ABOUT SHELLY
Michelee “Shelly” Cruz-Crawford has lived in Nevada since 1989.
Shelly Cruz-Crawford is a first generation high school and college graduate, who serves as an equal opportunity officer in the Air Force National Guard, is the first Latino Regent, and is a school principal.
Over the past twenty years, she has taught kindergarten through college. All of what she does is grounded in her “Why.” She strives to create opportunities through education advocacy because she believes education is the pathway to societal upward mobility.
She has written Senate Bill SB352 which created $10 million dollars in state educator recruitment funding. She also assisted with the $65 billion 2021 Federal Recovery Broadband Act that ensures that all of our students have access to the internet. This last legislative session she co-presented Senate Bill 428 for teacher pathway programs. She did all this as a community member. Imagine what she’ll do as a legislator!
She truly believes we all have common goals and strives to work with everyone in the community to identify these goals and work collectively because we are better together.
Volunteer and Advocacy Work:
Cruz-Crawford serves on the Nevada Department of Education’s Principal Advisory Committee, Nevada National Guard’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion task force, she is the Nevada Association of School Administrators’ board secretary, she also serves on a local School Organizational Team, and is a member of the Nevada Association of Latino Administrators. She was named the Public Education Foundation’s 24th Annual Education Hero for her education advocacy work.
Family:
Regent Cruz-Crawford has been married since 2002 to her husband Michael who is a fifth generation ironworker. Together, they have a daughter, Lola, born in 2005 and a son, Gustavo, born in 2007. Lola is going to school to be a teacher at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Education
College of Southern Nevada High School (Millennium Scholarship), 2000
UNLV B.S. in Psychology, 2004
UNLV M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction, 2010
Sierra Nevada College (UNR) Endorsements in Instructional Leadership and Teaching English as a Second
Language, 2013
Georgetown University through a partnership with the Public Education Foundation in Educational Leadership, 2021
William Howard Taft University Ed.D in Organizational Leadership and Policy, 2023, Dissertation: Recruitment of Diverse Educators by Removing Barriers for Routes to Licensure