Middle School Assistant Principal 22-23 SY

KIPP Albany is a part of a national network of high-performing public Charter Schools committed to creating joyful, academically excellent, and prepared students with the skills, ability, and confidence to pursue their paths to college, career, and beyond.

With the Troy Prep K-12 schools joining the KIPP Albany network (to become KIPP Capital Region) for the 2022-2023 school year, our KIPP schools will serve more than 2,500 students across the Capital Region. We look forward to increased curriculum offerings for students, professional development for staff, and enhanced family and community partnerships.

We are committed to furthering anti-racism, equity, and racial justice in all our efforts, and expect all of our stakeholders to participate in this work so that we can create a future without limits for our students, together.

Position Overview

The Assistant Principal’s job is to support the school in driving academic and character outcomes for students as a key member of the school’s leadership team. We expect our Assistant Principals to lead both instruction and school culture and also to be able to develop leadership in the school’s emerging leaders. At KIPP, we believe that the Assistant Principal is the School Leader's successor and is being actively developed for school leadership. The AP should consider him/herself an apprentice to the School Leader and the AP should gradually build capacity to lead a KIPP school.

Key Responsibilities:

Model and support implementation of the school’s vision and goals

• Supports the development of School Leader’s school-wide vision and takes an active role in investing and mobilizing teachers to achieve the collective goals of the school; owns the implementation of select school priorities in support of the school-wide vision
• With guidance from the School Leader, leads the planning and goal setting for the grades/departments that he/she coaches and ensures alignment with school-wide goals

Contribute to school-wide planning and prioritizes time to accomplish goals

• Provides input into the school-based strategic planning including and identifies what the school’s strategic plan means for his/her own leadership and people that he/she manages

Develop emerging leaders with School Leader’s guidance

• Supports the School Leader in identifying and developing emerging and teacher leaders (Department Heads and/or Grade Level Chairs) through goal setting, coaching, and providing feedback

Model strong staff and student culture and manage school-wide character development and behavior management systems

• Supports teachers in understanding processes and roles in student support and intervention and develops systems and structures to ensure that limited time is spent on reactive student discipline
• Manage parts of the daily school operations (e.g. arrival/dismissal, lunch/recess, school trips)
• Acts as the first Leadership Team contact on student intervention and parent engagement hierarchy; determine next steps for issues that rise above the teacher/grade level/department chair

Collaborate with School Leader on hiring diverse, highly-effective teachers and school staff

Build own and direct reports’ instructional knowledge of standards, content and instructional methods

Content (Standards, Curriculum, and Assessment):

• Develops deep mastery over the academic standards in the subjects/grades for which he/she coaches, and strong understanding of academic standards for all subjects/grades. Understands the implications of standards on what a student should know and be able to do, connect teachers with relevant resources to improve their content knowledge, and therefore what a teacher needs to know and be able to do to facilitate student mastery
• Studies curriculum and assessment content and further develops an understanding of how assessments map to content mastery, and what is required of students and teachers to accomplish mastery on the assessments
• Teaches teachers how to assess for both student mastery and growth towards college readiness and insists that assessments are used to inform teacher instruction

Research-based Instructional Practices (Methods and Time):

• Develops own and teacher’s knowledge of best practices in instructional methods and teaches teachers how to match particular strategies to gaps in student mastery

Develop teachers to provide rigorous and high-quality instruction and support School Leader in planning and implementing enabling systems of the Academic Strategies Pyramid

Data Analysis (Data-driven Instruction and Progress Monitoring):

• Lead data-driven instruction. Help teachers: determine how data aligns to end-of-year goals (what is being assessed and how it maps to standards); break-out data to analyze how different student groups are performing; determine what data is saying about areas of student mastery and growth, and identify specific instructional actions and adjustments to fill students’ knowledge and skill gaps and a timeline to do so

Teacher Instructional Development (Instructional Coaching, Content Teams, and Workshops):

• Provide high-quality instructional coaching with frequent and scheduled teacher observations, actionable and bite-sized feedback, and accountability for adjustment in practice
• Coach emerging leaders on their instructional coaching practice
• May lead or coach others who lead department/content/grade-level meetings that focus on planning for and norming on instruction and culture, practicing instructional strategies, and progress monitoring the department/content/grade level
• Recommend to the School Leader what school-wide professional development will be the highest leverage in improving student results; lead engaging, actionable, adult-learning workshops; and hold staff accountable for the implementation of the workshop practices

Prioritize Assistant Principal’s own success and sustainability by engaging lifelines and renewing to get stronger

• Education: Bachelor’s degree required. Master’s degree preferred
• Experience: 2 years previous instructional coaching experience preferred
• Commitment to being anti-racist
• Student Focus: Belief that all students, regardless of background, have the ability to go to and through college; demonstrated commitment to the school’s unique community
• Direction Setting: Ability to set the direction for a team and motivate others to action
• Achievement Orientation and Performance Management: Demonstrated student achievement results in own classroom and from teachers that he/she manages
• Cultural Competence: Demonstrated ability to create inclusive environments that honors and supports a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives
• Instructional Leadership: Adept at data analysis; ability to extract meaningful insights across school-wide data
• Instructional Leadership: Expertise in what the school-wide academic standards and state assessments require of students’ knowledge and skills to demonstrate mastery; able to translate student mastery requirements into instructional plans and strategies
• Achievement Orientation: Demonstrated resilience and focus on student outcomes

Compensation range: $85.5 - $94.5k (full time, exempt)

KIPP Albany Community Public Charter Schools is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, sexual preference, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, pregnancy, or veteran status