Dr. Michelle Lee

Superintendent Dr. Michelle Lee’s path to Ottawa has been long, circuitous, and experience-rich. It has passed through eight school districts in two states, has seen her take on the roles of teacher, principal and superintendent (sometimes simultaneously), and has taken more than three decades to travel. “I’ve been around a while,” Dr. Lee says with a smile. “This is my thirty-fifth year.”

Although she has already had a distinguished career, Dr. Lee is far from finished. Since she arrived in Ottawa eighteen months ago, she has rolled up her sleeves and dug into the important work of making sure Ottawa Elementary School District 141 survives, and thrives, well into the future.

A go-getter from an early age, Dr. Lee was on the fast track to a career in education when most of her peers were still in high school. Taking college courses alongside her high school classes as a junior, she graduated in the middle of her senior year. “They cut girls’ basketball, and I had no purpose to be there,” she recalls. “I had my credits, and I could go.” So, go she did.

Where she went was to Western Illinois University in Macomb, where her parents were both employed. She started at WIU full-time in January of 1985, and graduated three years later, a brand-new teacher. Her first job was teaching sixth grade in Wichita, Kansas, which was something of a culture shock for young Michelle. “I had fifteen in my graduating class, and I go down there and I’m teaching at an inner-city school, and I had thirty-six kids in a trailer,” she recounts.

Once the shock wore off, though, Dr. Lee quickly warmed up to her students, and made an effort to be something of a mother figure to them. “I had a love for all those students, and I still communicate with some of them,” she says.

When her sister became ill with cancer, Dr. Lee moved back to Illinois to be nearer to her. She took on the role of reading and math specialist in the Astoria district, and coached volleyball as well. “When you’re 5’11”, that’s what you do – you coach,” she says.

But she was not destined to coach volleyball for much longer. “I had a principal come up to me while I was at Astoria, and say, ‘Michelle, I know you’re working on your Masters in reading, but I really think you should be an administrator. I think you should get into a leadership role’.” At the time Dr. Lee had no interest in administration, and brushed off the comment without giving it much thought. But the episode would soon be revealed as foreshadowing of the events to come.

Eventually, she was recruited by nearby Havana to coach volleyball and serve as a reading specialist. Despite her indifference to the prospect of working as an administrator, Dr. Lee had been working on an administrative certificate in tandem with her Masters degree, and while at Havana, she received a phone call from a former professor at Western Illinois, who said, ”There’s this job in Industry, and you need to apply.”

Her immediate reaction was, “I don’t want to be a principal.” But he saw in Dr. Lee the same thing that the principal in Astoria saw, and was insistent. “You need to apply,” he repeated. Michelle gave in and applied for the position, and soon was sitting down for an interview.

“I went into the interview, and the first thing out of my mouth was, ‘I don’t want your job, I’m just here for the experience’,” she recalls. “Well, I got the job.”

At the time, she was the youngest female principal in the state. “It was really hard going in there, because the people I was leading were all older than me,” she remembers. “My first day on the job, I had somebody come in and say, ‘Is the Principal here?’, and I said, ‘Yeah, I am the Principal’. And he goes, ‘No, really – is the Principal here?’.”

She soon settled into the role, and realized that it really was what she was supposed to be doing. After Industry, Dr. Lee honed her skills, increased her experience and paid her dues at small districts across the state: BallChatham (Assistant Principal), Wood River-Hartford (district-wide Principal), Riverwood (PrincipalSuperintendent), and just prior to coming to Ottawa, a unique role as dual Superintendent of both the Dallas City and La Harpe districts. “And, no, I didn’t get double the pay,” she says, wryly.

It was her father’s passing that had prompted her move from Riverwood to take the jobs at Dallas City and La Harpe, to be closer to her mother. And now, not quite four years later, her mother passed away as well. Dr. Lee decided she needed a change, and as of July, 2022, her path to Ottawa was now complete.

