Student Support Specialist, Salem Prep High School, Salem Public Schools SY2024-2025

Salem Public Schools

Salem is a small, diverse city with a proud maritime and immigrant history.  Salem Public School leaders are passionate about urban education and understand the urgency of improving student achievement.  They respect and value the racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity of our students and their families, and have a strong commitment to the Salem community.  Salem Public Schools seeks individuals who can serve all our students, regardless of ability or language. Applicants who have experience working in urban schools and have bilingual skills are strongly encouraged to apply.

Salem Prep High School Description

Salem Prep High School is a separate therapeutic day school that is part of the Salem Public Schools.  The Prep is based on creating a small, individualized, and therapeutic learning environment for students who have social and emotional needs that cannot be addressed in the mainstream high school (or middle school) or Therapeutic Support Program (TSP).  What is unique to Salem Prep is the therapeutic milieu focused on relationships, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) that is brought into all aspects of the student’s day, in academic, social, and community-based environments.

What You’ll Do:

The Salem Public Schools sees the engagement of families and caregivers as a key component of the work of raising student achievement and providing equitable educational opportunities for all Salem students.  In Salem, we aspire to authentically engage all voices in the collective effort to ensure student success.  We believe that parents, guardians, and other family members are critical partners in the educational process, and we embrace our responsibility to proactively reach out to all families in a variety of ways to support their engagement in the schools. While we have a common definition of engagement across the district, each school has its own goals and plans to advance family and community engagement. Reporting to the school Program Director, the Student Support Specialist plays a key role in helping to achieve its engagement goals by implementing the school’s engagement plans.  As such, the Student Support Specialist will help lead the efforts to facilitate this engagement, supporting and building a culture of high expectations for every child. The Student Support Specialist will also be responsible for managing student attendance monitoring and reporting, completing light clerical tasks, and assisting with needs of the program as directed by the Program Director.

Role Responsibilities:

School Engagement Goals and Plan

• Assist school Program Director and others in developing and implementing a family and community engagement plan that will meet the school’s annual and long-term engagement goals
• Under direction of the Program Director, develop programs and activities designed to engage families and the community to improve student achievement
• Collaborate closely with the school’s clinical team and others to identify families’ needs and interests and enable access to community resources.
• Participate in district-wide professional development to enhance own skill set in family engagement strategies 

Communication and Outreach

• Facilitate the development of strong partnerships and two-way communication between teachers and families
• Co-develop and execute strategic communications and outreach plans that employ a variety of methods and modes to maximize outreach and eliminate barriers for students and families
• Assist the school Program Director with outreach and welcoming activities pertaining to new or incoming families
• In coordination with teachers, communicate family translation needs to the ELL Department and/or the PIC
• Provide interpretation/ translation in Spanish as needed at school site

Activities/Event Planning and Coordination

• Work with school Program Director and teachers to support and promote family events planned by the school leadership team
• Manage Community Service opportunities for our students
• Serve as liasion to Salem High School; keeping families and students aware of events and opportunities available to them at SHS
• Assist with event planning, coordination, marketing, and outreach to ensure success, including outreach to diverse groups of parents
• Maintain flexible hours, including frequently scheduled evening hours to attend appropriate community and or school events and/or conduct outreach and other communication activities with families as decided in consultation with Program Director.

 Front Office Major Duties and Responsibilities:

• Monitor comings and goings of Salem Prep High School staff and students, as well as visitors to the school
• Monitor students leaving the building during school hours to ensure they have appropriate authorization
• Assist with monitoring of student attendance by entering attendance, tardies and dismissals manually in Aspen each day and making phone calls home when necessary
• Support tardy student check-ins
• Assists with light clerical work including photocopying, creating and hanging signs, data entry, answering the phone and taking and forwarding messages, managing a simple student database in Google Spreadsheets, and checking and communicating voice mail to appropriate team members.
• Additional duties as assigned by the Program Director 

What You’ll Bring:

We are looking for candidates who have diverse backgrounds and experiences, are inspired by our mission and are highly motivated to change children’s lives through education in a therapeutic milieu. You’ll be right at home here if you are a reflective practitioner who values collaboration with colleagues and pushes yourself, your work, and the people around you to the next level.  We expect our SPS employees to:

• Hold a deep commitment to students and families and value diversity - The SPS community is vibrant, diverse in background, ethnicity, language, and perspective. You embrace and affirm the backgrounds of all members of the SPS community and view our diversity as a powerful resource that supports us each in learning and doing our best work.
• Hold high expectations for yourself, students, and colleagues – You see potential in all, especially our SPS students, and maintain high expectations for achievement, while providing the support necessary to meet that bar. You hold yourself to high expectations, modeling SPS values and seeking opportunities to continuously improve.
• Build authentic, caring relationships with colleagues, students, and families – You build strong relationships across students, families, and colleagues that are collaborative in nature and contribute to the individual and collective success of SPS. You partner with families and colleagues to make decisions in the best interest of students and learning.
• Embrace feedback – You are a reflective practitioner who learns from failure, using mistakes and challenges as opportunities for growth. You model persistence and growth mindset and thrive in a culture of feedback. 

Job Requirements:

• Bilingual Spanish speaking (both oral and written fluency required)
• Excellent organizational and communication skills (oral and written)
• Practices exceptional telephone and e-mail etiquette
• Has basic computer skills, experience with Google docs a plus
• Accepts, seeks and/or takes initiative for new responsibilities, assignments and/or projects and initiates and takes action for improvements
• Ability to multi-task and work under pressure to meet deadlines
• Ability to communicate respectfully with families from a variety of cultural backgrounds
• Ability to develop positive relationships with teenagers
• Ability to collaboratively assess family needs and identify resources
• Commitment to equity and belief that all students can learn
• Responds confidently to the demands of work when confronted with change, adversity, or other challenges (adapts well to change in the work environment)
• Positively represents the district; exhibits professional demeanor
• Citizenship, residency, or work visa in US

Preferred Qualifications

• Some college or equivalent
• Experience working in an urban school or other setting
• Family outreach or other relevant experience

Work Year:        195 Day (School Calendar plus 15 days)

FTE/Hours:        Full-time, 37.5 hours per week, Evening hours frequently required

Salary:               50K to start (includes benefits)

Reports to:        School Program Director

Equal Opportunity Employer

Salem Public School District is committed to maintaining a work and learning environment free from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, pregnancy, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital/civil union status, ancestry, place of birth, age, citizenship status, veteran status, political affiliation, genetic information or disability, as defined and required by state and federal laws. Additionally, we prohibit retaliation against individuals who oppose such discrimination and harassment or who participate in an equal opportunity investigation.