Leading Through Uncertainty
How Local and State Education Leaders Can Respond
As federal support dwindles, student enrollments shift, and political divides deepen, education leaders are operating in a storm of uncertainty. Every decision, from budgeting to staffing, now requires navigating more complexity with less certainty. In many states, temporary federal COVID relief funds have expired just as districts face rising costs, shifting student needs, and declining public trust. Meanwhile, demographic changes, policy changes, and political tensions continue to reshape the educational landscape, often in uneven and unpredictable ways.
Despite these challenges, local and state leaders are not powerless. Strategic planning, scenario modeling, and community engagement can help chart a course through uncertain terrain. With the right tools and insights, education systems can make informed decisions that protect students, staff, and long-term stability. At APA Consulting, we partner with education leaders across the country to build adaptive, data-informed strategies that balance financial constraints with a commitment to equity and student success.
A Changing Education Landscape
State and local leaders are navigating a landscape marked by deep and growing uncertainty. Key drivers of uncertainty include demographic shifts, declining federal funding, a volatile economy, and increasing political polarization. While some of the uncertainty relates to new federal policies, other challenges such as demographic changes and enrollment declines, have been impacting education leaders for over a decade. The recent expiration of pandemic-era relief funds has also left many school districts bracing for budget shortfalls just as student needs are growing. Meanwhile, the role, capacity, and funding of the U.S. Department of Education remain unclear, creating disruptions in both funding streams and institutional guidance.
A key aspect of these challenges is that they are uneven. For example, while some school districts are facing school closures and consolidation of resources due to enrollment declines, others face the opposite problem, rapid growth and overcrowding. Changes at the federal level increase uncertainty and further complicate decision-making and communication with communities. At every level, leaders are being asked to make tough decisions with incomplete information and shifting constraints. Taken together, education leaders operate in a complex and challenging environment which means that strategic foresight, adaptive planning, and stakeholder engagement are more important than ever before.
Strategic Moves Leaders Can Make Now
Education leaders do not need to wait for uncertainty to be resolved before taking meaningful action. Strategic planning during volatile times can position states, districts, and education programs and providers to respond with clarity and confidence to minimize disruption, enhance efficiency, and help ensure success under a variety of different scenarios. A key first step is convening internal and external stakeholders in thoughtful conversations that acknowledge current uncertainty and outline the organization’s plan to prepare, navigate, and respond to potential challenges.
During these conversations, several exercises can be beneficial to support productive planning. One foundational exercise is conducting a SWOT analysis to identify internal strengths and weaknesses such as staff usage of time and resources, along with external opportunities and threats, such as student enrollment trends, budget impacts, and availability of revenue. Leaders should also adopt strategic budget practices, including the use of a multiyear budget perspective and plan; employing collaborative and interdepartmental budget building processes; and using organizational goals and priorities to drive resource allocations. And just as important is the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of previous investment impacts to inform future allocations. Such evaluation is key to understanding challenges that impede implementation success as well as the return on investment of resources that are deployed. These strategies equip education leaders with a roadmap to steer through ambiguity while using data to stay focused on student, staff, and organization success.
APA’s Approach
At APA Consulting, we help education leaders navigate uncertainty with clarity, data, and strategy. Our team has extensive experience supporting school districts and local and state education agencies through moments of transition, whether driven by policy shifts, enrollment changes, or funding volatility. We use adaptive models to help program leaders explore and model different scenarios and understand how changing conditions, such as declining enrollment and reduced funding might affect staffing or programming, so they can build adaptable planning models with confidence. These models go beyond forecasting; they serve as decision-making and communication tools that help leaders assess and understand potential future scenarios, communicate transparently with all stakeholders about current challenges, and plan with confidence to successfully meet and address those challenges.
Stakeholder Engagement
Stakeholder engagement is a critical piece of this work as districts or states contemplate the current condition of their education system, engage in strategic planning, or consider any potential changes or shifts in policy. APA has significant experience supporting strategic planning and system redesign efforts by designing and facilitating town halls, listening sessions, focus groups, interviews, and surveys that bring diverse perspectives to the table. These perspectives provide our clients with the feedback needed to inform their decision-making processes in a way that is inclusive, actionable, and aligned with long-term goals. This kind of engagement is particularly important in times of uncertainty, when trust-building, buy-in, and transparency are essential for successful policy adoption and implementation.
Financial Insights
APA is one of the nation’s leading school finance experts. With a deep understanding of state and federal education funding systems built on over 40 years of experience, APA has worked on finance issues in all 50 states as well as at the federal level supporting everything from funding formula redesign to cost modeling, efficiency studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, fiscal equity analyses, and federal compliance. Our team has supported states and local education agency leaders to analyze and refine existing funding systems, as well as to develop and implement new funding models. Further, APA has worked on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education to examine the use of federal funds at the district level across the country. This included collecting extant accounting and HR data from individual districts and mapping each state’s unique Chart of Accounts to federal standards, enabling robust, apples-to-apples comparisons across districts and states.
At APA, our team is skilled at bridging such detailed fiscal data with system-level policy thinking. We understand how money moves through systems, how systems can be redesigned to better serve students, and how policies can be created to support consistent and equitable implementation over time. APA is therefore very well prepared to help education leaders navigate how recent changes at the federal level impact and intersect with state and local funding policies.
Governance Models
APA’s expertise assists state and district leaders as they consider new governance or jurisdictional models, funding models, facility utilization, or staffing needs. APA has for instance worked with the Vermont Agency of Education and state policymakers as the state considers changes to its overall K-12 governance and funding system and its career and technical education system governance and funding systems. Additionally, APA has developed a proposed transportation funding model for the state of Michigan and provided staffing and financial analysis for Denver metro school districts. APA works as a thought partner with clients to move recommendations from conception through implementation. As federal priorities shift and fiscal uncertainty grows, APA is uniquely positioned to help education leaders understand the corresponding implications for local and state education funding and to design adaptive strategies that reflect today’s realities as well as future needs.
With education leaders continuing to operate in an ever-changing funding and policy landscape, APA Consulting is here to help navigate these complex times with a focus on strategic thinking and planning, data gathering and analysis, fiscal sustainability, and meaningful public engagement. Get in touch here - and in the meantime, follow us on LinkedIn to stay up to date on examples of the supports we provide.