How to get hired as a school principal in 2026-27

The license is the gate, and the state approved-program list decides whether your degree counts

Everything else here is downstream of one fact: in nearly every state you cannot be principal of a public school without a state administrator license, and the license is issued against a specific approved preparation program, not against a degree title. Two people can hold the same master's in educational leadership from the same university and only one of them is eligible, because one enrolled in the track the state approved and the other enrolled in a general leadership track without the internship and the state's required coursework. Before you pay anyone tuition, find the approved program list on your own state education agency's website and confirm the exact program name appears on it.

This is the most expensive mistake in the field and it falls hardest on people doing the sensible thing: teaching full time and studying online at night. Plenty of national online master's programs lead to licensure in the state where the university sits and nowhere else. Some say so in the fine print and leave the rest to you. Ask the program one direct question in writing: does completion of this specific track make me eligible to apply for the administrator license in my state, and if not, what would I need to add. Keep the answer.

The second component is teaching experience, counted in years of full-time service on a valid teaching certificate and verified by your employer rather than self-reported. Most states set it at two or three years, some at five. Substitute years, paraprofessional years and private tutoring usually do not count. Some states count service as a school counselor, school psychologist or librarian on the relevant certificate; some do not. Read the regulation, not a forum post, because this is the requirement that quietly moves a career plan by two years.

The third is the internship, and it is the part that actually prepares you. A good preparation program places you with a sitting principal for a defined number of clock hours across a full school year, with required experiences across the real work: supervising and evaluating instruction, chairing an IEP meeting, building a piece of the master schedule, managing a budget line, carrying a discipline case to its conclusion, running a family meeting. Programs vary enormously in how real this is. Ask how many hours, whether they are spread across elementary and secondary, who supervises, and whether you get to lead anything or only shadow. A shadowing internship produces a license and no evidence file, and the evidence file is what gets you hired.

The fourth is the assessment, and the format matters more than the pass rate. Several states use performance assessments rather than multiple-choice tests, and those are not something you cram. California's CalAPA asks you to complete and submit three leadership cycles with video and artefacts from a real school. Texas pairs a knowledge exam with the Performance Assessment for School Leaders. Florida's FELE includes a written performance component. The SLLA from ETS is still the most widely used knowledge exam and is scenario-heavy rather than recall-heavy. Build the assessment into your internship year, because in the performance-assessment states the assessment and the internship are the same work.

Finally, know your state's tier structure and your expiration date. Many states issue an initial or preliminary license, then require a defined period of administrative service plus a state-approved induction or mentoring program before issuing the professional or clear license. The initial license expires. A teacher who earns the credential, applies for two years without landing an assistant principal role, then stops paying attention can find it lapsed. One more practical point: some postings require the license in hand at the closing date and others accept it pending, so read the posting rather than assuming.

• Confirm your intended program appears on your state education agency's approved principal preparation list before enrolling, and get it in writing.
• Count your qualifying teaching years the way your state counts them: full-time service on a valid certificate, employer-verified.
• Ask any program how many internship clock hours, across which levels, supervised by whom, and what you will lead rather than shadow.
• Find out whether your state uses a knowledge exam (SLLA), a performance assessment (CalAPA, PASL), or both, and schedule it inside the internship year.
• Diary your initial license expiration date and the exact service plus induction requirement that converts it to a professional license.
• If you may move states, read the NASDTEC interstate agreement, then read the receiving state's own reciprocity page, because partial reciprocity usually still means an added exam or course.

The path nobody skips: teacher, teacher leader, assistant principal, principal

The most useful thing to understand about this career is that principal is rarely an entry point into administration. Most principals were assistant principals first, and most assistant principals were visible teacher leaders before that. Districts hire on demonstrated adult leadership, and a classroom record, however excellent, does not demonstrate it. A superintendent is trying to answer one question: has this person already made other adults change their practice, and did it hold.

That means the move starts years before you apply. The in-between roles are the evidence generators: department chair, grade-level lead, instructional coach, teacher on special assignment, dean of students, athletic director, testing coordinator, MTSS or PBIS lead, induction mentor, school improvement team chair, union building representative. The ones that count are the ones where you were responsible for a result across a group of adults rather than for a committee's attendance. Running the master schedule, leading a grade-level team through a curriculum adoption, owning the attendance intervention system, rebuilding the referral process: that is principal work at a smaller scale, and a panel can score it.

