Principals' Leadership Academy

A Project by AVID Center, The Flippen Group, and Learning Keys

The Principals' Academy has been the quintessential experience to transform my own leadership and has had a tremendous impact on me personally and professionally."

- Monica M. Oviedo, Ed.D.
Los Angeles, CA

The mission of the Principals' Leadership Academy is to increase the relational leadership skills and organizational knowledge of current principals such that they have the capacity to develop systems of schooling that provide an opportunity for all students to be successful both socially and academically.


Key Factors Addressed by the Principals' Leadership Academy


Human Performance Factors:

These factors impact the relational capacity of a school and address issues pertaining to developing safe learning environments, developing self-managing classrooms, and building productive relationships through acquisition of relational leadership skills. Participants in the Academy learn to:

  • Identify individual constraints and develop a plan to address these constraints in a manner that increases the principals' capacity to lead their schools to greatness
  • Develop relationships and processes that build high-performing, self-managing administrative and teaching teams that work toward common goals
  • Model key relational skills and behaviors for school and staff members so that they in turn can model them for students
  • Develop a relational school culture that results in enhanced student achievement and decreased discipline referrals and absenteeism
  • Open lines of communication to give and receive feedback effectively
  • Develop specific skills and techniques for conflict resolution
  • Acquire the skills to make good hiring decisions


System and Operational Design Factors:

These factors impact processes that provide quality educational experiences for students and address issues pertaining to planning, curriculum, instruction, assessment, and targeted professional development. Participants in the Academy learn to:

  • Identify the skills needed for students to be "college ready" so that effective strategies can be implemented that develop the intellectual capacity, social skills, and academic competencies necessary for students to be successful at the university level
  • Understand the structures, processes/protocols, and systems that are required on their campuses to create a true "college ready" culture.
  • Recognize and overcome system and operational constraints
  • Apply specific tools and strategies to develop, implement, manage, facilitate and evaluate campus-wide strategic and operational plans
  • Set priorities to focus organizational resources
  • Create a common instructional language in order to calibrate instruction and to create a system to monitor and evaluate instruction
  • Develop school cultures that embrace access for all, and equity in student opportunities and development
  • Leverage AVID's strategies school and districtwide


Participants will be required to participate in five multi-day trainings throughout the year.

If you have any questions, please contact AVID Center via the Contact page.


Meet Your Trainer

Mike NeeceAVID Center training will be conducted by Mike Neece, AVID Director of Systemic Initiatives. This is Mike's 30th year in education. Prior to joining AVID Center Mike was a teacher for 23 years in Riverside Unified School District before becoming an Assistant Principal at Riverside Poly High School in 1999. In 1992, Mike received the Clara Foults Award, California Bar Association's Award for State Educator of the Year. From 2003-2006, Mike served as the Principal of Ramona High School in RUSD, which currently has the largest, most successful AVID program in the world, with over 30 percent of its student population in AVID. Ramona was a California Distinguished School in 2005, as well as an AVID National Demonstration School in 2003, 2004, and 2005. In 2005, Ramona had the highest college-going rate of any high school in five counties.