Assistant Principal of Culture

Reports to: Principal
School: Launch Expeditionary Learning Charter School – Middle School
Position Type: Full-Time, 12-Month Leadership Position

Position Overview

The Assistant Principal of Culture is a member of the Middle School Leadership Team responsible for creating and sustaining a safe, joyful, rigorous, inclusive, and relationship-centered school culture where students are known, challenged, supported, and held to high expectations.

The Assistant Principal of Culture owns the systems, relationships, adult practices, and student experiences that shape school culture at Launch. This includes schoolwide culture systems; student behavior and accountability; restorative practices; student belonging and engagement; family and community partnership; attendance and punctuality; student celebrations and leadership; and the daily student-facing systems for arrival, dismissal, lunch, recess, transitions, hallways, bathrooms, and other shared spaces.

This leader is responsible for ensuring that culture systems work from beginning to end. The AP establishes clear expectations, develops adults to implement them consistently, monitors implementation, maintains strong documentation systems, ensures appropriate interventions and restorative responses occur, communicates with families and staff, and follows through until concerns are appropriately resolved.

A central responsibility of the role is developing the capacity of adults throughout the building to create strong classroom and schoolwide culture. Success is not defined by the AP becoming the primary responder to every student concern; it is demonstrated by strong adult practice, consistent systems, student ownership, and increasingly strong student outcomes and experiences.

In addition to schoolwide culture leadership, the Assistant Principal of Culture has full instructional and managerial responsibility for the Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities teams, including teacher development, curriculum implementation, instructional quality, and student achievement.

Schoolwide Culture & Student Experience

The Assistant Principal of Culture will:

• Own the implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement of Launch's schoolwide culture vision and expectations.
• Establish clear and consistent expectations for student behavior and adult responses across the school.
• Ensure students experience Launch as safe, predictable, joyful, inclusive, restorative, academically focused, and grounded in strong relationships.
• Maintain a highly visible and proactive presence throughout the school day.
• Develop systems that balance high expectations, accountability, relationship-building, restoration, and student dignity.
• Monitor culture across classrooms, grade levels, hallways, shared spaces, and different times of the school day.
• Identify where culture systems or adult practices are breaking down and develop clear action plans in response.
• Lead responses to significant or recurring student behavioral concerns.
• Facilitate restorative conferences, re-entry meetings, accountability conversations, and other interventions when appropriate.
• Partner with the Principal around significant student, staff, and family situations.
• Ensure students experience culture systems as clear, consistent, fair, and grounded in care.

Arrival, Dismissal, Lunch, Recess & Shared Spaces

The Assistant Principal of Culture is the primary owner of the student-facing systems and adult implementation for arrival, dismissal, lunch, recess, transitions, hallways, bathrooms, and other shared spaces.

The Assistant Principal will:

• Design, document, communicate, implement, and continuously improve arrival and dismissal systems.
• Own the daily execution of arrival and dismissal, including student movement, staff posts, supervision, expectations, routines, and accountability.
• Design and own lunch and recess systems that promote safety, joy, belonging, appropriate supervision, cleanliness, and student independence.
• Establish clear expectations and routines for transitions, hallways, stairwells, bathrooms, and other shared spaces.
• Create clear staff assignments, posts, responsibilities, and accountability structures for these systems.
• Train staff on expectations and provide coaching and feedback when implementation is inconsistent.
• Ensure staff consistently and reliably execute assigned culture responsibilities.
• Establish clear systems for coverage when staff members are absent or unavailable.
• Monitor these systems in real time and make adjustments based on student needs, culture data, staff feedback, and observed challenges.
• Develop opportunities for student leadership and ownership within shared spaces when appropriate.
• Partner closely with Operations on facilities, transportation, School Foods, safety, scheduling, and other logistical needs that support these systems.

Operations owns the operational infrastructure necessary for these systems to function. The Assistant Principal of Culture owns the student experience, culture expectations, adult implementation, supervision, routines, and accountability within these spaces.

