Carbondale Reporter

Carbondale resident Syhemia Gray-Cruz is running for a spot on the Unity Point Community Consolidated School District 140 Board of Education.

Gray-Cruz is motivated by the desire to advocate for policy reform across the board.

“My biggest two things is representation and policy reform,” Gray-Cruz told the Carbondale Reporter this week. “I'm running basically here for policy reform and just to be transparent with parents about the policies in the upcoming things that are being changed with media and everything else. I've been in the area since 2009. I was an intern there, and then I end up being a parent of multiple children there. I just really like transparency to know what's going on at the school and being involved. I've always been an involved parent. I'm an educator myself. I'm a special education teacher. So it is just being involved with my kids' education. I know there's a lot of different things going on in the media and in education and just I've seen a lot of different things. I just want to kind of be part of that and be inside of it as well.”

Gray-Cruz noted also that communication needs to be improved.

“I just know that I've had issues and are following up and being clear on what the procedure is for an issue,” she said. “Just following up. Letting the parents know you care about this, this is an issue. This is how we're dealing with this. I just can't stress enough how important communication is and especially when things are being done with them at the school and it may affect the community. I think that that is something that should be very clear on. For instance, I've mentioned, the toy gun situation, and there we know that bullying is prone. We know that we have the Black Lives Matter things going on. and some stuff was in the media last year.”

Gray-Cruz underscored her background and how she has “been in for representation and policy reform and just my involvement in education." She was proud to mention her master's in Curriculum and Instruction and believes "that is a skill the board could benefit by having.”

“I'm from up north," she added. "I've been down here for quite some time. I came down here for education myself and I kind of stayed because I thought it was a better place to raise a family. A little bit slower. But I know education is viewed differently, even though we're in the same state nor in the south part. They both view it totally different, even though the goal is to educate people in this state is I just see that is very different in how things are being carried out and how different each school or region deals with the issues that they have at hand. Resources is also a big thing.”

Gray-Cruz holds a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale; her Linkedin profile said. She is employed as a special education teacher at Neurorestorative Academy in Carbondale.

In 2022, a seventh-grade Unity Point student was caught distributing “white privilege” cards to Black students, The Southern Illinoisan reported. The card’s back read, “This card grants its bearer happiness and success because its (sic) the color of your skin and not the choices you make that determine your ability to be successful.”

Unity Point Community Consolidated School District 140 oversees 547 students attending one school, a Public School Review report said.