Middle Grades Principal

Our starting point is community. Westside Atlanta Charter School (WACS) was established by neighbors, individuals, and families living on Atlanta’s Westside who sought to increase educational equity in a growing part of the city. Educators, parents, and community members developed a vision for an innovative public charter school serving a diverse community. Westside opened in August 2013 with students in grades K–2 and expanded grade by grade to become a K–8 school.

Westside fosters a diverse, tight-knit community of lifelong learners, giving each child an excellent academic experience that builds curiosity, critical thinking, and character. Our work is grounded in holistic growth, curious minds, community belonging, and academic excellence. To learn more about Westside Atlanta Charter School, please visit the school’s website.

Westside Atlanta Charter School seeks an innovative, student-centered Middle School Principal to lead grades 5–8. This leader will shape a rigorous and supportive middle school experience that prepares students for success in high school and beyond. The Principal will understand the academic, social, emotional, and developmental needs of adolescents and create a school environment where students are known, challenged, supported, and empowered to take increasing ownership of their learning.

The Middle School Principal will lead high-quality, standards-based instruction; strengthen literacy and mathematics across content areas; use assessment and student-support data to guide decisions; and develop teachers and staff through clear expectations, feedback, coaching, and professional learning. The Principal will foster a culture of belonging, curiosity, character, student voice, and academic excellence while building strong partnerships with families and the broader Westside community.

This is an opportunity to lead a collaborative team, support students through a critical stage of development, and ensure that every student is prepared for the next stage of their educational journey.

Key responsibilities of the Middle School Principal include:

• Create a safe, inclusive, and affirming environment in which students in grades 5–8 feel known, respected, challenged, and supported.

• Establish consistent expectations for attendance, punctuality, behavior, academic effort, integrity, and student responsibility, using developmentally appropriate and restorative approaches.

• Promote student voice, agency, leadership, collaboration, and positive peer relationships while helping students navigate the social and emotional transitions of adolescence.

• Model the belief that every student can achieve at high levels and ensure that instructional and operational decisions prioritize student learning, well-being, and growth.

• Build a culture aligned with Westside’s values of holistic growth, curious minds, community belonging, and academic excellence.

• Lead implementation of a coherent, rigorous, standards-based instructional program across grades 5–8, aligned with Westside’s mission, instructional priorities, and curriculum.

• Support strong content-area instruction and collaboration among teachers, including interdisciplinary planning and consistent expectations for high-quality student work.

• Strengthen literacy across the curriculum, including explicit attention to reading comprehension, vocabulary, writing, and the continued development of disciplinary literacy; support effective mathematics instruction and conceptual understanding.

• Conduct classroom observations and learning walks; provide actionable feedback, coaching, and follow-up that improve teaching…