Shortwood mourns Dionne Coy-Bailey
Dear Editor,
For many of us Caribbean educators, the date 01/01/ 01 is indelibly etched in our minds. This is the date on a document outlining the Caribbean Recruitment Initiative (CRI) designed and implemented by the Board of Education of the City of New York. By September 2001, teachers from Jamaica and other Caribbean countries were placed in schools in districts 17, 18, 73, and other selected districts where there is a high concentration of Caribbean students.
This was a great opportunity for Caribbean teachers to seek a better life for themselves and their families. Teachers from all levels of the education system availed themselves of this opportunity. Mrs Dionne Coy-Bailey, who was a lecturer at Shortwood Teachers’ College and a member of the team for the Reform of Secondary Education, at that time, was numbered among the recruits. Like everyone else she wanted the best for herself and her family.
Almost nine years later, Mrs Coy-Bailey’s dream came to an abrupt, tragic end in a gruesome, heart-wrenching, mind-boggling, and excruciatingly painful tale of murder-suicide, reported in the mass media in New York and Jamaica. The Gleaner article on February 25 speaks to “a pall of gloom hanging over the small farming community of Ulster Spring in Trelawny, following the tragic deaths of Jamaican educator, Dionne Coy-Bailey, and her two daughters, who were killed this week by her husband in a murder-suicide.”
The Shortwood Teachers’ College family, which includes her relatives, is deeply saddened by the tragic turn of events. She herself and those whom she had left behind in her quest to improve the quality of her life and her family’s, could never have imagined that her dreams and aspirations would have come to such a tragic end.
Mrs Coy-Bailey will be remembered for her contribution to education at home and abroad, and the improvements that took place under her watch as president of the Shortwood Teachers’ College Staff Association.
There are some things that we will never understand.
Winnie Anderson-Brown
winabenator@gmail.com
