Dr. Teresa Belote announced on Nov. 17 she would be retiring as the superintendent of the St. Joseph County Intermediate School District at the end of the 2025-26 school year, after nearly nine years in the role.
By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
CENTREVILLE — One of the classic idioms in the English language involves going out on a high note, where a person finishes out something they’ve done at their most successful point.
For St. Joseph County Intermediate School District (ISD) Superintendent Dr. Teresa Belote, that will soon be exactly the case for her career.
At the ISD’s monthly board meeting on Nov. 17, Belote announced that she would be retiring from her position at the end of the 2025-26 school year, after what would be nine years at the head of the ISD.
In an interview Monday, Belote said it was a hard and “bittersweet” decision to retire, but she said she’s going out following “one of the best years I’ve ever had.”
“I have loved my time here. I don’t mince words about that. I’m very proud to be part of St. Joseph County. So, it’s hard to make the decision,” Belote said. “I think it’s time to pass the baton to somebody, and I’ve always said I want to leave on a year that feels like I’ve accomplished things and I can hand it to the next person with a nice bow on it and have it be in good shape for them to continue on.”
The 57-year-old Belote is a native of St. Joseph County, graduating from Colon High School in 1986. She originally didn’t want to go into the education field, but a volunteer opportunity while she was at Western Michigan University to work with kids during a craft activity as part of an outreach program helped develop her love for working with kids.
“While I babysat and I’d had opportunities like that, this felt different,” Belote recalled. “It was students with special needs, students with IEPs. And I thought, oh, I really love this.”
Belote changed her career path at that point from the medical field to the education field, eventually graduating from WMU with a bachelor’s degree in education with an emphasis in special education. She started her 32-year career in education teaching students with IEPs at White Pigeon and Mendon before transitioning into teaching fourth grade at the Eastwood School in Sturgis.
A little later on, she said the district was searching for a special education coordinator, so Belote applied and got the job for Sturgis Public Schools. She then worked at the ISD for a year as a teacher consultant, but because it didn’t involve working with kids that much, she didn’t enjoy it as much.
“They were lovely and gracious, and I worked with five local districts and I thought, oh, I don’t get to work with kids anymore. It was all grown-ups,” Belote said. “And I thought, ‘what did I just do?’ I like grown-ups, but I was very early in my career and I didn’t recognize the loss of that until I was here.”
A friend of Belote’s called her up during her year at the ISD, and said there was an opening for a principal position back in Sturgis, and recommended to Belote she apply. That call led to Belote working 10 years as principal at Congress Elementary and Wenzel Elementary in Sturgis.
She also recalled learning from plenty of principals in her tenure, and their influence being one of the big things that led her to grow in her profession. One of the big influences when she was a principal, prior to becoming a superintendent, was Cheryl Riley, the former principal of Andrews Elementary in Three Rivers.
“I would come to [the ISD] building for principal meetings and I would sit as close as I could to that woman and learn as much as I could, because it was those people that were that step ahead of us that poured into us and helped us be successful,” Belote said. “I thought if I can do that to this next generation as I’m in the fall of my career, I feel like that was a life well lived. That’s what got me here.”
Belote then spent three years as superintendent over in Bronson before being encouraged by another friend to apply for the superintendent’s job at the ISD in 2017. She was hesitant at first, but then she recalled the friend telling her something that was “meaningful” to her.
“They said, ‘You know, a lot of people poured into you. It’s an opportunity to give back,’” Belote recalled. “I reflected on that for a few days, because I thought as much as I really loved Bronson – and they were very good to me, I had a great board, great people – there is something special about coming home.”
During her tenure as ISD superintendent, Belote has had at least a partial hand at expanding opportunities for students in career and technical education (CTE), work-based learning, special education, and early childhood education. One of her biggest accomplishments was the expansion of the CTE program from 10 programs in 2017 to 18 programs today, thanks in part to a new CTE millage that was passed in 2019.
Belote recalled when she began, there were talks about building a dedicated CTE center in St. Joseph County, but after an extensive listening tour through the county, she found out reaction to such a plan was mixed. Eventually, she said she got what she called a “better, broader picture” of the needs for CTE in the county, which had been cut by quite a bit in the early 2010s following per-pupil funding cuts in 2012.
What followed was the CTE millage, a 10-year, 1-mill millage, which helped restore a number of programs and helped eventually expand to more programs over the next several years, including public safety, culinary arts, and HVAC, among others. The impact CTE has had on students in St. Joseph County, Belote said, has been “really good for the community.”
“I was just in a meeting the other day, walked out and a grandma came out and had to tell me that her granddaughter had just passed and gotten into a new profession and what CTE had done for her,” Belote said. “I get those stories all the time from parents and grandparents, or I get to go to American Axle, for example, and see our first apprentice get honored by that team who has put in so much time and effort, and they’re hiring our students. It’s really exciting to watch this opportunity.
“We would not have been able to do that without the millage. We would have done our best, but we would not have 18 programs of offerings for students that want to do everything from public safety, which was one of the new expanded opportunities, HVAC, another new one. All of those things that we identified as needs.”
However, Belote said the credit for those accomplishments cannot be solely attributed to her, but rather to the entire team at the ISD.
“I can’t say it’s me, it’s we,” Belote said. “I think it’s about this amazing team and this community.”
She added that by announcing early that she would be retiring, it will give the ISD’s Board of Education an opportunity to have stronger candidates apply for the position and give them enough time to make a decision on who will succeed her. Belote said she hopes whoever takes over keeps up the progress that has been made over the last eight, almost nine, years.
“I hope it’s somebody that loves this community, that understands that you keep kids first, and everything else, you can sleep at night as long as you know every decision you make is about what’s in the best interest of kids from this seat, and taking care of staff is how we take care of kids too,” Belote said. “So, I hope that whoever takes this position just knows how lucky they are. That’s my hope.”
Belote said she looks forward to spending time with her husband in retirement and “enjoy each other’s company,” but did not rule out returning to the educational field in the future.
“I’m going to figure out what my next role is, because I’m not done working,” Belote said. “I still love working with kids; I’m going to find the right fit, and I don’t know what that looks like yet, but probably something a little less all-encompassing than this role. I might need a little more down time than I used to as I get older.”
Overall, looking back, Belote said she is thankful for being a part of the success of the ISD in the last several years.
“I’ve been very lucky in my career to be able to be part of something that’s bigger than me, so I’m very proud of that and grateful for that,” Belote said.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
