[2024 - 2025] KIPP Durham Middle Assistant Principal ($25,000 salary boost, 10+ years of teaching related experience)

Organizational Overview

Leading a school is one of the absolute hardest professions in the world. 

Leading a school turnaround is a whole other level of hard. The reality of too many of our country’s schools—especially those serving low-income and other marginalized communities coming out of a global health crisis and with a century of systemic under-investment—is that the academic achievement of their students doesn’t match their students' brilliance, and their student culture does not create an environment where each and every student is seen, valued, and loved. 

KIPP Durham Middle School on the east side of Durham, North Carolina, has been one such school. Every 6-8-Grade student in our classrooms today is brilliant, but our efforts over the past decade have not successfully harnessed that collective brainpower to get exceptional results on North Carolina’s state middle school exams in reading, math, and science, the benchmarks that ensure they are on track towards being academically prepared to lead the choice-filled lives they envision for themselves.

KIPP North Carolina, in partnership with the leaders and national resources of the KIPP Foundation, is seeking to change that reality. 

For the 2024-25 school year (and for the next two school years after that), we are assembling a dream team of 18 exceptional professionals—master teachers, instructional leaders, operational leaders, special education experts, and other supporters of learning—who are eager to “re-found” our Durham middle school to create a dynamic and engaging middle school learning environment that maximizes our 160 students’ limitless potentials. 

The Assistant Principal we are seeking to join our team will be responsible for ensuring that our students’ learning experiences are exciting and rigorous. They, alongside the Principal, will prioritize excellent teaching in every single classroom. Our Assistant Principal will coordinate curricula and instructional content, coach teachers, assess student and teacher performance, and lead professional development. Our Assistant Principal will be a master of content and demonstrate an unwavering commitment to holding high expectations. They will rely on the school’s Dean of Students to make that focus on content happen, and they will work closely with the Principal to support all our master teachers to drive exceptional student achievement. 

While we founded the school in 2015, we are treating 2024-25 as a re-founding school year, an endeavor that requires a staff with a founder’s mentality around doing what it takes, making it happen, sweating the small stuff, and creating a reimagined reality for our students.

CRUCIAL COMPETENCIES

Our Assistant Principal will blow the following four crucial competencies* out of the water:

Driving for Results : Our Assistant Principal will have a strong desire to achieve outstanding student learning results and the task-oriented actions required for success. Our Assistant Principal will set high goals for themselves and all students, making persistent, well-planned efforts to achieve these goals despite barriers and resistance; holding others accountable for doing their part to achieve results; and putting in all the extra effort necessary to ensure success. 

Influencing for Results : Our Assistant Principal will motivate others—students and staff colleagues—and influence their thinking and behavior to obtain outstanding student learning results. Our Assistant Principal will understand that they cannot accomplish change alone, but instead must influence the work of others. They will use a variety of influencing moves—inspiring students, nurturing ridiculously joyful AND rigorous classroom and schoolwide cultures, grasping and responding to unspoken student needs and motivations, and simultaneously supporting and prodding colleagues to collaborate on the path to schoolwide success—as the situation requires. The relationships they will form are for the purpose of influencing others to enhance student learning, not just for the purpose of personal bonding. 

Problem-Solving : Our Assistant Principal will be LASER FOCUSED on planning, organizing, and delivering high quality supports for our teachers, AND they will continually analyze data to determine student learning needs and next steps for intervention blocks during the day, on select weekend academies, and during summers (while running summer academies during select weeks and leading summer teacher professional development sessions during other select weeks).

Personal Effectiveness : Our Assistant Principal will exhibit flexibility and optimism when faced with stressful, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar situations; maintain confidence in themselves and a willingness to keep improving despite the many challenges of their role; actively embrace the constant changes needed to ensure student learning in high-challenge situations; and hold and maintain a strong belief in the human potential for learning and improvement, despite significant societal pressures to settle for less. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES

