Charter School Operations Rubric Pack

Everyone on your staff chart gets evaluated. Only some of them have a rubric.

Every person on your staff chart deserves to know what strong performance looks like in their role. The Charter School Operations Rubric Pack is a set of twelve performance rubrics for the school staff who are not teachers and not principals, along with the scoring expectations that help two managers arrive at the same score for the same person.

Schools have had rubrics for teachers and principals for a long time. For the people who run the front office, the finance office, the kitchen, the building, and the athletics program, role descriptions and rubrics tend to be far less available and far less accessible. Growth MindED built this pack to fill that gap, so that every staff member on the chart has the same clarity their teaching colleagues already have, and so that every manager has something specific to coach toward.

Each rubric is organized into sections. Each section contains a set of written expectations. Every expectation is described at all five score levels, from Ineffective through Highly Effective, so a staff member can read the rubric in August and know what strong performance looks like in their role.

HOW THIS SAVES YOU TIME

Writing twelve rubrics from scratch takes a leader three to four weeks. This pack gives you that time back on the day you download it, and it gives every operations staff member a full year of clear expectations to work from.

SCORING EXPECTATIONS (AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW BEFORE PURCHASE)

These are the expectations a manager follows when turning individual scores into a section score.

• The score that appears most often across a section becomes the score for that section.
• When two scores appear the same number of times, the manager records the lower of the two, unless the manager writes down the evidence that supports the higher one.
• When two or more expectations in a section are scored at the lowest level, that section cannot be scored higher than Minimally Effective.
• When two or more expectations in a section are scored at Minimally Effective or below, that section cannot be scored higher than Developing.
• Every score is supported by evidence from at least two separate occasions. A single incident, however vivid, is not a pattern.
• A score of Highly Effective means reliable performance plus exactly one of three things: the staff member anticipates a problem before it arrives, improves a process so the result continues without them, or teaches someone else to do the work. When a manager cannot point to one of those three, the score is Effective. Effective is the expectation, not a disappointment.
• The expectations also carry two additional columns that explain why a staff member would receive one score and not another. When someone asks how a score was decided, the answer is already written down.

Growth MindED publishes these expectations here so that you can see exactly how the scoring works before you make a decision. Though some systems share their scoring expectations after the sale, inside a handbook, at Growth MindED we publish them up front, because a manager who can explain how a score was reached is a manager whose staff member understands the score.

THE TWELVE ROLES

The pack includes one rubric for each of the following twelve roles: Director of School Operations, Chief Financial Officer, Dean of Students, Special Education Coordinator, School Registrar, Enrollment Specialist, Afterschool Program Coordinator, School Office Manager, School Food Service Worker, Athletic Director, Custodian, and Facilities Manager.

WHAT IS IN THE 18 FILES

• Twelve rubrics, one for each role listed above. All twelve are built the same way, so only the role-specific section changes from one rubric to the next.
• 289 written expectations in total, each one described at all five score levels.
• The scoring guide, which explains how individual scores become a section score, how evidence is gathered, and what a manager confirms before recording a score of Highly Effective.
• A scoring calculator that opens in any web browser and does the arithmetic for the manager. There is nothing to install, no account to create, and it works without an internet connection. It also prints.
• A one page guide to the culture expectation that is left open on purpose, with one example filled in completely so a leader can see the shape of a finished one.
• A rollout guide that includes six questions about who owns each part of the process, a suggested eight week start, and a second set of score labels for schools that use different words than these.
• A one page memo that a staff member can forward to whoever holds the budget.
• Read Me First, which walks a manager from opening the folder to completing a practice score in about thirty minutes.

WHY THIS PACK

You have already read the scoring expectations. They are published above, before you spend anything. Though some rubrics give a manager five columns of descriptions and leave the arithmetic to be worked out locally, at Growth MindED we publish the arithmetic, because two managers looking at the same staff member should arrive at the same score.

It covers the people who open the building. The published evaluation systems available today cover counselors, nurses, psychologists, and librarians. This pack covers the front office, the finance office, the kitchen, the athletics program, and the facilities team, and it uses one structure across all twelve roles so that a network can run the same process for everyone.

It allows you to include your school specific values. Every rubric leaves one expectation in the culture section open on purpose, because a rubric carrying somebody else's values reads as borrowed. The guide for writing your own is included, along with one worked example.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Twelve roles for $199 comes to about seventeen dollars a role, one time, and building the same twelve internally takes three to four weeks of a leader's time.

The pack is written for charter schools and charter networks, where these roles sit inside the school building. Of fifteen recent postings for Director of School Operations, thirteen were charter networks. Districts often divide the same work between a central business office and building staff, so each rubric lists the district equivalent titles inside it.

If a role you supervise is not among the twelve, take the closest rubric and replace its role-specific section. Everything else carries over, because the shared sections were written to work across the whole staff chart.

This is usually purchased by a head of school, an executive director, a chief of schools, or a director of operations. A principal is often the person who wants it first, which is why the forwardable memo is included.

DELIVERY AND LICENSE

The price is $199 for one school site or one person. Delivery is an instant download, and purchase orders are accepted. Growth MindED Consulting licenses the pack to the one person or the one school site named on your receipt. You are welcome to edit it, brand it, and use it with your own staff. Please do not resell it, redistribute it, or post it to a shared drive beyond the licensed users. Licenses covering more than one school are available.

ONE CAUTION

This pack is a tool, not a policy. The rubrics describe performance. They do not decide pay, renewal, or termination. Please talk with your HR lead or your attorney before any score contributes to an employment decision, particularly where a collective bargaining agreement is in place.