The assistant principal job is its own competition and its own distortion. Many districts load assistant principals almost entirely with discipline, attendance, buses, lunch duty, testing and facilities, which is survivable but produces a candidate whose evidence file is all operations and no instruction. If you take an AP role, lobby for an instructional portfolio: a cohort of teachers you formally evaluate, a content area or grade band you supervise, ownership of one school improvement goal end to end. If you cannot get it in the role, build it around the edges: join the literacy team, run the data cycle for one department, lead the summer scheduling work. Principal panels ask instruction questions, and an AP who can only talk about discipline data loses to one who can talk about both.

Internal candidacy is a real and large advantage, and many districts are explicit about it. Some require you to be screened into an administrative pool or eligibility list before you may apply to any individual site, which means a separate application cycle, a separate interview, and often a cohort or aspiring leaders academy that runs across a school year. If your district has a pool, getting into it is the actual application and the site posting is the second step. Ask HR in the autumn how the pool works and when it opens, not in April when the vacancy appears.

The honest trade-off in picking your first principalship is school size, level and difficulty. Small rural elementary schools, alternative and continuation schools, newly opened schools and schools in state improvement status are where first-time principals are most often hired, because the competition is thinner. All four are harder jobs than a stable suburban elementary, and two of them come with external accountability timelines you inherit on day one. That is a reasonable trade if you go in with your eyes open and ask hard questions in the interview about what support exists. It is a bad trade if you take it believing the posting's description of the challenge.

Be realistic about tenure, because it changes how you plan. Reporting from the Learning Policy Institute, NASSP and the federal National Teacher and Principal Survey has consistently found principal tenure measured in a handful of years, with turnover concentrated in high-poverty schools. The published figures move, so read the current report rather than a number quoted in an article. The practical implication: assume you will make a second move inside this career, keep your evidence file current from your first week, and keep your license in good standing even when you are comfortable.

• Target roles where you are accountable for a result across adults: master schedule, curriculum adoption, attendance system, induction mentoring, a school improvement goal.
• If your AP role is all discipline and operations, deliberately acquire an instructional portfolio: an evaluation caseload, a supervised content area, one improvement goal end to end.
• Find out in the autumn whether your district runs an administrative pool or eligibility list, and treat admission to it as the real application.
• Expect the first principalship to be a small, rural, alternative, new or improvement-status school, and interview that reality hard rather than pretending it away.
• Keep a dated artefact file from your first leadership assignment onward; nobody can reconstruct three years of evidence in the week a posting appears.
• Read the current Learning Policy Institute, NASSP and NCES National Teacher and Principal Survey reporting on principal tenure rather than any number quoted secondhand.

The hiring calendar decides your year, and the jobs are posted where you are not looking

Principal hiring is sharply seasonal and the season is short. Retirements and resignations surface from late winter, boards post vacancies through early spring, and most appointments are made between March and June for a July 1 start. If you are not licensed, in the pool and packet-ready by February, you are usually waiting a year. Build backwards from that: assessments passed and license in hand by the preceding autumn, letters of recommendation requested before the winter holidays, references briefed in January.

A second, smaller wave happens in late summer and is worth watching. It is caused by chain reactions: a principal moves to a district office role in July, a sitting AP moves up, and two vacancies open at once with weeks to fill them. These move fast, sometimes with an interim appointment for a year. An interim principalship is a genuine route in, and it is also a year of being evaluated in public with no guarantee, so take it with a written understanding of whether the permanent job will be posted competitively.

Where the jobs are posted is regional and mostly not on the national job boards people default to. California districts post on EdJoin. Many midwestern and plains states use REAP. Thousands of districts use Frontline Recruiting and Hiring (formerly AppliTrack) or SchoolSpring, which look like separate district sites but share an application. Large urban districts run their own enterprise systems such as Workday, Oracle or iCIMS. Several state administrator associations run their own boards and newsletters, and those often carry a vacancy before the district site does. Register on the two or three systems your target region actually uses and set alerts, rather than refreshing a national aggregator.

Watch board agendas, not just job boards. In a US public district the resignation or retirement of a principal is accepted at a public board meeting, and the agenda and minutes are published. A resignation accepted in February tells you a vacancy is coming before HR posts it, and it often tells you the one thing the posting never will: whether the departure was a retirement, a promotion or something else. Board minutes also carry budget cuts, enrollment decline, a curriculum adoption, a bond measure and a boundary change, all of which you want to have read before you walk into the panel.