Culture Systems, Documentation & Follow-Through

The Assistant Principal of Culture will:

• Develop, implement, maintain, and continuously improve schoolwide culture systems, routines, procedures, and expectations.
• Ensure culture systems and expectations are clearly documented, communicated, and understood by staff, students, and families.
• Create and maintain clear systems for documenting behavioral incidents, interventions, consequences, restorative responses, family communication, and follow-up.
• Ensure staff consistently and accurately use established culture documentation and referral systems.
• Regularly review and audit culture documentation for accuracy, completeness, trends, and outstanding follow-up.
• Establish clear escalation protocols and ensure staff understand how and when concerns should move through the system.
• Ensure significant student incidents receive timely and appropriate follow-up.
• Ensure consequences, interventions, and restorative responses are completed as intended.
• Establish effective re-entry processes following significant incidents or extended removals from the school community.
• Create and maintain systems for tracking students with recurring behavioral, attendance, or engagement concerns.
• Ensure interventions have clear owners, timelines, next steps, and measures of progress.
• Monitor whether agreed-upon interventions are actually happening and hold appropriate team members accountable for follow-through.
• Ensure timely family communication and appropriate documentation of communication.
• Coordinate across teachers, grade teams, student support staff, families, and leadership so students do not fall through the cracks.
• Maintain accurate records necessary for student support, accountability, family communication, and compliance.

Adult Development & Accountability

A central responsibility of the Assistant Principal of Culture is building the capacity of adults to create and sustain strong culture.

The Assistant Principal will:

• Conduct regular classroom and schoolwide culture walkthroughs.
• Provide timely, specific, and actionable feedback to teachers and staff.
• Coach teachers who need additional support with classroom management, student relationships, routines, engagement, or implementation of schoolwide expectations.
• Model effective culture practices and create opportunities for teachers to practice and receive feedback.
• Lead professional development related to classroom culture, management, restorative practices, student relationships, routines, and identified schoolwide needs.
• Support teachers in developing proactive classroom culture plans.
• Identify patterns in adult practice contributing to recurring culture challenges.
• Hold adults accountable for consistently implementing agreed-upon schoolwide culture systems.
• Differentiate between student-specific concerns, system-level concerns, and adult-practice concerns and respond accordingly.
• Partner with the Principal when patterns in adult practice require additional coaching, accountability, or formal intervention.

Success in this area is demonstrated not simply by the AP's ability to manage students, but by the increased capacity of adults throughout the building to create and maintain a strong culture.

Grade-Level Culture & Student Support

The Assistant Principal of Culture will:

• Partner with and develop Grade Level Chairs as leaders of grade-level culture.
• Monitor grade-level culture, attendance, punctuality, engagement, and belonging trends.
• Establish structures for grade teams to identify and problem-solve around students requiring additional support.
• Ensure student interventions have clear owners, timelines, next steps, and measures of success.
• Monitor whether agreed-upon interventions are implemented and determine whether they are effective.
• Partner with counselors, social workers, special education staff, restorative justice staff, and other student support personnel around students requiring more intensive intervention.
• Help grade teams identify root causes rather than repeatedly responding to individual incidents.
• Ensure grade-level practices remain aligned with schoolwide expectations.

Attendance, Punctuality & Student Engagement

The Assistant Principal of Culture will:

• Own the Middle School strategy for improving student attendance, punctuality, and engagement.
• Monitor chronic absenteeism, lateness, and student engagement trends.
• Establish systems for identifying students requiring additional support.
• Partner with families, grade teams, Operations, and student support staff to understand and address barriers to attendance and engagement.
• Ensure attendance interventions are documented, assigned, implemented, and followed through.
• Monitor whether interventions are producing improved student outcomes.
• Identify connections among attendance, academic performance, behavior, belonging, and engagement.
• Develop targeted interventions in response to persistent patterns.
• Create systems for recognizing and celebrating improved and strong attendance and punctuality.

Family & Community Partnership

The Assistant Principal of Culture owns the Middle School's approach to family partnership as a core component of strong school culture.

