Chief Academic Officer

The Chief Academic Officer (CAO) will collaboratively set the vision for Capital City’s instructional program, ensuring that it aligns with the core of EL Education and prepares all students for academic achievement and success. The CAO will be charged with helping the entire community achieve Capital City’s whole child approach and mission to enable a diverse group of students to meet high expectations; develop creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills; achieve a deep understanding of complex subjects; and acquire a love of learning along with a strong sense of community and character.

The Chief Academic Officer will supervise the Director of School Quality and Director of Enrichment as well as advise the three campuses' Principals and Instructional Coach and Curriculum Coordinators. The CAO will report to the Head of School (HOS) and serve on the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) collaboratively working with other members of SLT and the HOS to realize the mission and goals of Capital City.

This is a 12-month position which is exempt and therefore not eligible for overtime pay under the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The Chief Academic Officer (CAO) has responsibilities in the following key areas:

• Building on the strong EL Education academic program. The CAO must believe in and be well-versed in the EL Education curriculum and overall instructional model.
• Maintaining equity at the core. The CAO must be a leader for equity and model culturally competent and inclusive collaboration, communication, and relationship-building through their actions and words.
• Ensuring high-quality programs and instruction. The CAO must know what high-quality instruction looks like and be able to support the design of curriculum and programs that challenge, engage, and empower students.
• Using data to improve programming. The CAO will work to set measurable academic achievement and growth goals for and supervise the collection, review, and use of data to foster continuous improvement and address inequities. Qualitative as well as quantitative data should be collected across all three dimensions of student achievement (mastery of knowledge and skills, high-quality work, and student character).
• Promoting shared leadership and decision-making. Shared leadership is essential to the culture and success of Capital City. A Capital City senior leader must establish trusting relationships with staff members and believe that collaborative leadership with diverse stakeholders yields stronger results.
• Engaging families in their children’s education. As the first parent-founded charter school in Washington, DC, family involvement is critical to the success of our students and program. The CAO should seek to creatively and proactively engage and seek the input of families and work closely with our school’s family engagement team.

Additional Responsibilities include:

• Leveraging and ensuring high-quality implementation and continual updating of Capital City’s educational design
• Promoting innovation in curriculum, instruction, and assessment
• Co-Designing and oversight of student instructional programs
• Ensuring the school drives excellent achievement outcomes and growth for all students
• Aligning academic and student support areas
• Working with the Instructional Coach & Curriculum Coordinators on each campus to ensure vertical alignment
• Being an academic presence in the school who inspires students, teachers, staff, and other community members to be their best selves
• Representing Capital City as a champion of the school
• Managing the alignment and division of resources
• Ensuring compliance with sector and state policies and legislation
• Partnering with the talent team to ensure high-quality staffing decisions and supporting the establishment of a strong talent pipeline

This position is ineligible for recurrent telework. Job duties are expected to take place in-person at Capital City.

Desired Qualifications:

Capital City is committed to finding an innovative, compassionate, and philosophically aligned leader for this important position. Specific qualifications include:

• Master’s or Doctoral degree in Education
• Demonstrated success leading an organization, supervising, and managing a team, with a minimum of five years experience as a leader, successfully meeting or exceeding organizational targets, achieving ambitious goals and driving significant impact.
• Ability to think reflectively and capture data, lessons learned and best practices, such that the Capital City model can be strengthened and enhanced. Strong data analysis skills and experience using data to improve instruction
• Deep experience inspiring, galvanizing, motivating and guiding diverse audiences while garnering their respect.
• Established commitment and demonstrated track record of improving outcomes in K-12 public education, specifically Title I schools serving students of color.
• Exceptional integrity, with the ability to stay true to one's own cause and purpose while incorporating the opinions, needs, and feedback of others.
• Clearly articulated and aligned philosophy of education with educational equity at its core
• Experience implementing and leading many of the instructional programs our school implements
• Spanish fluency strongly preferred (Capital City PCS serves a population that is 64% Latinx)