Different sectors run different calendars and different gates, and they are worth knowing even if you intend to stay in public schools. Independent schools hire a head of school or division head through search firms such as Carney Sandoe, Educators Collaborative, RG175 and Storbeck Search, on a calendar that starts in the autumn for the following year, with no state credential required, a written educational philosophy statement, a multi-day campus visit and an interview with the board of trustees. Charter networks often run their own principal residency or fellowship for a year before placement, hire against results and a performance process (state rules vary on whether a state license is required at all), and post year-round. Catholic and other parochial schools hire through the diocese or the school's board, with faith-formation requirements that are not negotiable. International schools recruit through Search Associates, ISS and Schrole, mostly between October and January, and want a license from your home jurisdiction plus overseas experience.

One more calendar note that costs people interviews: many districts require your references and letters to be submitted through their system, by the referee, by the closing date. Not attached by you. If you ask a superintendent for a letter in the same week the posting closes, you will miss it, and the screen marks your packet incomplete before a human reads a word of it.

• Be license-complete and packet-ready by February; the main window runs roughly March to June for a July 1 start.
• Register on the systems your region actually uses (EdJoin, REAP, Frontline Recruiting and Hiring, SchoolSpring, a district's own Workday or iCIMS) and set alerts.
• Read board agendas and minutes for resignations, retirements, budget actions and enrollment trends before a vacancy is posted.
• Treat the late-summer wave and interim appointments as a real route, with a written understanding of how the permanent job will be filled.
• If you are open to charter, independent, parochial or international schools, learn their separate calendars and gates; the independent and international seasons start months earlier.
• Request letters of recommendation months ahead and confirm the exact submission mechanism, because referee-submitted letters are a common silent disqualifier.

The application packet, and the letter of interest that is actually scored

A principal application is a packet, not a resume. Expect to supply the district's own application form, a resume, a letter of interest addressed to the specific posting, a copy of your administrator license and often your teaching certificate, transcripts for every degree, three to five letters of recommendation with at least one from a current or recent supervisor, a reference list with current phone numbers and email addresses, and in many districts written responses to two or three prompts. Some add a philosophy statement or a short video response. The screen is a rubric, and an incomplete packet scores zero on the lines it is missing.

The letter of interest carries more weight here than a cover letter does in almost any other field, because the committee uses it to decide who gets interviewed and because it is the only writing sample most candidates provide before the interview. Districts frequently score it against published criteria such as instructional leadership, equity, communication and fit with the posting. Write it per school. A letter that would work for any school in the state reads as exactly that.

What makes it score is public data you looked up. Every US public school has a state report card: enrollment, grade span, demographic composition, chronic absenteeism, assessment results by subgroup, graduation rate for secondary schools, and frequently discipline and teacher data. Most schools also have a published school improvement plan, and the district has a strategic plan and board-approved goals. Naming one or two specific things you noticed, and connecting them to work you have actually done, separates the ten letters a committee remembers from the eighty it does not. Do it with care rather than as an audit: write that you noticed the ninth-grade on-track rate and the improvement plan's focus on attendance, then describe the attendance system you built and what it moved. Do not write that the school is failing and you will fix it.

Answer the written prompts in the district's own language. If the posting and the board goals talk about multi-tiered systems of support, write about MTSS. If the state evaluation system is T-TESS, TEAM or a Danielson-based model, name it. This is not keyword gaming; it is evidence that you can operate inside the system this district runs, which is a genuine thing the committee is screening for.

Brief your references properly and early. In education, reference checking is deep and is often done by the superintendent personally, including calls to people you did not list: a county colleague, a neighbouring superintendent, someone who used to work with you. Assume anyone in your county may be called. Give your listed references the posting, your letter, and two or three specifics you would like them to be able to confirm, so that the person who picks up the phone says 'she rebuilt the master schedule to protect intervention time and the attendance rate moved' rather than 'he was great with kids'.

Decide early how you will handle confidentiality, because you cannot fully have it. In most US districts the appointment is made by a vote at a public board meeting with a published agenda, and many districts name finalists or bring them to a public forum before that. If you are a sitting AP or teacher, your current principal will find out. The least damaging version is that they hear it from you first, early, framed as a career step rather than an escape. The most damaging version is that they read your name on a neighbouring district's board agenda.

