Planning staff development programs to meet changing state education agency (SEA) needs can best be undertaken by considering first what the SEA is trying to accomplish. If we look at the priorities and emphases given by the SEA to its various managerial, service, and leadership tasks, concepts of agency role and mission begin to emerge. By examining these concepts and the legal and financial restrictions on the SEA's activities, planners can create a fairly clear picture of the possible staff development policy alternatives. Among the factors that must be considered are the likelihood of appropriate training programs outside the agency, the possibility of coordinating with local education agencies or other states' SEA's to provide programs that would be impractical for the individual SEA to provide alone, the uses to which new communications technology can be put, and the impact of changing public demand on the agency's role and its consequent training needs. While the options created by these factors are fairly universal, the policies appropriate to each state are quite specific and not touched on in this document. (Author/PGD)