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Author: Sean Johnson

2025 Impact Report

Written by Sean Johnson on . Posted in Noteworthy News.

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In 2025, state and local agencies across the country faced intensifying pressures. Tight budgets. Shifting school enrollment. Workforce shortages. Increasingly complex and uncertain policy environments.

And yet Afton’s client partners led with intention and clarity in service of their constituents. They made hard decisions. They improved opportunities for all.

Afton was proud to walk alongside them – designing, planning, and implementing ambitious policy and funding strategies through human-centered processes and rigorous data analytics. 

Across 33 states and localities, Afton’s work centered on three priorities:

  1. Strategic use of public dollars. We helped leaders assess, design, and implement funding policies and plans where they matter most.
  2. Coherent state and local systems. We supported leaders in building government systems that work for families and learners, incorporating data analytics, human-centered engagement, and policy design into agencies.
  3. Addressing conditions that lead to opportunity gaps. We provided insights & capacity to help partners to tackle root causes.

Certain themes held everywhere we worked: implementation matters as much as design. Workforce stability is a precursor to quality. Public leadership requires courage, clarity, a true love of mission, and trustworthiness at scale.

The pages that follow are a love letter to my talented, intentional, and fun colleagues at Afton and their impact in 2025. Their expertise is extraordinary. But in the public sector, expertise alone is never enough.

My colleagues understand real impact comes from a genuine commitment to mission and partnership. I see my colleagues showing up with humility, respect, and trust. And we see our client partners showing up the same way. Which created public impact that far exceeds even the smartest idea.

Carrie Stewart
Founding Partner & CEO

Afton’s Impact at a Glance

These numbers reflect more than activity. They represent systems strengthened and capacity built. Across states and sectors, we worked alongside leaders to align funding, clarify decision-making, and translate policy into durable implementation. The result isn’t just initiatives completed, but infrastructure that will continue serving communities into the future.

K-12:  Helping Schools and States Navigate Financial Uncertainty

Rising student needs. Shifting enrollment. Uncertain revenues. Climbing costs.

Leaders across state agencies, districts, and charter networks are making high-stakes decisions in a volatile environment. This year, we helped them make strategic funding and policy decisions that hold up for current challenges and the resource-tight years ahead.

Turning State Policy into District Reality

Passing legislation is one thing. Making it work is another. Ambitious policy often stalls at the implementation stage. The same law lands very differently, depending on a district’s capacity and context.

Take mental health funding. Schools are increasingly expected to support student mental health as an important driver of academic success, while not typically being fully funded for it. We partnered with an advocacy organization to name that gap clearly and tie it to specific cost inputs.

In Rochester, MN, our work led to a new budget model that more effectively allocates resources in accordance with the district’s strategic plan. In Boston, district leaders are now putting into practice funding strategies we helped design, building more transparent and equitable resource allocation across their schools. Better policy by design. Stronger outcomes by implementation.

Project Highlight: Maryland

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future applies to 24 county-level districts, including some of the nation’s largest systems and several in rural areas. They’ve been given the same policy, but have vastly different capacities to act. 

Maryland’s Accountability and Implementation Board needed a partner who could advise at the state level while understanding what districts experience on the ground. Our team helped build implementation infrastructure so reform can happen on the ground.

After 18 months, the LEAs walked away with stronger budget processes, clearer systems for Minimum School Funding implementation, and experience navigating accountability requirements. And at the state level, the AIB gained a partner who could translate district-level challenges into policy-relevant insights. When implementation surfaced ambiguities, we helped develop solutions that kept the Blueprint on track.

Project Highlight: Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, we partnered with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to study how $3.4 billion in Student Opportunity Act and ESSER funds flowed through the system at the district and school level. The resulting report found that SOA funds reached the students the policy intended, and that the overlap with ESSER helped many districts sustain investments without the fiscal cliffs many feared. DESE now has a foundation to track how their funding reforms play out.

Helping Charter Networks Plan with Clarity

Charter school leaders know the reality: entrepreneurial spirit can sometimes be at odds with the headwinds. Enrollment is stagnant, costs keep climbing, future funding is uncertain, and student needs are rising.

Afton worked with 60+ charter school networks across 22 states to provide financial clarity in decision-making. We built scenario-based multi-year financial plans, created board-facing financial communications to tee up the right information for decisions, and pressure-tested growth plans before commitments got locked in.

