SY2025-26 Middle School Principal

NOTICE: All Ingenuity Prep employees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before their start date. All persons offered a position will be required to provide valid proof of vaccination prior to starting employment or must be approved for a medical or religious exemption.

Ingenuity Prep prepares PreK - 8th grade students in Ward 8 to succeed in college and beyond as impactful civic leaders. Our innovative instructional model promotes small group learning for students, collaborative teaching teams, and robust coaching and professional development opportunities for teachers and staff.

We are seeking an innovative, self-starting, bold leader who is fiercely unapologetic about cultivating a learning environment where all students feel known, included, and appropriately challenged. You are experienced with management of adults and understand that the secret sauce to any team is the coaching and development of the adults who make magic happen for students. Because you understand the importance of coaching, you believe in the importance of feedback–giving and receiving it. Thus, you are disciplined, well-organized and can manage and oversee regular observation-feedback cycles for a staff of 30+ adults. Further, you are resilient, quickly rebounding from challenges, quick to fail forward, and deeply committed to shaping the instructional programming of our Middle School Academy for the long-term. Above all, you are equity-minded, and you leverage this mindset to partner across lines of difference so that all MSA stakeholders feel authentically engaged in the critical work of improving outcomes for all of our students.

WHAT WE’RE ABOUT

• Mission: We’re closing the opportunity gap. Students and families in Southeast D.C. have too few options for high-quality elementary, middle, and high schools. Ingenuity Prep aspires to right this systemic injustice providing an exemplary educational option for Southeast D.C.’s students and families.
• Model: We pair high expectations with high support. Too often, our students are underestimated.  At Ingenuity Prep, an innovative teacher development model, paired with best-in-class training from strong instructional leaders, allows us to grow great teachers who, ultimately, lead high-expectation and high-support classrooms.
• Results: Our students are defying expectations. Ingenuity Prep’s students outperform their neighborhood peers on rigorous, national, college-track assessments.  Already out-performing many of their more privileged peers around the city, in the coming years, Ingenuity Prep’s students will provide an expectation-defying and achievement-gap-closing proof point — showing what our kids are capable of when we provide the right opportunities, expectations, and support.

 

WHAT YOU’LL DO AS MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL:

Expertly Develop Secondary Leaders : Develop and manage three VPs who manage a cohort of teachers by:

• Co-observe teachers managed by VPs to align on vision of excellence and appropriate action steps for the teacher development
• Provide feedback on the planning and execution of formal weekly coaching sessions and providing teachers with actionable feedback that allows them to attain high expectations.
• Provide feedback on the planning and execution of weekly data and weekly intellectual prep meetings.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the leader based on the performance of teachers and students

Urgently Drive Outcomes: 

• Ensure that each classroom has established conditions for learning. Beyond that, classrooms in your Academy should feel highly structured, communicate high expectations, and most importantly, foster students’ love of learning through warmth, joy, and rigor.  When this is accomplished, students at all levels should be able to succeed. This includes, but is not limited to the following:  

• Ensure physical classroom space is conducive to learning. 
• Ensure all staff, agnostic of their roles, communicate high expectations, warmth and joy to students through actions, words, and school-wide systems culture management system.

• Ensure all staff in your Academy have a sense of belonging and a trusted staff member they can go to, including offering additional support to your staff and Secondary Leaders in the form of live-coaching (peer feedback, video observation, modeling, etc.).
• Through partnership with the Dean of Students, oversee, establish, and support in the development of Academy-wide incentives.
• Ensure families are routinely partnered with, and informed about their student’s strengths, areas for growth, and progress. 
• Attend regular meetings (2-4 times per month) with members of the school-wide Instructional Leadership Team and serve as a sounding board for critical decisions at the Executive Team Level
• Have a whatever it takes mindset to ensure a warm school culture, full of high expectations.

Monitor Progress towards Outcomes: 

• Use data to assess the overall quality of Academy culture and implement plans to address any whole-Academy problems related to classroom culture and the learning environment
• Conduct regular data analysis and action-planning with your leadership team focused on the following types of data: referrals, suspensions, attendance, grades, power standards mastery, and F&P levels/progress.
• Monitor the overall performance of individual students in the cohort and ensure that action steps are taken by teachers for the most struggling students through the support of the grade-level  MTSS/RTI process
• Observe each staff member biweekly, offering written feedback on the quality of their implementation of the academy-wide coaching focus.

Strategic Intervention to Achieve Outcomes

• In partnership with the Vice Principals, develop long-term coaching arcs that support the overall growth and development of staff across the academy. Use these coaching arcs to plan and facilitate regular PD–up to 2-3 times per month. 
• Through myriad coaching strategies, strategically intervene to support consistent high-level execution toward academy-wide goals and expectations. 

WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR

Ingenuity Prep may be the right fit for you if:

• A passionate belief in Ingenuity Prep’s mission, values, and educational model
• You have at least seven years of combined experience as a lead teacher or instructional leader in a school serving a high number of at-risk students.
• Proven track-record of high achievement and ability to create and maintain a strong, positive,  student and staff culture
• A relentless drive to achieve goals
• An ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment and a capacity to remain calm and focused when faced with unexpected challenges
• An ability to work collaboratively with all stakeholders to innovate, problem-solve, and/or resolve conflict
• An ability to appropriately and quickly respond to constructive feedback and a proven commitment to growth mindset and improving one’s own instructional and management practices
• A solutions-oriented approach when facing challenges
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (both written and verbal) and proven ability to maintain positive relationships with colleagues
• A sense of humility in the face of success
• A strong attention to detail and proven ability to follow through on commitments.

MORE ABOUT US

Ingenuity Prep offers among the strongest compensation and benefits packages of any public charter school in Washington, D.C. Our compensation and benefits package includes:

• Highly competitive compensation for instructional and non-instructional positions.
• 100% of medical and dental premiums for employees paid for by Ingenuity Prep, along with 100% of dependent premiums and 50% of spouse’s or domestic partner’s premiums.
• 100% of employee’s short­ and long-term disability and life insurance plans paid for by Ingenuity Prep.
• A minimum of two weeks maternity/paternity leave, up to 6 weeks, at 100% of pay (60% from IP and remaining pay from DC Paid Family Leave ) for all staff — regardless of gender.
• A 100% match -- up to 3% -- on your 401K retirement plan.
• A 100% Ingenuity Prep-paid cell phone plan. You can even bring your current number into our plan.
• MacBook Air computer for professional and personal use

Salary Range: $127,205 - $158,862  (commensurate with 1-10 years experience)

Ingenuity Prep does not make hiring decisions based on race, color, creed, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, age, disability, veteran status, religion, political affiliation, or any other characteristic protected by state, federal, or local law. Covid-19 vaccination is required prior to the first day of employment.