Principal says she’s not running for herself in Las Vegas council race

Michelee Quiroz Cruz-Crawford has been a principal for four years and a school administrator for seven. She recently passed officer training as a new member of the Nevada Air National Guard.

Now, Cruz-Crawford, who leads Ronnow Elementary School in east Las Vegas, has set her sights on representing the 100,000-plus residents in the sprawling northwest Ward 6 on the Las Vegas City Council.

“I’m not running for myself,” she said during an early December interview. “I’m really running because I know I can do a fantastic job on the City Council. I love our city.”

Building a diverse background

Unlike other candidates to declare for the seat thus far, including Las Vegas Planning Commission Chairman Lou DeSalvio and Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Ray Spencer, Cruz-Crawford’s entry into the race was not a recent decision, nor was it influenced by the incumbent’s choice not to seek re-election. The ward’s current councilwoman, Michele Fiore, is campaigning to be the next governor.

Instead, Cruz-Crawford, 38, said a council run has been something she has been working toward for a long time, starting the process about five years ago.

She pursued a doctorate in leadership and policy to broaden her skills and said she is close, only needing to defend her dissertation. She joined the military, where she has been involved in issues on diversity and inclusion. And she has worked with ReInvent Schools Las Vegas, a partnership between the city and Clark County School District, to improve educational opportunities for students in underserved elementary schools.

“It just makes sense to kind of have someone that has a very diverse background,” she said, adding that the attribute was too often missing in politics.

A lack of racial diversity prompted her to push for recently passed state legislation that provides school support staff with more opportunities to pursue becoming licensed teachers. Cruz-Crawford said she had noticed that teachers were mostly white at her predominantly Hispanic school, while paraeducators were more diverse and reflective of the student population.

‘More effective’ approach than Fiore

As she moves forward with her campaign, Cruz-Crawford said she is listening to the concerns of residents. She has heard issues about water access, overdevelopment, affordable housing and crime such as car thefts and vandalism.

“They want safe spaces,” she said. “They want clean spaces.”

Cruz-Crawford said she wanted to ensure that programs, such as rental assistance, were better communicated to the public and that there was more community outreach in Ward 6. She also noted that establishing partnerships was important to create more funding for city initiatives.

When asked what she thought about Fiore’s representation of the ward, Cruz-Crawford said she did not wish to be “divisive,” adding that Fiore had always been kind to her students.

“We have very different ways of approaching things,” she said. “I think mine’s more effective.”

Assessing school district shortcomings

Las Vegas-area schools were recently ranked second-worst for school quality among the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, performing poorly in academic growth, high school graduation rate and growth among disadvantaged students, according to a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The district needs to identify what it is doing wrong and look at critiques, Cruz-Crawford said, and she reinforces what is working and what is not with her teachers. She acknowledged that morale can decline amid systemic organizational issues.

But she said she has remained resilient and found positive feedback for successes to be as important as constructive feedback. Her school has avoided districtwide and nationwide struggles with staff retention during her tenure, she said.

Cruz-Crawford said her political platform will ultimately be informed by talks underway with Ward 6 residents, and she suggested that she was unafraid to confront difficult problems.

When students were told they had to move to online learning at the beginning of the pandemic, and many did not have computers or internet, she said she reached out to lawmakers and helped bring broadband connectivity into the community via the $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

“If there is someone out there that would do a better job than me,” she said, “I definitely want them to win.”

The candidate filing period for nonjudicial races in 2022 begins March 7. The primary election is June 14.

Contact Shea Johnson at sjohnson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @Shea_LVRJ on Twitter.