We also coached school finance leaders, guided communities of practice, and trained boards and school leadership on Effective Financial Governance, Leading Through Financial Uncertainty, Long-Range Financial Planning, and Effective Financial Reporting.

Project Highlight: Alabama

I Dream Big and Independence Prep had something in common: neither had opened their doors yet. No students. No revenue. Just two leaders with a year of high-stakes decisions ahead of them.

We supported both schools in the window before students arrived, when the decisions that will shape a school’s finances for years get made. That meant facility strategy. Cash flow timing. Enrollment scenarios. Finance committee structure. 

Both schools opened with facility strategies that matched their financial reality, operational costs mapped before contracts were signed, and boards equipped to govern, not just rubber-stamp.

Project Highlight: Texas

Vanguard Academy wanted to grow from 6,800 to 10,000 students via three new schools. The CFO had a number in mind to fund it, but needed more than instinct to bring it to the board with confidence.

We led a multi-month financial planning process that surfaced answers to pertinent questions in the decision making process: What does debt service coverage look like at different financing levels? What if enrollment comes in below plan? Which staffing assumptions don’t hold up at scale?

What we found was that central office positions had been growing proportionally with enrollment. We also uncovered a $2.3 million substitute line item that pointed to deeper data gaps between Finance and HR.

Vanguard is still growing. But now they’re growing with a single source of data truth, a staffing model built for scale, and a framework the team can use long after the engagement ended.

Early Care & Education: Building Systems That Work for Families

Early care and education systems have dramatically improved. But for many families, the day-to-day reality still feels fragmented. Hard to navigate, hard to afford, and hard to count on.

For ECE systems leaders, the challenge in 2025 wasn’t a lack of ideas, but the difficulty of translating policy into practice across complex, capacity-strained systems. Afton partnered with states to operationalize funding reforms, address workforce instability (including increasing pay), and strengthen the underlying infrastructure needed for programs to function more reliably for families and providers.

From Fragmented Funding to Coherent Systems

Early childhood funding often arrives through disconnected streams. Each with its own timelines and reporting requirements. Building coherence takes intentional effort.

In 2025, we did that work across a number of states. From redesigning how dollars flow, to building tools that help local leaders understand their own communities, the through line has been the same. Systems should adapt to families, not the other way around.

And the work is growing. We’re excited to be partnering with early childhood leaders in Arkansas and North Carolina as they build funding systems and policy frameworks that can actually deliver for young children and their families.

Project Highlight: Illinois

We were proud to help support the launch of the new Department of Early Childhood, designing funding mechanisms to direct resources equitably based on community needs and aligning program standards to support a comprehensive, simpler, and fairer ECE system for Illinois families, providers, workforce, and communities.

We were also proud to support the design and implementation of Illinois’ Smart Start Workforce Grants, which resulted in Illinois raising wages for early childhood workers, benefiting 16,857 teachers and caregivers across 8,878 classrooms.

And through our project with the Early Childhood Block Grant, we helped the state answer, “with limited funding, where does the next dollar have the most impact?” We built a methodology for equitable allocation that can persist year over year. In FY25, Illinois directed $9 million in quality dollars based on this approach, raising per-child funding minimums for 140 community-based providers.

Project Highlight: Louisiana

Leaders wanted to be ready to launch a formula for early childhood funding, while also making progress in the meantime. We built a statewide model showing where where gaps remain and what expansion would cost. When local leaders asked what this meant for their parishes specifically, we built a version they could use themselves. Now, through our partnership with Louisiana Policy Institute for Children, an interactive dashboard is available, helping local leaders to tell their own stories about community needs.

Workforce Development: Closing Gaps in Who Does the Work

Workforce gaps don’t just reflect shortages. They reflect barriers. Who gets recruited, trained, supported, and retained shapes who ultimately serves our communities. When entry points are narrow or advancement pathways unclear, systems strain. When those pathways are strengthened, communities benefit.

Building Workforce Systems That Actually Work

Workforce shortages don’t stay in one lane. They show up in schools that can’t find counselors or retain teachers, and employers who can’t find the people they need to grow.

The challenge is rarely a lack of will. It’s that the systems meant to develop, support, and connect workers are often disconnected from each other and their stakeholders.

In 2025, we worked across two very different workforce contexts to help partners do the hard work of building coherence: one focused on expanding who enters the behavioral health pipeline, and one focused on helping a public workforce system better understand the employers it exists to serve.

