2026 Small Schools Summit

Small school marketing teams face an impossible challenge: deliver professional brand work with little to no staff, limited budget, and endless demands. AI has changed what's possible, but most schools don't know how to leverage it strategically. This session helps you build your marketing stack one brick at a time, choosing the right foundations, tools, people, and processes for your school's reality. You'll learn the essential brand standards that make AI useful instead of generic, how to think strategically about where to invest in people versus automation, and which tools deliver professional results without professional budgets. The centerpiece is a live demonstration of Claude for Teams, showing how to set up project instructions, use shared projects with your team, and turn them into plugins that scale your capability. Walk away with templates, a decision matrix for building your team, and a clear picture of which bricks you're already using and which brick to add next.

Use strategic futures tools to clarify long-range vision and make bold decisions with confidence. Participants will use scenario planning to stress test strategic objectives over the next 1–3 years.

When everything feels important, it can be hard for small-school leaders to know where their time is best spent. This session will examine how heads of school and leadership team members can develop clearer systems, better priorities, and more effective working rhythms so they can lead with greater focus, support their teams more effectively, and reduce unnecessary bottlenecks.