The Chicago High School for the Arts seeks a Principal in the Administrative department for the 2025 - 2026 school year.
Job Identification:
Title: High School Principal
Department: Administration
Classification: Full-Time
General Summary:
We are ChiArts. Chicago's first public arts high school. The Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts®) develops the next generation of diverse, artistically promising scholar-artists through intensive pre-professional training in the arts, combined with a comprehensive college preparatory curriculum. Over 2,500 hours of tuition-free, pre-professional arts training is provided to every scholar-artist from freshman year to graduation. Our alumni are pioneers – as scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, and change-makers, and from millions of plays on Spotify, to touring with a dance company, to published writing, to making art that challenges and entertains us on stage and screen, they are blazing new pathways.
Position Summary
The ChiArts Principal will lead as a creator, innovator, collaborator, motivator, and builder of confidence and trust; embodying the vision, disposition, and skills to work together with staff to foster a school culture of excellence, ensure educator effectiveness and cultivate collaborative objectives between the Arts and Academics. ChiArts’ Principal will galvanize staff under dynamic leadership goals, foster a robust professional learning community, and contribute to the build-out of school-wide strategic initiatives.
Strategic leadership
- Works collaboratively and flexibly to support and improve systems and decision-making processes that strengthen outcomes.
- Creates, strengthens, and maintains academic and cultural systems and procedures.
- Works collaboratively to improve academic and cultural systems and procedures that need improvement across stakeholders.
- Advances the vision, mission, and values of the school in concert with the Executive Director, Artistic Director, and School Board of Directors.
Data-Informed leadership
- Reviews student learning data from a whole-school perspective from Star 360, ACCESS, and previous College Board assessments to inform follow-up and response to student learning needs.
- Ensures teachers use multiple sources of student learning data during common planning, classroom observations, and observation debriefings, and holds teachers accountable for knowing how their students are progressing.
- Facilitates regular meetings with the grade level and department leads and ILT to build a data-informed culture that seeks continuous improvement.
- Collaborates with MTSS coordinator on the implementation and roll out of MTSS program
- Holds teachers accountable for knowing how their students are progressing
- Ensures teachers are using multiple sources of student learning data during common planning, classroom observations, and observation debriefings
- Creates and strengthens a data-informed culture that relentlessly seeks continuous improvement
Instructional Program
- Oversees the instructional program of the school, ensuring its development, delivery, assessment, and college readiness standards across grades.
- Regularly reviews the effectiveness of instructional strategies, and works to implement or improve current professional development practices
- Collaborates with the case manager, ELPT, and MTSS coordinator to ensure they have the necessary support and guidance for our DL, ML, and high-needs students.
- Manages academic financial, operational, and personnel resources to support optimal instruction.
- Responsible for the overall instructional program of the school, its development, delivery, assessment, and college readiness standards across grades
Scholar-Artist Behavioral Expectations
- Implements structures to teach and reinforce behaviors in collaboration with the Dean of Students.
- Develops the school’s capacity to respond to student’s behavioral and social-emotional needs in developmentally appropriate ways.
- Monitors data to ensure that no child is invisible and that every student has access to supports within and beyond the school.
Effective Teaming
- Establishes, manages, and develops strong teams that collaborate, communicate, and work together for ChiArts students and its community
- Builds systems for distributed leadership through which members of the instructional leadership team manages specific initiatives and grade-level teams or departments
- Develops a clear plan for adult learning across the school that aligns areas for whole-school improvement, teacher team areas of focus, and individual development priorities
Equity-Centered Leadership
- Possesses experience working directly with staff and students from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and LGTBQ+ communities, as well as, the understanding the need for equitable practices in all classrooms and spaces
Parent/Community Engagement
- Puts structures and processes in place to consistently partner with stakeholders, including staff, families, and students, to inform and adjust strategies.
Personal Leadership
- Demonstrates personal resolve and maintains core confidence and belief in self and the school even in the face of adversity.
- Continuously reflects on performance, seeks feedback, and actively pursues opportunities to improve personal leadership and the school.
- Inspires a schoolwide sense of positivism and possibility.
Reporting Relationship
- The ChiArts Principal reports to the Executive Director and supervises academic and student support school staff members.
- Responsible for employees including the school’s Assistant Principal, Counselors, Case Manager, and Dean of Students. Supports the Artistic Director and Director of Operations.
Other Duties
- Complete other duties/projects as assigned
