Belleville District 201 educator retiring after more than 30 years in her hometown

The latest school board meeting of Belleville Township High School District 201 was more emotional than usual.

Many administrators and the board president praised Melissa Taylor, assistant superintendent for student services, who has worked for 30 years in Belleville, her hometown. She is set to retire at the end of June.

Taylor began her career in the early 1990s as a special education teacher of kids with behavioral and emotional disabilities in Cahokia District 187 and then Belleville District 118. After that, she became a behavior intervention specialist and then director of special education in District 118 before making the jump to District 201 in 2012 to become director of special services. In 2019, she became assistant superintendent for student services.

At Monday’s meeting, District 201 Superintendent Brian Mentzer recalled that he met Taylor on his first day as a teacher when they both worked at Jefferson Elementary School. One day, he severed his finger, and she drove him to the hospital.

“All I remember her saying is ‘hey now, you got to stay awake for me,’” Mentzer said. “But we both made it back and taught that afternoon.”

He added that “she’s been an amazing influence,” having an outsized impact at every stage of her career, from in the classroom to the district level at both Belleville 118 and 201. Taylor is a graduate of both districts.

“Honestly, to be able to do it … in the community where you’re born and raised, is pretty much second to none,” Mentzer said.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with her for four years, and coming into the district I was kind of aware of her outstanding reputation and some of her career accomplishments,” Assistant Superintendent Dustin Bilbruck said. “And then you get here to the district and you get to work with her every day ... you understand just how good she is at her job and the things that she does for kids.”

In recent weeks, Taylor has received recognition outside of the district, too. She was named the 2023 Citizen of the Year by the Belleville Chamber of Commerce in May.

After she retires, Taylor’s duties will be shared largely between Mentzer, Bilbruck and Director of Human Resources and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Marshaun Warren, all three of whom have doctorates in educational leadership.

With her retirement fast approaching, the BND sat down with Taylor to learn more about her career and impact.

What are some of your proudest accomplishments throughout your career?

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that lately with retiring,” Taylor said.

Throughout the retirement process, several people from the past have come up to her and told her that she helped their child with a problem and made a difference.

“That has been kind of overwhelming,” she said. “I do feel really proud of that kind of legacy that I always wanted to treat people well.

“When you’re dealing with a child with a disability, that can be a hard road,” Taylor said. “I always wanted to do everything I could to make it easier, not be part of the obstacles that a parent might be encountering. And so having these people tell me that … it made a difference, it means a lot to me.”

You’ve dedicated your career to special education, an area where the teacher shortage in Illinois is most acute. What motivated you throughout the years and during hard times?

“Special education is really rewarding, but it is hard. What I loved the most about it is I could see the difference I was making with kids daily,” Taylor said.

“I also had honestly a lot of instructional freedom,” she added. “I could teach things that I thought were engaging and interesting and that (students) really needed.

“I had the ability to develop lessons and teach the things I wanted to teach in a way that, you know, you don’t necessarily have when you’re teaching third grade.

“I enjoyed the freedom, the instructional freedom, that I thought came with special education, and I got to see my kids make a lot of progress.”

What advice do you have for special education teachers that are just getting into the field?

“The best special education teachers are really good teachers,” Taylor said.

She said a teacher can’t pursue special education because of factors like smaller class sizes.

“That’s not going to fill your bucket,” Taylor said. “You have to enjoy teaching and watching kids learn. And when you enjoy that, and you get to work with some of our needier kids, you’re really going to see some great progress.”

What do you see as some of the biggest issues currently in special education or public education?

“I think the shortages are a really big issue and a real cause for concern. For whatever reason, the teachers don’t feel as valued as they used to feel, and so you see folks not entering the field or giving it just a couple years and leaving. And that just used to not be the case. But I do feel like that tide needs to turn … if we’re going to solve the shortage,” Taylor said.

Parent and community support is especially important, she added.

“We have that in Belleville. This community has really always, through my whole career, been really supportive of our schools,” Taylor said. “I think that’s part of why, you know, maybe the shortages aren’t hitting us as hard as they’re impacting some other districts.”

There are other issues, she said, but those ebb and flow. “We’ll get through them. But the shortage is a real concern,” she said.

And successes?

“We have so many options for kids,” Taylor said. “That’s one of the things that’s been a big success here.”

She pointed to the success of the CAVE — which houses the district’s career and technical education courses and alternative school that boasts a graduation rate on par with the high schools — as well as how the district used federal COVID-19 relief funds to do things that will have a long term benefit.

Another success and accomplishment Taylor said she’s proud of is the new construction currently underway at the Bridges Connections campus, which was something she wanted to do before she retired.

There was a barn on the property formerly owned by Belleville golf legend Bob Goalby just north of Belleville West High School that had been blown down before Taylor got to District 201, she said.

“We had been talking for a long time about the best thing to do with that spot and how we could make it meaningful for Bridges, because that Bridges program, it’s got all these little spaces,” Taylor said. “If they want to have everybody together, there really isn’t a way to do that out there. And I really wanted to give them that and make that happen.”

She applied for and received a federal grant totaling about $250,000 for the district to construct and furnish a building on the property that will serve as a gathering space for Bridges students. It is being built with the help of CAVE students.

It’s a “huge success” that the district has been able to do that for a segment of its students, Taylor said.

Another item on her “retirement bucket list” was related to literacy instruction.

“Literacy is a big concern, and that’s not something that high schools have always had to worry about. You didn’t always have to be concerned about the number of freshmen who were significantly below grade level in reading, but that is the case now, and it’s been the case for a while,” Taylor said.

The district has seen some improvement after a dip in literacy rates post-COVID-19, but there are still “way too many kids” who haven’t had the kind of reading instruction that is going to make them successful, she said.

“When you can’t read at grade level, it impacts your ability to do any of our classes, it impacts your ability to do the trades, it impacts your ability to join the military,” Taylor said. “So kids who can’t read at grade level or close to grade level have really limited futures.”

Before the pandemic, the district created a “literacy leadership team” to set goals and envision what literacy intervention could look like at the high school level.

That work led to the inclusion of a literacy goal in the District 201’s latest strategic plan and the hiring of two literacy interventionists, one for each campus.

The interventionists will start part-time in the upcoming school year and provide small group literacy instruction typically seen at younger grade levels but adapted for the high school setting.

“I think it’s gonna really move the needle for kids,” Taylor said.

Is there anything else you’d like to highlight?

“I really wanted to highlight just this community,” Taylor said.

“I always wanted to be here, you know. I wanted to support this community. I love the diversity that we have here. I love the support that our community gives to our schools. And I’ve just always felt like, just proud to be able to stay in my town and make a difference here,” she said.

“We aren’t great at talking about how good we are,” Taylor added.

Instead, people have a tendency to focus on the issues and ways to perfect things, but that often means they shy away from talking about the good stuff, she said.

“But the truth is, we are doing some really great things that aren’t happening in a lot of places. And so to get to be part of that has been something I’ve been really grateful for,” she said.