Are you fulfilling your destiny? Are you looking for a place where you can find purpose behind what you do every day? Do you love variety, problem-solving, working with data, and being a people leader?

Our Mission

At Higher Ground Education, we're driven by a deep desire to bring about widespread change in education today. We believe that the traditional method of education used in most schools is antiquated, outdated, and broken. To meet the needs of today's students and to bring about true progress in the world around us, we need an education model that fosters independence and develops competent, capable, action-oriented critical thinkers.

Higher Ground is bringing on District Manager(s) to shape, support, and systematize its rapidly growing network of schools. This is a critical role on our team. Our network of Montessori Schools (95 locations and counting with 2,600 staff) is in hyper-growth mode (40 more new schools this year), and our suite of digital education offerings (ranging from Virtual School to a Learning Management SaaS platform engineered in-house) is scaling up. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, we have a track record of 50% growth.

More than ever before, we need strong leaders who are both a big-picture thinkers capable of surveying our vast landscape of operational complexity, and hands-on doers with the skills to quickly solve problems and scale practical, effective systems – for children, staff, and parents alike. If you’re excited about working in an entrepreneurial environment and being the key quarterback for a region of schools that enable widespread change in education, this role is for you.

Your Role

As a District Manager, you'll be responsible for overseeing a group of Guidepost Montessori schools. Guidepost Montessori is a growing community of authentic neighborhood Montessori schools where we strive to serve as a guidepost on the path toward widespread education reform.

• Proactively quarterback the success of the region. This role is at the middle of everything. You will support a team of school leaders to bring it all together, from our Montessori programming, to hiring staff, to earning the trust of parents. As the overall integrator, every day is different, and it starts and stops with you. Taking a proactive approach and being comfortable with ambiguity and initiative-taking all both key.
• Drive enrollment and profitability outcomes. At Higher Ground, we believe mission is margin. Ensuring our schools have greats programs that attract and retain families is a top priority. As the District Manager, you’ll ensure your portfolio of schools is on track with their revenue (enrollment) and expenses (staff, facilities, etc.).
• Lean-in when and where your team needs you. District Managers are our first point of escalation. Practically, this means that if something goes right, or if something goes wrong, you’ll be pulled in. Supporting our schools through challenging staff situations, thoughtfully navigating relationships with parents, or handling a health and safety incident on campus could all be parts of your week.
• Lead and build a high-performing team. Our District Managers are inspiring people leaders. You’ll be managing and motivating a large team through the ups, downs, highs and lows and incredible personal and professional growth of building a school. We’re looking for folks that love working with others and aren’t afraid of a tough people challenge when and where it comes up. People who thrive in this role get energy from enabling others to achieve their best.

Please note that we believe impact happens on the ground. Traveling to support schools across the region and understanding the unique challenges for each community are fundamental to this role. Expect to travel 50% of the time.

Our Ideal Candidate Will Possess:

• 3 years professional experience with demonstrated success delivering both customer growth and operational improvement, ideally in fast-moving and matrixed organizations
• Supervisory experience with multi locations for 3 years, we prefer experience with multi state locations 
• Knack for developing talent and motivating teams, ideally with 2 years of management experience
• Distinctive communication and writing skills, incl. attention to detail and ability to write persuasively, synthesize information, communicate with empathy
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, incl. ability to assess a situation by gathering facts and evaluating data (e.g., financial literacy, comfort with basic Excel)
• Track-record of cross-functional collaboration and leading projects that deliver results via people that you do, or do not, directly manage
• Drive to roll-up sleeves and build something, including a propensity to constantly look at people and processes to find ways to make them more efficient, collaborative, and scalable
• Experience taking a new offering to market, or managing a P&L
• A passion for education

We will prefer you over other candidates if you have

• 5 years’ experience with multi locations in education
• AMI or AMS Montessori training
• Previous classroom teaching experience

Please note the following physical requirements may be required for this role:

• Standing for up to eight hours
• Carrying up to 50 pounds
• Lifting up to 50 pounds
• Physically moving throughout the school, including but not limited to: squatting, reaching above your shoulders and head, kneeling, crawling and sitting on the floor.