Sayde Bunyan-Dean: A Century of Breaking Barriers in Education

At 100 years old, retired Cincinnati Public Schools educator Sayde Bunyan-Dean has lived through a century of change — and spent nearly four decades helping to shape it. Her story is one of persistence, innovation and courage, as she not only taught generations of students but also broke barriers of race and gender at a time when doing so required resilience and grace.

“I had a hard time getting into the schools to be accepted, but I made it,” Bunyan-Dean said, who turned 100 last September. “I just had to sell my program and sell myself to the principals and the teachers, and I was always happy and I showed my smile and I talked with them and they accepted me.”

Bunyan-Dean began her career in 1950 in Lumber City, Georgia. She later taught at the historic Lincoln Grant School in the Covington, Kentucky Independent Public Schools district before joining CPS. 

“I worked in Cincinnati Public Schools for 33 years and six years out of the state, that gave me a total of 39 years working with America’s children,” she said.

Helping those who needed it most

At Hays School, now Hays-Porter, she taught special education in small classrooms, usually with about 10 children between the ages of 7 and 9. Many of her students, she recalled, had been put in the wrong type of classroom.

“Children who were supposed to have had learning disabilities, but all of them did not have them,” she said. “They were just placed in their classes because of so many different conflicts at home.”

It was there that Bunyan-Dean recognized the importance of reaching children by also teaching their parents. In 1953, she launched the early intervention preschool program, which sent teachers into homes to coach parents on how to prepare their children for school. In 1974, her program was adopted by the Cincinnati Public Schools’ Board of Education. In 1988, the Ohio School Board adopted the program as a model for school districts across the state.

“I wrote a program teaching parents how to teach their children. I got them at six months and kept them for three years,” she said. “The parents had to be present every time we went into the home to work with the kids because you’re actually teaching the parents how to prepare their kids for school.”

Her model was ahead of its time, emphasizing family engagement decades before it became standard practice in early childhood education. She was proud to see parents taking ownership. 

“I would go to the homes and they didn’t know I was coming to see if they were really implementing some of the skills that I taught them,” she said. “They were doing it with their older children, not just with the younger ones.”

Even after retirement, Bunyan-Dean carried on the work as a volunteer, working with preschool children at the Emanuel Community Center in Over-the-Rhine, according to a 1991 article in The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Bunyan-Dean also took her passion and extended it to older children, especially young Black men. She worked to expose them to successful businesspeople and professionals.

“You must break every stone to get to where you want to go because the opportunities are out there,” Bunyan-Dean said. “The opportunities are greater now for young people coming up than they were when I came along.”

Breaking barriers during integration

Bunyan-Dean's career took her across Cincinnati, including the city’s western neighborhoods during the 1960s, when most schools there were still majority white. As one of the few Black teachers' supervisors, she was often asked to prove herself. 

“I had to break the ice in a lot of places to be accepted,” she said. “They learned that I was real, that I wasn’t trying to sell something to them that was not acceptable. And they began to listen to what I had to say and they followed my program.”

Her work coincided with some of Cincinnati’s most turbulent years. In 1968, during the unrest in Avondale, Bunyan-Dean stepped in to protect her colleagues. “Some of the teachers in school had to pass through Avondale, where the riots were going on, and they were afraid they were going to be mistaken for white, so they would ask me to drive them home,” she said. “And I did.”

Through quiet persistence and unwavering professionalism, she built relationships that helped ease tensions and push CPS further toward integration.

Witness to history

Bunyan-Dean's life bridged eras of American history. Born in Kentucky, she later moved to Cincinnati with her family in 1955. Her brother, Judge George Bunion, became the city’s second African American judge. She also counted William Mallory Sr., the longtime state legislator and patriarch of one of Cincinnati’s most influential political families, as a friend and neighbor. 

“I picked him up every morning,” Bunyan-Dean said. “I lived in the middle of the block and he lived on the corner and he couldn’t drive. He was teaching at Washburn School downtown and I dropped him off there.” 

She also lived long enough to work under another historic first. In 1986, CPS appointed Dr. Lee Etta Powell as its superintendent, making her both the first woman and the first African American to hold the role. 

“I had the first African American superintendent,” Bunyan-Dean said. “Her name was Lee Etta Powell. I had the opportunity at my church to introduce her to the public, and that was great. I feel really proud of doing that.”

Advice for today

Bunyan-Dean retired from CPS in 1990 but continues to share wisdom for the next generation. 

“The opportunities are greater now for young people coming up than they were when I came along,” she said. “They must take advantage of it. They just can’t play around anymore. They have to select what they want to do and follow through on that.”

She has equally direct advice for teachers. “You must set your goals and obtain them,” she said. “Because you are working with a young life that needs to be developed and you have their life in your hands.”

A life well lived

Even outside of the classroom, Bunyan-Dean led with purpose. A devoted Christian, she credited her upbringing for her long life. 

“I think I lived a pretty decent life. I’m a Christian and I follow the rules of the Bible,” she said. Her father was a minister, her mother a homemaker and among their six children, four went to college.

She was also active in civic life, joining Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Phi Delta Kappa and Top Ladies of Distinction — a group founded during the civil rights era to help Black children transition into newly integrated schools, among other initiatives. 

Looking back, she remains proud of the life she built. Asked to sum up her legacy, Dean did not hesitate.

“I started at the bottom, and I had to break the ice to make steps to get me where I wanted to go,” she said. “And I think I cracked a lot of stones to get there.”