Across the country, education leaders are being asked to do more with finite—and often uncertain—resources. States and districts are navigating the long-term implications of pandemic relief spending, increased demands for transparency, and growing pressure to demonstrate that education dollars are improving outcomes for all students. Supporting states, districts, schools, and communities as they navigate this fiscal landscape is the centering purpose of the Strategic Funding and Finance Center. 

The Center, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is a national technical assistance center designed to help policymakers and education leaders align resources with priorities in smarter, more strategic ways. 

Our team at the Strategic Funding and Finance Center knows that funding decisions are not just budgetary exercises, but rather program and policy choices that shape student opportunity. Building strong schools means ensuring that everyone, from policy leaders to school business officers to classroom teachers to families and communities are working together to orchestrate a delivery system for teaching and learning that reaches and meets the needs of all students. We have been talking to state, district, and school leaders throughout the nation. They identified real barriers to harnessing financial resources to meet their priorities. These challenges include limited capacity to strategically combine funding streams with different purposes and rules, uncertainty about how to meet compliance requirements across those funding sources, declining student enrollment (and the resulting loss of revenue), and rising costs associated with serving students with specialized needs.

Our goal is to help leaders break away from the status quo and use funding as a lever for meaningful, sustainable change that allows them to achieve their goals.

At its core, the Strategic Funding and Finance Center exists to support states in making evidence-based funding decisions that improve outcomes for students. We work alongside state education agencies, districts, schools, and their partners to identify innovative and permissible ways to use federal, state, and local funds, including strategies for blending and braiding resources. Our goal is to help leaders break away from the status quo and use funding as a lever for meaningful, sustainable change that allows them to achieve their goals.

The Center’s work is grounded in the real needs of the field. Through ongoing needs sensing, we provide high-quality resources and technical assistance across several key topic areas. These include Education Funding and Finance 101, which offers clear, accessible guidance to help policymakers and practitioners understand complex finance systems and communicate them effectively. We also focus on building state capacity to leverage funding flexibility, supporting leaders as they navigate federal regulations and maximize allowable funding uses and opportunities to serve students. 

Additionally, the Center supports strategic resource use, helping states move beyond compliance driven approaches toward data informed allocation decisions that promote fairness, flexibility, and impact. We are also deeply committed to addressing the unique challenges facing rural communities through our Rural School Finance Community of Practice, which centers developing innovative strategies and formats to ensure students’ needs are met and rural communities are thriving.

We are grateful to collaborate with partners who bring deep expertise and trusted relationships in the field. Our partnership with Association of School Business Officers International (ASBO) strengthens our connection to local finance leaders and supports shared needs sensing, dissemination, and outreach efforts so that resources reach the practitioners who need them most. 

We are also excited to work closely with Afton Partners whose experts will codevelop resource allocation review tools and strategies through targeted assistance to states and through a cross-state community of practice. This work will help states, districts, and schools strengthen knowledge of funding flexibility, state-level fiscal practices, and strategic funding approaches aligned with strategic priorities.

As we launch the Strategic Funding and Finance Center, we do so with a clear commitment: to help education leaders use every dollar more strategically in service of students and the educators who nurture these students along the pathway to success. We look forward to learning with states, districts, and schools, responding to their most pressing needs, and supporting smarter, more equitable education finance decisions in the years ahead.

If you have an idea, a need, or a question, please reach out to us at sffcenter@air.org