• Assemble the packet once and keep it current: application, resume, letter of interest, license, transcripts, three to five letters, briefed reference list.
• Write the letter of interest for one school, naming facts from its state report card, its school improvement plan and the board's goals.
• Mirror the district's own vocabulary and frameworks (MTSS, PBIS, the state evaluation model) because the committee is screening for system fit.
• Brief your references with the posting and two or three specifics you want them to be able to confirm.
• Assume reference calls to people you did not list, and assume the board agenda is public; tell your current principal yourself, first.
• Check whether letters must be submitted by the referee through the district's system, and by what date.

The principal resume: school context, outcomes with baselines, and what gets ignored

The principal resume fails in a predictable way: it is a very good teacher resume. It describes lessons, classroom management, student engagement and the candidate's own practice. A superintendent is reading for something else and reads fast. Put the administrator license at the very top, with the state's exact name for it and its status, because that is the first thing checked. For example: 'Texas Principal as Instructional Leader certificate, standard, valid through 2030', or 'California Preliminary Administrative Services Credential, issued August 2026'. If it is pending, say precisely where it is: assessment passed, program completion filed, application submitted on a date.

Then give each school its context in one line before you give any result: enrollment, grade span, the share of students who are English learners, the share receiving special education services, Title I status, the number of staff you supervised, the budget you managed. A reader cannot calibrate 'raised proficiency nine points' without knowing whether that was a 310-student K-5 or a 2,100-student comprehensive high school where a third of students are English learners. Including the context is also an implicit claim that you know which numbers matter, which is itself being assessed.

Write outcomes as baseline, change, time frame, and name the lever. A readable claim looks like this: 'chronic absenteeism from 31 percent to 19 percent across two years, by building a daily attendance team, a tiered outreach protocol and a weekly data review with counselors'. 'Improved school culture and attendance' is not a claim at all. The metrics districts actually track, and therefore the ones to use, include chronic absenteeism, suspension rate and disproportionality by subgroup, state assessment proficiency and growth by subgroup, ninth-grade on-track rate, graduation and dropout rates, advanced coursework participation and pass rates, teacher retention, referral counts and climate survey results. Use your own real numbers, and be able to produce the source if asked.

Be specific and legally careful about supervision and evaluation, because this is the experience that most separates candidates. State how many certificated staff you formally evaluated and under which framework (Danielson-based, Marzano, T-TESS, TEAM, your state's model). State that you have carried improvement plans and difficult personnel processes to their conclusion, without naming individuals or describing identifiable cases. A candidate who has never evaluated an adult is applying for a job that is largely about evaluating adults, and a panel finds that out in the first ten minutes.

Name the systems you have operated, because principals are also operators. The student information system and what you did in it (PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward, Aeries, Synergy), whether you built a master schedule and what the constraints were, the funds you managed (Title I allocation, site discretionary funds, activity accounts, state categorical money), and the compliance work you chaired: IEP meetings, 504 plans, manifestation determinations, Title IX intake and reporting, mandated reporting, English learner identification and reclassification, state accountability designations and the improvement plan that follows one.

What gets skipped: leadership adjectives with no object, a philosophy paragraph at the top, an undifferentiated list of every professional development session you have attended, committee memberships with no result attached, 'references available upon request', and any statement about students that every applicant could write. Two pages is normal for an administrator and three is acceptable with real administrative history. Keep it plain text with standard headings and no graphics, because it will be parsed by the district's system and then printed in black and white for a panel of twelve people.

• Line one: the state's exact license name, its status, and the expiration date or a precise pending status.
• One context line per school: enrollment, grade span, English learner and special education percentages, Title I, staff supervised, budget managed.
• Every outcome gets a baseline, a change, a time frame and the lever you pulled.
• Name your evaluation framework and your evaluation caseload; omit anything that could identify a staff member.
• Name the student information system, the funds, the master schedule work and the compliance meetings you chaired.
• Cut the philosophy paragraph, the PD list, the adjectives and the unattached committee memberships.
• Plain formatting, two to three pages, legible printed in black and white for a large panel.

