Outstanding Minority Women in Education Recipient

Cynthia Perkins has been the Parent Engagement Specialist with Selma City Schools for twenty-five (25) years, where she provides parents with information and skills, they need to support healthy attitudes, behaviors, and environments. She creates a variety of opportunities for parents to be engaged in education. Parents are informed on how important regular and effective two-way communication can help build a strong rapport between the home and school.

 
She is an Alabama State University Alumni where she received her bachelor’s degree in Social Work and a master’s degree in Elementary Education.  She was born and reared in Selma, Alabama.  She remembers, when at the age of seven, the historical marches from Bloody Sunday to the successful march on March 21, 1965, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others marched to ensure that African Americans could exercise their constitutional right to vote, even in the face of a segregationist system that wanted to make it impossible. 

She understands the importance of having parents engaged in the lives of their children. Parents are their children's first teacher and deserve the skills to support their children. She is a beacon of hope for parents, students and her community. 

She is also a member of the National Council of Negro Women, Inc. and a member of the Zeta Delta chapter of National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa. She is a devoted wife, mother of three, and grandmother. Her husband James Perkins, Jr., pastor of Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church and Mayor of the city of Selma is her greatest supporter.