Our Mission
The mission of the School Leadership Center of Greater New Orleans is to improve schools by inspiring and developing instructional leadership among principals and other educators, thereby advancing student achievement.
SLC Goals
- To inspire courageous leadership
- To form a broad-based network of educational leaders working to create schools as open, critical, and mutually supportive communities of learners for both adults and children
- To work with all public, private, parochial and charter schools
- To promote reflective practice
- To increase knowledge about school leadership through research, school development, and evaluation.
- To encourage academic insight
- To connect our school leaders to national and international networks that are studying and building school leadership.
- To advocate collegiality
- To stimulate public support
- To increase student achievement
Our History
The School Leadership Center (SLC) was founded in 1997, with vision and leadership from the Baptist Community Ministries, the University of New Orleans, and Xavier University. SLC is modeled after the Principal Centers that proliferated in the 1980s upon Harvard’s Graduate School of Education’s decision to make its experts in educational leadership available to schools around the world.
Centers proliferated in response to the glaring lack of on-the-job professional development for school leaders and the growing recognition that the principal plays a crucial role in school reform.
The SLC planning team met with directors and participants of principals’ centers throughout the world to glean information about how best to address specific problems faced by those charged with training school leaders. Invaluable assistance from principal centers at Georgia State and Harvard Universities, the Maine Leadership Network, as well as leaders in the International Network of Principals’ Centers, especially Dr. Gordon Donaldson and Dr. Richard Ackerman, helped SLC develop its philosophy of service and extensive mentoring opportunities.
SLC was one of the first leadership centers to connect the work of the principal directly to student achievement. All SLC programs are linked to each other, allowing a comprehensive, measurable approach to aiding participating schools in reaching increased student achievement.
SLC Governance
SLC is governed by a twelve member Board of Trustees. With the inception of the grant in 1997 the board was made up of 6 members appointed by SLC’s major funder Baptist Community Ministries and 3 members each of SLC’s partners University of New Orleans and Xavier University. In 2011, the makeup of the board changed to 15 members selected from local, regional, and national educators. Current board members or staff nominates new members that are voted on by the entire board. Members serve unlimited 4 year terms.
Support SLC
The School Leadership Center (SLC) is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit dedicated to developing Louisiana’s public and non-public school leaders, and optimizing teaching and learning in the school environment in order to increase student achievement.
While our mission is to create better school leaders and teachers, our outcome impacts the future of young people, and the future of our community. Your gift to the School Leadership Center is an investment in the future of our students, teachers, school leaders and our community. Please be a part of making sure that the School Leadership Center can continue to serve schools and students for many years to come. Click here to make an online donation to SLC.