School Director in Training

School Director In Training (SDIT)

At DSST Public Schools we believe that every student deserves an exceptional education, and that strong school leadership is the single greatest lever to delivering the rigorous, vibrant, and equitable schools our students deserve. The School Director in Training (SDIT) Program serves as DSST's multi-year advanced leadership development pathway for rising School Directors. The School Director in Training Program at DSST Public Schools is grounded in these core beliefs:

• Classroom teachers and school leaders are the most critical levers driving school and student success.
• Leaders are the drivers of their development and own opportunities to optimize their growth.
• The pursuit of educational equity is the reason we do this work; to be an exceptional leader, one must fiercely own the pursuit of equity across all domains.

In Year 1, SDITs engage in rigorous professional development through intensive coaching, observation/debrief cycles tightly aligned to individual growth plans, targeted development sessions, and on-the-job stretch opportunities while working alongside a Mentor School Director as a school-based leader (typically taking on the responsibilities and ownership for instruction, student culture, and/or school operations). SDITs serve as systems, culture, curriculum, and instructional leaders while coaching and managing teams towards exceptional results.

In Year 2, SDITs continue to engage in the rigorous on-the-job and supplemental development of Year 1 while layering on additional opportunities designed to prepare them to assume the role of School Director. These opportunities may include: rotating leadership placements to learn alongside new Mentor School Directors, excellent school observations, robust external professional development, and the opportunity to serve as an Interim School Director at a DSST school. After School Directors, SDITs serve as the most senior school-based leaders across the DSST network and assume exceptional responsibility for the results and success of a school.

You Should Consider This Role If:

• You want to lead a DSST middle or high school. The core of DSST's School Director in Training Program centers on preparing promising rising leaders (YOU!) to lead rigorous, vibrant, and equitable schools within 1 to 2 years.
• You are mission-driven at your core. You are deeply connected and committed to DSST's mission, and are unwavering in your belief that all students deserve access to an excellent education and can achieve at the highest level.
• You are an unrelenting champion for equity. You believe rigor, access, and opportunity for all is education equity. You devote time to learning and reflection on critical concepts related to race, power, and identity. You value and successfully develop relationships across lines of difference, and your unyielding commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion drives actions and decisions.
• You have a high bar for excellence and refuse to give up. You demonstrate the drive and aligned actions to take on more than is expected and never relent in pursuit of a challenging goal. When things feel impossible, you innovate, iterate, and inspire your team to keep going with eagerness and optimism to achieve exceptional results.
• You love working with people. You believe in a school community where everyone can both belong and be themselves. You have a strong understanding of and investment in people, an inclusive lens, and lead with a compassionate view of the human condition that can lead to transformative results.
• You are an eager and continuous learner. You love a challenge, and feedback makes your heart grow fonder. You seek and own opportunities to grow, and are deeply and comprehensively committed to being a school leader worth following.

Essential Functions & Responsibilities:

Leadership

• DSST Mission Driven: Demonstrate a sense of urgency about achievement for ALL students and preparing every student for post secondary success
• Pursue solutions with tenacity that maximize student achievement. Is willing to do whatever it takes to get the work done right
• Model professional maturity; emotional constancy in stressful situations, bringing out the best in others, seek solutions and positively motivating
• Mentor and coach staff members to encourage growth and results
• Identify and systematically develop future leaders
• Acts as a strategic partner to the School Director; fully responsible for executing the vision of the leader in all areas
• Supervise a substantial portion of the team

Culture

• Cultivate school culture centered on core values that deeply care for each student and staff member and holds each student and staff member to the highest level of accountability
• Coordinate with school leadership team to ensure Morning Meetings are robust and supportive of our values-based culture
• Collaborate with school staff to maximize the ability of the school to support students' academic and socio-emotional development
• Provide leadership to all staff and students in establishing a positive, structured, achievement-oriented, and fun school culture

Instruction, Coaching and Evaluation

• Provide instructional leadership informed by a nuanced understanding of DSST best practices
• Use centralized coaching tool to track all coaching meetings, observations, and action steps
• Provide teachers with specific, actionable, qualitative (i.e., narrative) and quantitative (i.e., rubric) feedback on their performance in all areas
• Manage a data-driven instructional process that includes rigorous interim assessments that are effectively aligned with year-end assessments and college readiness. Able to align all other school leadership components to the data driven instructional process (professional development, curriculum development, teacher observation/supervision, etc)
• Work with teachers to create and refine DSST curriculum documents (assessments, plans, data tracking), which correspond to college readiness standards, core instructional practices, and the benchmark assessment program
• Create, maintain, and update whole school, grade level, and teacher level student academic and assessment records and reports
• Oversee required standardized testing
• Identify and arrange for staff development opportunities which relate to core instructional practices, standards based assessments, and content areas
• Co-manage department chairs to ensure effective outcomes within departments

Systems

• Implement systems that "sweat the small stuff," maximize the programmatic goals of the school, and are scalable as the school grows
• Develop solutions to complex problems involving all stakeholders
• Manage with fiscal responsibility - develop a disciplined planning process that identifies the school's highest-priorities

The School Director in Training will be evaluated based on data-driven performance indicators including, but not limited to student attendance, measurable student learning gains on nationally-normed tests, internal benchmark assessments, and student retention and parent/student satisfaction.

Additional Duties:

• Recruit and hire school faculty
• Serve as a recruiter for new students; actively engage prospective families in an effort to draw more students to choose your school; be willing to take on additional tasks to support recruitment, as needed
• Actively engage in the community in which your school is located, and the broader Denver/Aurora community as well. This includes community outreach, touring your school with elected officials and other community leaders, hosting community events and encouraging staff to be present in the community.
• Actively engage in family communications by establishing norms and cadence with staff, and modeling strong positive family communications
• Work with DSST Home Office to create network-wide standards, curriculum, and assessment documents
• Work with DSST Home Office to create network-wide new teacher professional development; create school-specific new and returning teacher professional development
• Participate in network wide Instructional Leadership Development and Culture Leadership Development
• If applicable, teach course(s) within the school
• If applicable, act as a student advisor for a group of students

Ideal Qualifications

• Proven commitment to and experience with serving students of color, students with disabilities, students experiencing poverty and/or multilingual students

Minimum Qualifications

• An unwavering belief that all students can succeed in high school, reach their most ambitious post-secondary goals, and lead exemplary lives
• Desire to personally professionally grow in their practice of becoming an anti-racist educator
• Self-awareness, a regular practice of reflection, and a desire to continuously improve
• Bachelor's Degree from an accredited university
• Demonstrated evidence of success coaching, leading, and managing adults towards exceptional results
• Demonstrated conviction and unyielding