Does Building Excellent Schools seek only Fellowship candidates who have been teachers or educators?
No. While experience and expertise in the classroom is helpful, there is so much more involved in designing and building a charter school of excellence. Building Excellent Schools seeks candidates who have depth of experience in a variety of areas, including organizing, public policy, school administration, project management, and strategic planning. The Fellowship focuses on areas — developing a practice-based educational program, building school support through community outreach and development, and founding a viable nonprofit organization — that represent the three essential components of a school founding process. Deep knowledge in each of these three disciplines is helpful, but it is also rare. Successful Fellowship candidates typically have a breadth of experience in one discipline; the Fellowship’s curriculum (PDF) provides support to round out their capacity in the other two. Building Excellent Schools seeks candidates with a variety of experiences because the Fellowship is as