The evidence file: building a portfolio of school outcomes before you need it

Principal candidates are chosen on evidence, and the evidence is almost impossible to reconstruct after the fact. Start a file now, in your current role, and add to it monthly. The contents are the ordinary artefacts of leadership work: the agenda and norms you wrote for a PLC, the data protocol you ran, the before-and-after slide from an intervention cycle, the master schedule you built and the constraint list behind it, the attendance tracker, the family engagement plan, the budget page for a grant you administered, the staff survey results, the written feedback you gave after a classroom observation, the handbook language you drafted.

Every artefact needs three sentences attached while you still remember them: what the situation was with a number, what you changed in adult practice, and what happened with a number and a date. That triplet is the unit of currency at every stage of this hiring process. It is what the letter of interest needs, what the resume bullet compresses, what the panel question wants, and what the presentation task is built from. Candidates who keep it have a straightforward application. Candidates who do not spend April trying to remember what the attendance rate was two Septembers ago.

Protect student privacy absolutely, and understand that this is itself part of the assessment. Never remove student-identifiable data from your district, never put a student name, ID or image in a portfolio, and never email a roster to a personal account. Use aggregates, redact, and if you show a document, show it with names blacked out and say that you have done so. A candidate who hands a panel a spreadsheet containing student names has disqualified themselves for a reason nobody will say to their face, because FERPA judgement is one of the things a principal is trusted with. The same applies to staff: de-identify every personnel example.

Build one artefact deliberately for the hiring process: a 90-day entry plan. Most finalist presentations are some version of it, and the ones that score are visibly not a template. A good entry plan has a listening phase with named audiences and a timeline (individual meetings with every staff member, a student focus group, a family coffee, the office and custodial teams, the feeder school principals), a data review phase naming which data you will look at first, a short list of things you will stabilise immediately, and an explicit statement of what you will not change in year one. That last part is what separates experienced candidates from enthusiastic ones. A panel of teachers hears 'I will not change the bell schedule or the grading policy in my first year' as a promise that you understand what a new principal costs a building.

If you are building the file as a teacher leader rather than an AP, the gap you have to cover is adult supervision, budget and compliance. Fill it on purpose. Ask to co-observe with your principal and write the feedback. Ask to sit in IEP meetings in a leadership role rather than as the classroom teacher. Ask to help build the master schedule. Ask to administer a grant. Ask to lead the induction of a new teacher. None of these requires a title, all of them produce artefacts, and a principal being asked these questions by a strong teacher is usually glad of it.

Carry the file in a form you can actually use. A folder with dated subfolders and a one-page index beats a designed portfolio nobody opens. For a finalist day, select three artefacts, print them redacted, and bring them as something to leave on the table. Do not hand a panel twenty pages. The purpose is not to be read; it is to make your claims checkable.

• Add artefacts monthly with the triplet attached: situation with a number, change in adult practice, result with a number and a date.
• Never carry student-identifiable data out of a district; aggregate, redact, and say that you have.
• De-identify every personnel example before it reaches a page, a panel or a reference call.
• Build a real 90-day entry plan with named listening audiences, a data sequence, immediate stabilisers and an explicit list of what you will not change in year one.
• If you lack AP experience, deliberately acquire adult supervision, budget and compliance artefacts without needing a title.
• For finalist day, bring three printed, redacted artefacts to leave behind, not a twenty-page binder.

The panel interview: who is in the room, what it scores, and the performance tasks

Expect panels, plural, and expect them to be scripted. A district panel typically seats an assistant superintendent or director of schools, an HR administrator, two or three sitting principals and sometimes a content director. Questions are read aloud in a fixed order, identical for every candidate, scored against a rubric, and the panelists write while you talk and often do not react. Follow-up questions may be forbidden. This feels cold and is not a signal about you. Answer in a structure the scorer can follow, because they are ticking criteria: situation with data, what you did, what changed, what you learned.

The second panel is the stakeholder panel, a different test with a different pass condition. It seats teachers, paraprofessionals and office staff, parents from the PTA or site council, sometimes students, sometimes a union representative. They are not scoring your knowledge of accountability law. They are deciding whether they want to be in a building with you for the next five years, whether you listen, whether you talk to a parent as a partner, and whether you will back staff up. Candidates lose here by performing expertise: arriving with a plan for a school they have never walked, correcting a teacher's premise, using district jargon at parents. Slow down, answer in plain language, address the person who asked, and say what you would want to find out before deciding anything.

