Vice Principal - Administration

KOPILA VALLEY SCHOOL (KVS)

"A world where every child is educated, safe and loved"

KVS is a non-profitable school running under the Kopila Valley Sewa Samaj, an NGO registered in Surkhet, Nepal, and funded by BlinkNow Foundation USA to provide world-class education to the neediest children who deserve the best education.  Our mission is to change the world by empowering Nepal’s children. The K-12 school is co-located with other programs including a residential children’s home, women’s empowerment center, sustainability, health and wellness, and family development program. We provide our students a free education, educational materials, health treatment and medicine, counseling, and a place to live. With our innovative future program, we strive to provide our children with career guidance, and scholarships for further studies.

The BlinkNow Foundation is a 501(c)(3) based in New Jersey which, through its country office in Nepal, oversees these programs in rural Nepal. Every day we strive to create a sustainable organization working to educate all of Kopila’s children until they are ready to enter the world as happy, skilled, confident, self-sufficient adults. We believe we can serve as a model for quality education in Nepal. We will strive to provide our children with scholarships (should they choose to pursue higher education), and the skills required to enter the world as global citizens, and ambassadors for change.

About the Role

The vice principal for administration is a senior position and leads operations of the Kopila Valley School. This position coordinates the building system, team, and other aspects of the school to create the best working and learning environment for the faculty and students. This role will utilize collaborative and consultative practices where appropriate including with students, staff, parents, and the wider community. This role will focus on creating a climate hospitable to education so that a cooperative spirit and other foundations of fruitful interaction prevail. Working closely with BlinkNow Foundation, this role will be building a sense of school community, including respect for every member of the school community; an upbeat, welcoming, solution-oriented, no-blame, and professional environment, and will aim at making KVS one of the highest functioning schools in the world.

Requirements

Education: Master’s degree in a relevant subject

Experience: At least 5 years of professional experience in the related field

Language: Fluent in English and Nepali

Other Qualifications: Team player, good presentation skill, initiator, ability to use computer tools, and passionate about working with children and vulnerable populations.

Core Responsibilities

• Leading the overall operations of the school ensuring the school environment is set for achieving the strategic goals

• In collaboration with the KVSS HR team, manage people and processes to foster school improvement.

• Help implement a research, monitoring, and evaluation plan and based on the findings ensure prompt actions towards better teaching-learning.

Detailed Areas of Responsibilities

The Vice Principal - Administration will be mainly responsible for overseeing the following areas of responsibility:

Leading the overall operational management of the school ensuring the school environment is set for achieving the strategic goals.

• Ensure optimum and creative use of school infrastructure, creating plans and schedules for using classrooms, library, learning labs, and play area
• Serve as the focal person for building and communicating school policies and processes, and staff roles, tasks, and responsibilities.
• Ensure the safety of all the students and employees at KVS is clearly addressed in the policies, plans, and protocols and address promptly the emergency safety situations.
• Lead preparation of the school annual budget and administer the approved budget timely and effectively.
• Coordinate with the KVSS operations team and oversee logistics and procurement for the school ensuring timely availability of all goods and services, and equitable and proper management of resources.

In collaboration with the KVSS HR team, manage people and processes to foster school improvement.

• Coordinate the work of defining job roles and building job descriptions for the approved position and ensure that recruiting for the vacant and planned positions is done timely and professionally.
• Ensure full and robust onboarding of the new team members and refreshers to the existing team members in a structured manner.
• Manage the faculty and other employees by providing them with necessary training and resources, making the best use of available staff experience and expertise, evaluating their work performance, and weeding out individuals who do not show the willingness or capacity to grow with the school.
• Build a strong school team with mutual relationships that are based on high levels of trust and respect to ensure high-quality education.
• Create an inclusive school environment in which everybody feels valued and supported, and uses available time efficiently and effectively for quality teaching and learning

Help implement a research, monitoring, and evaluation plan and based on the findings, ensure prompt actions towards a better teaching-learning.

• Develop a school-wide understanding that all decision-making should be guided by research and data. This involves promoting teachers’ use of data, analyzing and using data to monitor progress, setting targets, and making decisions.
• In collaboration with the M&E team, build annual monitoring and evaluation plan and generate data to measure the progress at a regular frequency.
• Focus on building self and colleagues’ skills in collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using data and ensuring access to quality school infrastructure to collect, record, store, analyze and display data.
• Report to the manager and other relevant team members analyzed information reflecting the actual status – both the status and needs – in a timely fashion.
• Support academic (curricular and extra-curricular) functions of the school to ensure continuous improvement in the quality of education, including providing policy orientation to all the teachers and school staff every year before starting school.

Additional expectations

The Vice Principal is also expected to:

• Build positive working relationships and environment in the organization by bringing solutions to the discussion table.
• Demonstrate professionalism in all interactions and execution of duties.
• Report to the manager every week, and as needed in case of urgent issues.
• Promote team alignment on the org-wide decisions.
• Ensure and enforce confidentiality in collected information/data.
• Embrace and support the values of gender equity and sustainability

The above list of responsibilities is not comprehensive, and the Vice Principal may be required to take on additional responsibilities, as determined by his/her Manager.

Key Characteristics

• You believe that we can change the world, in the blink of an eye
• You believe in making decisions that put children first
• You are self-motivated, organized, and approachable
• You enjoy creating systems, keeping records, and increasing efficiency
• You are always looking for new ways for our team to work smarter instead of harder
• You are detail-oriented and conscientious. You make sure nothing slips through the cracks
• You have a strong work ethic and a willingness to pick up new skills. You are comfortable multi-tasking
• You are experienced and comfortable talking with a wide range of people from nursery children to government ministers
• You are positive, patient, and a clear communicator who is comfortable working with both Kopila Valley staff in Nepal and the BlinkNow staff in the United States
• You are an empathetic person, with a knack for putting out fires before they start and soothing conflicts brewing beneath the surface
• You require little supervision and are flexible. You understand that you will be wearing many hats in this role, many of which are not explicitly included in this job description

Application Procedures: 
If you think this opportunity will amplify your career growth, we encourage you to apply by clicking “Apply For This Job” and submit all required documents.

Note: No telephone inquiries will be entertained. If your application is a good fit, we will follow up with you directly for the screening process.