Community School Director (CSD)

Inspiring Minds NYC has provided support services to underserved high school students in Central Brooklyn since 2019. Informed by a focus group of 40 students from Boys and Girls High School, we learned that our youth felt disconnected and yearned to build meaningful connections with their community. We designed our model to make these connections through culturally responsive programs that develop culture identity, leadership skills, health & wellness and artistic expression. Due to the success of our model, we have grown in size and are looking for Community School Directors to lead in our partner schools. We are a fast growing nonprofit and there is potential to grow with our team!

What is a Community School?

Community Schools are a strategy to organize resources and share leadership to integrate social services into the fabric of the schools. Community Schools align resources with vision and purpose resulting in improved student learning, stronger families and healthier communities.

Community Schools offer a holistic approach toward improving academic performance driven by strong, collaborative partnerships among principals, parents, teachers and CBOs. In Community Schools, parents are real and active partners in their children’s education, the school climate is joyful and positive, and expanded learning opportunities are abundant.

Core outcomes are two-fold. At the student-level, community schools aim for increased attendance and student engagement; connectedness to adults; development of social and emotional skills; and improved academic performance. At the school-level, community schools aim for improved school culture; more actively engaged families; and seamless service delivery with partner organizations.

Hiring Process: The Community School Director is hired by Inspiring Minds in consultation with the principal and the School Leadership Team (SLT). While the CSD will be “on the payroll” of the CBO partner, it is essential that the principal be involved in the recruitment, screening and selection of the Director.

Job Responsibilities:

School Partnership-Building:

• Serve as an advisor to the principal, providing leadership for coordinating the work of different partners within the school, and aligning the work of partners with the school faculty.
• Work with school leadership to maintain a focus on results and track progress.
• Organize Community School Team (CST) Meetings.
• Support the development of the school’s Community School Plan and/or community school components of school’s Renewal School Comprehensive Educational Plan (RSCEP), and oversee the plan’s implementation.
• Develop strong relationships with parents, students, and teachers, and ensure that all stakeholders understand what a community school is and how it supports student achievement.

Expanded Learning Time (ELT):

• Work with SLT, teachers and partner agencies to integrate expanded learning and enrichment activities before, during or after the school day.
• Build relationships and mechanisms to effectively link the school day to expanded learning activities.
• Assist the school in identifying outside providers for ELT as necessary.
• Coordinate and attend field trips that expose youth to new experiences

Attendance Improvement:

• Serve as key member on school’s attendance team, including (but not limited to) using the New Visions data tools for tracking and coordinating student interventions.
• Assist with data collection and research, and prepare relevant data to bring to meetings.
• Organize and oversee assets and needs assessments and seek input from teachers, school staff, parents and students to determine ongoing needs of students and families. Identify high need students, coordinate with teachers to target interventions, and track and monitor impact of interventions.

Family Engagement Support:

• Work with Principal, SLT, and Parent Coordinator to implement a transformative model of family engagement that creates strong school-to-home partnerships for learning.
• Support special events that promote family engagement

Coordination of Social Services:

• Identify local community resources and broker new partnerships that are aligned with school goals and needs.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree required
• Ability to work effectively high school aged youth, educators, families and communities from a wide range of cultural, social and economic backgrounds.
• Experience working in school based settings, with knowledge about tenants of community organizing, student support services, and youth development theories. Ability to work collaboratively, with strong relationship building skills.
• DOE fingerprinting and background clearances.