Wildflower Charter School Founding Teacher Leader Opportunity

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Build the school you've always wished existed - and the public school your community deserves.

Wildflower is seeking experienced Montessori educators to join founding teams that will design, launch, and eventually lead teacher-led public charter Montessori schools.

Teacher Leaders are co-founders who create schools alongside Administrative Partners and community leaders. Launching a charter school is a multi-year entrepreneurial endeavor, and Teacher Leaders shape every aspect of it: from the earliest stages of school design through charter authorization, school launch, and leading your own classroom in the school you built.

As a Founding Teacher Leader, you will participate in the Wildflower Charter Incubator, a structured program combining coaching, practical work, and individualized support as founders prepare for charter application, authorization, and school opening.

This is a founder pathway with a paid teaching and leadership role at the end of it, not an immediate employment position.

About the Opportunity

Launching a charter school is a multi-year entrepreneurial endeavor. In collaboration with a Founding Administrative Partner, Founding Teacher Leaders will:

• Move through the Wildflower Charter Incubator and complete its readiness milestones.

• Co-develop the educational vision, school culture, and learning environment.

• Contribute to charter application development and authorization.

• Build relationships with families, community organizations, and local partners.

• Help recruit founding board members and future Teacher Leaders.

• Develop enrollment strategies that make Montessori available to more families.

• Create systems that allow educators to lead together through shared governance.

• Prepare to launch and lead your own Montessori classroom as a co-founder.

Teacher Leaders don't step into someone else's school. They build the organization itself and then lead within it.

During the Incubator

The Wildflower Charter Incubator begins with six weeks of structured work alongside a small group of founding teams, followed by four weeks of individual coaching and integration sessions with your team. 

Support continues as teams move toward application and launch, and includes:

• Readiness reviews and milestone feedback

• Montessori program design

• Community-rooted school design

• Family engagement and enrollment strategy

• Governance and shared leadership

• Financial sustainability

• Team development

• Charter application development and authorization preparation

• Long-term school startup planning

Who We're Looking For

We are seeking experienced Montessori educators who don't want to choose between the classroom and leadership. Founding Teacher Leaders do both: guiding children every day while creating an entirely new public school around them.

Strong candidates typically have:

• MACTE-accredited Montessori certification (AMI, AMS, or equivalent)

• Several years of Montessori classroom experience

• Deep respect for child-centered learning

• Strong relationships in the community they hope to serve

• A desire to expand access to public Montessori education

You believe in the teacher-leader school model, public Montessori should be open to every family, children thrive when educators have autonomy, schools should reflect their communities, and leadership is shared and relational.

Entrepreneurial Characteristics

Successful Teacher Leaders are visionary educators with an entrepreneurial mindset: builders rather than implementers, comfortable with ambiguity, and energized by creating something that doesn't yet exist. They're also reflective practitioners and relationship-centered leaders: curious, collaborative, resilient, and motivated by long-term impact.

Compensation

Participation in the Wildflower Charter Incubator is unpaid. This is a founding journey, and like most founding journeys, the compensation comes when the school you build comes to life.

Founding teams typically spend 6 to 12 months developing a charter application and securing authorization, then another 6 to 12 months preparing for launch. Once a school is authorized, founders transition into paid roles within the school they have created, with Teacher Leaders leading their own classrooms.

Post-launch Teacher Leader and Administrative Partner salaries typically range from $70,000 to $100,000, depending on the school's location and state funding levels.

Commitment

Launching a Wildflower charter school is comparable to starting a mission-driven social enterprise. It calls for persistence, collaboration, and sustained effort over several years. You won't do it alone: throughout the process, you'll have coaching, practical tools, and the experience of the broader Wildflower network behind you, while retaining full ownership of building a school that reflects your community and educational vision.

Geographic Consideration

Where you build matters. Charter law, authorizer relationships, and funding conditions vary widely by state, so Wildflower is focused on places where a new charter school can realistically succeed.

States with strong conditions for a new Wildflower charter include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and parts of Upstate New York.

New Wildflower charter schools are not currently viable in California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, or Washington state. If you're in one of these and this work speaks to you, Wildflower's independent school pathway and openings at existing Wildflower charter schools may be a better fit.

About Wildflower Schools

Wildflower is a national network of more than 80 small, teacher-led, community-embedded Montessori schools across 22 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico. Each school is founded and led by its educators and is deeply rooted in the neighborhood it serves. Wildflower believes that children are fundamentally peaceful, curious, and good, and that schools can only work for children and families if they also work for educators. That belief is why Wildflower schools are built and led by the people closest to the children.

Wildflower's public charter schools are tuition-free and open to every family regardless of income. Founding teams are supported by The Wildflower Foundation, which provides access to startup capital, hands-on coaching and tools, and a national community of Teacher Leaders who have walked this path themselves.