Associate Director of Special Services

About the Opportunity

The Associate Director of Special Services plays a critical role in ensuring that Democracy Prep scholars with disabilities and Multilingual Learners receive high-quality, legally compliant, and academically rigorous programming across our New York schools.

Reporting to the Managing Director of Special Services, the Associate Director of Special Services provides network-level leadership, coaching, and systems support to school-based Special Services Managers (SSMs) and school leaders. The Associate Director is responsible for translating the network vision for Special Services into strong school-based practice, developing the capacity of SSMs and other leaders, monitoring implementation and compliance, identifying trends across schools, and partnering with school teams to develop sustainable systems that improve outcomes for scholars.

Associate Directors will oversee a portfolio of schools based on grade band. One Associate Director will primarily support Democracy Prep’s elementary and middle schools, while another will primarily support Democracy Prep’s high schools. Within their assigned portfolio, Associate Directors serve as the primary network-level thought partner and coach for Special Services Managers and school leaders, ensuring strong systems and practices across special education and MLL programming.

This role requires a leader who can move between strategy and execution; analyzing network and school-level data, coaching leaders, strengthening systems, ensuring compliance, and maintaining a relentless focus on the quality of services and instruction scholars experience every day.

Who You Are:

• A leader and education reformer with an unwavering commitment to the Democracy Prep mission of college success and authentic civic engagement for all scholars, especially scholars with disabilities, Multilingual Learners, and scholars requiring additional academic or behavioral support; you have an innate or highly developed ability to set a vision and motivate others toward achieving it.
• A systems-level thinker and coach who understands that sustainable improvement happens by developing the capacity of school-based leaders. You are skilled at identifying trends across classrooms and schools, determining root causes, and translating those findings into clear priorities, systems, and coaching actions.
• A data-informed leader, adept at analyzing academic, service-delivery, compliance, and student outcome data, with a strong sense of personal agency and accountability for scholars’ achievement and a belief that all scholars, including scholars with disabilities and MLLs, can and will achieve at high levels.
• A knowledgeable special education leader with a deep understanding of IDEA, New York State and New York City special education requirements, IEP development and implementation, specially designed instruction, related services, testing accommodations, inclusive practices, and the continuum of special education services.
• A leader with knowledge of effective programming and supports for Multilingual Learners, including the importance of appropriate identification, service delivery, progress monitoring, instructional supports, and collaboration between MLL and special education systems for dually identified scholars.
• An effective coach of adults who can build trusting relationships while maintaining high expectations, provide actionable feedback, facilitate difficult conversations, and support school-based leaders in strengthening their practice and systems.
• An organized manager with strong time management and follow-up skills and a demonstrated ability to take initiative, manage multiple priorities concurrently, and ensure that commitments translate into action.
• An excellent communicator, with a demonstrated ability to speak and write clearly and persuasively to school leaders, teachers, families, external partners, district representatives, and network leadership.
• A constant learner who is willing to reevaluate one’s understanding based on new information and data and who approaches complex problems with curiosity, urgency, and a solutions-oriented mindset.

Strongly Preferred: Experience managing, coaching, or developing adults and/or school-based leaders.

What You'll Do

Lead and Support a Portfolio of Schools

• Serve as the primary Special Services network leader for an assigned portfolio of Democracy Prep schools, with responsibility for either elementary and middle school programming or high school programming.
• Develop a deep understanding of the strengths, needs, and priorities of each school within your portfolio and use school- and network-level data to identify trends, establish priorities, and determine where additional support or intervention is needed.
• Partner closely with principals and other school leaders to build strong, sustainable Special Services systems that ensure scholars receive high-quality instruction, services, interventions, accommodations, and supports.
• Serve as a thought partner to school leaders on complex Special Services decisions, helping leaders balance individual scholar needs, instructional quality, staffing, programming, compliance requirements, and school-wide systems.

