Amanda Dakas has been named principal at DeKalb Middle School.

Director of Schools Patrick Cripps has chosen Dakas, who has served as assistant principal at DMS for five years, to fill the vacancy left when Randy Jennings took the principal’s position at DeKalb County High School recently.

Dakas is a 1991 graduate of DeKalb County High School, and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree with a Major in Speech Communication and a Minor in Inclusive Early Childhood Education, her Masters of Science degree in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Tennessee.

She attended Oakland University in Michigan in 2000, where she took introductory educational leadership classes. She received her Educational Specialist degree with a focus on Instructional Leadership from Tennessee Technological University in 2006.

The new principal began her career teaching first grade at John Sevier Elementary School in Maryville in 1995, and came back to DeKalb County in 1996 to teach seventh-grade Math at DMS, where she also served as football cheerleading coach.

Her husband’s job in the automotive industry then took Dakas to Michigan, where she worked as a homeschool educator for a year and a half. She then took a job in Sales and Marketing at the Dura Automotive Headquarters for four years before returning to Smithville.

She went back to teaching in 2002, instructing third graders for five years and then computer and technology for five more at Northside Elementary School. She was named assistant principal at DMS in 2012.

Meanwhile, the new assistant principle at DMS is seventh-grade math teacher and Saints football and DWS Bulldogs baseball coach Tad Webb.

While Webb will be giving up the coaching positions, no successors have been named.