By Karen Gutierrez
Enquirer staff writer

BELLEVUE - Bellevue High School has changed. For one thing, there's a new principal, and he has suspiciously short hair.

For another, teachers this year received a four-page document titled, simply, "Duties of teachers."

They also got, for the first time, a list of student misbehaviors - those that warrant immediate referral to the office, and those that teachers are free to handle themselves.

Structure. Consistency. Direction. Paperwork. Now where would a guy learn all that?

"Old habits die hard for us," Mike Wills says. "My wife will tell you I'm organized to a fault."

Wills retired from the Marine Corps in 1993 after a 24-year career that included combat in Vietnam and stints at the White House. He left as a lieutenant colonel - the only one now running a public high school in Kentucky.

Retired military personnel are a natural fit with education, says John Gantz, director of the national Troops to Teachers program.

Among the reasons:

• In the military, people are required to get promotions or leave, so those who retire after many years are proven leaders.

• They understand both diversity and young people, because the armed forces have a lot of both.

• They can be financially comfortable as teachers, thanks to military pensions.

Wills, who earned a degree in education from Eastern Kentucky University before entering the Marines, became a teacher after his military career ended and eventually received a principal certification. He was an assistant principal at Holmes High School in Covington before going to Bellevue.

At first, Bellevue students were intimidated by the idea of a Marine in the halls. But Wills is not what they expected. He doesn't bark orders, and he sits down to talk at lunch, senior Lisa Brun says.

He developed the schoolwide discipline plan in part because parents told him rules weren't being applied consistently. Students have noticed the change.

Last week, a young man was suspended after calling a teacher a derogatory term. And the dress code is no longer optional.

Not everyone has adjusted to the new leadership.

When Wills started, he noticed a problem: a few eighth-graders were enrolled in both algebra and pre-algebra. He had them removed from the latter and placed in an elective, whose teacher was disgruntled by the increase in class size.

"I need you to be on the team on this," Wills told her on the phone. Then he invited her to meet with him one-on-one.

It's not the White House. It's not combat. But Wills figures he's right where he belongs.

"Just like being a Marine," he says, "you can make a difference."

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E-mail kgutierrez@enquirer.com