Overview
About Ascend
Ascend is the largest Brooklyn-based public charter school serving nearly 6,000 K-12 students in 16 schools. We exist to serve every student – to help them embody their inherent excellence by providing rich, joyful learning experiences that unlock a life of boundless choice.
Access to education is a social justice issue. As educators, we center justice and live out our commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism (DEIA) by ensuring that our students have the skills, tools, and confidence they need to thrive today and in the future. We are proud to have a workforce that mirrors the diversity seen in our students. Working at Ascend provides a community focused on developing an environment of support and belonging. Educators collaborate closely and encourage each other to achieve great outcomes.
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Our schools honor, nurture, and challenge the whole child. Ascend fosters critical thinking skills and a love of learning through an inquiry-based learning approach, Responsive Classroom model, and anti-racist education. We are deeply committed to advancing educational equity for all of our students. Students at Ascend benefit from a rich and rigorous liberal arts curriculum that nurtures natural curiosity about the world and guides them to think critically and independently.
Ascend invests in employees by providing competitive compensation, benefits, and ongoing professional development programs. Total compensation includes a generous benefits package with flexibility in healthcare plan choices, including mental healthcare services, and a 403(b) match. Our paid time off includes Wellness Days set aside for employees to focus on their personal care. We also believe in bringing joy to the office, with committees focused on employee programs and events to foster collaboration.
For more information on Ascend Public Charter Schools’ model, approach, and core values, please visit our website.
The Senior Director of HR Operations is an essential leadership role on the People team responsible for leading our efforts to connect our employees using technology, applications and data in an effortless, secure, and timely manner. The Senior Director will be responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive HR systems strategy, leveraging technology, processes, and automation, that supports the organization’s goals and objectives.
The Senior Director will serve as a leader that drives key people team processes, sitting between Talent and Human Resources, with the goal of optimizing HR and Talent systems and tools to improve various processes. Additionally, the Senior Director of HR Operations will be responsible for identifying, presenting, and analyzing team data to provide valuable insights for decision-making and strategic planning.
This role will also partner with other network teams, especially the Finance team, to maximize efficiency and accuracy of our collaborative processes to ensure appropriate controls and structures are aligned between the people and finance functions.
Responsibilities
- Develop and execute a comprehensive HR process, systems, and data strategy aligned with the People Team and the organization’s overall goals and HR objectives, including but limited to:
- Organizational job architecture
- Position control and organization chart
- Onboarding and offboarding systems
- Salary and additional compensation structure
- Oversight of the HR handbook and implementation of its processes
- HR data management and responsible for building and maintaining HR metrics
- Oversee end to end People (HR and Talent) processes, ie employee lifecycle from application to offboarding, and collaborating across multiple teams and functions to lead
- Assess current People (HR and Talent) tools and systems landscape, identify gaps and areas for improvement, provide training and support to users, and drive adoption across the organization, for example:
- Measurement of organizational engagement and oversight of the annual process
- Intent to return
- Trends in HR and talent data
- HR Compliance, ie I-9 auditing and any HR data requests required for grants or broader compliance
- Teacher Certification oversight and monitoring
- Adhoc HR compliance projects
- Create and oversee HR and Talent metrics reporting and oversight; analyze HR and Talent data and systems, identify technology solutions, and provide data-driven insights and recommendations to present to organizational leaders and stakeholders.
- Establish and enforce data governance policies and ensure compliance with data privacy regulations to protect employee data and maintain data integrity.
- Stay current with HR and Talent system and process trends and best practices, and continuously assess and improve the organization’s HR and Talent capabilities.
- Maintain accuracy of employee information and data and needs within HRIS, in partnership with Payroll and HRIS teams
- Support HR leadership in meeting network and organizational goals.
- All other duties assigned by management within the scope of Human Resources performance expectations.
Staff and Reporting Relationships
The Senior Director of People Operations reports into the Chief People Officer.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree and at least 8-10 years of experience in Human Resources and/or HR predictive analytics and insights. Experience with leading a HR transformation project is preferred.
- At least 5 five years of experience leading a functional team in a matrixed environment.
- At least 5 years of experience developing and implementing strategic initiatives which align with business goals and budget.
- Experience with project management (planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives).
- Experience providing customer service to internal and external customers, including meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
- Experience identifying operational issues and recommending and implementing strategies to resolve problems.
- Experience synthesizing and summarizing the data to identify insights to business outcomes, and communicating or presenting findings to leadership.
Compensation
The starting salary range for this position is $130,000-$150,000. Several factors such as candidate's work experience, education/training, job-related skills, internal peer equity, as well as market and business considerations may influence base pay offered. This salary range is reflective of a position based in New York City.
Diversity at Ascend
Ascend is committed to building a diverse and inclusive community, both through our hiring practices and our focus on creating a culture and environment where diverse perspectives, ideas, and identities are valued and integrated into our way of working and educating students. Ascend staff represent a wide diversity of racial, socio-economic, gender, religious, and national identities—opening a window to the entire Ascend community on the richness of humanity. We welcome all applicants who share our mission and vision to join us in our deeply consequential work.