Pre-Conference Workshops

For the 2026 Annual Conference & Expo, we are pleased to offer four amazing pre-conference workshops for conference attendees. Pre-conference workshops are more in-depth dives into topics of interest to school business professionals. These learning sessions will take place on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. Join colleagues and experts to discuss these important and timely topics.

Pre-Conference Workshop Participation Disclaimer:

To ensure a high-quality professional development experience, each pre-conference workshop requires a minimum number of registered participants. Should a workshop not meet the required enrollment by August 19, 2026, it will be canceled. In such cases, registered participants will be notified and provided the option to either transfer their registration to another available pre-conference workshop or receive a full refund of the workshop registration fee. 

Pre-conference Workshop 1

Activating Leadership: Leading with Compassion and Insight

Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026 | Time: 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Description:

Leadership isn’t a title, it’s a practice. In today’s schools, the word “leader” can feel weighed down by stereotypes of power, control, and being “out of touch.” This interactive workshop invites you to reclaim leadership as a force for good, starting with the most important place: yourself! Grounded in Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead™ research, you’ll explore how courage, clarity, and connection can transform the way you show up with your team, your stakeholders, and your community.

During this pre-conference workshop, you’ll learn how to lean into vulnerability, build trust, and create spaces where meaningful growth can happen, for you and for the people you lead. Through guided reflection, practical exercises, and peer discussion, you’ll uncover how insight and compassion fuel influence and inspiration (not pressure or control). Along the way, you’ll be introduced to key ideas such as: leadership is not a title, courage is a skill, and vulnerability is essential.

You’ll also get an engaging introduction to the Four Skill Sets: Rumbling with Vulnerability, Living into Values, BRAVING Trust, and Learning to Rise, and how they apply in real-world leadership moments. The session concludes with a breakout panel that brings the concepts to life and explores how self-leadership grounded in insight and compassion helps you inspire others and strengthen your culture.

Learning objectives:

At the end of this activity, learners should be able to:

• Cultivate their own definition of self-leadership.
• Recognize and integrate ways to cultivate self-compassion as a leader.
• Incorporate the tools provided by Brené Brown's research on leadership to improve emotional resilience. 

Speaker(s):

• Nicole Lewis-Keeber, MSW, LCSW, Founder, Insightful Work
• Panelist(s): TBD

Continuing Education Details:

• Track: Human Capital and Workplace Culture
• SFO: 3, Management of Human Resource Functions
• CPE: 3, Personnel/Human Resources
• CAE: 2.75, Executive Leadership
• Knowledge Level: Intermediate
• Prerequisites/Advanced Preparations: None

Fee:

• Member: $275
• Non-member: $325

Pre-conference Workshop 2

Taking A System Strategy Approach to Return on Investment in Education

Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026 | Time: 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Description:

Budget uncertainty is forcing districts to make high-stakes tradeoffs, what to keep, what to scale, and what to stop. In this interactive workshop, you’ll learn a clearer way to make those decisions with confidence using School System Return on Investment (SSROI), an actionable five-step process created by Education Resource Strategies (ERS), a national nonprofit that helps districts use resources more strategically. Unlike traditional ROI approaches that focus narrowly on individual programs, SSROI takes a system strategy lens, examining how your district organizes schooling and where redesigning structures can unlock innovation and better results.

During this pre-conference workshop, you’ll explore how SSROI creates a shared platform for school and district teams to evaluate whether strategies are improving student and teacher experiences and outcomes. By engaging stakeholders early, the process builds shared vision, surfaces concerns sooner, and strengthens collective ownership, so your final decisions are data-informed, transparent, and built to last.

Learning objectives:

At the end of this activity, learners should be able to:

• Examine how SSROI differs from traditional ROI methods by emphasizing systemic change and stakeholder engagement.
• Learn to apply the five-step SSROI process to guide investment decisions and assess impact.
• Explore strategies to engage stakeholders in creating a shared vision and collective ownership. 