What the first panel is really testing is whether you can talk about instruction in evidence rather than slogans. The archetypal question is a version of 'tell us about a time you improved outcomes for a group of students who were not being served'. A scoring answer names the group and the data that identified them, says what you saw in classrooms, says what you changed in adult practice (the schedule, the PLC structure, a coaching cycle, a curriculum, an intervention block), and says how you knew it worked, including what did not work. An answer about believing all students can learn scores nothing. The same is true of equity questions, which nearly every panel asks: belief statements score low, a specific subgroup plus a specific practice change plus a result scores high.

The second thing being tested is whether you follow process under pressure. Expect scenarios: a veteran teacher refuses to use the adopted curriculum; a parent arrives angry at the front desk and is recording; a fight is filmed and posted before lunch; a staff member is accused of something serious; a student discloses abuse; a lockdown is called. In these, 'I would call my supervisor' is not weakness, it is a scored correct answer at the right moment, alongside the specifics: secure students first, preserve evidence, make the mandated report, notify the district office and counsel, do not promise what you cannot say, communicate to families inside the district's protocol, document everything. If your district uses Standard Response Protocol vocabulary (hold, secure, lockdown, evacuate, shelter), use it. Knowing the special education discipline protections, including manifestation determination, matters in the same way.

Expect at least one performance task on the day, sometimes three. The common ones: a data set from a real or fictional school with 20 to 30 minutes to prepare what you notice and what you would do first; a recorded lesson to watch with the feedback you would give the teacher, delivered orally or in writing (scored on whether you cite evidence rather than opinion, whether you prioritise, and whether what you say is coachable); an in-basket of emails and messages to triage; a timed writing task, usually a letter to families about an incident or a memo to staff; and a short presentation, most often the entry plan. Practise the writing task specifically, because writing a calm, clear, legally careful 200-word letter to families in 25 minutes is a skill, and the sample goes into your file.

Finalist day usually means time inside the school: a tour, a meet and greet, sometimes a short walkthrough of classrooms where you are asked what you noticed. Staff and parents are often given feedback forms. Treat every conversation as part of the interview, including the ones with the office manager and the custodian, who are frequently asked afterwards what they thought and who know the building better than anyone. Have two good questions ready rather than six, and make them real: what would you want the next principal to protect, and what is the thing a newcomer would get wrong in the first month.

• Answer in a structure the rubric can follow: situation with data, action on adult practice, result with a time frame, what you learned.
• Treat the stakeholder panel as a different test: plain language, listening, no plan for a building you have not walked.
• For equity questions, name the subgroup, the practice change and the result; belief statements score low.
• In crisis scenarios, say the process out loud: students safe, mandated report, district office and counsel, evidence preserved, families informed, documented.
• Prepare for performance tasks: data analysis, lesson video feedback, in-basket triage, a timed family letter, and a 90-day entry plan presentation.
• Know the school's public data, improvement plan and board goals before you walk in; 'why this school' must contain facts about this school.
• Bring two specific questions, and treat the office and custodial staff conversations as scored, because they frequently are.

The offer, the board vote, and the first-year realities nobody warns you about

In a US public district you are not hired when the superintendent says so. The superintendent recommends and, in most districts, the elected board appoints by a vote at a public meeting with your name on a published agenda. Nothing is final until that vote, offers are explicitly contingent on it, and occasionally a board declines to approve a recommendation. Do not resign your current position before board action, and do not announce anything before it either.

Read the contract, not the salary number, and compare like with like. Three figures decide what the move is actually worth: the annual salary, the number of contract days (commonly 210 to 260 for an administrator against roughly 185 for a teacher), and your position on the salary schedule, which is usually indexed by degree, credited years of experience and school level. Ask explicitly how many of your teaching years transfer for placement on the administrator schedule, because districts differ and the answer compounds for the rest of your career. Ask about the stipends that do not appear in the base: doctoral stipend, extended-year days, technology or vehicle allowance, activity supervision. In a public district the schedule itself is rarely negotiable; placement, credited years, stipends and start date sometimes are.

Ask about employment status, which in administration is genuinely different from teaching. Depending on the state, principals may be at-will, on a one to three year term contract, or on an administrative contract with a return-to-teaching right that preserves tenure in the teaching role. That return right is one of the most valuable clauses in the field and people routinely fail to ask about it. Find out also whether you leave your bargaining unit, what happens to accumulated sick leave and seniority, and what the evaluation cycle and non-renewal notice dates are.

