Cross-functional support for superintendents managing a crisis no single department can solve alone.
Many school districts face a rapidly worsening, complex crisis that includes weak academic performance, falling enrollment and revenue, underutilized buildings, rapidly increasing operating costs, and eroding public trust. District attempts to successfully address this complex crisis and deliver sustained academic improvement and financial health have been limited by a critical obstacle: in a traditional functional structure, the only executive whose job is to manage the system as a whole is the superintendent — and they simply don’t have enough time to devote to resolving it.
Miller Associates provides consulting and/or temporary Chief of Staff services to support superintendents in developing and implementing cross-functional solutions to the complex crisis they face.
Develop a clear, shared understanding of the different dimensions of the crisis, in partnership with internal and external stakeholders.
Craft a range of options for addressing the crisis and achieving the district’s long-term academic and financial goals.
Facilitate a transparent decision process that builds stakeholder trust, rather than eroding it further.
Design detailed cross-functional implementation plans that translate board decisions into coordinated action and clear accountability across departments.
Support execution, monitoring, and adaptation as conditions change — so the plan stays a plan the district actually follows.
Focused advisory support on a specific dimension of the crisis — enrollment decline, school closure and consolidation, facility utilization, or cost management — brought in alongside your existing team.
Embedded, cross-functional leadership support for superintendents who need someone dedicated to managing the complex crisis as a whole while they keep the rest of the district running.
Miller Associates’ consulting teams usually include a mix of people with K-12 experience and relevant private-sector experience — because solving a complex, cross-functional crisis takes both. In her consulting engagements, Susan has also partnered with leading policy research organizations, including the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Education Policy and the Georgetown University Edunomics Lab.
Client confidentiality means these are described as disguised composites, without identifying the districts involved.
Like many school districts, this suburban district faced a shrinking student population — down over 5% in the three years following COVID to just over 24,000 students. Additional challenges included aging facilities with significant capital needs, competition from charter schools along its borders, uneven building utilization driving up delivery costs, and inconsistent programs and pathways.
Solution: We partnered with a community advisory board to build a transparent, guideline-driven process for school closures and consolidations that minimized disruption to students and families. Capital improvements, funded through the district’s bond program, supported new construction to enhance the academic experience for affected families. Programs and pathways were rationalized across K-12 articulation areas, and underutilized facilities were repurposed.
Results: The process led to the consolidation of several school buildings and a reduction of roughly 2,000 underutilized seats, generating approximately $8–10 million in projected annual cost savings reinvested directly into academic improvement initiatives.
A mid-sized urban school district faced significant competition from surrounding districts and charter schools. To address declining enrollment, the district engaged the community through a series of workshops to identify academic programs that would appeal to families within district boundaries — and potentially attract families from outside them.
The district could identify opportunities for growth, but struggled to understand student and family flight. As we worked to determine which schools needed minor improvements, renovations, or replacement, one piece was missing: understanding why families chose not to attend their designated neighborhood school.
Solution: To prioritize investments effectively, the district needed to understand the why behind each family’s choice to enroll elsewhere. We recommended a survey giving families the opportunity to explain why they opted out of their assigned neighborhood school and what drew them to a different one.
Results: The survey revealed that families’ decisions were driven by a mix of factors: academic programs that didn’t fit their child’s needs, perceived poor academic performance, bullying concerns, and lingering reputational effects from a past incident at the school. These findings helped define where the district would revamp and bolster their academic offerings, address student academic outcomes, and prioritize capital investments.
Engagements are shaped to the district — from a single school board briefing on closure and consolidation options, to sustained, multi-month support spanning enrollment, finance, facilities, and governance.
For State Education Agencies, we provide support for their school district turnaround interventions, within the constraints established by their state laws and regulations.
Every engagement starts with a private conversation about the challenges you face, and how we can help you to meet them.
Contact Susan Miller