The Assistant Principal will:

• Develop and implement a coherent strategy for building strong, trusting relationships between Launch and its families.
• Ensure families experience Launch as welcoming, responsive, respectful, transparent, and partnership-oriented.
• Build authentic relationships with families beyond moments of student concern, discipline, or crisis.
• Create regular opportunities for families to connect with school leaders, teachers, one another, and the broader Launch community.
• Develop and lead family-facing culture events, workshops, celebrations, community-building opportunities, and engagement experiences.
• Establish systems for proactive family outreach rather than relying primarily on reactive communication.
• Ensure families receive timely and clear communication regarding significant or recurring student concerns.
• Establish expectations for documenting family outreach and follow-up.
• Facilitate family conferences when leadership involvement is necessary.
• Lead restorative meetings involving students, staff, and families when appropriate.
• Partner with families to develop student accountability and support plans.
• Ensure commitments and next steps established during family meetings are documented and followed through.
• Gather family feedback and use it to improve culture systems and the overall student and family experience.
• Identify families who may be disconnected from the school community and develop strategies for stronger engagement.
• Collaborate with Operations, Communications, Student Support, and other teams while retaining ownership of relationship-building and family culture.

Student Voice, Leadership, Joy & Belonging

The Assistant Principal of Culture will:

• Develop meaningful opportunities for student voice, agency, and leadership.
• Gather and respond to student feedback about their school experience.
• Develop systems that strengthen belonging, relationships, school pride, and connection.
• Own or oversee schoolwide culture-related celebrations, assemblies, recognition systems, incentives, traditions, spirit weeks, and community-building experiences.
• Ensure recognition systems celebrate growth, academic achievement, leadership, contribution, attendance, and Launch's Habits of Responsibility.
• Develop student leadership structures that allow students to meaningfully contribute to their school community.
• Partner with staff to create developmentally appropriate opportunities for joy and connection.
• Ensure culture events and experiences reinforce Launch's values and contribute to a coherent student experience.

Culture Data & Continuous Improvement

The Assistant Principal of Culture will:

• Establish regular cycles for reviewing culture, attendance, punctuality, engagement, and belonging data.
• Analyze trends across students, classrooms, grade levels, teachers, locations, times of day, and types of incidents.
• Analyze arrival, dismissal, lunch, recess, transition, and shared-space trends to identify system-level challenges.
• Identify students requiring additional intervention and ensure appropriate plans are developed and monitored.
• Identify schoolwide and grade-level trends requiring changes to systems or adult practice.
• Develop action plans in response to identified trends.
• Monitor the effectiveness of interventions and adjust strategies when needed.
• Gather and analyze student and family feedback.
• Regularly communicate culture trends, progress, areas of concern, and recommended next steps to the Principal and Leadership Team.
• Use data to recognize progress and celebrate improvements in student and adult practice.

Social Studies & Multi-Subject Humanities Instructional Leadership

In addition to schoolwide culture leadership, the Assistant Principal of Culture has full instructional and managerial responsibility for the Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities teams.

The Assistant Principal will:

• Directly manage, coach, develop, and evaluate Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities teachers.
• Conduct regular observations and provide timely, specific, and actionable instructional feedback.
• Own the quality of teaching and learning across Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities.
• Ensure strong implementation of the school's adopted curricula and instructional expectations.
• Ensure instruction aligns with the Launch Way Instructional Framework, schoolwide instructional priorities, and grade-level expectations.
• Monitor student work, assessment results, and other measures of student learning.
• Support teachers in planning rigorous, engaging, culturally responsive, standards-aligned, and appropriately differentiated instruction.
• Ensure students with disabilities and multilingual learners have meaningful access to grade-level content and appropriate supports.
• Lead Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities team meetings, professional learning, collaborative planning, curriculum implementation, and data analysis.
• Develop and monitor instructional action plans in response to student achievement and implementation data.
• Hold teachers accountable for instructional quality, planning, curriculum implementation, student engagement, and student outcomes.
• Develop the instructional capacity of Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities teachers through observation, coaching, modeling, feedback, and professional learning.
• Partner with Special Education and other instructional leaders to ensure Multi-Subject Humanities programming meets students' academic and developmental needs.
• Ensure strong coordination among teachers and service providers supporting students within Multi-Subject Humanities.
• Collaborate with the Principal and Director of Student Achievement & Professional Learning on schoolwide academic priorities.
• Own teacher development and student achievement outcomes across Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities.

