The Roxbury Board of Education finally held a retreat on August 18 after its previously scheduled July retreat was canceled. Unfortunately, while the meeting included several worthwhile discussions about district programs and finances, it appears to have accomplished relatively little of the governance work that a BOE retreat is supposed to address.

This distinction matters. A retreat should not simply be another presentation from the superintendent about district operations. It is one of the few opportunities for board members to step back from regular meeting business, evaluate their own performance, identify weaknesses, receive governance training and establish clear goals for improving how they function as a board.

What Was Discussed?

Superintendent Santora provided extensive information about the district’s instructional and operational priorities, including:

• Expansion of the Multi-Tiered System of Support
• Elementary math growth and the use of student-performance data
• Additional academic interventions at the secondary level
• Enrichment opportunities for advanced students
• In-district special education and alternative programs
• Rising healthcare costs and possible self-funded options
• Shared services, regionalization and district configuration
• Student wellness, mental-health services and school safety
• Parent-teacher conferences and communication with families

These are important issues. Board members need to understand the district’s academic goals, financial pressures and student-support systems in order to provide responsible oversight.

But most of this was an administrative presentation about what the district is doing. That is different from evaluating what the Board itself is doing.

What Should a Board Retreat Accomplish?

There is no New Jersey law requiring every BOE retreat to follow one specific agenda. However, the New Jersey School Boards Association identifies several important components of the annual governance process, including reviewing the board self-evaluation, holding an annual goal-setting retreat and developing action plans for board and district goals.

A meaningful retreat should give the board time to:

• Review the results of its annual self-evaluation
• Identify strengths and governance weaknesses
• Establish measurable board-specific goals
• Develop timelines and assign responsibility for those goals
• Review board ethics and legal obligations
• Clarify the division between governance and administration
• Improve communication and meeting procedures
• Evaluate whether previous board goals were accomplished
• Discuss how the board will improve transparency and public trust

The August 18 retreat does not appear to have completed most of this work.

Board President Chris Milde announced the beginning of the evaluation process and said members would receive a link to complete it. A separate meeting was tentatively scheduled for October 13 to review the evaluation. In other words, the board did not review a completed self-evaluation at the retreat—it merely started the process.

There also does not appear to have been a formal NJSBA governance training, a dedicated ethics review, a meaningful examination of board performance or the adoption of measurable board-specific goals and action steps.

This Is Part of a Continuing Pattern

This was not an isolated missed opportunity.

In 2024, the retreat raised transparency concerns because it was reportedly neither livestreamed nor audio recorded. That followed troubling comments during the prior year’s ethics discussion in which some members appeared to suggest that personal beliefs or conscience could take priority over laws, regulations or the Board Member Code of Ethics.

In July 2025, the annual retreat again failed to include three important components: formal NJSBA training, a board self-evaluation and a dedicated ethics review. A previously scheduled NJSBA training in March had also failed to occur, and no timely replacement was held.

The board eventually held another retreat in December 2025. By then, it was attempting to address months of accumulated conflict, distrust, social-media behavior, unclear meeting procedures, policy failures and confusion about the line between board governance and administrative management.

That December discussion confirmed exactly why timely retreats and governance training matter. Members acknowledged fractured relationships, group-versus-group behavior, personal attacks, poor internal communication, surprises during public meetings and concerns about micromanagement. The retreat was used reactively to address damage that had already occurred instead of proactively preventing it.

Then the July 2026 retreat was canceled. When the board finally met on August 18, the agenda again centered overwhelmingly on district goals and administrative operations rather than board governance.

Discussion Is Not the Same as Accomplishment

The August retreat was not meaningless. Board members received useful information and raised legitimate questions about academic intervention, enrichment, healthcare costs, special education and parent communication.

But receiving information is not the same as completing governance work.

Where was the honest assessment of whether the board is functioning effectively? Where was the review of previously identified communication and trust problems? Where were the measurable board goals, responsible parties and deadlines? Where was the ethics review? What concrete changes did the board agree to make?

If the self-evaluation will not be reviewed until October, the community should be told what happens next. Will the results be discussed meaningfully? Will the board establish public goals based on those findings? Will progress be measured during the year, or will the evaluation simply become another form that gets completed and forgotten?

Roxbury Needs More Than an Administrative Update

Board members oversee district policy, the superintendent and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. Their decisions affect thousands of students, families and employees. The quality of their governance matters just as much as the programs being administered in the schools.

A retreat should demonstrate that the board is willing to examine itself with the same seriousness that it uses to examine student data, district expenses and administrative performance.

For several years, Roxbury’s retreats have been canceled, delayed, inadequately documented or missing critical governance components. The August 18 meeting continued that pattern. It provided substantial information about the district, but it did not appear to produce a completed board evaluation, board-development plan, ethics review or measurable governance goals.

Roxbury does not simply need a BOE that meets. It needs a BOE committed to improving how it governs—and willing to show the public what that improvement looks like.