Published on: September 14, 2026
An ATIXA Tip of the Week by Saundra K. Schuster, M.S., J.D.
The most pressing challenges facing K-12 schools and higher education institutions today rarely remain within a single professional’s sphere. What begins as a civil rights report can quickly raise questions about applying appropriate legal standards, employee supervision, documentation, student safety, supportive measures, communications, behavioral risk, free speech, policy interpretation, and institutional authority.
Stakeholders may disagree on who should take the lead in addressing a complex issue, what the appropriate response should be, and how to reconcile legal obligations with institutional priorities. Each professional brings legitimate expertise, and each office sees a crucial piece of the puzzle, but no one may be able to address the whole picture alone.
Without complete facts, clear jurisdiction, unanimous agreement, or a perfectly applicable section of the handbook, today’s institutional leaders must do far more than apply policy. They must exercise sound judgment, make tough calls, build consensus, and guide their institutions through uncertainty.
The question for today’s compliance professionals: how do you lead through ambiguity? The 2026 ATIXA and NABITA Joint Annual Conference is designed to prepare you for that.
Leadership Looks Different in 2026
The future belongs to well-trained professionals who can lead across disciplines, not just within them. Schools and institutions need professionals with expertise spanning civil rights investigations, behavioral intervention, student conduct, human resources, and disability services, perhaps more than ever before.
Increasingly, leadership means recognizing when a matter has outgrown your expertise, then knowing how to bring the right people into the conversation without losing clarity, accountability, or momentum.
Institutional Readiness Is the Next Frontier
Institutional readiness means preparing people and decision-making structures to perform under pressure, and ensuring processes are effective. For years, this focused on building compliant programs. The conversation is shifting toward resilience. True readiness means making sound decisions even when facts are incomplete, stakes are high, and multiple offices are involved. That work must begin long before a crisis arrives.
This philosophy shaped our decision to introduce the joint conference format last year, joining the voices of ATIXA with those of NABITA’s practitioners. It reflects what we have observed through decades of consulting with educational institutions: the challenges practitioners face are increasingly interconnected, and the best solutions emerge when professionals converge to learn alongside colleagues outside of their own disciplines.
The response to last year’s conference reinforced that belief. Attendees valued the opportunity to deepen their expertise while gaining a better understanding of how institutional partners approach the same situations. Their feedback has shaped this year’s event as we continue refining the experience to reflect the realities of modern institutional practice.
Learning That Reflects the Work
Whether through certification courses, conference sessions, shared keynotes, the Consultation Corner, affinity and community groups, or the ATIXA Capstone Experience (ACE), every part of the conference is designed to strengthen the muscles of individual expertise and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Throughout my career, I have found that partnering and learning with colleagues who view the same challenges from different angles sharpens judgment, strengthens professional relationships, and leads to better decisions.
Join Us in Baltimore
I hope you’ll join us in Baltimore this October for the 2026 ATIXA and NABITA Joint Annual Conference, marking ATIXA’s 15th and NABITA’s 18th annual conferences. Bring your team, your questions, and your perspective. Together, we’ll build the kind of collaborative leadership our institutions need.
The future of this work belongs to practitioners who can keep learning, collaborate across disciplines, and make consistent decisions even when the path forward is not obvious. The Conference is designed to ease you onto that path, wherever you are on your journey toward multifaceted proficiency.
See you there!