2025 NSBA Annual Conference Preview

Take a peek at what's in store for conference-goers this year in Atlanta

From rural education initiatives to student mental health, AI-driven education, and innovative schooling ideas, here's a sampling of the education sessions, preconference sessions, and speakers presenting at this Annual Conference. 

March 14, 2025

Joe Sanfelippo remembers early in his leadership career operating with a “help desk” mentality. Anything and everything in his school that needed fixing or attention landed on his plate. And he willing took it on, thinking “It’s just easier for me to fix things than to teach others how to fix them.”

That approach was not only exhausting; it also was harmful to the development of leadership within his school, Sanfelippo says. “I wasn’t developing any leaders because all the people who wanted their stuff fixed would come to me all the time, and the people who actually wanted to grow stopped coming to me because they knew I was just going to do it for them.”

From the smallest rural school district to the largest, building leadership capacity is essential, says Sanfelippo, a former teacher, school counselor, director, coach, principal, and the recently retired superintendent of Wisconsin’s Fall Creek School District.

Named National Superintendent of the Year by Education Dive in 2019, his 900-student district was twice named an Innovative District by the International Center for Leadership in Education.

Sanfelippo will share his insights into leadership building as the keynote speaker for the Rural Education Breakfast on Saturday, during NSBA’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exposition, April 4-6, in Atlanta.

When staff is limited, which is often the case in rural schools, it is essential to “build the capacity of staff and do it in a way that makes everyone feel like they own part of the process and can grow in that process,” he says.

In his book, Lead from Where You Are, Sanfelippo outlines what he has identified as key behaviors to building leadership—recognizing greatness in your colleagues, acknowledging their work, and extending successes to others.

“Leadership was never intended to be a committee of one,” but too often, that happens, and the result is “you’re not building anyone else up along the way,” he says. In addition, uncertainty and misunderstandings about roles and responsibilities will likely occur.

To learn more about the inspirational speakers, world-class programming, top education solution providers, experiential learning site visits, and innovative networking opportunities available during this year’s conference—and to register—go to the Annual Conference Page at www.nsba.org/our-events/2025-annual-conference.

Here is a sampling of the education sessions, preconference sessions, and speakers presenting at this year’s conference.

Rural education initiatives

·       Reimagining Rural Education Through an Equity Lens is a three-and-a-half-hour preconference session led by Maryland’s Talbot County Public Schools. It outlines how the 5,000-student school district, located on the state’s Eastern Shore, works collaboratively with the local management board, businesses, and community partners to examine disparities among student subgroups, create student advisory groups, and make the community its classroom with an equity focus.

·       Meaningful, Authentic, Holistic, and Choice-Based Learning, presented by Nevada’s White Pine County School District, shares the preparation and planning that went into creating an elementary STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) Academy for this remote mountain town in Ely, Nevada. Lessons to be discussed include the teacher training process and instructional design, how the academy serves as a career progression opportunity for educators while still working directly with students, and the joy that students, families, and educators take from the program.

·       Representatives from the Association of Alaska School Boards and the Kansas Association of School Boards team up for the session Where Are the Students? Increasing Engagement with School Boards, State Associations, and Beyond! School board members are there for the students; however, those students rarely have a voice at the board table, and even more rarely in state associations. The two state groups share the creative ways that they have bridged the gaps between their board members and the students they serve, involving students at the board table and developing opportunities for meaningful student engagement in the work of school boards.

Student mental health and well-being

Former NSBA president Miranda Beard has long emphasized empathy and training for school staff to help children exposed to traumatic experiences recover and succeed in school. She continues that message as a consultant with Hope 4 the Wounded, a national program that provides educators, child advocacy professionals, and community organizations with trauma-informed practices and strategies for learning and wellness.

In the session, Reaching the Wounded Student and Staff for Better Academic Achievement, Beard and Joe Hendershott, Hope 4 for the Wounded founder and executive director, highlight the need to recognize and support students who are beyond the point of “at-risk” for trauma resulting from abuse, neglect, violence, bullying, and other mistreatments.

Applying principles best suited to supporting at-risk children will not produce the care and healing needed to help wounded children, Hendershott says. Educators, administrators, and school board members require “different professional development to prepare them to address the issues, to identify the correct terminology and the correct strategies to deal with wounded kids,” he says.

Hendershott is the author of the books Reaching the Wounded Student and Supporting the Wounded Educator. “Sometimes the adults supporting wounded students have their own, unaddressed wounds,” he says.

This work speaks to the need for equity-focused education and “giving children and staff what they really need to be successful,” Beard says. That work begins with the school board that “comes up with the policies and ideas and strategies to support the wounded children they’re serving and that the community expects them to support,” she adds.