Different problems. The same underlying question: how do you build a system that actually works for the people in it?

Project Highlight: Illinois

Illinois could meet only 22% of its residents’ mental health needs. A 349:1 patient-to-provider ratio. Over a third of adults with co-occurring disorders receiving no treatment at all.

We helped the Illinois Behavioral Health Workforce Center build its first strategic plan, bringing together legislators, agencies, universities, and advocacy groups to identify 113 concrete actions across six goals.

They now have a blueprint addressing the full pipeline: early career pathways linking high schools to behavioral health careers, loan repayment in underserved regions, and Illinois’ first rural residency in psychiatry. Every goal has metrics reported directly to the legislators who control funding.

Project Highlight: Pennsylvania

MontcoWorks is a public resource designed to connect employers with qualified talent. The problem: most area employers didn’t know it existed, and some had misconceptions about who it served.

We worked with their team to figure out why, using employer focus groups, surveys, and a human-centered design process to build personas and map the real experience of trying to work with the system. What they found was that they couldn’t be all things to all employers, and trying to be was stretching their team thin.

The result was a clearer service model, reorganized personnel, and a new business services advisory council to own and carry the strategy forward.

Field Contributions: Adding to the Conversation

Afton’s impact extends beyond our consulting. Our team contributed to the broader field through research, writing, and public engagement.

Katie Reed published a series examining the tensions families experience navigating two different education systems before and after their children turn five. The education system asks families to stitch together fragmented pieces. Katie named what that feels like.

Two decades after Hurricane Katrina, Carrie Stewart reflected on her experience opening five charter schools in New Orleans in 40 days after the storm. 

Abby McCartney presented her work on Early Intervention Cost Modeling at the Division for Early Childhood conference alongside Theresa Hawley. She also spoke at the Education Commission of the States alongside Libbie Sonnier on her ECE funding design work in Louisiana.

Ellen Johnson co-authored Talent Connections: Your Guide to Leveraging Chicago’s Workforce Investments, helping employers navigate the city’s workforce development ecosystem.

Sana Fatima, PhD, published Outcomes of a Trauma-Responsive Educational Approach at Scale and presented at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.

We’re proud of the curiosity and rigor our team brings to their client work. That energy shows up in the research they publish, the stages they present on, and the conversations they push forward. The work doesn’t stop at the deliverable.

Looking Ahead to 2026

The pressures that defined 2025 aren’t going away. Afton will keep showing up to find the opportunities in it all:

Strategic use of public dollars: helping leaders make resource decisions that hold up over time.

Coherent state and local systems: weaving connective tissue across stakeholders so when legislation and policy has the intended impact, benefiting communities and learners.

Addressing conditions that lead to opportunity gaps: tackling root causes, not just symptoms.

We expect to contribute to the evolving school choice landscape, increasing access to effective early childhood programs, and the strategic use of resources in an uncertain environment.

All in service of families, children, and communities.

Two Systems, One Family: The Lived Reality of America’s Educational Divide

Written by Sean Johnson on . Posted in Early Childhood Education, K-12 Education.

While policymakers often debate early childhood and K–12 separately, families experience them as one continuous journey — full of hopes, tradeoffs, and structural contradictions. This is the first piece in a three-part series (the second and third are here) unpacking how we arrived here, how these systems are evolving, and what it would take to design a more coherent pathway for every child.

A working mother sits at her kitchen table after bedtime, far too many tabs open on her computer. She’s trying to sort out child care for her almost-three-year-old, deciphering program types, weighing cost and availability, mapping commutes, comparing hours to her work schedule. The waitlists are long — so long — for the programs that actually fit her life.

What’s a mom to do?

Her mind wanders ahead to Kindergarten. She scrolls through neighborhood school reviews, tries to interpret the school’s report card, and reminds herself that at least – finally – her daughter will have a guaranteed spot somewhere. That brings relief, but also uncertainty: What does she really know about this school? Will it be right for her child?

This contrast isn’t just emotional. It’s structural. It’s the lived reality of America’s educational divide.

Before age five, parents act as consumers in a market system – empowered in theory to choose, but with no guarantee of access. They chase openings. They juggle waitlists and subsidies. They compare home-based care, center-based care, preschool programs, willing and able family members, and whomever might have a slot.

