Assistant Principal of Culture

About the Role

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. This role owns the systems, relationships, adult practices, and student experiences that shape school culture at Launch, including 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 daily student-facing systems for arrival, dismissal, lunch, recess, transitions, hallways, bathrooms, and other shared spaces.

This leader ensures culture systems work from beginning to end by establishing clear expectations, developing adults to implement them consistently, monitoring implementation, maintaining strong documentation systems, ensuring appropriate interventions and restorative responses, communicating with families and staff, and following through until concerns are resolved. The role also includes full instructional and managerial responsibility for the Social Studies and Multi-Subject Humanities teams, including teacher development, curriculum implementation, instructional quality, and student achievement.

Responsibilities

Schoolwide Culture & Student Experience

• 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

• 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.

Culture Systems, Documentation & Follow-Through

• 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

• 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.

Grade-Level Culture & Student Support

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Develop meaningful opportunities for student voice, agency, and leadership.
• Gather and respond to student feedback about their school experience.

Position Type

Full-Time, 12-Month Leadership Position