When Ray Blackwell was a child, his father had already been taken away. He would visit his father, Eric, in prison, but that still left much to be desired.

“I remember being very heartbroken when I had to leave,” he said, adding that he would cry all the way home.

To fill the void in his everyday life, Blackwell developed a relationship with Rob Woolery, a science teacher at G.W. Fowler High School in Syracuse. Woolery became a father figure in Blackwell’s life, having Blackwell over for dinner and helping him find a job.

“For me it was just trying to provide direction to a young man who needed it,” Woolery said.

About seven years later, Blackwell, a Class of 2015 Syracuse University alumnus, is now running on the Green Party ticket for the Syracuse City School Board in hopes of helping the next generation of students in the city.

There is not a shortage of students with difficult home lives in the city.

“So many kids have stories and it’s a lot on them,” said Woolery, who is now a teacher at Grant Middle School.

Blackwell almost ended up like many other students who make their way through the Syracuse City School District. His time in middle and high school was filled with suspensions.

Prior to meeting Woolery, Blackwell had been suspended from school numerous times in both middle school and high school. He attended four different high schools before graduating from Fowler in 2007. He had been kicked out once before at Fowler.

Woolery developed a bond with Blackwell, and Blackwell ended up confiding in his teacher.

“He did things that were outside of his job description,” Blackwell said.

Woolery also helped Blackwell after he graduated from Fowler. Before deciding to go to college, Blackwell released a hip-hop album under the name RayWellz. This was after Woolery helped Blackwell land an internship at Def Jam Records in New York City. Despite starting a record label known as Tice Records, Blackwell left music to pursue a higher education.

“I began to see that, in order to make the impact I wanted to make on Syracuse and on youth, I had to really make sure I had a sound education,” Blackwell said.

In 2013, Blackwell graduated from Long Island University with a degree in history. In 2015, he graduated from SU with a degree in cultural foundations of education.

Blackwell’s time at SU showed him the importance of diversity in the classroom, he said. At the university, the classroom was comprised of privileged students and underprivileged students, along with classmates from different backgrounds, Blackwell said.

“The real education comes from dialoguing with people who are different than you,” Blackwell said.

Blackwell said he wants to bring diversity to Syracuse city schools through desegregation and school choice.

One of Blackwell’s goals is to reopen Syracuse Central High School and create a magnet school comprised of suburban students and students from the city schools. The diversity, he believes, would be good for school choice in the district. Sixty percent of the students at the school, which would need to be renovated, would come from Onondaga County, and 40 percent would come from the city of Syracuse.

Blackwell learned about the privatization of public schools while at SU. He is against the Common Core and does not want Syracuse’s failing schools to become controlled by private entities.

Right now, 18 of Syracuse’s 34 schools are considered “failing schools,” according to a report from the office of New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo. By the end of this year, the schools will be eligible to be taken over by the state and privatized into charter schools or other types of schools.

Private charter schools don’t have to accept kids with special needs or students learning English as a second language, and they also don’t have to hire union teachers, Blackwell said.

“They aren’t regulated as normal public schools would be,” Blackwell said.

The significance of his campaign, Blackwell said, is his ability to relate to students in the city schools, unlike other members of the school board.

“We need people who empathize with leading this school district, not just people who feel sorry for the students and want to help,” he said. “That has to stop.”

To get people to vote for the Green Party, Blackwell said people need to focus on the issues facing the schools in Syracuse. When it comes to his character, Blackwell said he cannot be corrupted because he does not see himself as a politician.

“I am someone who is passionate and compassionate about our school kids,” he said. “I am going to do the right things, not the political things.”

Published on September 8, 2015 at 10:36 pm

Contact Rob: rromano@syr.edu