AKRON – Akron Elementary School Principal Blaine Conley will move to Tippecanoe Valley Middle School as head administrator, and Akron teacher Christina Mills will take over at Akron as principal.
The Tippecanoe Valley School Board approved the changes during their regular meeting Monday night.
During the February meeting, the board approved the retirements of TVMS Assistant Principal Jeff France and Principal Earl Richter. At the March meeting, Scott Backus was approved as the assistant principal at TVMS.
As TVMS principal, Conley will receive an annual salary of $78,000.
According to information provided, Conley is a 1993 Warsaw Community High School graduate and a 1997 Manchester College graduate, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a middle school social studies endorsement. He earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from Indiana University in 2004.
Conley started his teaching career in 1997 at Boone Grove Elementary School, where he taught fourth grade for three years. He taught fourth grade at Knox Elementary School during the 2000-01 school year.
In August 2001, Conley was hired to teach fifth grade at Akron. He was named principal at Akron in August 2005.
He also has served as a high school girls varsity basketball head coach, high school boys junior varsity basketball coach and a high school boys varsity basketball volunteer assistant coach.
Conley is a graduate of the Indiana Principals Leadership Academy.
Mills’ annual salary will be $67,000.
She graduated from Tippecanoe Valley High School in 1990, and is a 1994 graduate of Ball State University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a kindergarten endorsement. She earned her master’s degree in school leadership from Olivet Nazarene University in 2012.
Mills began her teaching career at Akron Elementary in 1994 and taught kindergarten and grades 2-5 for six years. While teaching at Akron, Mills coached girls basketball, volleyball and softball, and boys and girls track.
The following four years, Mills taught eighth-grade language arts for Bremen Public Schools. While at Bremen, Mills also taught a semester of freshman Spanish and worked with emotionally handicapped students for a semester. She served as a middle school academic coach, middle school girls basketball coach and assistant varsity girls basketball coach.
During the 2004-05 school year, Mills worked as a full-day kindergarten teacher at the SENSE Charter School in Indianapolis where she was a start-up teacher for a new charter school.
In 2007-08, Mills worked as a pre-kindergarten teacher at The Promise Pre-School in Fishers.
Then in August 2008, Mills returned to Akron Elementary. During the 2008-09 school year, she participated in Reading Recovery teacher training. She currently serves as a Title I teacher and reading interventionist for students in kindergarten through fifth grade at Akron.