At age five, everything changes. Children enter Kindergarten and become beneficiaries of a public system. They receive guaranteed access to a seat – usually tied to their address – with limited but growing opportunities to customize.

Families don’t experience their children in silos. Their needs and values don’t shift overnight. Yet our system forces them to code-switch at age five—from navigating a fragmented early childhood market to entering a structured public K–12 system.

Understanding the Structural Divide

To understand this structural divide, we can use a simple framework that clarifies how each system is built at its core — independent of current reforms or policy debates. We’ll explore historical context next, but for now, consider our systems along two dimensions:

The X-Axis: Access

  • Market-Based Access: In a market model, competitive forces determine where resources flow, and families access services based on price and availability. In our context, families match with available slots based on a variety of factors (e.g. timing of application, lottery, location, etc.). Access depends on navigating supply and demand.
  • Guaranteed Access: Every child has an unconditional right to a slot (often based on assigned location) for free and compulsory public services, regardless of background or needs. The system bears responsibility for providing space and services regardless of demand.

The Y-Axis: Degree of Curation

  • Customized: Families can design individualized learning journeys, selecting from various learning environments, pedagogies, curricula, locations, schedules, etc. to match their children’s needs and family priorities.
  • Standardized: Educational experiences prioritize uniform guidelines and expectations for what students should learn, how it should be taught, and how they are assessed. Consistency is prioritized over customization to achieve goals.

The Current Landscape

  • ECE (Upper Left Quadrant): High customization potential through market-based access. Families can theoretically choose providers matching their needs and preferences (if they can afford it and spots exist). ECE functions like a market, albeit with strong regulatory and subsidy overlays.
  • K-12 (Lower Right Quadrant): Historically, K12 has offered guaranteed access with standardized delivery at its core. Every child gets a seat, but most families get their assigned district school with standard hours, pedagogy, and curriculum. While choice is increasingly available, latest data from Pew Research Center suggests that out of the entire K–12 school population, about 83% are attending a traditional public schools (though some of these are exercising choice within their public school district, such as magnet or open enrollment options).

The Critical Enabler: Capacity and Infrastructure

What this framework risks obscuring is a critical truth: customization depends on capacity on both the supply side and the demand side. And capacity (an organization’s resources) depends on infrastructure (structures and systems that make it possible to use capacity productively). These are market enablers needed to achieve goals.

Consider that on the supply side, providers need start-up funding and incubation time to develop new offerings, and they need wherewithal to understand family needs and preferences, the capability to design targeted offerings, get those offerings to families, and to sustain them over time.

On the demand side, families’ ability to curate a learning journey demands time, system knowledge, social capital, and financial resources — things most often associated with higher income families. This is where market enablers (such as navigation support, transparent and user-friendly information, simplified application and enrollment systems, and supports to overcome logistical barriers like transportation) becomes essential— not as a static feature, but as a dynamic force that changes through a family’s unique educational journey.

The depth and quality of infrastructure and family support determines whether “choice” is real or illusory, whether customization serves all families or only the privileged. As both systems converge — seeking to combine guaranteed access with meaningful personalization — this support becomes the determining factor in whether this convergence promotes equitable access to quality in both ECE and K12, or exacerbates inequity in both.

The Central Questions This Raises

We understand the structural hurdles built over centuries that have gotten us to where we are today. But if we asked families what they need, the answer would likely fall out like this: reliable access to quality education services that fit their children’s needs, without undue burden.

If families want guaranteed access with meaningful ability to customize, how can we build policies with that as the central goal?

This framework prompts four critical questions that must be understood:

  1. What works and fails in each quadrant? What do families gain from ECE’s market-based customization (choice but limited guarantee) versus K-12’s guaranteed standardization (access but limited customization)? What can the systems learn from each others’ strengths and mistakes?
  2. Where do families actually want to be? Is there alignment between where systems are moving and where families need them to be? How does this vary based on family resources? How do preferences change with capacity and infrastructure supports?
  3. How are both systems evolving across this matrix? Where is K-12 moving as it adds choice options? Where is ECE heading with a push for universal access? What early evidence do we see of what is taking hold and what is not, and why? How does this connect to family preferences?
  4. What does convergence mean for policy design? If both systems are moving toward some level of guaranteed access with customization options, what governance structures, funding mechanisms, infrastructure and supports must we build to promote equitable opportunities and meaningful outcomes?

