Wildflower Charter School Founding Administrative Partner Opportunity

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Build a public Montessori school from the ground up.

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

Administrative Partners are co-founders who work alongside Montessori Teacher Leaders to transform a vision into a thriving public school. Launching a charter school is a multi-year entrepreneurial endeavor: rather than stepping into an existing administrative role, Administrative Partners help create the school itself, from early community conversations through charter authorization and school launch.

As an Administrative Partner, 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.

The Founding Administrative Partner serves as the Charter Leader for the emerging organization. While Teacher Leaders primarily steward the school site and its educational program, the Charter Leader builds and coordinates the charter-wide systems that allow the school to operate as a compliant, financially sustainable, equitable public institution. This includes governance, authorizer relations, finance, human resources, compliance, data systems, student services, enrollment systems, communications, technology, and other shared operational infrastructure.

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

About the Opportunity

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

• Co-create the operational, governance, and financial foundation of a future Wildflower charter school.

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

• Lead or support charter application development and authorization.

• Build relationships with communities, authorizers, and founding board members.

• Develop systems for enrollment, finance, compliance, governance, and operations.

• Help assemble the partnerships, fundraising, and organizational infrastructure needed to launch a sustainable public Montessori school.

Administrative Partners share leadership with Teacher Leaders, making decisions collaboratively and drawing on input from those affected and from those with relevant expertise.

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

• Charter application development

• Governance and board development

• Financial modeling and fundraising planning

• Community engagement and enrollment strategy

• Charter authorization preparation

• Long-term school startup planning

Who We're Looking For

Strong candidates may have experience in school leadership, charter schools, nonprofit management, business operations, finance, project management, public administration, or community organizing. No single background is required: what matters is that you're ready to build.

You believe in the teacher-leader school model and that schools should be deeply rooted in the communities they serve, and lasting change happens through that kind of community-rooted leadership.

Entrepreneurial Characteristics

Successful founders are builders and systems thinkers: highly organized, comfortable with ambiguity, and energized by creating something that doesn't yet exist. They're relationship-centered leaders who are curious, collaborative, resilient, and motivated by long-term impact. Administrative Partners work alongside their Teacher Leader to turn the school's vision into real systems, budgets, and structures, always keeping the mission at the center.

Compensation

Participation in the Wildflower Charter Incubator is unpaid. This is a founding journey, and like most founding journeys, the compensation comes when the organization 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 and moves into implementation, founders transition into paid leadership positions within the school they have created.

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 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.

Learn more at wildflowerschools.org.