Director, PreK-12 Education Programs

 About the Role

The Director, PreK-12 Education Programs leads SchoolHouse Connection’s (SHC) practical assistance work to improve the identification, enrollment, attendance, and educational success of children and youth experiencing homelessness. This is a new position for a senior professional supporting a high-performing team and ensuring high-quality, impactful practical assistance nationwide.

You will guide a talented team that delivers training, responds to complex questions from the field, advises state and local educational agencies on implementation, and produces clear resources that translate policy into real-world solutions.

What You’ll Do

1) Lead a high-performing team. 

• Lead and support a high-performing team of three senior managers and contractors.
• Set clear goals, roles, and expectations; coach for excellence; and strengthen team systems that enable timely, high-quality delivery.
• Build consistent workflows for prioritizing requests, tracking deliverables, ensuring quality control, and meeting deadlines.
• Use data and feedback to drive continuous improvement, learning, and impact across all practical assistance work.

2) Oversee high-quality practical assistance and professional learning.

• Oversee SHC’s PreK-12 practical assistance strategy and delivery to support strong and impactful implementation of the McKinney-Vento Act nationwide.
• Ensure high-quality professional learning, including:
  • Interactive in-person and virtual trainings
  • State and regional conferences with action planning
  • Agency-level advising and implementation support for SEAs and LEAs
  • Clear, actionable resources for educators, administrators, families, and youth
• Ensure accurate, timely, practical responses to inquiries about students’ legal rights and school practices, including identifying trends and translating them into guidance and training.

3) Build and maintain partnerships. 

• Build and maintain strong relationships with national and state partners, including the U.S. Department of Education’s technical assistance center (National Center for Homeless Education).
• Collaborate across SHC teams (early childhood, higher education, state and federal policy, research and evaluation, strategic communications, and Youth Leadership & Scholarships) to support aligned systems and solutions.
• Manage fee-for-service projects in partnership with senior leadership.
• Contribute to funding proposals and reports that sustain and expand this work.

What We’re Looking For

You are a strong people leader and manager who can run complex work with high standards, and you are also a skilled practical assistance leader who can translate policy into practice across diverse contexts.

Required experience and knowledge

• At least seven years of supervisory experience leading teams and managing complex, multi-stakeholder projects.
• Strong understanding of how state and local educational agencies operate in practice, including the realities of implementation.
• Demonstrated experience designing, delivering, and overseeing high-quality, impactful technical assistance and professional learning that leads to improved practice and student outcomes, including presentations, facilitation, coaching, inquiry response systems, and advising agencies on implementation.
• McKinney-Vento expertise that is either:
  • Deep and demonstrated through substantial responsibility applying the law to real-world situations across settings, or
  • Rapidly attainable, if you bring strong experience practically applying laws and policies, strong judgment in ambiguous situations, and experience working with vulnerable student populations.

Preferred experience and knowledge

• Experience working across diverse settings, such as national, regional, SEA, and multiple LEAs.
• Experience developing resources that are clear, practical, and usable by busy practitioners.
• Experience convening educators and cross-system partners to improve practice and outcomes.

Key strengths for success

• Exceptional people leadership: coaching, accountability, clarity, and team culture.
• Excellent project management: prioritization, timelines, delegation, quality control, and follow-through.
• Ability to identify patterns across diverse geographies and translate field experience into national strategy and tools.
• Strong writing and editing skills, including editing the work of others to produce high-quality resources.
• Dynamic public speaking and facilitation skills.
• Relationship-builder who earns trust across systems.
• Calm, solutions-oriented leader who maintains high standards in a fast-paced environment.

Who Should Apply

This role is a strong fit if you have led a team, owned complex deliverables across partners, and have a track record of improving quality and consistency in practical assistance and professional learning. You do not need to have held a national role previously, but you should have experience that translates beyond a single local context.

Because this is a senior leadership and multi-context technical assistance role, we cannot consider applicants who lack any of the elements listed under “Required experience and knowledge” listed above, or applicants:

• Whose experience is limited primarily to a single McKinney-Vento role in a single district or agency, without broader responsibility for leading teams and managing complex cross-stakeholder work.
• Whose professional learning experience is limited to delivering trainings that the applicant did not design or oversee, or is limited to one local setting without adapting content across diverse contexts.
• Who are seeking a role that is mainly direct service, individual case support, or a single-program portfolio without significant people and project management responsibility.

Why Join SchoolHouse Connection?

At SHC, your work directly supports the educators and systems serving children and youth who face some of the greatest barriers to educational success. You’ll join a collaborative team at the nation’s leading organization focused on educational opportunities for children and youth experiencing homelessness.

Equal Opportunity

SchoolHouse Connection provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, medical condition, genetics, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state and local laws. Upon request, reasonable accommodations in the application process will be provided to individuals with disabilities.

Application Guidelines

Applications are accepted only via the form provided here. Please do not contact SchoolHouse Connection directly about the position.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.