This structural divide didn’t emerge by accident. It is the product of centuries of policy choices, cultural norms, and fragmented governance — forces that have shaped the systems families navigate today.

In the next installments of this series, we’ll briefly step back to trace that history and then look forward, examining where both early childhood and K–12 are headed and what convergence could mean for policy design. For now, it’s enough to recognize the core truth at the heart of this conversation: families deserve a system that meets them where they are, rather than requiring them to adapt to the system they inherit.

Four Disciplines for Leading Through Financial Uncertainty

Written by Sean Johnson on . Posted in Finance Best Practices, Financial Sustainability, Workforce Development.

It’s safe to say education leaders are dealing with one of the most uncertain financial periods in recent memory. The end of one-time ESSER funding. Enrollment declines. Policy volatility. State budget pressures. All of these forces are conspiring to create a uniquely complex environment for public education decision-making.

Education leaders from the school to the district to the state are making difficult choices, often with incomplete information, while maintaining staff morale and without losing the trust of the community.

But while we can’t control federal budgets or birth rates, there are things we can control. We can control how we plan. How we communicate. How we decide to show up as leaders.

At the local school system level, I believe there are four essential strategies that leaders can employ to navigate this environment. And while they won’t make your problems go away or make your jobs easier, I believe leaning into these four areas will help you serve your communities with greater confidence.

Discipline 1: Communicate with Clarity and Transparency

In uncertain times, when leaders are silent, people get anxious. It’s important to name the uncertainty, to address the proverbial elephants in the room.

Consider your board and finance committee. Share data about enrollment, funding, student needs, and cost trends. Don’t just describe the risks, make an attempt to quantify them. And outline the second-and-third-order effects on things like compensation, facilities, or growth.

Consider transparency with your staff on your operating context. While that might feel risky, we tend to find they appreciate hearing the same data and context that leadership is weighing. It’s important that this messaging be consistent, informative, transparent, and compassionate. We appreciated this example from KIPP North Carolina last year.

Finally, make sure your finance committee continues to function well. Maintain a consistent meeting cadence. Include members that are financially literate and capable of balancing rationality and empathy. A well run committee will help strengthen your own decision-making and provide appropriate checks on your logic when weighing hard decisions.

Discipline 2: Manage Risk with Scenario Planning

No plan fully survives contact with reality, even in the best of times. It’s certainly true right now. That’s why Afton urges school system leaders to scenario plan on their financial outlook – toward effective decision making on instructional strategies.

Start by identifying your major areas of financial risk. That could be state and federal budget risk. It could be rising student needs. It could be enrollment variability. It could the construction costs or facility maintenance costs.

For each, model out the base scenario, the best-case scenario, and the worst case scenario. You want to see the impacts of each, some, and all at once.

You are trying to be ready to act decisively no matter what version of the future arrives.

Discipline 3: Protect Cash to Preserve Flexibility

Even financially healthy schools and school systems can be whipsawed by reimbursement delays or enrollment timing. It’s imperative to have solid cash management practices to give your organization sufficient breathing room when surprises inevitably arrive.

Some concrete recommendations:

  • Keep at least 45-90 days of cash on hand.
  • Exercise discipline around submitting grant reimbursements promptly.
  • Start the process of establishing revenue anticipation notes or lines of credit now. The best time to do this is before you need it.
  • For smaller school systems and charter schools with limited access to capital, regularly project your monthly cash flow and update it each month. What gets measured gets managed.

Leaders must be able to forecast these dips and act early by adjusting spending, delaying large purchases, etc.

Discipline 4: Strengthen and Diversify Revenue

Enrollment management is becoming a more common lever to influence the revenue side of the equation for public and charter schools alike. Any organization that relies on per-pupil funding can benefit. Setting data-driven enrollment targets, investing in marketing systems and staff, and monitoring progress and course correcting as needed are all core skills in doing this work well.

Schools can also explore diversified revenue strategies to avoid single points of failure. What programs and services are you offering that are eligible for funding outside of the typical K-12 funding formula? Grants, philanthropic partners, fee-based services (after-school, summer schools/camps, facility rentals, etc.) and interest-bearing investments on reserves can all contribute to incremental revenue increases. When things tight, even small adjustments matter.

Lean In To What You Can Control

In periods of tremendous uncertainty, education leaders have the power to plan, to communicate, to anticipate. And by doing so can lead their communities with conviction, with steadiness, and with compassion.