To determine what lies ahead for a school system and to be ready for it, school board members need to plan, this paper maintains. The author makes suggestions for several components of planning, including goal setting and developing priorities for facility use, staffing, programs, and services. The importance of the school district budget and policies are emphasized as tools for planning how to meet future needs. The author recommends and discusses analyzing statistics on projected enrollments, projecting revenues and expenditures, carefully developing policies and priorities, and analyzing cost/benefit, staffing, and facility budget priorities. The paper closes by recommending that systems that lack resources to gather information needed for planning hire a consultant. (JM)