Our Team
Leveraging over 25 years serving as strategic and operational education leaders, our team has refined a framework of thinking – our Blueprint – to accelerate achievement at scale across K-12 schools and educational institutions.
Selected Founder Achievements
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100% of K-8 schools in the top 1% of math and top 3% of English in New York State every year
100% of the Middle Schools achieved 90%+ pass rates across all 4 New York State High School Regents core content exams
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12th grade students averaged 1238 on the SAT (more than 200 points above nat’l average for comparable populations)
100% of High School students (over 800) sat for AP exams, with 76% passing at least one (1) AP exams (16% above nat’l average, typically a selective group of test-takers)
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98% acceptance to at least one college that met their full financial need (from below 50% in year 1)
90%+ college matriculation and 80%+ college enrollment across graduation years
Scaled these outcomes against 10x growth in graduating class size (26 to over 160)
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Founder & CEO
Before founding Blueprint to Great Schools, Barbara led high school and college access programs for over 6 years at the largest network of K-12 charter schools in New York City.
She serves on advisory boards for the University of Pennsylvania (from which she earned degrees in finance and history) and Columbia University. Barbara lives in New York with her husband and son, occasionally performing on stage (and on national television).
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Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Before co-founding Blueprint to Great Schools, Rita spent more than a decade at the largest charter school network in New York City, where she started as a teacher before accelerating into leadership, spending time as an assistant principal, principal and finally, as the youngest K-12 superintendent (School Manager) in the network’s history – a position she maintained for 5 years.
She earned her Master’s in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated with her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University. Rita loves exploring the world with her husband and three children.
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Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Before co-founding Blueprint to Great Schools, Rachel spent a decade as an elementary school teacher and then middle school and high school leader in the largest charter network in New York City. Most recently, she was the principal of a Title 1 high school serving over 800 students for 4 years.
She earned her Master’s in Education from Touro College and her undergraduate degree from James Madison University. Rachel is an avid reader and long-distance runner, having completed the New York City Marathon in 2024.
Our Blueprint
We train K-12 executive and board-level leaders to adopt our Blueprint, a systematic framework for disciplined decision-making, and deliver results for their organizations.
Our ultimate goal is for our clients to independently use our framework to support their vision, no matter where they operate in the education ecosystem.
Vision. The Blueprint is centered, first and foremost, around a leader’s belief in their vision. We work with our clients to refine their vision – from words on a page, to the core of a strategic plan that drives organizational change.
Internal Verification. Next, we support clients to stress-test their own and their team’s behaviors, day-to-day, to bring their vision to reality. We serve as product managers, translating quantitative and qualitative goals into data visualizations that offer rapid, actionable insights for leaders.
Leadership Development. Many hands make light work. People management is a skill agnostic of industry and content expertise. We intensively coach our clients to become true people managers, developing their teams by practicing the right schooling priorities, at the right time.
Investment in Culture. It is a joy for our staff, students, and families to be a part of a great school community – and it is easy to do, when an organization’s systems and leaders all work towards one unifying vision. Investing all stakeholders to become culture carriers creates limitless, authentic joy.
External Verification. The pursuit of external verification - national and international recognition through whole-school achievement, awards, honors - is the last piece of the puzzle. Great teams compete for championships - literal and figurative! - and great schools set increasingly ambitious goals, in alignment with their vision, to go after, year after year.
