really like the athletics program. Moving on, I haven’t had any personal experiences with censorship and dissent at school, I have gotten in trouble for a gc outside of school, but I think free speech and free press is one of the most important things in the world and the amount of control happening on pretty normal things is crazy for a school so dedicated to being forward thinking. I want to be a journalist when I grow up and I’m really into press freedom, I find that what the school is doing replicates a more controlling country‘s government like Laos (I know more about Laos because I did my ATW on that), their own statements remind me a lot of the type of optimism, quantitative focus over actual reality and “non-truths” made by the US during the Vietnam War by figures like McNamara. I don’t really have anything special to say on the Bauer lawsuit, the filings are really the more important thing.

I want to end this by saying I am not a pessimist. I think SPA has the capabilities and the resources to foster a meaningful change in the environment that makes or breaks the student’s lives, I only wanted to post this to voice my opinions so that maybe somebody is empowered like the Bauer dad to try and bring meaningful change to the community.

Can we take a moment to discuss the "small vocal minority" that Ottley keeps citing and the SPA spokespeople keep repeating in articles that then get parroted here?

They keep saying it's just a small vocal minority stirring up the trouble and asking for his removal.

Of course, has it occurred to him or those that support him that the new enrollment contract he instituted is *designed* for anyone who opposes not to be vocal? And, if they are not able to be vocal because the school has shown they will retaliate and expel kids for their parents being so, how does he, or anyone, actually know how large the opposition is?

So, I would assume the desire for regime change at the school is large but many now feel they can't say anything publicly lest they risk their kids being retaliated against.

The Bauers were used as an example to show other parents what would happen to them if they expressed any discontent.

My guess is that it worked. I know it would for me.

So anyone on here or any official word claiming to know how small or large or vocal or not opposition is really does not. Ottley doesn't know, those that support him don't know. Those against him don't know. And that is by the school's design. It benefits them enough to not know that they wrote a whole new enrollment contract to not know.

A standard rule in marketing: For every one complaint you hear, assume there are 50 more you don't.

If entire districts like LA can make the change to ban or significantly limit screen time for younger kids, why isn’t the school doing so? Why aren’t more parents coming together to demand better?

Young kids don’t need to play games as rewards. They don’t need videos on whiteboards. They don’t need all the screens the school has made available. We’ve been asked about it before but the national movement is motivating me to do even more.

SPA needs to do better

Whatever apologies individuals may make, it is clear that there has been an exceptional amount of turnover in staff and trustees.
SPA wants to see itself as an elite prep school. Unfortunately colleges just do not see it that way. Year after year senior parents share the same sad stories. Their children did not get into any of their top choices. Well, SPA is certainly getting a national reputation now, but for all the wrong reasons.
The primary job for the Head of School should be raising money. Who is going to support SPA now that they have alienated the alumni?
Ottley is such a snowflake that he is willing to destroy the institution to protect his own delicate ego!

SPA - now internationally recognized.

A substantial new development in the controversy around Head of School Luis Ottley. https://www.startribune.com/st-paul-academy-lawsuit-luis-ottley-matt-bauer/601861206