Check the retirement consequence before you accept, especially across a district or state line. Public school employees are usually in a state teacher retirement system. Moving within the state typically continues your membership, while moving to another state, to a charter outside the system, or to a private school may not. Years of service credit, vesting thresholds and final-average-salary calculations are what to look at, and the system's own counselors will run the numbers for you. It is a free phone call and it can be the difference between a lateral move and an expensive one.

Ask the questions that tell you what you are walking into. Why is this position open, and where did the previous principal go. How many assistant principals, counselors and office staff are budgeted, and is that number changing. What is the enrollment trend and what does it do to the staffing allocation. Is the school in a state accountability designation, and if so what is the plan and the timeline. What is the current relationship with the bargaining unit at this site. How many teacher vacancies are open right now for August. A district that answers these straight is telling you something good about itself. A district that will not is also telling you something.

Finally, plan the entry seriously, because the first ninety days set the next three years. Most new principals arrive in July into an empty building with a master schedule already built, staff vacancies to fill, a budget already allocated, and six weeks before students. The work that pays off is meeting every single staff member individually before August, learning the office and custodial teams' names and routines first, finding the two or three people who hold the institutional memory, reading last year's data with the counselors rather than alone, and changing almost nothing visible in the first semester. Keep your evidence file running from week one. The next posting comes round faster than anyone expects.

• Nothing is final until the board votes in public; do not resign or announce beforehand.
• Compare salary against contract days and schedule placement, and ask how many teaching years transfer for placement.
• Ask whether the role is at-will, term-contract, or carries a return-to-teaching right that preserves tenure.
• Call your state retirement system before a cross-district or cross-state move and get the service credit answer in writing.
• Ask why the job is open, where the predecessor went, what the staffing allocation and enrollment trend are, and whether the school carries an accountability designation.
• Spend the first ninety days listening and stabilising, with an explicit public list of what you will not change in year one.

What a screen is looking for

These are the terms that a resume screen, human or automated, is matching against for this role. Use the ones that are true of you, in the words the posting uses.

• School Principal
• Assistant Principal
• School Administrator
• Administrator license
• Administrative Services Credential
• School Building Leader (SBL)
• Principal as Instructional Leader
• Educational Leadership certification
• Principal/Assistant Principal license
• Preliminary administrative credential
• Clear administrative credential
• SLLA
• CalAPA
• CPACE
• PASL
• FELE
• State-approved principal preparation program
• Administrative internship
• Master of Education in Educational Leadership
• Ed.S.
• PSEL standards
• NELP standards
• Instructional leadership
• Teacher evaluation
• Danielson Framework for Teaching
• Marzano evaluation model
• T-TESS
• Classroom walkthroughs
• Coaching cycles
• Professional learning communities (PLC)
• Master schedule
• Master schedule building
• Curriculum adoption
• MTSS
• RTI
• PBIS
• Restorative practices
• Chronic absenteeism
• Attendance intervention
• Suspension rate and disproportionality
• Ninth-grade on-track
• Graduation rate
• State assessment data analysis
• Subgroup achievement gaps
• ESSA accountability
• Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI)
• Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI)
• School improvement plan
• Title I
• Title I budget
• Site budget management
• Categorical funds
• IEP meetings
• 504 plans
• Manifestation determination
• Special education compliance
• English learner identification and reclassification
• Title IX
• Mandated reporting
• Student discipline due process
• Emergency operations plan
• Standard Response Protocol
• Teacher recruitment and retention
• Induction and mentoring
• Shared decision making
• Site council
• Family and community engagement
• Climate survey
• PowerSchool
• Infinite Campus
• Skyward
• Aeries
• Synergy
• Entry plan
• 90-day plan
• Letter of interest
• Stakeholder panel interview
• Data analysis performance task
• School board approval
• Administrator salary schedule
• EdJoin
• Frontline Recruiting and Hiring
• REAP
• Interim principal
• Charter school leader
• Head of school
• Dean of students
• Instructional coach
• Teacher on special assignment
• AI guidance for schools
• Student data privacy agreement
• FERPA
• COPPA
• Academic integrity policy
• Early warning system

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