·       Students exposed to trauma are also the focus of the session, The Intersection Where Trauma-Informed and Culturally Competent Schools Meet. Developmental trauma expert Melissa Sadin notes that more than half of all students in any school have experienced some form of childhood trauma. With more than half of the nation’s students from racially and ethnically marginalized groups, educators need to be prepared to meet their students where they are. Sadin’s session will focus on strategies for building culturally competent and trauma-informed school communities.

·       Keegan Lee, the Gen Z digital well-being activist who drew a standing-room-only crowd at last year’s Annual Conference, returns for an interdisciplinary discussion with NSBA’s Jinghong Cai on the crucial roles parents and educators play in raising children in today’s information age. Social Media and Mental Health: A Scientific-Based Curriculum of How to Raise Children in a Digital Age addresses various subjects, including intergenerational differences in navigating technology and the importance of digital literacy and digital wellness in shaping young people’s self-perception. Lee also will discuss a course she designed to help parents and educators gain the confidence and tools they need to effectively shape the young minds of tomorrow in the age of social media and emerging technology.

·       Researchers with the University of Southern California Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research will report on their national study that adds to growing concerns about the impact of the global pandemic on children’s mental health and academic performance. The session, Multifaceted Strategic Response from Educational Institutions to the Long-Term Mental Health Impact of COVID-19 on K-12 Students, will also provide practical strategies at the school level and supportive policies at the district, county, and state levels. The researchers stress that there are ways to address this ongoing crisis and foster environments where all students can thrive mentally and academically and recover from the impact of the pandemic.

Innovative schooling 

·       In Relationships First: Reimagining Education by Prioritizing Human Connections, district leaders from Utah’s Park City School District will show how rethinking educational practices with a focus on relationships helps ignite passion, inspire innovation, and create thriving educational communities that benefit both students and educators. With the right strategies, human connections can grow while engaging in the most challenging academic work, the presenters say.

·       Achieving Greatness Together Through Student Leadership offers insights learned from the Pendergast Elementary School District’s 8th Grade Superintendent’s Student Council. The program in the Phoenix, Arizona, school district fosters student leadership and engagement within the district and community while preparing students for the future and offering them valuable opportunities for high school and beyond. The program focuses on building leadership, presentation, and teamwork skills while enabling students to work collaboratively with the district governing board and superintendent.

·       In Reimaging Time, Space, and Pace: Creating a Student-Centered Classroom, district leaders with New York’s Mineola Union Free School District share their work to use technology to create systems that enable student voice and choice and explore alternate measures of assessments that de-emphasize teaching to the test and allow for reuse of time in the school day. The session will explore the use of student-created evidence folders, genius-hour projects, autonomous courses, and skills-based projects.

·       Freedom Schools have a rich educational history rooted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the Freedom Summer civil rights initiatives to empower African American communities through education. That legacy continues today. The session, Lindop School District 92 Implements Freedom Schools to Improve Teaching and Learning, examines the decision by the PK-8 district in Broadview, Illinois, to adopt the research-based Freedom Schools curriculum for one of its schools and incorporate its emphasis on literacy, African American history, civic engagement, advocacy, and more.

Education in an AI-IMPACTED world

·       Integrating Artificial Intelligence in K-12 Education: Enhancing Student Learning and Teacher Efficiency highlights Topeka Public Schools’ work to leverage AI to personalize learning, streamline administrative tasks, and provide real-time data analytics for enhanced student outcomes. The session aims to help attendees understand how to implement AI-driven personalized learning pathways, use AI in assessments, and manage classroom tasks more efficiently, transforming educational practices in their districts.

·       NSBA’s Center for Public Education and ProjectSet, a work-based learning platform, team up for the session LifeReady Students: Building Durable Skills for an AI-Driven Future. AI is reshaping the skills students need for success in their careers and lives. Durable skills—often called “soft skills” or “employability skills”—enable individuals to effectively manage resources, time, and opportunities to achieve meaningful results. The session will explore strategies to equip students with adaptable, future-ready skills essential for thriving in an AI-empowered world. (Read more about Durable Skills and AI in the Research Column, page 48.)

·       Leaders with the New York State School Boards Association present the session Deepfakes, AI, and Disinformation: Legal and Communications Implications. It will explore how school board members and administrators can manage the communications and legal implications of the malicious use of AI in a school district (think disinformation and fake audio and video clips of administrators and students). Attendees will understand how to respond if/when disinformation occurs and learn how to navigate legal issues such as defamation, cyberbullying, and staff discipline.