We apply system expertise and human-centered principles to meet evolving needs of our workers, job seekers, and employers.

Afton supports local and state workforce development ecosystems to fulfill the needs of workers, job-seekers, and employers.  Our work enables alignment and integration, equitable policy and program design, and improved service delivery. We find solutions within the many contributors to workforce development, including jobseekers and workers themselves, community-based providers, education institutions, public and private funders, policymakers, intermediaries, advocates, public administrators, and state and local governments.

We help dismantle systemic barriers to education and training, increase the effectiveness of the public workforce system, and address issues of job quality to ensure all workers can thrive. Services include:

• Project and Meeting Management
• Group Facilitation & Consensus Building
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Human-Centered Design
• Workforce Strategy & Program (Re)Design
• Program Scaling & Replication
• Comparative & Best Practice Research

We help education leaders inside states and districts design systems where delivery models, governance, and funding are aligned around student success.

School systems are navigating enrollment declines, rising student needs, state budget squeezes, and federal policy shifts. Resources are tightening while achievement gaps persist.

Afton helps state and district leaders design systems where delivery models, governance structures, and funding are aligned around student success. As national experts in education funding policy and strategic resource allocation, we help you weigh the options and land on decisions your community will support and you can make happen.

The decisions that shape a school system are more effective and easier to implement, when the people affected have been part of the conversation. We talk with parents and families, teachers and school personnel, board members and district leaders, and pair what we hear with local data & national research to help you design solutions that last.

Examples of our services include:

• Funding policy design and implementation, for states and school districts
• District and school growth, merger, and consolidation decisions
• School choice system design and oversight
• Special education funding and delivery models
• Career and technical education funding and delivery
• Budget process design and resource allocation decision support

“Afton Partners has worked closely with our school district for over a decade. They have taken the time to build relationships and truly understand our local context. This deep and long standing engagement with the community has made them our most trusted partners and advisors. Recently, with a complex decision around school utilization and grade level alignment facing the district, there was no question about who to turn to to lead our decision making process with data, community input, and their own insights – it was Afton. During that process they came to the district multiple times to meet with community members, hand out surveys, and to get proximate to the challenges that we were facing. For an organization that works nationally to invest so much time locally is unique.”

We support charter school leaders in their entrepreneurial mission by ensuring financial implications are clear in each consequential organizational decision.

From high-level strategy to pointed analysis, we help you balance today’s financial realities with tomorrow’s long-term success.

Our work with more than 100 charter school networks around the country centers on effective organizational decision making, guided by the five foundations of financial health: sustainability, resiliency, financial operations, governance, and budget alignment.

We love the innovative spirit of charter schools. Our services honor that spirit and enable your mission in financially enduring ways.

• Financial health diagnostics
• Multi-year financial planning & forecasting
• Budgeting, reforecasting, and cash flow management
• Facilities planning and financing affordability
• Growth and expansion planning
• Board governance training
• Fractional CFO services
• CFO training and coaching

“Over the past two years, Equitable Facilities Fund has partnered with Afton Partners on a couple of strategic projects and it has been a truly remarkable experience for EFF and the charter school sector. The Afton team made the work together more impactful and seamless by bringing their deep expertise and collaborative spirit to every project. We appreciated that we could count on Afton to deliver high-quality insights and solutions that put schools, community and students first. We chose to work with Afton because we wanted a partner who could provide best-in-class service to charter schools while rooting that service in a culturally competent approach. Afton’s commitment to equity and excellence showed up in the way they approached every task with empathy, diligence and integrity. In summary, working with Afton Partners has been a transformative experience for Equitable Facilities Fund and the schools we serve, and we look forward to many more years of successful collaboration.”

We take a community-centered, structural approach to create stronger and more equitable ECE systems, programs, and policies.

ECE programs and services rely on myriad governance and accountability structures and a complex maze of funding streams from multiple public and private sources. And yet, it’s still woefully inadequate to provide the services children and families need or to recruit and retain exceptional educators. Fortunately, communities are shining a spotlight on the imperative of ECE for child development and economic capacity. But before more money enters the system, we have to ensure it can be used effectively and equitably. We help states reimagine and restructure governance and funding systems to build coherence, uplift educators and providers, and support effective programs — so that all resources are pulling in the same direction in service of children, families, and communities.

The time is now to create systems that serve children and families well, uplift the ECE workforce, support providers and encourage new entrants, and enable economically healthy communities. We walk with partners to ideate, develop, and implement change through services including:

• Task force and commission facilitation
• Community engagement
• Needs assessments and gap analyses
• Cost-modeling and funding studies (across child care, preschool, Early Intervention, early childhood special education, home visiting programs, and other services)
• Funding policy design and implementation
• Workforce compensation and benefits studies
• Service access, equity, and adequacy studies
• Program design, implementation, and technical assistance
• State and local governance planning and analysis
• Agency and program budgeting and financial planning & analysis

“With Afton, we got the very best of what a consultant can be. Beyond providing technical expertise and great process facilitation, the Afton team were true partners in the work—sharpening our thinking and communication to address the complex challenges and opportunities our state was facing in its early childhood system.”