2026 SAIS Annual Conference

Independent schools that undertake campus capital improvements face both opportunities and risks. A capital campaign and resulting construction can elevate your mission or compromise your future. This session will offer an integrated, sequenced framework designed to reduce risk and strengthen decision-making while ensuring that a campus improvement initiative builds brand equity, financial sustainability, and donor and community confidence.

While schools recognize that creating supportive relationships is paramount to student success, they often struggle to identify and prioritize the most effective interventions to bolster well-being. In this workshop, Nina Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Authentic Connections, will be joined by Meredith Miller, upper school coordinator of student support at The Westminster Schools, to discuss using data to inform and prioritize well-being initiatives. Nina will explore findings from surveys administered to over 250,000 students and 28,000 educators to highlight the modifiable aspects of school climate and culture that have emerged as most linked with well-being. Additionally, Meredith will share how Westminster has used data collected from students to guide programming, inform strategic priorities, and target interventions for the groups needing additional attention. Attendees will leave with an expanded knowledge of the current state of mental health across schools and methods for engaging their communities to support well-being.

As schools collect more data than ever, the real challenge is not access, but interpretation. In this session, Cindy Blackburn will explore what it truly means to build data fluency among educators and leaders and why this skill is becoming essential in AI-enabled schools. Drawing on real school examples and Toddle’s AI Insights, participants will leave with practical ways to use data to inform curriculum, assessment, and student support without losing sight of context, equity, or purpose.