Fork In The Road - Unsustainable Workloads or Smarter Support?
- Campus Communications Services
- Dec 2, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Macro pressures in education
We’re at a convergence of some truly complex, and high-stakes, times. Across the education sector, institutions nationwide are facing unprecedented pressures - notably since 2020 and Covid-19: learning gaps; mental health and behavioral challenges; attendance and engagement issues; increasing student support demands; digital inequity; political and social tensions; declining enrollment; recruitment and retention difficulties (in part, due to changing generational attitudes towards prioritizing wellbeing and work-life balance); budget constraints and funding uncertainty.
During the same period, an expansion of communications channels and tools emerged, fundamentally changing how educational institutions, staff and families connect and engage. Out with the paper, in with digital and 'social media as a communications channel' age! While this initially brought significant benefits, more recently the overwhelming explosion of fragmented apps, platforms and social media pages has tipped the balance - mounting complexity and workload for educators, and no longer fully meeting compliance obligations or parental preferences - families are becoming disengaged.
In 2025, families expect streamlined solutions that deliver the same clarity, convenience, and responsiveness they experience in everyday digital interactions elsewhere. So, as integrated school communications platforms and AI enter the mainstream, campuses and programs find themselves navigating a critical gap - where powerful new capabilities exist, yet regulation, guidance, and a shared understanding of implementing alongside a complimentary tech stack and coherent strategy, are still catching up. The mismatch compounds pressures, and potential is not yet being reached.
How those pressures show up for high school marching band directors
What this convergence looks like in practice for high school marching band directors is a role stretched even thinner, and far beyond the podium. Alongside teaching and rehearsing, today's high school marching band directors already carry more responsibility than ever: relentless communication demands, heavy administrative loads, increasing operational complexity, and the pressures of a season that never really slows down. Add in some of the broader factors mentioned above, such as limited staffing numbers in comparison to other types of large student programs, declining numbers entering the profession, frequent early-career band director attrition, changing processes and regulations, more technology and systems that don't talk to each other, along with budgets held together with hope and duct tape - the stress is real.
Much of this work happens outside rehearsal hours and under time pressure, leaving directors to juggle operational decisions and communications in parallel, often reactively. The result is sustained overload and decision fatigue in a role that was never designed to carry this much administrative and communications weight on top of everything else.
The human consequence
In a profession built on passion and competitive pressures, the dynamic makes it difficult to set boundaries or create a healthy separation between personal identity and professional role - because, for many directors, "the band is never done". When combined with long hours, work-life imbalance, extreme workload spikes, and strong emotional investment in students and performances, it's no surprise that high rates of burnout occur.
Burnout comes from overextension + emotional exhaustion, not 'just' stress
Burnout in this context is not an individual problem; it's structural - a symptom of systemic failure.
Fork in the road
So, what can be done?
At this point of convergence, two realities must first be acknowledged:
>>> The current real risk and cost of band director burnout and attrition
Program instability
Loss of institutional knowledge
Student retention impact
>>> The opportunity
To rethink the tools, support structures, and systems surrounding the role
Technology and AI has the potential to help transform communications, operations and administrative aspects of the high school marching band director role, and reduce workload and stress, - but only if we understand the real challenges and bottlenecks. To do that, the band director voice needed to be heard. Real insights to help shape conversations around smarter, sustainable support, in order to develop potential solutions that support directors in meaningful, realistic ways.
In December 2025, Campus Communications Services launched a survey entitled:
‘The State of the High School Marching Band Director 2025: Workload, Stress, and the Role of Technology & AI’
The 10-minute, anonymous survey digs further into:
What's driving workload and stress
Where communication, operational and administrative demands pile up
How technology and AI may help
What would actually make the job more sustainable
Survey Goal #1 - Representation
To provide a platform that ensures high school marching band directors are heard and represented in emerging research and sector-wide conversations, particularly as similar investigations into workload, stress, and the adoption of AI gain momentum across other areas of education.
"This is a great project!"
Survey Goal #2 - Reality check
To better understand directors’ lived experiences regarding current levels of stress, workload, and perceptions and use of technology and AI, as well as to explore how these experiences may potentially correlate with individual and program demographics.
"This is much needed"
Survey Goal #3 - Connect concepts
To connect the concepts of communications, operations and administrative challenges with potential tech/AI solutions. Specifically identifying where new technologies and systems could provide meaningful, long-term support and reduce director workload and stress, rather than contribute to incremental burden.
"So glad to see the time and effort in recognizing this!"
Survey Goal #4 - Initiate the start of a mindset shift
To initiate a broader, longer-term conversation about sustainability in the role, including a shift in mindset around how communications, operational and administrative work is structured and supported.
"Very interested to see the results"
Survey Goal #5 - Influence change
To raise awareness beyond the band community, engaging educators and administrators who may not be directly involved in marching band programs but are positioned to influence policies, resourcing, and systemic change.
"I appreciate you gathering this data. I hope it's used to elongate band director careers!
TL;DR
K-12 education is facing major pressures, from learning and engagement issues to staffing challenges, tight budgets, and changing expectations for digital communication. High school marching band directors are especially affected, balancing nonstop communications, heavy admin work, and complex operational demands that contribute to overload and burnout. The blog argues that burnout is a system problem, not an individual one, and that we are at a fork in the road: continue absorbing the risk and cost of burnout and attrition, or rethink tools, support structures, and the role of technology and AI. To help find answers, Campus Communications Services launched the 'State of the High School Marching Band Director 2025' survey to gather directors’ experiences on workload, stress, and where technology and AI could potentially help make the role more sustainable.
The survey is open to any current high school marching band director, assistant director, percussion director or color guard director, and responses are being collected throughout the month of December 2025. Results are anticipated to be published January 2026.
Supporting Research
(Jerri Neddermeyer, MMEA, 2022)
(Gaile Stephens, KMEA, 2022)
(Evan VanDoren, 2024)
(Arthur Wright, 2019)
(www.banddirector.com)
(Music Teacher Guild, 2024)
(www.research.com, 2025)
(Gallup, 2022)
(Deloitte 2025)
(Deloitte, 2023)
Helpful Resources For Band Directors
The article highlights that band director burnout stems from chronic stress and declining motivation, impacting both well‑being and program quality. It outlines key symptoms - exhaustion, apathy, and frustration - and offers strategies to prevent or recover from burnout, including self‑care, delegation, mentorship, realistic expectations, and seeking professional support.
The article explains that burnout in music education stems from emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced accomplishment due to long hours and blurred work-life boundaries. It offers strategies to combat burnout, including self-care, boundary-setting, intentional routines, reshaping self-talk, and seeking support to maintain a healthier, balanced career.
The article shares practical, achievable strategies to help band directors reduce stress and avoid burnout, emphasizing delegation, intentional breaks, and protecting personal time. It encourages directors to reconnect with their purpose, lean on support systems, and build small habits that support long-term work-life balance and well-being.
The article explains how burnout among band directors leads to emotional exhaustion, loss of motivation, and negative impacts on both personal well-being and the quality of music instruction students receive. It emphasizes the need for early recognition, empathy, and support from colleagues and administrators, along with mentoring and purposeful engagement, to help directors recover and sustain long-term effectiveness.
A 2025 doctoral case study examined how reducing after‑school marching band rehearsals affected both performance outcomes and directors’ work‑life balance. When practice frequency was reduced, competitive results did not decline, but directors reported greater opportunities for personal time and healthier balance - which the author suggested can lessen burnout and reduce resignations.