Crew

For the 2026–27 school year, the Principal retains primary leadership of Crew, including its vision, curriculum, expectations, connection to the Habits of Responsibility, and alignment to Student-Led Conferences and Passages.

The Assistant Principal of Culture will partner with the Principal to strengthen the connection between Crew and schoolwide culture.

This includes:

• Participating in Crew walkthroughs.
• Identifying trends related to belonging, relationships, facilitation, and culture.
• Supporting Crew leaders with culture and facilitation.
• Ensuring schoolwide culture systems reinforce the relationships, accountability, belonging, and Habits of Responsibility developed through Crew.
• Helping connect student leadership, culture celebrations, and family partnership to the broader Crew experience when appropriate.

Leadership Team Responsibilities

As a member of the Middle School Leadership Team, the Assistant Principal of Culture will:

• Serve as a schoolwide leader and strategic thought partner to the Principal.
• Participate actively in Leadership Team meetings, strategic planning, and schoolwide decision-making.
• Bring culture, attendance, engagement, family partnership, Social Studies, and Multi-Subject Humanities data to leadership discussions.
• Develop and monitor goals related to assigned areas of responsibility.
• Collaborate closely with the Principal, Director of Student Achievement & Professional Learning, Operations leadership, Student Support, and other key staff.
• Communicate challenges early and bring proposed solutions.
• Maintain strong systems for project management, documentation, communication, and follow-through.
• Take ownership of commitments and ensure work moves from identification through completion.
• Support schoolwide priorities beyond immediate areas of responsibility when needed.
• Assume additional school leadership responsibilities in the Principal's absence as assigned.
• Model Launch's expectations for professionalism, accountability, collaboration, care, and continuous learning.

Qualifications

Strong candidates will demonstrate:

• A track record of creating strong, joyful, academically focused classroom and/or school culture.
• Significant experience as a highly effective classroom teacher, preferably at the middle school level.
• Experience managing, coaching, developing, and evaluating teachers.
• Strong instructional leadership skills.
• Experience teaching, coaching, or leading Social Studies and/or Multi-Subject Humanities strongly preferred.
• Experience designing, implementing, or managing schoolwide culture and student support systems.
• Strong knowledge of restorative and relationship-centered practices.
• Demonstrated ability to build strong, trusting partnerships with students and families.
• Experience developing student leadership, belonging, and engagement.
• Demonstrated ability to build effective systems and ensure consistent implementation.
• Exceptional organization, documentation, project management, and follow-through.
• Ability to analyze academic, culture, attendance, behavioral, and engagement data and translate findings into action.
• Ability to balance care, empathy, accountability, and high expectations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to navigate complex student, staff, and family situations with sound judgment.
• Deep commitment to educational equity and rigorous learning for all students.
• School leadership experience strongly preferred.
• Master's degree and appropriate New York State school leadership certification preferred or required in accordance with Launch expectations.

Measures of Success

Success in the Assistant Principal of Culture role will be demonstrated by:

• A safe, joyful, rigorous, relationship-centered, and academically focused school culture.
• Clear, documented, and consistently implemented schoolwide culture systems.
• Smooth, predictable, safe, and well-supervised arrival and dismissal systems.
• Strong lunch and recess culture characterized by clear routines, appropriate supervision, belonging, and joy.
• Efficient, calm, and consistent transitions and shared-space routines.
• Timely and consistent documentation and follow-through on student concerns and interventions.
• Clear accountability for who owns next steps when students require additional support.
• Reduction in recurring behavioral concerns and preventable culture incidents.
• Increased consistency in culture expectations across classrooms and grade levels.
• Increased teacher capacity to manage classrooms and respond effectively to student needs.
• Decreased reliance on administrators to resolve routine classroom behavior.
• Improved student attendance, punctuality, engagement, and belonging.
• Strong family trust, communication, participation, and partnership with the school.
• Increased student voice, leadership, recognition, joy, and connection to the school community.
• Evidence that culture, attendance, and engagement data are routinely analyzed and used to improve systems and adult practice.
• Strong Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities curriculum implementation and instructional quality.
• Measurable growth in Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities teacher practice and student achievement.
• Consistent evidence of strong ownership, organization, documentation, accountability, and follow-through from problem identification through resolution.