Support and Grow Teachers

• Observe and coach teachers all day every day, providing them with rigorous feedback and supporting them in the classroom
• Support teachers in developing their instructional practice (unit and lesson planning, lesson execution, and collection and use of assessment data)
• Clearly articulate student performance goals for each grade level and work with teachers to set measurable student goals in individual classes
• Continuously monitor student achievement by analyzing independent work, assessment results, and other data points in order to target interventions
• Lead all aspects of curriculum implementation and assessment and ensure consistency within the school program and alignment with state and other rigorous standards
• Plan and execute professional development days in coordination with the Principal and other colleagues
• Recognize and celebrate staff professional growth and success; charge hard to get early, small wins around student achievement; identify early wins that are most important to show that student learning progress is possible and to create momentum for additional changes
• Document all observations and feedback in Whetstone to track teacher growth
• Hold mid-year and end of year performance reviews to support teacher performance 
• Plan and facilitate targeted professional development for teachers
• Set clear, high expectations, and hold teachers (and students) accountable for performance—all of which requires taking personal responsibility and doing everything required to reach challenging goals
• Embrace and incorporate the gift of feedback from wherever it comes—colleagues, principal, assistant principal, regional coaches, students, wherever—in the spirit of Pursuing Excellence, one of KIPP NC core values
• Do all the operational things that support great instruction, like keeping records and completing tasks for data tracking systems (including actually helping to CREATE some of those data systems)

Exemplifying a Growth Mindset

• Collaborate with school and regional colleagues to identify areas of strength and areas of growth for professional development throughout the year, some of which will be leader-led, and some of which will happen in the quiet after-school moments in classrooms with colleagues in the routine preparation for the next day
• Attend (and often lead) practice clinics to hone and sharpen skills and delivery
• Participate in Teacher Work Days, Regional Data Days, and Professional Development meetings after school; satiate their hunger to learn and grow as a professional

Taking Care of Yourself 

• Use the many benefits the organization offers employees (health benefits, generous school holidays, etc.) to relieve stress after the workday is done or over school breaks and holidays, as the job of turning a school around is tough—teachers will experience stress and emotional challenges associated with all the essential duties enumerated above, and self-care will be a priority

QUALIFICATIONS

The following are required of the KIPP Durham Middle Assistant Principal:

• A deep commitment to the mission of KIPP NC and an unwavering belief in the potential of all our students
• An unwavering commitment to anti-racism, equity, inclusion, and liberation
• A deep commitment to both racial equity and improving the lives of kids from economically marginalized communities
• 10+ years of school or school-related experience in K-12; experience in teaching or leading in a high performing charter school and/or schools with a high population of students with free and reduced lunch
• Strong record of driving outstanding student results
• Strong data analysis skills
• Interest in and passion for supporting teacher growth
• Ability to provide high leverage feedback via classroom observations
• A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant content area
• Pass Criminal Background Check
• Fluency in Spanish is preferred

Additional Notes

• Hours are Monday-Friday, 7:00 AM – 5:00 PM (these are work hours for staff, not school hours for students)
• Some Saturday/weekend commitments will be required for additional tutoring and intervention work with students
• Durham Middle staff will be expected to help run summer academies in the Summers of 2025, 2026, and 2027

Total Benefits

This KIPP Durham Middle Assistant Principal will be paid on the 24 - 25 Durham AP scale according to all of their years of relevant experience.

In addition, the KIPP Durham Middle Assistant Principal will receive:

• A $25,000 salary boost to recognize their investment in KIPP Durham Middle’s re-founding
• Opportunity to earn supplements for a relevant PhD, additional licensure endorsements, National Board Certification, and teaching in high needs areas (these supplements are in perpetuity and in addition to base salary)
• Health Insurance: State Health Plan with low premiums for individuals and deep discounts for spouses, dependents, and families
• Paid Parental Leave: 8 weeks of 100% paid maternity leave and 4 weeks of 100% paid paternity leave
• Paid Time Off + Sick Leave: 5 days of PTO and 6 sick days every year
• Retirement: An optional 403b with a generous employer match with immediate vesting
• Relocation Assistance: If you need to move 200 miles or more to the Triangle to take this opportunity, KIPP North Carolina will provide you with up to $5,000 to support your moving expenses. This will be determined based on the distance of your move.

Important Note: This incredible opportunity to magnetize a Dream Team staff to Durham Middle starting in the 2024-25 school year is made possible by the national KIPP Foundation. Their commitment to KIPP NC is for three school years (2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27). After those three years, we will reassess our approach and resource allocation model. We are asking all successful candidates in this role to commit to the entirety of those three years (with a TBD for 2027-28 and beyond!). 

*We are forever indebted to Public Impact, a North Carolina-based non-profit organization dedicated to an excellent education for all students and excellent careers for all educators through its national Opportunity Culture initiative, for this language and framework.