Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives

Executive Director Of Strategic Initiatives

The Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives provides executive leadership for Trinity Basin Preparatory's highest-priority school improvement initiatives, with primary responsibility for accelerating outcomes at turnaround schools and designing high-impact professional learning sequences for principals.

The Executive Director serves as both a turnaround leader and principal-development strategist, translating district priorities into coherent systems of implementation, leadership development, progress monitoring, and accountability. The role works closely with the Chief Academic Officer to identify organizational barriers to school performance, establish clear expectations for improvement, develop principal capacity, and ensure that improvement strategies result in measurable changes in adult practice and student outcomes.

The Executive Director directly supports and supervises assigned turnaround principals while developing professional learning experiences that strengthen principal leadership across the district.

Essential Functions

Turnaround School Leadership and Accountability — 40%

• Directly supervise, coach, develop, and evaluate principals of assigned turnaround schools.
• Develop differentiated school improvement strategies based on academic performance, leadership capacity, staffing, culture, attendance, student support, and operational data.
• Establish clear 30-, 60-, and 90-day priorities, milestones, and leading indicators for turnaround campuses.
• Conduct frequent campus visits to assess the quality and consistency of implementation.
• Identify root causes when improvement strategies are not producing expected results and rapidly adjust actions, resources, or supports.
• Ensure campus improvement plans move beyond compliance and function as actionable turnaround plans.
• Monitor Tier 1 instruction, intervention, school culture, staffing, attendance, SPED/EB performance, and other high-leverage indicators.
• Partner with principals to identify and address ineffective systems, practices, and adult behaviors that impede student achievement.
• Maintain a strong sense of urgency around campuses requiring significant improvement while building sustainable leadership capacity.

Principal Professional Learning Strategy — 25%

• Design and lead coherent, yearlong professional learning sequences for principals aligned to district priorities and demonstrated leadership needs.
• Develop principal learning experiences that move beyond isolated professional development sessions toward a deliberate progression of learn → model → practice → implement → receive feedback → demonstrate mastery.
• Use school performance data, principal observation trends, implementation data, and leader feedback to determine professional learning priorities.
• Develop exemplars, protocols, practice opportunities, case studies, simulations, and other tools that allow principals to practice critical leadership behaviors.
• Coordinate with School Leadership and Teaching & Learning leaders to ensure principal development reinforces district instructional and organizational expectations.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of principal professional learning by determining whether learning transfers into observable changes in leadership practice and campus outcomes.

Strategic Initiative Design and Execution — 15%

• Lead high-priority academic and school-improvement initiatives assigned by the Chief Academic Officer.
• Translate strategic priorities into clear implementation plans with defined owners, timelines, deliverables, measures of success, and progress-monitoring routines.
• Identify cross-functional dependencies and coordinate with Academic, Student Support, Human Resources, Operations, Finance, and other departments as necessary.
• Develop repeatable systems and tools that allow successful turnaround practices to scale across the organization.
• Surface implementation risks early and recommend solutions to the Chief Academic Officer.

Performance Management and Analytics — 10%

• Establish scorecards and progress-monitoring systems for assigned turnaround campuses and strategic initiatives.
• Analyze leading and lagging indicators to determine whether strategies are producing the intended results.
• Facilitate regular performance reviews with principals focused on evidence, root causes, commitments, and next actions.
• Differentiate support based on campus need rather than providing identical support to every school.
• Prepare concise executive updates for the Chief Academic Officer regarding progress, risks, barriers, and recommended actions.

Executive Leadership and Organizational Alignment — 10%

• Serve as a member of the Academic executive leadership team.
• Partner closely with Executive Directors of School Leadership to maintain consistent expectations for principals across the district.
• Help establish and reinforce districtwide standards for effective principal leadership.
• Model productive conflict, candor, accountability, collaboration, and solution-oriented leadership.
• Ensure communication and decision-making remain aligned across central departments and campuses.
• Perform additional strategic responsibilities assigned by the Chief Academic Officer.

Key Outcomes

Success in this role will be demonstrated by measurable evidence that:

• Assigned turnaround schools demonstrate accelerated improvement in accountability outcomes and leading indicators.
• Turnaround campuses establish stronger instructional, cultural, intervention, and leadership systems.
• Principals demonstrate measurable growth in their ability to diagnose problems, prioritize, execute, monitor, and adjust.
• Principal professional learning is coherent across the year and directly connected to the leadership behaviors TBP expects in schools.
• Professional learning results in observable changes in principal practice rather than participation alone.
• Effective turnaround practices are documented, codified, and scaled where appropriate.
• The Chief Academic Officer receives timely, accurate information regarding school performance, implementation risks, and necessary strategic decisions.

Leadership Expectations

The Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives must operate with the understanding that strategy is only successful when it changes execution at the school level.

The successful leader:

• Creates clarity around what effective implementation looks like.
• Maintains high support and high accountability.
• Uses data to diagnose rather than simply report.
• Distinguishes symptoms from root causes.
• Builds principal capacity rather than creating principal dependence.
• Addresses performance concerns early.
• Ensures professional learning is followed by practice, implementation, observation, feedback, and follow-through.
• Understands that different campuses require differentiated levels of support and intervention.
• Maintains urgency without sacrificing thoughtful analysis or sustainable systems.

Required Qualifications

• Master's degree in education, educational leadership, curriculum and instruction, or related field required.
• Valid Texas principal certification or equivalent leadership credential required.
• Minimum of five years of successful campus and/or district leadership experience.
• Demonstrated success as a principal, principal supervisor, or senior school leadership administrator strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience improving outcomes in historically underperforming schools or leading significant organizational improvement.
• Experience designing and facilitating professional learning for school leaders.
• Strong knowledge of Texas accountability systems, STAAR, school improvement requirements, instructional leadership, MTSS, and data-driven instruction.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze complex school-performance data and translate findings into actionable strategy.

Preferred Qualifications

• Doctoral degree or advanced leadership training.
• Experience supervising and developing principals.
• Demonstrated experience leading turnaround schools.
• Experience developing principal pipelines, leadership-development programs, or principal professional learning systems.
• Experience working in charter school systems or multi-campus school networks.
• Knowledge of high-quality instructional materials, instructional coaching, strategic staffing, and school improvement frameworks.

Core Competencies

Turnaround Leadership: Can rapidly diagnose school-performance challenges and establish a focused improvement strategy.

Principal Development: Can coach experienced school leaders while holding them accountable for measurable results.

Strategic Thinking: Connects individual initiatives to broader organizational priorities and identifies unintended consequences before they become barriers.

Execution: Converts strategy into specific actions, owners, timelines, and measurable outcomes.

Instructional Leadership: Understands high-quality Tier 1 instruction, curriculum implementation, student work, assessment, intervention, and instructional coaching.

Adult Learning: Designs professional learning that changes leader behavior rather than simply delivering information.

Data Analysis: Uses multiple data sources to identify trends, test hypotheses, determine root causes, and monitor impact.

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