Speaker(s):

Sharla Horton, Ed.D., Director, Education Resource Strategies

Continuing Education Details:

• Track: Finance Budgeting and Resource Management
• SFO: 3, Financial Planning, Budget Planning, and Analysis
• CPE: 3, Finance
• CAE: 2.75, Operations
• Knowledge Level: Intermediate
• Prerequisites/Advanced Preparations: None

Fee:

• Member: $325 
• Non-member: $375

Pre-conference Workshop 3

AI is a Leadership Multiplier: Practical Prompt Engineering and Confident Implementation

Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026 | Time: 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Description:

Lead smarter, communicate more clearly, and make faster, better-supported decisions, with AI as your leadership multiplier. This four-hour beginner/intermediate-level pre-conference workshop is designed for school business officials who are new to AI or early in their adoption and want structured, practical guidance they can use immediately. If you’ve experimented but aren’t yet applying AI consistently in your workflow, this session will help you turn curiosity into repeatable practice.

During this pre-conference workshop, you’ll get a clear, step-by-step introduction to the fundamentals of prompt engineering, with practical demonstrations across common district scenarios, including drafting communications, analyzing expense data, creating summaries, building complex Excel formulas, and generating board-ready narratives. The focus is on clarity, structure, and safe, repeatable workflows (not advanced automation), so you can get better outputs faster and avoid the most common mistakes.

The session concludes with a guided, hands-on AI lab where you’ll practice building structured prompts in a supported environment and leave with templates you can adapt back at your desk. By the end, you’ll know how to interact with AI effectively, implement responsible and safe practices in your district, and take your next steps toward consistent, high-quality results.

Learning objectives:

At the end of this activity, learners should be able to:

• Identify the core components of effective prompts by applying the TADA framework (Title, Assign, Define, Ask) and examine how structure improves output quality and consistency.
• Explore common use cases such as drafting communications, summarizing financial data, generating complex Excel formulas, and creating executive-ready narratives using structured prompts.
• Differentiate between experimental use and workflow-level implementation, identify responsible AI practices, and examine the next practical steps for integrating AI into their daily operations. 

Speaker(s):

Aziz Aghayev, M.B.A., Founder, Flowlyst

Continuing Education Details:

• Track: Technology, Data, and Innovation
• SFO: 3, Financial Planning, Budget Planning, and Analysis
• CPE: 3, Business Management & Organization
• CAE: 2.75, Operations
• Knowledge Level: Beginner and Intermediate
• Prerequisites/Advanced Preparations: None

Fee:

• Member: $275 
• Non-member: $325 

Pre-conference Workshop 4

AI-Ready School Business Professionals: Practical AI Adoption & Judgment Strategies

Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026 | Time: 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Description:

AI can dramatically improve productivity and work quality, but many districts see the same pattern, early excitement followed by stalled adoption. When staff rely on generic prompts, results can feel inconsistent, and people quickly fall back to familiar manual processes. The real challenge is not access to AI tools. It is building the judgment, management practices, and organizational readiness to use them well.

This pre-conference workshop helps school business professionals move beyond basic AI awareness to the applied skills that drive real adoption. You will learn to treat AI as a management and workflow capability, so you can consistently provide context, break down work into clear tasks, evaluate output quality, and decide where AI can and cannot add value. Through facilitated discussion and practical application, you will use a diagnostic framework to assess readiness across governance, culture, workflow integration, and risk.

You will also build six meta-skills that strengthen day-to-day AI performance: context assembly, quality judgment, task decomposition, iterative refinement, workflow integration, and frontier recognition. You will leave with a clearer way to evaluate AI opportunities, support responsible adoption, and prepare yourself and your team for an AI-integrated future in school business operations.

Learning objectives:

At the end of this activity, learners should be able to:

Explain the key skills and conditions needed for effective AI adoption in school business operations, including the applied judgment required beyond basic tool use. Assess organizational readiness for AI adoption using a diagnostic framework that considers governance, culture, workflow integration, and risk. Identify and apply strategies that build the six meta-skills needed for effective AI use: context assembly, quality judgment, task decomposition, iterative refinement, workflow integration, and frontier recognition.

Speaker(s):

Natasha Valencia, Supervisor of Budget, Prince William County Public Schools 

Continuing Education Details:

• Track: Future Trends and Strategic Foresight
• SFO: 3, Risk Management
• CPE: 3, Information Technology
• CAE: 2.75, Operations
• Knowledge Level: Intermediate and Advanced
• Prerequisites/Advanced Preparations: None

Fee:

• Member: $275 
• Non-member: $325