I get asked all the time: “What should our board be doing during the summer?”

The honest answer is — more than most boards think.

There’s this assumption that June through August is the slow season. Schools are closed. Meetings are lighter. The pace is slower. And so boards go dark. They don’t meet. They don’t plan. They show back up in August or September and spend the first two months scrambling to catch up.

The best boards I’ve worked with do the opposite. They treat summer as their strategic work period.

Here’s what they’re doing — and what your board could be doing right now.

1. New Board Member Onboarding: Start Before They’re Sworn In

If you’re waiting until July to onboard newly elected board members, you’re already behind.

The research is clear on what works: preboarding, not onboarding. The highest-engagement window is between the election and the swearing-in. That’s when new members are most curious, most motivated, and most open to learning what they don’t know.

A structured summer onboarding program should include:

  • Governance committee mentor assignment — pair each new member with a returning trustee who can answer questions the new member doesn’t want to ask in public.
  • Board policy manual review — not just handing them a binder. Walk through the key policies: board operating procedures, conflict of interest, ethics, meeting protocols.
  • Financial literacy training — within the first 90 days. New board members should understand fund balance, revenue sources, expenditure categories, and how to read a budget summary before they’re asked to vote on one.
  • Facility tour — scheduled during summer when schools are quiet. Let them see the buildings, meet key operations staff, and understand the physical condition of the district’s assets.
  • Board portal training — Diligent, BoardDocs, whatever your district uses. They need to know how to find materials, access the agenda packet, and participate in electronic communications before their first meeting.

The North Carolina School Boards Association and Texas Association of School Boards both recommend July as the ideal window. Schools are empty. The new member’s calendar is relatively open. There’s no way to fake it — if you don’t onboard in July, you’re playing catch-up in August.

ESB Framework connection: Goal Clarity starts with every board member understanding their role. Clear onboarding = clear role understanding = better governance from day one.

2. Summer Board Retreat: Don’t Just Bond — Produce

Every board retreat I’ve attended starts with good intentions. “We’re going to reflect on our strategic plan.” “We’ll set goals for the year.” “We’ll do some team building.”

And then the facilitated portion ends at 3pm and nothing concrete gets adopted.

Here’s what I’ve learned from the districts that do it right: the retreat should produce five specific outputs before anyone walks out the door.

  1. Approved annual board goals — What specifically will this board accomplish in the coming year? Measurable, time-bound, tied to student outcomes.
  2. Strategic plan priorities confirmed or revised — The year-end Q4 check-in on your strategic plan happens now. Are you on track? Do strategies need adjustment?
  3. Superintendent performance goals — These should align with the board goals you just set. If your board goal is improving third-grade reading scores, the superintendent’s goal should be implementing the plan to make that happen.
  4. Committee assignments for the coming year — Who serves on what, who chairs each committee, and what are the committee-level deliverables tied to the board’s annual goals?
  5. Annual board work calendar — When will data checkpoints happen? When’s the mid-year supt evaluation check-in? When’s the budget workshop? Map the whole year before the year starts.

The Arizona School Boards Association is offering facilitated summer retreats this year at $600. That’s not expensive. If your board is trying to run its own retreat without a facilitator, you’re losing money — not saving it. Professional facilitators keep the conversation strategic. Self-led retreats tend to drift into operational griping about the air conditioning in the admin building.

Multiple state associations (CABE, CSBA, SAIS) are investing in retreat facilitation. They’ve done the math. Facilitated retreats produce better outcomes.

3. Superintendent Evaluation Cycle Prep: Summer Is Groundwork Season

Most boards think about the superintendent evaluation in the spring, right before the summative evaluation is due. That’s too late.

The summer retreat is when you set the stage: superintendent annual goals should be set in tandem with board goals at the June or July retreat. Not in September. Not in October. Right now.

Here’s the sequence that works:

  • Summer retreat: Board sets its own annual goals. Board and superintendent agree on superintendent performance goals that align with those board goals.
  • Late summer: Superintendent provides a narrative self-reflection on the previous year’s goals — what was accomplished, what wasn’t, and why.
  • Early fall: Board individually reviews evaluation criteria and completes preliminary rubrics.
  • Mid-year (winter): Formal mid-year check-in — how is the superintendent progressing against the goals set in the summer?
  • Spring: Community input collection (if your process includes it), summative evaluation preparation.
  • Late spring/early summer: Summative evaluation, then the cycle resets.

If you wait until spring to start thinking about evaluation criteria, you’re not doing an evaluation cycle. You’re doing a performance review. There’s a difference.

4. Committee Work: Restaff, Re-align, and Focus

Summer is the natural time to restructure board committees. The research shows that boards using summer for committee restaffing and goal-setting are more effective across the year.

Three committees deserve specific summer attention:

  • Finance committee. Given the budget crises we’re seeing — El Paso ISD declaring financial exigency, Austin ISD facing a $181M deficit, Hartford and WCCUSD in active fiscal distress — the finance committee has the heaviest summer workload. They should be monitoring deficit reduction plans, reviewing quarterly financials, and tracking key indicators before the full board takes action.

  • Policy committee. Summer is the ideal window for policy review cycles. New legal requirements, policy manual updates, board operating procedure revisions — do this work now so the full board can adopt changes before the school year gets busy.

  • Governance/Board Development committee. This is the committee that oversees board self-evaluation, member training, and recruitment. They should be leading the onboarding process for new members, coordinating the board retreat, and preparing the self-evaluation instruments.

5. Strategic Plan Q4 Check-In

If your district operates on a July-June fiscal year (most do), summer is the fourth quarter of your strategic plan cycle.

The question every board should be asking right now: Where are we on each goal?

The most effective boards I’ve worked with request a strategic plan “scorecard” at the summer board meeting — one page per goal, showing progress data on leading and lagging indicators, with a clear green/yellow/red status.

If a goal is off-track, summer is the time to revise strategies or reset targets. Don’t wait until mid-year to discover you’re behind.

The Washington State School Directors’ Association and Illinois Association of School Boards both recommend including stakeholder survey data in this summer review — staff, parent, and student voice as part of the strategic plan check-in, not as an add-on in the fall.

The Bottom Line

Summer is not a vacation from governance.

If your board goes dark between June and August, you’re not resting — you’re losing your strategic advantage.

The boards that enter the school year prepared — with onboarded members, aligned goals, agreed-upon supt performance targets, and a calendar that maps the entire year — are the same boards that end the year able to point to real student outcome progress.

So here’s my question for you: What’s on your board’s summer calendar?

Next step: If you want a structured 12-week summer governance work plan — week-by-week tasks for onboarding milestones, retreat prep, budget monitoring, and evaluation cycle steps — reply to this email and I’ll send you the ESB Summer Governance Work Plan Template. It’s free. It’s your board’s road map for the next three months.

Don’t waste the summer.

— AJ