Chief School Improvement Officer (Rockford)

ROCKFORD PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT #205

Job Description

Job Title: CHIEF SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT OFFICER (CSIO)

Job Code: 1051

Department: Superintendent's Cabinet

Supervisor: Superintendent

Date: July 1, 2026

FLSA Status: Exempt

PURPOSE OF THE POSITION: The Chief School Improvement Officer (CSIO) serves as the district's senior executive responsible for the quality, coherence, and continuous improvement of teaching and learning across all schools and grade levels within Rockford Public School District #205. Reporting directly to the Superintendent, the CSIO provides visionary and operational leadership across the district's full academic continuum from early childhood through postsecondary pathways while ensuring that equity, excellence, and accountability are embedded in every system and structure.

This position requires a leader with deep instructional expertise, the political and relational acumen to navigate a complex urban district, and the organizational capacity to align a large, diverse central office and school-based leadership team around a shared vision for student success.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES: The CSIO provides direct and indirect supervision of the following:

• Early childhood, multilingual learner programs, and postsecondary pathways
• District-wide instructional coaching
• Curriculum, instruction, and assessment
• All building-level principals across the district

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Instructional Leadership and Academic Systems

• Lead the design, implementation, and continuous refinement of the district's PreK-12 instructional framework, ensuring alignment across all grade levels, content areas, and program types.
• Oversee curriculum adoption, review cycles, and instructional material selection, ensuring alignment to Illinois Learning Standards and evidence-based best practices.
• Direct the district's instructional coaching infrastructure, establishing clear expectations, professional learning pathways, and accountability measures for coaches across all schools.
• Ensure coherent vertical and horizontal alignment of curriculum from early childhood through postsecondary programming, eliminating gaps and redundancies across the continuum.
• Lead the development and implementation of a Multi-Tiered Supports (MTSS) framework, ensuring evidence-based intervention and enrichment are accessible to all students.
• Oversee the district's early childhood and pre-kindergarten programs, ensuring developmental readiness and seamless transition into K-12 learning environments.

School Performance and Principal Leadership

• Direct the daily operational leadership of all district schools, including the formal evaluation of building principals using the Illinois principal evaluation framework.
• Monitor school performance data against district strategic goals, identifying trends, celebrating strengths, and deploying targeted support to underperforming schools.
• Lead the district's principal professional learning community, building a culture of shared accountability, instructional leadership, and continuous improvement across all buildings.
• Conduct regular school walkthroughs and observation cycles, providing timely, specific, and growth-oriented feedback to building leaders.
• Partner with the human resources function to identify, recruit, develop, and retain high-quality building leadership across the district.

Equity, Access, and Inclusive Practice

• Integrate equity-based design and culturally responsive teaching practices across all instructional systems, ensuring that race, language, disability status, and socioeconomic background do not predict student outcomes.
• Oversee multilingual learner programs, ensuring compliance with federal and state requirements and the delivery of high-quality, language-sustaining instruction across all content areas.
• Collaborates with the district's special education programs and services, ensuring compliance with IDEA, appropriate IEP development and implementation, and meaningful inclusion across the least restrictive environment continuum.
• Expand access to advanced coursework, dual credit, AP, and postsecondary pathways for historically underserved student populations.
• Lead the development and implementation of inclusive practices that reduce disproportionality in discipline, identification, and academic placement.

Federal Programs, Compliance, and Accountability

• Provide executive oversight of all federally funded Title programs (Title I, II, III, IV), ensuring fiscal compliance, strategic alignment, and measurable impact on student outcomes.
• Serve as the district's primary liaison with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) on matters of academic accountability, school improvement designation, and compliance reporting.
• Manage and report regularly on district academic dashboards, analyzing student performance data and maintaining accountability with ISBE and the Board of Education.
• Lead the development and execution of the district's Comprehensive Improvement Plan and building-level school improvement plans, ensuring coherence with the district's strategic priorities.
• Oversee state and federal reporting requirements related to academic programming, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and transparency.

Community and Family Engagement

• Build and sustain meaningful partnerships with community organizations, higher education institutions, and workforce development entities that expand student opportunity and post-secondary readiness.
• Develop and implement a district-wide family engagement framework that reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of the RPS205 community and positions families as genuine partners in student learning.
• Serve as the district's academic spokesperson to the community, communicating student performance, programmatic initiatives, and improvement strategies with clarity, transparency, and cultural competence.
• Collaborate with school leadership to strengthen school-community relationships, particularly in historically underserved neighborhoods and communities.

Strategic Planning and Cabinet Leadership

• Serve as a senior member of the Superintendent's Cabinet, contributing to district-wide strategic planning, policy development, and organizational decision-making.
• Manage and provide executive oversight of the instructional services budget, ensuring strategic alignment of resources to district academic priorities.
• Lead cross-departmental collaboration to ensure that finance, human resources, technology, and operations functions are aligned in support of the district's academic mission.
• Represent the Superintendent at Board of Education meetings, community forums, and state-level engagements as assigned.
• Demonstrate awareness of collective bargaining agreements and labor relations dynamics, ensuring that academic initiatives are implemented in a manner consistent with contractual obligations.
• Perform other duties as assigned by the Superintendent for the purpose of ensuring an efficient and effective district learning environment.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Education

1. Doctorate in Educational Leadership, Curriculum and Instruction, or a closely related field preferred; master's degree with executive experience required.
2. Current Illinois Professional Educator License with administrative endorsement required, or eligibility for Illinois licensure.

Experience

1. Minimum of five years of demonstrated successful executive leadership at the cabinet or senior administrative level in a public school district.
2. Demonstrated experience leading instructional improvement at scale in a diverse, urban, or complex school district.
3. Proven track record of improving student outcomes for historically underserved populations including students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and students experiencing poverty.
4. Experience overseeing federally funded programs and managing ISBE compliance and accountability requirements.

Demonstrated experience with principal evaluation, development, and leadership pipeline building

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

1. Deep expertise in instructional systems design, curriculum development, and evidence-based best practices in PreK-12 education.
2. Demonstrated ability to lead large, complex organizations through change with clarity of vision and disciplined execution.
3. Strong political acumen and personal relationship management skills in a high-stakes, multi-stakeholder environment.
4. Systems thinking capacity able to diagnose root causes, design coherent solutions, and anticipate second-order effects across a large organization.
5. Expertise in data analysis, accountability frameworks, and the use of evidence to drive instructional decision-making.
6. High-level communication skills written, verbal, and presentational with the ability to convey complex information clearly to diverse audiences.
7. Demonstrated commitment to equity and culturally responsive leadership pra]]>