Coach and Develop Special Services Leaders

• Provide ongoing coaching and development to Special Services Managers and other school-based leaders responsible for special education and MLL programming.
• Build the capacity of SSMs to serve as effective instructional leaders, case-management leaders, and compliance owners at their campuses, including strengthening their ability to coach teachers and staff on specially designed instruction, differentiation, accommodations, service delivery, and effective supports for scholars with disabilities and MLLs.
• Regularly review school-level practices and data with SSMs, identify areas of strength and growth, establish clear action steps, and monitor progress toward improved implementation and scholar outcomes.
• Develop and facilitate professional development for SSMs, school leaders, teachers, and other stakeholders based on network priorities and trends identified through data, observations, compliance monitoring, and coaching.

Drive High-Quality Special Education Programming

• Serve as a champion for scholars with IEPs, ensuring that IEPs and IEP goals are central to scholars’ educational experiences and that school teams understand their responsibility for implementing each scholar’s program.
• Support schools in strengthening specially designed instruction, differentiation, intervention, progress monitoring, inclusive practices, and programming across the continuum of special education services.
• Partner with academic and school-based leaders to ensure that scholars with disabilities have meaningful access to rigorous grade-level curriculum while receiving the individualized supports necessary to make progress.
• Review academic, IEP goal, intervention, service-delivery, and other student-level data to identify trends and ensure that programming decisions are responsive to scholar needs.

Strengthen MLL Programming and Support

• Partner with school leaders and relevant network teams to support strong programming for Multilingual Learners across assigned schools.
• Support schools in establishing systems that ensure MLLs are appropriately identified, receive mandated language services and instructional supports, and have their progress regularly monitored.
• Monitor school-level MLL data and implementation trends, identify gaps or risks, and partner with school teams to develop clear action plans when programming or service delivery requires improvement.
• Support professional learning and collaboration that strengthen teachers’ and leaders’ ability to provide rigorous, accessible instruction for MLLs and dually identified scholars.

Ensure Strong Compliance Systems

• Establish and maintain strong network-level systems for monitoring special education and MLL compliance across assigned schools.
• Regularly analyze compliance data to identify individual school concerns as well as patterns and systemic trends across the portfolio.
• Support SSMs in maintaining strong systems for IEP implementation, annual reviews and reevaluations, progress reporting, related and supplementary services, testing accommodations, documentation, parent communication, and other mandated responsibilities.
• Conduct regular reviews and audits of school-level Special Services systems and documentation, communicate findings clearly, and partner with SSMs and school leaders to

Build and Improve Network Systems

• Identify patterns across schools and use those trends to recommend and implement network-level improvements to Special Services systems, tools, resources, professional development, and practices.
• Develop clear protocols, trackers, tools, and resources that allow school-based teams to effectively manage Special Services responsibilities while maintaining a focus on scholar outcomes.
• Partner cross-functionally with Academic, Operations, Talent, Data, Legal, and school leadership teams to ensure Special Services priorities are integrated into broader network systems and decision-making.
• Support the Managing Director of Special Services in establishing annual priorities, monitoring network-wide progress, and continuously strengthening Democracy Prep’s approach to serving scholars with disabilities and Multilingual Learners.
• Maintain a strong understanding of changes in federal, state, and local special education and MLL requirements and support the network in translating those requirements into clear, effective school-based practices.
• Above all, ensure that compliance, instruction, and scholar outcomes are never treated as separate bodies of work: strong Special Services systems should result in scholars receiving the services they are entitled to, teachers delivering stronger instruction, school leaders making better decisions, and scholars making meaningful academic and developmental progress.

Compensation

Salary range is $115,000 - $130,000 commensurate with your experience. Democracy Prep employees are provided with a benefits package that includes medical, vision, and dental insurance, 403B matching, parental leave, a smartphone, and a laptop.

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Democracy Prep is an Equal Opportunity Employer and will not discriminate against an applicant or employee on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, or ancestry, sex, age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, familial status, domestic violence victim status, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state or local laws, regulations or ordinances. Our mission is to educate responsible citizen-scholars who will change the world. We strongly believe that by building a DREAM team that represents numerous perspectives, backgrounds, and expertises, we can achieve this goal together. This is a value we highly support and strongly encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply.