CAS Annual Conference 2025

Leading for equity is one of the most rewarding and difficult challenges leaders face today.  It requires time, dedication, persistence, and in many cases “unlearning”.  Prior to engaging in equity work with stakeholders leaders must build learning structures and routines that continuously develop racial consciousness in themselves and their staff.  In this session, we will provide a detailed analysis of a process for becoming leaders of a culture of self-reflection, distributive/shared leadership, and collective responsibility for equity while providing first hand accounts from staff members on how these changes are spreading throughout the school.  The goal of the session is to first understand what equity work is and how we, as educational leaders, can build a systemic culture of equity.  A secondary goal is to have session participants reflect on their own racial consciousness and how that can impact their leadership, in turn affect school transformation. 

In today’s evolving educational landscape, effective leadership is key to fostering a positive culture and climate. "Empower to Elevate" is designed for school and district leaders looking to clarify their leadership purpose and strengthen their skills. Through interactive activities, participants will reflect on their core "why" and connect personal values to leadership practices, enabling them to inspire meaningful change.

The session will explore strategies for building trust, promoting collaboration, and creating inclusive environments that support growth and innovation. Leaders will leave with actionable insights and practical tools to elevate their school communities.

Attendees will receive resources for reflective practice, activities for team collaboration, and strategies to address educational fatigue. These tools can be tailored to meet the unique needs of individual schools and districts. Participants will gain practical strategies ready for immediate implementation with leadership teams or faculty to create lasting, positive impacts.

"Transformative Discipline: Using Restorative Practices to Enhance Student Engagement and Responsibility" is a professional development session designed to equip administrators with practical strategies for implementing restorative practices in their buildings. Participants will explore how shifting from traditional disciplinary methods to restorative approaches can foster a more positive, inclusive school culture. Through collaborative activities and real-world examples, this session will demonstrate how restorative practices can improve student engagement, strengthen relationships, and promote personal accountability. Administrators will learn how to address conflicts constructively, build empathy, and encourage students to take ownership of their actions, ultimately supporting their academic and social-emotional growth. Learning Outcomes: 1.    Participants will be able to implement restorative circles and conferences to address student behavior and promote accountability. 2.    Participants will develop strategies to create a restorative school environment that encourages student engagement, collaboration, and responsibility.

Participants will be able to look at data through a storytelling lens and formulate 3 key questions to identify what barriers they would need to remove to improve the data. For the purpose of this session we will focus on how one district created a culture of inclusion and belonging which led to improved student academic growth. The audience will learn how the district decided to take a different approach to looking at data to successfully identify the barriers that were keeping them from improving. This led to how they developed structures and put systems in place to implement them and saw how their targeted efforts delivered results almost immediately! 

In this presentation, attendees will explore essential ingredients necessary to foster a safe, inclusive, and positive environment. We will explore leadership habits that promote vibrancy as well as leadership characteristics that are detrimental. The session will highlight the importance of relationships centered on trust, transparency, collaboration, and care. Anecdotal evidence and survey data will be shared as indicators of success. The presentation will be interactive with questions, role-plays, and simulations to elicit relevant dialogue and discussion.

We all believe in supporting the whole child – academically, socially, emotionally, physically, and behaviorally – but how can we strengthen our systems to promote more coordinated and integrated practices? One approach is to leverage the CDC’s Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model as an organizing framework. In this workshop, attendees will develop a foundational understanding of the WSCC model; consider opportunities to strengthen teaming structures, goal setting, and data collection; and identify the next steps for whole child strategic planning in their setting. This workshop will feature a panel discussion with administrators from the Colchester Public Schools and East Hartford Public Schools to share key lessons learned from using the WSCC model to strengthen their school and district practices.

For better or worse cell phones have revolutionized daily life and schools are no exception.  The use of cell phone by students both in the school setting and beyond it poses a host of unique legal issues that the courts and legislators are still catching up with.

In this session our presenters will review the latest case law addressing cell phone search and seizure, student First Amendment rights, sexting/mandated reporting, use of cell phone data at disciplinary hearings, district bans on cell phones during the school day as well as other issues.  By examining real cases in detail administrators will gain a practical understanding of the "do's and dont's" of student cell phones along with a sneak preview of emerging areas in the law.