Between February 2025 and February 2026, NAIS undertook a comprehensive strategic planning process, grounded in member feedback and research, with the goal of informing our organization’s direction and priorities. The resulting plan will focus NAIS’s distinctive strengths and help schools thrive amid a rapidly evolving landscape.
How the Strategic Plan Focuses Our Direction and Priorities
Independent school leaders are navigating extraordinary complexity—including enrollment uncertainty, affordability pressures, workforce shortages, challenges to youth mental health, increased community polarization, and rapid technological change.
Over the next three years, NAIS will deliver what school leaders say they need most to respond to these challenges: stronger leadership pipelines and sustained workforce support, a powerful national voice protecting independent schools and strengthening public perception, and practical insight that helps leaders make confident decisions every day.
At the center of this work is a clear understanding that strong governance and a healthy school culture that is grounded in inclusion, belonging, and well-being are essential to effective schools and thriving students.
What the Strategic Plan Means for Member Schools
- Leadership development opportunities will become clearer, comprehensive, and connected—preparing current and emerging leaders.
- New insights, frameworks, and tools will strengthen the partnership and alignment between school leaders and their boards.
- NAIS resources and initiatives will help expand and sustain the independent school workforce.
- Sector-wide data will become easier to use and indispensable, with DASL/DataVista functioning as a decision-support platform leaders rely on regularly.
- Members will quickly find the right NAIS resource for the decision at hand—practical, relevant guidance that supports strong leadership; sound governance; and healthy school cultures grounded in inclusion, belonging, and well-being.
- NAIS will be an active partner as leaders and educators manage new forces like AI, with guidance on student impact and strategic opportunities.
- Members will see the clear impact of NAIS’s advocacy—strengthening the value proposition of independent schools, deepening public understanding of their distinctive strengths, and amplifying the independent school voice in national conversations about thriving, inclusive communities.
- Rapid-response guidance on national issues will help leaders make decisions and communicate to their community.
How We Will Strengthen Our Capacity
To achieve the objectives of the strategic plan, we will focus our service to leaders; align our programming to what is important to schools and what NAIS can uniquely do; and strategically invest in technology that will expand access to, and the relevance of, our resources.