Executive Director of Exceptional Education

Hamilton County Schools, located in Chattanooga, TN, is working to ensure that all students thrive and experience a future without limits.  We are committed to excellence for every student and are seeking outstanding leaders, teachers, support staff, and district employees who desire to make a difference in the lives of students. With nearly 75 schools, we are confident that you can find your place in Hamilton County. 

Learn more about working for Hamilton County Schools at careers.hcde.org and get to know us and our strategic plan, Opportunity 2030.

The essential function of this role is to build a robust, asset based, learning and professional development pathway that results in systemic change for Hamilton County and academic results for students. The leader will serve as a change agent for the department and must hold high expectations for students. The leader must have the ability to lead the vision and manage the process.

• Establish a vision and theory of action for the Exceptional Education department around 4 major areas - Learning, Behavior, Compliance, and Data Systems for Access and Opportunity for our children in exceptional education
• Create work streams that will best support schools through the Exceptional Education department; insure reasonable response time for support
• Develop an organizational structure to align the work of learning, behavior, diagnostics, and compliance for students within special populations
• Create a Professional Learning pipeline for teachers to access the materials and training for serving our students; a retention strategy
• Maintain a staffing formula that supports student access to services and opportunities
• Consistently evaluate the effectiveness of programming and respond when children are not accessing opportunities
• Use data as a driver to eliminate barriers to access for all students; quickly respond when students are not learning
• Maintain a dashboard for interpreting data that will help identify results for students within a special population
• Work with General Education leaders to establish a learning, compliance and behavior response strategy
• Create efficient and effective work streams for teachers to access supports and remove barriers
• to accessing services
• Align programs for behavioral support for students to decrease expulsions and suspensions
• especially for subgroups
• Establish a community forward plan to support, train, and inform parents to create a customer-focused climate Create a leadership team for input, order, climate and culture to include leaders, teachers, and community partners
• Manage and grow the talent within the organization
• Implement High Quality Curriculum resources and supports for all teachers of students within
• special populations
• Coordinate with learning and leadership team on standards and curricular supports as well as training opportunities
• Establish a teacher professional development plan to support areas of the theory of action and areas defined by the action plan
•  Maintains confidentiality and adhere to the Teacher Code of Ethics as defined by Tennessee Law
• Must be a problem solver and provide reasonable and timely response and solutions for kids
• Must be willing to work across areas with multiple departments
• Must be able to operate a motor vehicle and maintain a valid, state-issued driver's license.

Knowledge/Education/Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Exceptional Education required. Preferred Master’s degree or higher in Exceptional Education
• Minimum of five (5) years successful work experience working with Exceptional Education or ENL population
• Experience in the design and implementation of various methods or procedures required to supervise classroom instruction; knowledge of federal, state, and local laws, rules, regulations, policies and procedures relating to students with disabilities.
• Knowledge of complaint resolution procedures used to settle OCR complaints, State Department of Education complaints, and due process hearings; or, any equivalent combination of education, training, and experience which provides the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities for this position.
• Understanding of Exceptional Education Law

Skills/Qualifications:

• Demonstrate excellent verbal and written communication skills to deal effectively with students,
• educators, parents, and community members.
• Demonstrate excellent planning, organizational, problem-solving, decision-making, and time
• management skills.

Compensation:
Salary is based on a combination of relevant education and experience.
Salary Scale