Since coming to Ottawa, Dr. Lee has become fully invested in the community. “I’ve really tried to engage with the community,” she says. Besides becoming involved with the Rotary Club, volunteering at the food pantry and working with the Chamber of Commerce, she makes an effort to attend as many school events as she can. “It’s important to get out and support those people,” she says earnestly. “Getting out and about for people to get to know me, I think that’s important for your Superintendent.”

She has also made it a priority to partner with the city in an effort to promote Ottawa to the wider world as a great place to live and raise a family. “I really, really try to build a working relationship with the city, trying to work with them on things, because we need to showcase our city together, to bring in new residents,” she explains.

Within the district, her focus has been on addressing concerns about the condition of district facilities. “We’re moving forward in our facilities. We know we have a lot of facility needs here, we’re getting that community engagement process going,” she says. One particularly exciting potential future project is a community solar field that would be located just south of Central Intermediate School. “We’re looking at doing ten acres there,” Dr. Lee says. “We’re still in the process, we’ve been talking since last May about this.” The project would not only benefit the school district, but also the wider community. “It would really help us to offset the cost of our electricity here,” she continues. Details are still being worked out, but plans are being talked about that would allow the public to draw power from the grid as well.

Dr. Lee’s attention is not focused solely on capital projects and building improvements. She is also working with staff to revamp the district curriculum, and a pilot of a new scope and sequence for the elementary reading curriculum is being launched the second semester of this year. Additionally, committees have been formed with the goal of aligning the curriculum all the way up through high school. “That vertical alignment is so important,” Dr. Lee stresses. “We don’t need to be teaching the same things three years in a row.”

One of Dr. Lee’s favorite “pet projects” is the therapy dog program. Soon after she began as Ottawa Superintendent, Jefferson Elementary Principal Nate Pinter presented her with the idea, asking what she thought of implementing a therapy dog program in the district. Having had experience with therapy dogs when she worked in the La Harpe district, Dr. Lee was immediately all-in, telling him, “I think it’s a great idea, I think we need one in every building.” The district partners with the United Way on the program, with the United Way acquiring the dogs and covering the cost of training and veterinary care for the first year. After that, each building in the district has a handler who is responsible for caring for the animal.

“We have seen such phenomenal things happen with these therapy dogs,” says Dr. Lee. “You could have a student that’s having a meltdown, and that dog will immediately go to that student and turn it around.”

Beyond her interest in the health and well-being of the district, its staff and students, Dr. Lee expresses concerns about the overall state of public education in the United States. She believes the key to its revitalization lies in a single, two-syllable word: respect. “I really think we have to start respecting each other, respecting educators for what we’re doing,” she says. “Nobody has an easy job, but these educators definitely do not. They’re in the trenches, day in and day out. We have to get that back, that respect for our teachers and administrators.”

Dr. Lee believes it can happen by building understanding with the public, getting the word out about all of the great things that are happening in our schools. “Education has evolved so much, just in the years that I’ve been in education,” she says. We are doing more to individualize stuff for our students, to help every student out there. We’ve changed in our discipline, we’ve changed in our curriculum.” She believes that many people assume that, because they had a less-than-positive experience when they were in school, their children will have a similar experience. “There are so many things that have changed throughout the years so don’t judge us based on your experience when you were a kid.”

Also on her radar is an impending wave of educator retirements in the coming years, and the urgency of filling those soon-to-be-vacated positions with qualified teachers at a time when colleges are reporting that about thirty percent fewer students are majoring in education. “What are we going to do to entice people to come here and teach?” she wonders. One possible answer to that question is committing to making available to teachers the professional development opportunities that they need to be successful in the classroom. In addition, the mentoring program for firstand second-year teachers is being retooled, with further refinements to come.

The path ahead may be rife with dead ends, switchbacks and forks where the best way forward is not always clear. But, these obstacles are fleeting, and Dr. Lee is well-equipped to guide the district through them. On the other side, the path is straight, flat and clear to the end destination – better Ottawa schools, and a better Ottawa.