Longtime Jefferson R-7 teacher and coach Tara Fish has been promoted to the district’s director of student services for the 2024-2025 school year, replacing Chris Buenniger, who is leaving the district at the end of the school year.
Fish, 48, currently is a science teacher at Danby Rush Tower Middle School and the head varsity volleyball coach at Jefferson High School.
She will take over the director job on July 1 and will be paid a $72,000 annual salary, the same pay Buenniger is being paid this school year. Fish is earning $58,060 this school year as a teacher.
She plans to continue as the high school’s head volleyball coach and will earn another $7,800 stipend for that job.
R-7 Superintendent David Haug said Fish was a good choice for the director job.
“Tara just brings so much to the plate,” he said. “She’s been with us 20-plus years and she’s won a lot of teaching awards.”
Those include an Emerson Gold Star Teacher award and a $10,000 grant in 2018 for her pioneering STEAM education program at the middle school.
As a coach, she led the varsity Blue Jay volleyball team to the Final Four twice, taking third place in state in 2021 and winning Jefferson County’s first public school state championship trophy in 2022. She was named the Jefferson County Athletic Assocation’s Coach of the Year several times and was the Missouri High School Volleyball Coaches Association Class 2 Coach of the Year in 2022.
Haug said losing Fish in the classroom will be tough, but she will be a good fit for her new position.
“She’ll be using the same skills, just applying them on a larger scale,” he said. “Specifically, she brings an ability and passion for communication. That’s number one for me. We always want to get better at that, and she fits into our plan in a big way. She is supremely organized, and that’s what you’ve got to have in this position.”
The director of services position was created 13 years ago, and the person in that job serves as the activities director, oversees the A-plus program and coordinates the district’s at-risk program.
Fish will work out of an office in the counseling center at Jefferson High.
She earned a master’s degree in education from Missouri Baptist University in 2007. She and her husband, Aaron, live in the R-7 district and have two adult daughters, Hilah Roth and Gracie Floyd.
Other staffing changes
Abi Chipps, a recent Indiana State University graduate, has been hired to take Fish’s spot as a middle school science teacher. She also will join the Blue Jays softball coaching staff.
Chipps, a speedy shortstop and standout player during her four-year career on the Jefferson High varsity softball team, was named an all-conference player was an all-state selection all four years, three times on the first team.
Abi Chipps goes airborne during the 2016 state softball tournament. Chipps and the Jefferson High School Blue Jays earned a third-place trophy in Class 2.
“She’s the first Jefferson graduate to come back and teach on the (sixth through 12th) grade level,” Haug said. “And I can’t think of anyone better for the spot.”
Chipps will be paid $39,000 (plus a softball stipend) under the current salary schedule, although Haug said it is likely district administration will recommend raising salaries as part of the next budget to be adopted in June.
He said two elementary teachers, Angie Massa and Becky Wright, are retiring at the end of this school year, and other staff members will take on new roles for the coming year.
“Amy Blythe, an elementary librarian, will move to second grade,” Haug said. “We have several people at Telegraph Intermediate who are moving to the middle school.”