Janiece Blake made a joke about this interview before it started.

Her mother — Allison Madison, mayor of Mounds — had been featured in the previous issue of Fusion. So when Janiece finally got her turn, she was ready with the line she'd been saving.

"Mom," she told her, "I've worked here for 87 months, and nobody's ever asked me to interview for the magazine."

They laughed about it. And then Dr. Thomas asked Janiece if she'd like to be. She said sure.

That's about how Janiece Blake has always moved through the world — steady, loyal, working from inside the institution rather than standing outside it waving for attention. "Not even close," she says when asked if she's a spotlight person.

Which makes it all the more fitting that the Meridian story she finally gets to tell is also, in many ways, the Meridian story of her whole life.

Her father graduated from Meridian in 1978. Her mother in 1982. Her older brother — class of 2000, who passed away in 2012 — walked the same halls. Janiece graduated in 2004. Her son crossed the stage in 2020. Her youngest just graduated last weekend. And her four-year-old granddaughter recently completed her first year of pre-K there.

"We're all Bobcats," she said.

She is a Meridian alumna who became a basketball coach at Meridian, who is now about to become superintendent of Carbondale Community Unit School District 95 — and all of it connects back to the people who refused to let her become a different kind of story.

She was a sophomore in high school when she had her oldest son. She knows what the statistics say about that. She also knows what happened instead.

A teacher named Cynthia Thomas looked directly at her, distraught, and said, "This does not have to define what your life looks like. You won't be the first, and you won't be the last. You can still go do great things."

Janiece never forgot it. Still hasn't.

She got there through a series of moves that started accidentally. After her undergrad and a stint at State Farm in Bloomington, her mother's bus accident brought her back home. She took a healthcare job in Carbondale and was commuting. When a bookkeeper position opened at Cairo School District, she applied for one reason: it was closer to the house.

She was the last person who applied for the position. She got it.

She had no idea what she was doing. Neither did the district's incoming superintendent, Annie Evers. "She and I practically worked alongside each other to learn about running a district together," Janiece said. Evers kept telling her she could run a school district herself. She didn't believe it. The words stayed with her anyway.

Ten years at Cairo. A front-row education in what happens to families when systems fail them. She was there when HUD shuttered its housing projects in Cairo. "I see what that does to families. I saw what it did to kids." She carries that.

When she left Cairo, Carbondale came quickly — within three months. District 95. A district of 1,600 kids, compared to Cairo's couple of hundred. The transition, she says, was seamless. The fundamentals don't change. Kids need what kids need.

Now the superintendent role at District 95 has opened, and she hesitated before applying. Self-doubt, she calls it. "I don't always view myself how others see me." She sat with it. Turned it over. And then landed on something.

"I've never left a place worse than I found it," she said. "Why wouldn't I bet on myself — to lead the people who are responsible for kids?"

She coached the Meridian girls basketball team through 2024, including one final season with only six players after a roster situation forced a hard decision. She put it back to the team. They chose the harder road. They called themselves the Mighty Six. They played with everything they had, and no bench to give them a rest.

"It's a testament to the kids' determination and heart," she said. "I could not have had any of the success that I did without them buying in and trusting me as their coach."

That's coaching. That's also leadership.

Her parents still came to those games — even after their daughter was the coach instead of the player. She hasn't forgotten that either.

At District 95, some of the people she now works alongside sub when they're needed. Her former band teacher. Her former fourth-grade teacher. People who shaped her when she was small. She thinks about it sometimes.

"My name is on the paycheck of the people who taught me," she said.

All those things have come full circle. The teacher who told her she could still do great things. The people who showed up for her. The district that raised her and now, at several removes, employs her.

She knows what it means to be believed in before you believe in yourself.

"I want to be that for others," she said. "I want them to feel like I believe in them."