Clara Borders

Clara Borders is a Partner at BetterEd Solutions and a Montessori school leader, instructional coach, organizational strategist, and growth-focused executive with more than 15 years of experience across Montessori classrooms, school administration, and Head of School leadership. Her work is centered on helping Montessori schools strengthen instructional quality, develop adults, preserve fidelity to Montessori principles, improve organizational systems, deepen family trust, and build the leadership and operating capacity required for sustainable growth.

Borders brings a rare combination of Montessori expertise and whole-school management experience. She has served as a Montessori classroom practitioner, Assistant Principal, child-care program director, school director, and Head of School. Across those roles, she has been responsible for teacher development, staff supervision and evaluation, admissions, student placement, family engagement, discipline, operations, budgeting, board partnership, compliance, professional learning, facilities, school communications, and long-range planning. That breadth allows her to see Montessori improvement not as a narrow instructional project, but as a whole-school transformation challenge.

Most recently, Borders served for eight years as Head of School of Mastro Montessori Academy in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, an independent Montessori school serving students from toddler through elementary and early adolescent levels. In that role, she led school policy and operations, staff recruitment and development, parent education, student services, strategic growth planning, fiscal stewardship, facilities, admissions, community engagement, and collaboration with the Board of Trustees. She also maintained the school’s relationship with the Association Montessori Internationale and helped ensure that school systems and classroom practice remained aligned with Montessori standards.

Her tenure at Mastro included a significant period of institutional growth. In a BetterEd reference check, a former Mastro board president specifically credited Borders’s leadership with helping the school grow from approximately 80 to 120 students and emphasized her dedication, adaptability, and ability to work effectively with teachers, parents, and board members. Public school communications likewise recognize her years of work and leadership during a period in which Mastro matured into a thriving toddler-through-sixth-grade organization operating across two buildings on a larger campus.

For Borders, growth is not simply an enrollment target. Sustainable Montessori growth depends on whether a school can expand without weakening instructional quality, adult culture, family experience, financial discipline, or fidelity to the model. She helps leaders think through the systems underneath growth: staffing and talent pipelines, classroom capacity, admissions, parent communication, facilities, budget, leadership structure, teacher development, governance, and the quality of the Montessori experience itself.

Borders is particularly strong in Montessori instructional coaching and adult development. Her leadership experience includes hiring, orienting, mentoring, coaching, developing, and evaluating teachers and assistants across multiple age levels. She understands that Montessori schools often face a distinctive leadership challenge: preserving the integrity and developmental logic of Montessori practice while also building consistent systems for feedback, professional growth, accountability, and schoolwide improvement. Her coaching helps leaders and guides make expectations visible, examine evidence of student experience, strengthen practice, and connect Montessori philosophy to day-to-day implementation.

Before Mastro, Borders served as Assistant Principal and Office of Child Care Director at Bowie Montessori Children’s House in Maryland, a toddler-through-eighth-grade Montessori school. There, she hired, trained, scheduled, mentored, and evaluated staff; led staff meetings; strengthened policies and procedures; supported student placement and discipline; managed family concerns; oversaw facilities and school operations; conducted admissions tours; and helped ensure compliance with state regulations and Montessori standards. The role deepened her ability to connect instructional leadership with the operational disciplines that allow teachers and students to succeed.

Earlier, Borders served as Head of School and Director at Maplewood Montessori in St. Louis. In that role, she was responsible for the growth and development of the school, staff recruitment and management, parent communication, budgeting, professional development, employee scheduling, payroll, classroom oversight, student support, and the smooth operation of the institution as a whole. She began her Montessori career at Chesterfield Montessori School, working directly in toddler environments as an assistant, co-teacher, and substitute teacher. This classroom foundation remains important to her leadership: she understands the work of school improvement from the perspective of the adults implementing Montessori practice every day.

Borders’s earlier professional experience working with children and adolescents in therapeutic and behavioral settings also informs her approach to student support. Before moving fully into Montessori leadership, she worked with youth experiencing significant emotional and behavioral needs, implemented individualized behavior plans, collaborated with therapists, facilitated behavior and life-skills groups, mentored young people, and supported students academically. That background contributes to a leadership style that is both structured and deeply attentive to the developmental and emotional needs of children.

Her Montessori preparation is substantial and specific. Borders holds an Association Montessori Internationale Assistants to Infancy diploma for ages birth to three, an AMI Montessori Administrators diploma, and AMI adolescent orientation training for ages 12 to 18. She also holds a master’s degree in education from Loyola University Maryland and a bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College. Her additional preparation includes Positive Discipline parent education, crisis prevention and safety management, and training in leading inclusive Montessori schools. She does not present herself as holding an AMI primary or elementary guide credential; her particular expertise is in school leadership, administration, toddler Montessori, coaching, whole-school systems, and the development of strong Montessori organizations.

At BetterEd Solutions, Borders leads and supports work specifically focused on Montessori school improvement, transformation, and growth. She helps Heads of School, principals, boards, and instructional leaders diagnose the current health of their organizations across Montessori fidelity, instructional quality, adult development, leadership, culture, enrollment, family experience, operations, governance, and financial sustainability. From that diagnosis, she helps schools identify the highest-leverage priorities and build practical 30-, 60-, and 90-day improvement plans.

Her work is particularly relevant to Montessori schools that are growing, experiencing leadership transition, struggling with staff consistency, seeking stronger instructional coaching, rebuilding family confidence, clarifying the relationship between the board and school leadership, strengthening admissions and retention, or trying to reconcile Montessori philosophy with modern management expectations. Borders understands that Montessori schools can have deeply committed educators and compelling missions while still struggling because management systems, adult accountability, communication, or organizational structure have not matured alongside the program.

Borders helps close that gap. She can work directly with Montessori guides and assistants on adult practice while simultaneously coaching school leaders on strategy, team management, board relationships, family engagement, and organizational growth. That ability to move between the classroom and the executive level is one of her most valuable strengths.

She is also especially effective at helping schools protect Montessori identity during change. Transformation can create legitimate anxiety in communities that value tradition and philosophical consistency. Borders helps leaders distinguish between the elements of Montessori practice that must remain protected and the organizational systems that may need to become substantially stronger. A school can preserve child-centered practice, prepared environments, developmental respect, independence, and Montessori pedagogy while also improving data use, staff accountability, leadership routines, family communication, financial planning, and strategic execution.

Her approach is strongly relational. Borders has spent much of her career building trust among parents, teachers, administrators, boards, and students, and former colleagues have specifically highlighted her ability to work across stakeholder groups. She understands that Montessori communities are sustained by relationships and that significant school improvement is more likely to endure when people understand the purpose of change, see themselves in the process, and trust the leadership responsible for carrying it forward.

At BetterEd Solutions, Borders contributes to the organization’s vision of transforming schools in our nation’s most underserved communities into happier, healthier, higher-performing places where every child can thrive. Within that broader vision, she gives BetterEd a dedicated Montessori capability: an experienced school leader who can help Montessori schools become more instructionally excellent, operationally strong, strategically disciplined, financially sustainable, and capable of growing without losing the philosophy that makes them distinctive.