By Danny Bauer Better Leaders Better Schools
Useful? Maybe. But a checklist doesn't tell you who you're being when you do those things. It doesn't help you decide what to do when a veteran teacher pushes back on Day 4. It doesn't give you a way to measure whether the first 90 days actually moved anything.
That's why most principals wing September — and spend the rest of the year catching up.
This post is built on the framework from Build Leadership Momentum: How to Create the Perfect Principal Entry Plan. It's not a generic template. It's the system Ruckus Makers use to design their first 90 days before they ever set foot in the building.
The workbooks — fill-in-the-blank for every bucket and checkpoint — come with the book bundle. Available as a PDF you can print, write in, and keep on your desk.
The 90-day window works because it's long enough to build real momentum and short enough to stay out of the future.
What most templates miss: they start with logistics. Operations. Scheduling. Policy review. Those things matter — but if you build systems before you know what you're building toward, you'll end up with very efficient machinery pointed in the wrong direction.
The framework in Build Leadership Momentum is deliberately upside down. It starts with you and works outward. Self-leadership first. Then communication. Then academics. Then culture. Operations last.
You can't build the right systems until you know what you're operating toward.
Everything in your first 90 days belongs in one of five buckets.
Your Day 91 Vision. Your Ruckus Maker Rules. Who shows up when things get hard.
Your stakeholder map. Your first message to staff and families. The listening tour that builds trust before you lead change.
What you'll learn about your school's instructional reality — and when you'll start moving it.
Your Sticky Core Values. The campus experience you're building. The one move that creates momentum.
Systems, schedules, structures. Critical — but last. Build the right operations once you know what you're operating toward.
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Before School Starts
What you're building, deciding, and getting clear on before a single staff member walks in the door.
Day 1
Your intentional first move. What Day One communicates about who you are before you've said a word.
Week 1
The listening tour begins. Stakeholder relationships form. You gather signal, not push change.
Month 1
Eyes and ears. What you've learned. What's shifting. The first commitment you're making out loud.
Month 2
You start building. Relationships established. Culture being set. The hardest conversations planned, not reactive.
Day 91
The vision you wrote before school started is the thing you measure against now. What's there? What's not? What are the next 90 days building toward?
This is the most valuable window in your year. And most principals spend it on logistics.
Ruckus Makers spend it on clarity.
Before a single staff member walks in the door, you need to answer the questions that will guide the whole year. That starts with one thing: your Day 91 Vision.
Not a mission statement. A vivid, present-tense picture of what your school looks, sounds, and feels like at the end of your first 90 days. Specific enough to navigate by when November gets hard.
Test it this way: could someone else read your Day 91 Vision and make a leadership decision on your behalf? If the answer is no, it's not specific enough yet.
You also set your Ruckus Maker Rules here — the 2-3 operating principles you'll hold yourself to before the pressure arrives. Not "I prioritize relationships." That's a value off a poster. A Ruckus Maker Rule sounds like this: "I have the hard conversation within 48 hours, every time." That's a rule you can actually live by at 7am when someone is standing in your doorway.
The district owns the floor. Attendance. Test scores. Discipline data. Those are real. They're the table stakes for keeping the doors open. Everything above that floor — the culture, the relationships, the reason a teacher stays instead of transferring — that's yours. Your entry plan is how you build it intentionally instead of accidentally.
Your first 30 days are not the time to announce change.
They're the time to earn the right to lead it.
Principals who show up full of energy and start casting vision find that staff checks out. People don't trust what they haven't been part of. Your first month is a listening tour. The goal is to make people feel what you're about — and that starts with asking better questions than anyone expected.
One thing to watch: the principals who try to move things in Month 1, before they understand the culture and the people, pay for it in Months 2 and 3. Gather signal first. You'll lead better for it.
Month 2 is where everything you gathered becomes strategy.
You've listened. You've observed. You've built enough trust to start sharing what you see — and to start building something together.
