This job posting is for all individuals interested in Principal and Head of School positions in the Boston Public Schools for the 2025-2026 school year. This job posting will build a pool of strong candidates for these positions when they become available in the winter/spring of 2025. Candidates will be made aware of individual school openings once they progress through the process. School types could include autonomous, exam, technical vocational, traditional, and turnaround. This job posting only includes Principal and Head of School positions. Other administrative positions are posted individually on the BPS hiring site.

Why lead in BPS?

We are committed to our students and have a track record of success.  

As the birthplace of public education in this nation, the Boston Public Schools is committed to partnering with families and communities to transform the lives of all children through exemplary teaching and leadership. We cultivate staff who create safe, welcoming and affirming  environments, celebrate diversity and confront racism and inequities. Together, we work to develop the knowledge, skill, and character to excel in college, career and life for all learners. There are many positive indicators for the growth of opportunity for our students in Boston; student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the national report card, makes BPS the first urban district to meet their marks in both English and Math for both tested grades. In addition, our graduation rates have increased steadily, reaching their highest ever point in 2018 at 75% district-wide.

We serve a richly diverse community of students and families. 

Boston Public Schools is quickly becoming one of the most diverse school districts in the country. As a leader in BPS, you will be immersed in our rich community cultures and have the opportunity to close the opportunity gaps that persist in our city and nation. Our 46,001 students reflect Boston’s vibrant blend of cultures, representing 140 countries and speaking 80 languages. 81% of our students identify as Black, Hispanic or Asian, and 49% have a first language other than English. Our learners hold a wide variety of learning styles and have varying levels of unique needs: 23% of students have IEPs and 70% of our students qualify as economically disadvantaged. Our district takes pride in providing equitable access to opportunity for all students and families through the use of Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Practices (CLSP), and tools such as Culturally Relevant Instruction Observation Protocols (CRIOP). By leading in our district, you are a key lever in embracing our urgent and mission-driven commitment to serving and empowering all of our kids and coaching others to do their best work to close academic gaps. 

We support our leaders to learn, grow, and succeed.

Our leaders receive individualized leadership and operational support, job-embedded professional learning, and relevant support from specific departments. Additionally, all leaders take part in Professional Learning Communities of their choice and attend All Leader Professional Development, both of which are focused on different aspects of building and honing anti-racist practices grounded in Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices. New leaders are supported through a two year induction program that includes professional learning sessions, cohort support sessions and mentoring from seasoned and successful leaders in the district.  

We have a highly-supported, world-class teacher and staff community.  

As a leader in Boston Public Schools, you will be surrounded by a team that consistently assists you in supporting students and families. Our schools have multiple school-based staff supporting students throughout their school day. These teams are an integral part of the community and are supported through Central Office training and support. We are proud to cultivate a talented and dedicated teacher force. We support and develop our teachers through multiple pathways, starting with new teacher development and continuing throughout teachers’ careers.   

Who are we looking for?

Boston Public Schools Leaders are passionate about equity, furthering student achievement, providing safe spaces for students to learn and grow. They are laser-focused on closing opportunity gaps. They reflect the racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity of our students and have a strong commitment to their greater school communities and the City of Boston. They are culturally, instructionally and operationally proficient and are able to utilize and develop these competencies to best serve all students and staff in their buildings.  

What skills & attributes are we looking for?

Visionary Leadership

Our School Leaders work with their teams to develop and implement a clearly defined vision that honors and acknowledges the assets, funds of knowledge and cultural wealth of students and families. The Leader’s vision maintains a clear focus on achieving sustainable success for every student, providing access to equitable opportunities, and building a sustainable inclusive and culturally responsive school culture and environment.

Vision: Build and act on a vision that is informed, continually refined and strengthened through student and family input, student data, best practice research, and community input.

Reflection & Feedback: Reflect on their leadership behaviors and practice, seek feedback and demonstrate a willingness to hear and apply it and continuously improve.

Communications: Establish consistent, reliable, and clear communications and engagement opportunities with multiple stakeholders to reinforce the “why” behind the vision, and reflect how new initiatives and any shifts are connected to it. The school leader adapts their own messages and actions to speak to and resonate with each audience, addressing their unique questions or needs.

Prioritization of Equity: Set clear priorities that advance racial equity, think critically, and seek input in decision-making through deliberate processes that elevate the voices of the most marginalized and of those who will be most impacted by the decision.

Thoughtful Decision-Making: Stay calm and level-headed under pressure; take well-thought out, often non-traditional, decisive action to achieve desired results for students that are tangible and measurable.

Operational Excellence: Able to set and work against a strict budget, adhere to legal regulations and union workplace guidelines, manage staff, and establish systems and a schedule that best serve students and enable staff to work effectively.

Instructional Leadership

Our School Leaders take initiative to create change and implement new initiatives grounded in equity to accomplish sustainable results. They have the knowledge and experience to build, support and empower their staff to create healthy and sustaining learning environments and consistently deliver excellent and equitable instruction.

High-Quality Instructional Materials: Support and advocate for the adoption and implementation of high quality, culturally responsive and standards aligned instructional materials. Ensure the use of tools and processes that vet instructional materials and PD for bias.

Professional Development: Support the development of professional learning that is timely and relevant and equips teachers to effectively provide culturally responsive and linguistically sustaining instruction. Help prepare teachers to lead and facilitate sessions that include cognitively demanding tasks and assessments of learning.

Instructional Excellence: Monitor and ensure high quality, culturally responsive instructional practices among teachers and staff to advance learning for every student. Ensure instruction is contextualized in students’ lives, promotes academic discourse, develops students’ critical consciousness, and enables students to demonstrate learning in a variety of ways.

Cultural Competency: Model and coach educators to provide culturally sustaining instruction that incorporates research-based best practice. Provide opportunities for educators to model for and coach each other.

