School Launch Support

To ensure that schools start strong and sustain excellence over time, BES provides School Launch Support to school founders in their planning year and first two years of operation.

School Launch Support consists of 80-100 hours per year delivered through individualized coaching, structured training, communities of practice, in-person intensives, and site visits. At the start of each year, founders and their coach will build a customized plan aligned to your school’s goals, your development priorities, and the phase of work ahead.

School Launch Support is open to founders of all public schools who are in their planning year and first two years of operation.

While School Launch Support is provided to BES Fellows in the Excel stage of the BES Fellowship, it is also offered to other school founders across the country.

The program can be prorated and is open for schools in Years 0, 1, or 2, and does not require enrollment in the prior year to participate in this year.

School Launch Support is organized around four phases that reflect a deliberate progression with each phase building on the last. The benchmarks leaders build in each phase are real tools they use to run their schools. BES reviews what leaders are actually building and using, and that is how we assess where each school is and what support is needed next.

Phase 1: Define & Anchor | Year 0 (July – October)

Founders establish the goals, metrics, plans and accountability structures that will anchor all work that follows. 

Phase 2: Architect Systems | Year 0 (October – December)

With goals established, founders design the instructional, operational, people, financial, and cultural systems that will bring their vision to life. A critical discipline of this phase is focus: founders identify the highest-leverage systems for Year 1 and articulate a deliberate sequencing plan for what gets built first and what is layered in over time.

Phase 3: Activate & Transfer | Year 0 (December) – Year 1 (October)

Systems only produce results when people execute them. This phase focuses on the transition from founder-as-designer to founder-as-leader and is aimed at enabling staff, families, and students to understand, own, and bring the school’s vision to life. It begins with hiring and runs through the critical first weeks of school.

Phase 4: Execute, Diagnose & Adapt | Year 1 & Year 2

Once open, the work shifts to sustained execution and continuous improvement. Founders track progress against goals, use data to diagnose challenges, present results to key stakeholders, and adjust strategies based on evidence. In Year 2, the focus deepens on distributed leadership.

Running across all four phases is a continuous improvement thread: a cycle of goal-setting, monitoring, diagnosis, and adjustment that is not a separate component, but the connective tissue that ties every phase of the work together. The data that flows through this cycle also shapes how BES deploys support, resulting in a two-way leader dashboard.

View key benchmarks and more in the School Launch Support overview >

Coaching includes a combination of support for the school leader, governing board members, and other members of the founding school leadership team. In addition, coaches may convene small group coaching sessions when they identify a shared challenge or learning opportunity across a subset of leaders — organized by school stage, geography, or specific domain.

School Leader Coaching: Data-driven and responsive coaching on instruction, school leadership, nonprofit management, organizational leadership, talent development, and student recruitment and enrollment. Each coaching session is anchored in a review of the leader’s dashboard, recent benchmark artifacts, and site visit observations, ensuring support is grounded in the actual state of the school.

Leadership Team Coaching: Coaching may extend to founding leadership team members where it will have the highest impact on student outcomes — deployed based on school need and leader priorities.

Governance: Tiered support on board strategy and management, board recruitment and development, board meeting facilitation, and navigating the board’s role as holder of the charter contract. Governance coaching is most active in Year 0 and progressively shifts to thought partner for the board chair and leader as they build confidence and capacity.

Finance: Technical assistance on budgeting, contingency planning, financial planning and management, and building the leader’s capacity to manage their finance contractor relationship — reviewing data critically, asking the right questions, and making informed decisions.

Facilities: Technical assistance on securing and managing local facilities partners to ensure a strong facilities plan.

View timing and frequency of these components in the School Launch Support overview >

Site Visit

On-site observation and coaching on instructional, cultural, and operational practices. Every visit includes direct classroom observation, a written feedback summary, and a co-developed action plan. Finance or governance coaches may join for targeted purposes.

During Y1, school founders have up to four visits (opening, fall, winter, and an additional optional visit). In Y2, two visits are required and up to two additional are optional.

Artifact Review 

Review of school artifacts including benchmark deliverables, videos of practice, and other documents.

Resources

A bank of exemplars, tools, templates, and resources to support leaders at each phase of the work, including models from high-performing schools and BES alumni.

View timing and frequency of these components in the School Launch Support overview >

In-Person Intensives (twice per year for Y0 in August & October; Y1 & Y2 may attend)

Two-day in-person sessions combining structured training, communities of practice, and school study visits to high-performing schools. The August intensive focuses on strategic planning; the October intensive deepens systems design and bridges to people leadership. 

Training (primarily for Y0; ongoing as needed for Y1 & Y2)

Cohort-based virtual training on core topics sequenced to match the phase of work leaders are in — including strategic planning, systems design, governance, financial management, hiring, and family engagement. Select sessions open to board chairs and leadership team members.

Communities of Practice (at least quarterly across Y0, Y1, and Y2)

Virtual peer learning sessions using structured protocols — tuning, dilemma, and data presentations — where leaders bring real work for feedback and peer analysis. Some sessions are cross-cohort, connecting Y0, Y1, and Y2 leaders to deepen learning and build lateral networks. 

Fellowship Showcase (two opportunities per year)

An opportunity to refine your pitch about your school and practice presenting to external stakeholders including successful school founders and representatives from foundations and charter support organizations.

View timing and frequency of these components in the School Launch Support overview >

Cost varies based on age of school and level of support needed.

To inquire about receiving School Launch Support and the associated costs, email Chief Programs Officer Rebecca Feiden: rfeiden@bes.org