About the role
Davis School Chicago is a proudly Jewish, college-preparatory high school opening in fall 2027 in downtown Chicago, in a state-of-the-art building at the heart of a great city for learning. Every adult at Davis is an educator and a culture-builder, held to two expectations at once: deep human warmth and uncompromising intellectual excellence. Davis is hiring a founding Principal — the day-to-day leader of the school's people, culture, classrooms, and results, reporting to the Head of School. The role stands on three domains of equal weight: the public leader, the instructional leader, and the manager of students, parents, and faculty. A senior financial leader owns finance and business operations and the Head of School owns fundraising and the board, so the Principal can focus deeply on academics.
Responsibilities:
• Serve as the school's primary public leader for students, families, and faculty, and the voice of its daily life at assemblies, celebrations, and milestones
• Build a warm, safe, high-expectations culture, and guard a high-trust, high-candor adult culture
• Own the instructional core: be highly present in classrooms, coach teachers through observation and feedback, and run data-informed cycles of improvement
• Lead curriculum design, interdisciplinary innovation, assessment systems, and accreditation work; monitor achievement and college placement outcomes
• Recruit, develop, coach, evaluate, and retain exceptional educators
• Build the systems, routines, traditions, and student-support structures of a new school, and lead day-to-day educational operations
• Navigate conflict with a steady, fair hand across three constituencies: adolescents, deeply invested parents, and experienced professionals
