Special Education Manager, New York

The Opportunity

There are almost 10 million U.S. students with disabilities and diverse learning needs, and that number is growing every year. The special education coordinators who support them sit at one of the most operationally complex seats in any school, especially in New York. They run the IEP lifecycle, liaise with the Committee on Special Education, support teachers and families, prepare for audits, and own compliance for the school. Most do it with spreadsheets, outdated software, and a calendar full of deadlines they have to remember on their own.

Waypoint Learning is an early-stage startup that is developing the AI operating system for special education. Our platform helps teachers draft compliant IEPs, generate curriculum-aligned instructional resources, track student progress, and automates progress monitoring – saving substantial time. One of our bets is that if we pair that platform with a great human, one person can run the special education operation of a school with much greater capacity.

This year, we’re piloting that bet with a charter school in the Bronx. We’re hiring our Special Education Manager to be embedded in the school, supported by our platform, and shaping what this role becomes for every school we partner with thereafter. The person who takes this role will help define how Waypoint shows up for schools, with a clear path to grow as we scale from a small set of founding partners to many.

Role Description

• CSE liaison. You’re the primary point of contact between the school and the Committee on Special Education in the Bronx. You attend CSE meetings, manage the relationships, and represent the school’s students and staff.
• Full IEP lifecycle. Evaluation coordination, meeting prep, annual reviews, triennial reevaluations. You use Waypoint to ensure every student’s IEP reflects who they are, what they need, and what’s working.
• Compliance and audit-readiness. You own the calendar of deadlines, the documentation trail, and the ability to produce an audit-ready package for SUNY, NYSED, or NYC DOE.
• A seat at the leadership table. You attend the school’s leadership meetings as the special education voice, partnering closely with the school’s special education teachers. When the school is making decisions about staffing, scheduling, or instruction, you make sure students with IEPs and their families are part of the conversation from the start and not an afterthought.
• The NYC playbook. You’ll codify how we support schools in New York – what works, what doesn’t, what we need to build, and how the next team member we hire learns the role faster than you did.
• Product partnership. You’ll surface what’s painful in the daily workflow, push back when something we built doesn’t actually help, and help us decide what to build next. The platform exists to make your job easier, and your honest feedback is how it gets there.
• A role that grows. This is the founding role on the school operations side of Waypoint. Where it goes depends partly on us and partly on you – leading a team of Success Leads as we add schools, owning how Waypoint works with school networks, or shaping the broader function as we grow. We’ll figure it out together.

Qualifications

• Experience as a SPED Coordinator (or equivalent) in NYC. You’ve run an IEP lifecycle, sat across the table from a CSE, and supported teachers and families through hard conversations for at least one year. You know the rhythm of a school year and the unforgiving cadence of compliance deadlines.
• Operational ownership. You take responsibility for the whole picture and not just your slice of it. When something falls through the cracks, your instinct is to fix the system, not assign blame. You’ve built or substantially improved a process before, and you have a track record of leaving things better than you found them.
• A product-oriented mindset. You’ll be using and shaping Waypoint every day. You don’t need to be technical, but you need to be opinionated about what good software feels like, willing to push back on the founder when something doesn’t work, and genuinely curious about how AI can change this work.
• Clear, direct communication. You can speak to a parent, a teacher, a CSE chairperson, a school principal, and a startup founder all in the same day and have each of them feel heard and informed.
• Genuine care for students and the people serving them. This role exists to make life better for students with IEPs and the adults who support them. The candidates we want most are the ones who already feel that pull.

Nice to Have

• NYS Students with Disabilities certification (active or in process)
• Experience opening a new school or building a function from scratch.
• Familiarity with SUNY-authorized charter schools and the SUNY Charter Schools Institute’s approach to special education compliance.
• Experience using or evaluating EdTech tools as a special education coordinator (even better if you’ve been frustrated by them).

Compensation

This role offers a salary in line with senior NYC SPED Coordinator compensation, paired with a founding equity grant in the company. We’re open to discussing the specific balance of salary and equity based on your priorities. Benefits details will evolve as we grow, but we’re committed to building a sustainable working environment from the start.

How to Apply

Send an email to Isaac at View email address on click.appcast.io with a few sentences about why this role interests you and attach your resume. If there’s a moment in your career you’re especially proud of – an IEP you fought for, a system you built, a student or family that you’ve impacted – we’d love to hear about it. No cover letter required.