If I want more freedom, I guess I’d be better off in Henrico County. A few years ago as a group I was affiliated with was trying to lobby the school board for faster funding of our high school’s renovation, we had to seek permission to put information in flyers that were taken home in the kids’ backpacks. We’d often run into resistance, as school officials were afraid of being supportive of a political effort.
But in Henrico, a church can advertise in school flyers, and the school system abets a charade by obfuscating the fact that it’s a church.
Laura Kreisa knew the YMCA, the PTA, the JCC. She couldn’t pinpoint WEAG.
She became curious about the acronym when her son came home from his western Henrico County school with a flier advertising a golf event sponsored by WEAG.
She saw no full name, no contact information.
Confused, Kreisa thought it may stand for some West End athletic group.
“I had no clue,” she said. “I was looking in the phone book for WEAG.”
She asked school staff and was told the letters stood for West End Assembly of God, a church in western Henrico.
“The way it’s presented, it’s not clear it’s a church,” Kreisa said. “I would feel better if they are straightforward. Any organization should be fully identified, whether it’s religious or not.”
That was last year. So Kreisa was surprised to see the acronym again last month when her son brought home a flier advertising an extreme dodgeball league. The flier still did not spell out the name.
So it’s a golf event. If her son is an elementary school child, the event clearly was not for him or his classmates.
“We allow the YMCA to use the acronym, we allow the JCC to use the acronym, and there are some people in Richmond, in the West End especially, that recognize the WEAG acronym,” said Marianne McGhee, Henrico schools’ director of public information and television services.
Causing confusion about the acronym was unintentional, said David Mercer, executive pastor at West End Assembly of God. WEAG shows up on school fliers most likely because the material is the same that they use in house, he said.
“It’s nothing clandestine by any means,” he said.
“It’s simply an acronym that we’ve come to identify ourselves by in our internal communications here.”
Oh, and we should know that!
This may be innocent as I know little about the church. But let’s be at least clear when we’re advertising a religious-related event in a public school flyer.