Senior Manager of Partnerships and Dissemination

ABOUT US

The Primary School is creating a new school model that brings together all of the adults in a child’s life, including parents, educators, and medical and mental health providers, starting from a very early age. We recognize the entrenched racism that exists within our public systems and the unjust impact this has had on families of color. Our aim is that children and families most impacted by systemic poverty and racism receive the multidisciplinary support they deserve to be well, learn, and thrive.

Long-term, we hope to create a game-changing school model that can be replicated across the country. As we continue to learn and grow, we plan to share what we’ve learned and pursue policy and systems change on a local, state, and national level. We are supported by a growing coalition of philanthropic partners, building on the generous support of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Our approach has three defining characteristics:

• We start early. We start working with children as young as 18 months and provide full-time school starting at age three to reach them at a critical stage in development.
• We partner with parents. We believe that when parents thrive, children thrive, so we support the wellness and growth of parents alongside the growth of their children.
• We integrate services. Our unique model unites health care and education, building a multi-disciplinary team and holistic system of care around a child’s full needs.

In 2016, we opened our flagship school in East Palo Alto, California, with our first class of four year olds. We have grown to serve over 300 children and their families through a birth to three program, parent wellness program, full-day preschool, and elementary school, which will grow through eighth grade. In 2021, we opened our second site in the East Bay.

ABOUT OUR EAST PALO ALTO SITE

We are continuing to grow our East Palo Alto site and are excited to launch 6th grade for our 2023-2024 school year. In our school program, we currently serve over 350 students across two preschool grades (3 and 4 year olds) and kindergarten through fifth grade. Integrated into our program are the other core components of our model including our parent program - partnering closely with parents throughout their child’s development and providing wellness programming for caregivers; our birth to 3 program - coordinating early developmental screenings and intervention services; and our medical home partnerships - working with existing health care providers in the community to coordinate care for children.

ABOUT OUR EAST BAY SITE

We opened our second site with a founding class of four-year-old children and families who started preschool in August 2021, and continue to serve preschool students in our school program. Drawing on key learnings from our first site, core components of the model include our parent program - partnering closely with parents throughout their child’s development and providing wellness programming for caregivers; our birth to 3 program - coordinating early developmental screenings and intervention services; and our medical home partnerships - working with existing health care providers in the community, including Kaiser Permanente in the East Bay, to coordinate care for children.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As a part of its growth and impact strategy, TPS is engaging in dissemination pilots with external partners to pilot components of its model in different settings. These pilots currently focus on the following “Big Bets” of the TPS model: parent wellness coaching; two-generational preschool readiness support; and medical home partnerships. This role will lead the work of finding, vetting, engaging, and managing dissemination pilot partnerships. It is part of the central office team and will partner closely with our internal design and learning teams to create the design of each partnership, the implementation plan, and the learning questions and measurement plan. Ultimately, these partnerships will yield insights for TPS on how its model can be implemented in diverse settings and impact the broader public education, health, and social services systems.

RESPONSIBILITIES

The Senior Manager will lead and steward TPS efforts to partner with education, health, and parent support organizations, including school districts, schools, ECE programs, and other community agencies, to test, improve, codify, and disseminate TPS model components both in the Bay Area and nationally.

The Senior Manager will:

1. Manage the organization’s partnership and dissemination efforts, working cross-functionally with the design, learning, policy, and communications teams, to support successful design and implementation of pilot programs with partners
2. Develop a pipeline of potential partners interested in our Big Bets through outreach, networking, presentations, and other activities
3. Manage the process of identifying and vetting partners; setting up the partnership roles, expectations, and goals for pilot programs; and codifying those in memorandums of understanding (MOUs)
4. Identify, engage, and support the content champions of the specific components across organizations, including in the program areas of parent supports, birth to three, and health
5. Work with the TPS learning and innovation team to develop learning agendas and evaluate outcomes of pilot programs
6. Work with TPS design and policy teams to codify the design, the learnings, and the policy implications from the partnerships
7. Work with the communications team to steward partnership relationships and to develop collateral about the partnerships to share internally and externally
8. Engage with funders and partners to explore new partnerships or develop plans to influence systems through existing partnerships
9. Partner with the TPS leadership team to evaluate its dissemination strategy, and consider how to extend the work to support broader dissemination and systems change efforts

QUALIFICATIONS

• You believe in the mission of The Primary School and that all children and families are capable of extraordinary things
• You believe in the strategy of The Primary School to invest in innovation and scale through public systems
• You have 5-7+ years of professional experience in education, health, and/or a relevant social services sector
• You have experience managing partnerships across organizations
• You are familiar with the levers of change in education, health, or social services systems
• You are comfortable in ambiguity and environments that change rapidly
• You bring a systems building mindset
• You have strong project management, planning and communication competencies
• You have an appetite for new approaches and the patience and skill to implement change
• You are highly collaborative and excited to work with an interdisciplinary team
• You have a track record as an exceptional communicator, particularly in cross-cultural situations
• You have experience preparing and making effective presentations to diverse groups large and small with different interests, priorities, and experience with innovation and systems change

COMPENSATION

Annual salary range begins at $83,800. Compensation is commensurate with qualifications and experience, plus excellent health benefits (health, dental, and vision), 401k retirement plan, flexible spending account (FSA), dependent care FSA, and generous paid time off, including a competitive paid parental leave benefit. TPS will cover 93% of the total premium cost for individual team members in our HMO and PPO plans, and 95% for individual team members in our HDHP plan. TPS also covers 50% of enrolled partners and/or dependents' costs on all three of our medical plans (HMO,PPO, HDHP).

To ensure fair and equitable compensation for all of our employees, The Primary School has a no-negotiation policy on all offers extended. Final offers are determined using role descriptions, job market data, internal parity, and semi-annual benchmarking. We hope that this policy, paired with ongoing transparency in our compensation process, will make TPS a more fair, inclusive, and diverse culture.