Forecast 2025 - 2026: Vanishing Point

We've arrived at the All Star break, the moment when the previous school year is in the rear view mirror and the next year is visible on the horizon. It's a good time to forecast the themes that will influence schools and school leaders next year and think about how you can prepare yourself to meet those challenges and opportunities.

Fiscally Conservative

Unfortunately, I think we will see an increase in independent school closures, mergers and acquisitions this year. Schools in in small markets, in cities with low migration and thus subject to the declining birth rate, schools overextended in debt, schools with chronic leadership turnover, have always operated with thin margins. With the uncertainty in our national climate, those margins have vanished. Whether your school is in tall cotton or struggling to meet payroll, this is a call for the Finance Committees to really dig in, for Heads to strengthen collaboration among the Finance, Enrollment and Advancement offices, for Heads to schedule more time with their CFOs, for CFOs to be even readier to throw up the stop sign.

Invest in People

This has always been true but will become truer in the coming year: the schools that invest in people, in hiring and retaining great teachers, supporting their professional growth, evaluating them earnestly, and replacing them when they are not performing, schools where leaders create a culture of connection and care for faculty and staff and for kids and families, these schools will win the day. Schools that fixate on new technologies and facilities at the literal and figurative expense of the people, even in the theoretical circumstance in which you could afford an endless list of those things, will struggle. Next school year more than ever, as our nation's leaders (and to a great extent, tech developers) bet on cruelty, surveillance, extortion, racism, schools should bet on stregthening the way community serves as the foundation for everything they do.

Make it Work

In the climate of uncertainty and fear growing in our country, schools should return to the heightened standard of precision that helped them navigate the pandemic: fully vetted schedules, carefully choreographed communication, deadlines met or exceeded, conflicts addressed promptly, drama doused with buckets of firm rationality. You'll need an even stronger commitment to your mission, and more specifically, your mission-in-action. Fence-sitting, hedging, allowing yourself to be drawn into sophistic debate are never productive behaviors and this year will be sure paths to cultural malaise and loss of trust.