Use of Data: Consistently examine and use disaggregated data to support calls for change in practice or instructional approach, paying close attention to inequities and gaps for historically marginalized students.

Growth Pathways: Provide pathways and opportunities for educators to grow as instructional leaders by providing opportunities for educators to lead in all of the above.

Leadership in Equity

Our school leaders believe deeply in the potential for every student to succeed, and work tirelessly each day to create an anti-racist school environment that is built around high expectations, an inclusive and welcoming culture, and an expectation of excellence for all.

Disrupt Inequities: Take clear, swift action to disrupt inherent inequities within the school community and relentlessly pursue what is right for students, even in the face of opposition from those in power.

Passion for Students: Require all educators in the school to maintain and model a similar asset-based perspective of students and families and commitment to student learning, growth, and opportunity. Our school leaders maintain and continue to model this confidence in every student even when the students demonstrate that they struggle to believe in themselves.

Culture: Embrace all student cultures and native languages, and engage and lead others in creating opportunities for the full community to celebrate and learn from them through linguistic and culture-sustaining experiences

Awareness: Ensures regular opportunities for educators to build awareness of their own cultural identities, lenses and biases through text-based dialogue and activities that enable educators to identify, confront and disrupt biases and racism.

Confronting Racism: Actively confronts racism, stereotypes and biases and empowers the school community - educators, students, families and partners - to do the same.

Family Partnerships: Able to build authentic relationships with students, families and communities to enable learning partnerships. Support educators in establishing genuine partnership with families, intentionally learn from families, and encourage family involvement in classrooms and school. Ensure proactive and positive outreach to families and partners so that they may engage meaningfully with school in traditional and non-traditional ways.

Team Building

The school leader will purposefully recruit, select, and support an experienced, culturally competent and diverse team who can work together to ensure the success of all students in the building.

Staffing: Ensure practices that yield and retain staff that have an asset-based mindset and fervent belief in the students and families served by the school. Place staff in roles that play to their strengths and enable them to have the greatest impact on students.

Growth: Facilitate the growth of individuals through ongoing, actionable feedback and evaluation; creates and empowers educators to seek out stretch opportunities; and coaches and mentors  teachers to achieve the school mission and grow as leaders.

Collaboration: Provide space for staff to engage in collaborative work to meet their immediate needs and build their longer-term capacity through Common Planning Time, coaching, mentoring, and the development of teacher-led PLCs and other opportunities for growth and collaboration.

Feedback: Provide and support others to provide real-time personalized, actionable feedback and opportunities so staff can celebrate their wins, and identify areas where they need to improve. Hold staff members accountable to changes in their practice to best serve students.

Distributed Leadership: Practice, model, and encourage distributed and shared leadership. Provides coaching and clear pathways for others to grow into leadership roles.

Culture & Community Building

Our school leaders create and maintain a safe, supportive and sustaining  school community and an environment for learning in which all students and their families feel welcome.

Collaborative Culture: Demonstrates an ethic of care. Create and sustain a school culture of “we” vs. “I”, with partnership and collaboration for all of the adults across the building, including teachers, administrators, central office staff, paraprofessionals, custodial staff, families and partners.

Engagement: Value and harness the strengths of families through a demonstrated commitment to frequent, meaningful and authentic partnership and engagement opportunities.

Safe Space: Create a psychologically safe space for all students, families and staff, where they feel consistently heard, seen, valued and respected.

Partnerships: Proactively seek out and leverage local partners, leaders and community organizations to complement teacher expertise, inform school improvement, and provide additional resources and learning opportunities for students and teachers. Ensure partnerships are culturally competent and target supports for students who are carrying the greatest burden of inequities.

SEL: Models the principles of culturally responsive social and emotional learning through daily interactions with staff and students; coaches staff to do the same to provide students with the social and emotional support they need.

Diversity: Creates and supports the development of inclusive efforts to celebrate student culture and diversity.

Qualifications - Required:

• Masters in Education or similar field.
• Possession of a valid Massachusetts School Principal License or proof of successful completion of MA-PAL.
• For Technical/Vocational positions: Possession of valid Vocational/Technical preliminary or professional license.
• Current authorization to work in the United States—candidates must have such authorization by their first day of employment.

Qualifications - Preferred:

• Teaching and leadership experience in an urban public school setting.
• Bilingual.
• Boston resident.

Compensation & Conditions of Employment

Base pay for School Leaders is determined by school enrollment as follows:

• 0 - 300 students = $147,122
• 301 - 600 students= $148,523
• 601 - 899 students = $149,924
• 900+ students = $151,325

Leaders will also be eligible for a salary differential based on their educational attainment and, beginning in their second year of leadership, performance. Leaders of transformation schools will also be eligible for a salary differential. 

Teacher/Leaders within the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) will be compensated according to the BTU contract rather than the terms noted here. Regional School Leaders will also be compensated according to separate terms than those listed here. 

Leaders shall work a twelve (12) month calendar, from July 1 to June 30. Leaders shall be entitled to receive paid time off for all nationally recognized or local holidays reflected on the Boston Public Schools calendar. The work year shall include 183 school days (student and staff facing days) as outlined in the BPS school calendar, in addition forty (40) days that shall be worked outside of student and staff facing days.  The schedule for these days shall be agreed upon by the School Superintendent and the School Leader.

The Boston Public Schools, in accordance with its nondiscrimination policies, does not discriminate in its programs, facilities, or employment or educational opportunities on the basis of race, color, age, criminal record (inquiries only), disability, homelessness, sex/gender, gender identity, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, genetics or military status, and does not tolerate any form of retaliation, or bias-based intimidation, threat or harassment that demeans individuals’ dignity or interferes with their ability to learn or work.