This is the month you synthesize your data and share your findings openly with staff. What you heard. What the data says. What's trending. This move — radical transparency about what you've learned — earns more trust than any vision speech ever will.
Then comes the most important thing a Ruckus Maker does in Month 2: set goals with your staff, not for them. Goals connected to your Day 91 Vision and rooted in the feedback your community gave you.
This is also when your Sticky Core Values go public. Not values from a leadership book — phrases specific enough to guide a real decision at your school. Memorable enough to travel through the building without you.
Month 3 is execution.
The vision is named. The goals are set. The trust is built. Now you lead the implementation — and you measure it.
The Ruckus Maker doesn't just set goals and hope. They identify leading and lagging indicators: what tells you whether you're on track before the end of the year? What evidence can you gather now that predicts where you'll be in June?
This is also the phase where you empower your team rather than direct them. You've built enough trust and shared enough context that the people around you can make decisions aligned to the vision. Your job now is to foster that capacity, not bottleneck it.
Before Day 91 arrives, do one more thing: plan a 100-Day celebration. Name the milestone publicly. It signals to your community that you're a leader who follows through — and it creates the kind of momentum that carries you into Year Two.
Here's the test for your entire 30-60-90 day plan:
What is your superintendent hearing about your school on Day 91? What specifically are they hearing from staff? From students? From families? What have you personally accomplished across each of the five buckets?
Write toward that picture. Make it vivid enough to navigate by. That single question — answered in detail before school starts — is the difference between leading from Day One and spending the year catching up.
"All that stress was gone. Having the plan — knowing exactly what I was walking into and what I was building toward — changed everything about how I led that building."
John Unger · Former Principal, West Fork Middle School, AR · Now a SuperintendentThat's what a real principal entry plan does.
For the complete framework — including the book, workbooks, and fill-in-the-blank templates for every bucket and checkpoint — visit the full Principal Entry Plan page here.
Every purchase includes the ebook, audiobook, and workbooks. The difference is whether you build your plan alone, with an AI thought partner, or with Danny reviewing your completed work before school starts.
A Day 91 Vision is a vivid, present-tense description of what your school looks, sounds, and feels like at the end of your first 90 days — specific enough to navigate by when November gets hard. It's not a mission statement or a tagline. It's the picture you write before school starts and measure against when Day 91 arrives. The test: could someone else read it and make a leadership decision on your behalf? If the answer is no, it's not specific enough yet.
The five buckets from Build Leadership Momentum are: You (self-leadership, Day 91 Vision, Ruckus Maker Rules), Communication (stakeholder map, listening tour, first messages), Academics (instructional reality, data, when to start moving it), Culture (Sticky Core Values, campus experience, the one move that creates momentum), and Operations (systems, schedules, structures — built last, after you know what you're operating toward). Most entry plan templates start with Operations. This framework starts with You. That's the difference.
A generic 30-60-90 day plan template is a checklist: meet with staff, review data, schedule walkthroughs. A principal entry plan built on this framework is a leadership document: it starts with who you are and where you're going, maps your stakeholders, names your Sticky Core Values, and gives you six checkpoints — Before School Starts, Day 1, Week 1, Month 1, Month 2, and Day 91 — that pace the work across all five buckets. The entry plan tells you not just what to do but who to be when things get hard.
Yes — and it works differently than you'd expect. The framework isn't just for new hires. A returning principal starting a new year benefits from the same discipline: writing a Day 91 Vision before school starts, naming their Ruckus Maker Rules before the pressure arrives, and planning the hardest conversations before they're reactive. The principals who design their entry each year outperform the ones who wing September, regardless of how many years they've been in the building.
Yes. The workbooks — fill-in-the-blank for every bucket and checkpoint — are included as a downloadable PDF in the book bundle. The $35 bundle includes the complete ebook, audiobook, and workbooks. The $100 bundle adds 30-day access to Digital Danny, an AI thought partner trained on a decade of school leadership coaching. The $500 bundle adds a live 1:1 entry plan review call with Danny.