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About the Fellowship
The Building Excellent Schools Fellowship is a rigorous, yearlong, full-time training program in urban charter school creation and leadership. All Fellows are paid an $80,000 professional stipend to focus on one goal: founding and leading a results-focused, mission-driven, high-achieving urban charter school. After the Fellowship, Building Excellent Schools Fellows receive additional support and coaching as they guide their schools successfully through start-up and early operations.
Get the Training: Through 85 training days, an extended leadership residency in a high-performing urban charter school, 20 to 30 school visits and structured work in your home territory, we teach you the essential practices to ensure your students succeed. The culmination of the Fellowship year is the submission of a well-written, thoroughly researched charter application that reflects the best practices in urban school design.
Take the Lead: Schools founded by Building Excellent Schools Fellows are free-standing, locally controlled, and independent of any management organization. As a Fellow, you become the lead founder of a charter school in your proposed territory. You choose the community; you develop the board; you engage stakeholder support; you make critical design decisions when writing the application. Most importantly, you build an independently managed school that you will lead once it opens.
Get the Support: As a Building Excellent Schools Fellow, your full-time job is to design, build, and lead your charter school. After your charter is approved, Building Excellent Schools supports your school through its opening through Follow-On Support.
Common Beliefs and Selection Criteria
Building Excellent Schools Fellows share common beliefs far more than they share common experiences. Our Fellows represent a vast range of professional experience including education, business, law, and public administration. Classroom experience is not a pre-requisite for participation in the Fellowship. However, a bachelor's degree is required. Ultimately, Building Excellent Schools is looking for high-capacity individuals deeply committed to fundamentally changing urban education.
Building Excellent Schools Fellows have:
An absolute belief that academic achievement drives everything:
- Leadership
- School design
- School culture
- Governance
A track record of exceptional impact:
- In their professional pursuits - business, law and/or education
- In their communities
Building Excellent Schools Fellows are:
- High-capacity: Strong communicators, strategic thinkers, highly flexible and urgent.
- Relentless achievers: They get the job done, no matter what.
- Humble: Always willing to learn.
- Demanding of themselves and others: Good is not good enough; only great will suffice.
Charter Application
The culmination of the Fellowship year is the submission of a well-written, thoroughly researched charter application that reflects the best practices in urban school design. Ultimately this application will not be the reflection of a solely individual effort. A successful Fellow will have built a Founding Board of seven to 11 equally committed people from a variety of backgrounds who fully support and believe in the proposal and pledge to receive the charter and usher the school through its first years. The Fellow will also have made real community connections in the territory in which he or she intends to found their school, ensuring that their effort is seen as integral to the community’s future. The school’s status as free-standing, locally controlled, and independent only affirms these connections.
Territories
For the 2010-2011 Fellowship, we welcome applicants who wish to start charter schools in:
- CALIFORNIA: Bay Area and Los Angeles
- MISSOURI: St. Louis
- COLORADO: Denver
- NEW YORK: New York City
- NEW JERSEY: Newark
- MASSACHUSETTS: Boston (pending current legislation); Brockton; Quincy; Randolph; Worcester and others
- TENNESSEE: Memphis, Nashville
- NATIONAL FELLOW: Additional Locations
Apply to the Fellowship
Application Deadlines for the 2010 BES Fellowship:
November 15, 2009, February 15, 2010 and May 15, 2010
We are offering a $5,000 "finder's fee" to eligible individuals* who nominate Fellow candidate-applicants who successfully enroll in the Building Excellent Schools Fellowship beginning in September 2010.
Selection Process
1) Application and Resume Review: Applicants complete Steps 1-3 of the Fellowship Application. Review of the Fellowship Application will begin once all three steps have been completed. Applicants will of hear of their initial application status within 10-14 days of submitting a completed Fellowship Application via email or phone.
2) Applicant Phone Interviews: Selected applicants will be invited to participate in a series of phone interviews with members of the Fellowship selection team.
3) In-Person Interview: Selected applicants will be invited to participate in a rigorous in person interview with members of the Fellowship selection team.
4) Reference Checks and Fellowship Invitations: Invitations to the Fellowship are extended to selected applicants.
*Any person who supplies Building Excellent Schools with a direct referral to a candidate that they are willing to personally or professional vouch for in a written statement. Employees of Building Excellent Schools, any college or university career services office, charter school association, or executive placement services are not eligible.