Participants
Everyone in the record: the six sitting board members, the student representative, the central-office administrators named on the agenda, every building leader who came to the table, and the citizens'-comment speakers — sixteen the record names, and one it never does. Name spellings follow the official minutes; where the minutes, the recording and the project's own dialogue file disagree, the row gives every version rather than picking one silently.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Michael Petrin | Chair, Claremont School Board | Presided. Opened with an unscheduled chair's report criticising his own conduct of the January 17 meeting: "I am learning the trial by fire sometimes. Learning from my mistakes. And last meeting was not a pretty meeting." Announced the removal of the school-calendar item; ran the three-minute and two-minute public-comment rounds; declined to let one board member answer for the whole body; proposed inviting the tech-center visioning committee to report in March. Never says his own name on this recording — the dialogue file identifies him by elimination and by the February 8 deliberative session, where he is named as chairman. Rendered Michael Patron and Patrone elsewhere in this corpus. |
| Heather Whitney | Vice Chair | The board's longest speaker after the superintendent. Moved approval of the January 11 and January 17 minutes. Laid out her reasons for voting the reduction: the collective bargaining agreement embedded in the budget, paraprofessional pay — "We pay less than McDonald's pays for a paraprofessional" — a possible tech-center renovation, and three ESSER-funded positions "which are going to go away." Read the state class-size standard aloud and later corrected the public's reading of the plan. Cited NHDOE cost-per-pupil figures that a resident disputed on the floor an hour later. Named on the recording by two commenters ("Heather referenced cost per students"). Not to be confused with member Whitney Skillen. |
| Steven Horsky | Board member | Author of the January 17 reduction document and mover of the $1,000,000 cut. Spoke once, at 1:05:03, to take responsibility and to correct the record: "it's a problem that I guess I technically created and I will, I will own that," and "Clearly there was people thinking that it was clearly stated to cut the tech, not the case. Athletics once again, not the case. It was specifically said not to do so." Asked how the visioning committee's timeline fits a renovation decision. Rendered Hauschka, Steve Gorski, Mr. Horse Keeper elsewhere in this corpus. He resigned from the board on June 21, 2023. |
| Bonnie Miles | Board member | Asked the first board question of the presentation — whether the changed traffic pattern needed to go to the police department "for safety purposes" — and returned at 2:29:29 to relay a parent's alternative configuration: Bluff for pre-K through grade 1, the other two elementary schools for grades 2–5, and grades 6–8 left at the middle school. Asked whether a motion was needed to keep the visioning committee on the agenda. As in nearly every 2023 recording, nobody says her name aloud; the identification rests on elimination against the roll and on the minutes, and this page flags that rather than letting repetition harden into certainty. |
| Frank Sprague | Board member | Moved to accept the amended agenda and moved the ice-hockey cooperative. Pressed the assistant superintendent on middle-school scheduling arithmetic — "how do you teach six sections with five slots?" Raised the two state forms the board had to sign, rendered by the transcript as "a an miss 226 and a miss DSB". Announced the February 28 school board forum, booked into the tech center rather than the community center: "Being a frugal Yankee, I am the community center wanted to charge, and I couldn't see paying a fee." Rendered Greg, Craig, Spriggs, Frank. Strange. across this corpus. |
| Whitney Skillen | Board member | Asked the two sharpest structural questions of the night — the effect of the reconfiguration on Title I and on students with one-to-one aides, and what "leverage points" the plan created for high-achieving students — and asked the principals to state their concerns rather than their benefits. Argued the visioning committee needed only "a blessing" and no deadline. In closing activities made a formal request, expressly not a motion, that the administration "get with the principal of the middle school, investigate these accusations and events of sexual assault, and literally shut it down," and disclosed her own experience as a seventh grader. Rendered Skilling, Skillet, Miss Gillan, Scullin across this corpus; on this recording her own roll-call answer comes through as Skilling here. |
| — vacant seat — | Seventh board seat | Vacant. One of the three seats on the March 14, 2023 ballot was a one-year term. The board sat six all evening; all six answered the roll. |
| Hannah Petrin | Student representative, Stevens High School | Gave the student report at 0:06:30: winter enrichment at Bluff and Maple, auditions for "A Tribute to Broadway", the hundredth day of school, Respect Week at the middle school — "a statewide educational campaign on teen dating violence" — senior play auditions, the tech center's February 10 culinary lunch at $8 with reservations required, and the February 22 Region 10 meeting in the Goodrich Community Room. Answered the vice chair's request to repeat the Region 10 date. The chair's daughter; she held the role for the 2022–23 year only. |
| Michael C. Tempesta | Superintendent of Schools, SAU 6 | Presented the reduction plan for about 27 minutes and answered questions for two hours. Gave the four-part breakdown of the $1,000,000 and the caution that "the entire FTE reduction reduction. And that's not necessarily the elimination of those positions." Estimated the staff effect at "For 4 to 7, I think" against the assistant superintendent's "6 to 9. I guess." Closed the sexual-assault exchange by confirming the district had acted and urging the room not to discuss specifics "for a variety of legal and ethical reasons for the students." Rendered Mr. Dempster, Mike pesca, Mr. Temper across this corpus — the first of those reads as a real surname and is dangerous. Superintendent from July 2019 until his dismissal in January 2024. |
| Michael Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation & Assessment | Answered the scheduling, pre-K support and dual-enrolment questions. Gave the night's clearest statement of the administration's theory of the case at 1:20:21: "the factors that impact student learning the most are quality teachers. And that's why if you have a class of 30 or a class 15, if the teacher in front of the students is very skilled, then students make gains. When we lose a quarter to a third of our staff every year, we can't develop that large impact quality teacher staff." Estimated a 15 percent staff reduction at "6 to 9. I guess." positions. Could not say whether students moved to a non-neighbourhood school would stay there. Rendered my Kosky / Kosky kosky to skis in this corpus. |
| Richard Seaman | Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations (business administrator), SAU 6 | Spoke four times, all on the warrant and the default budget. Confirmed that the collective-bargaining cost estimate in warrant Note A does not reflect the proposed staff reductions and would not before the ballot. Confirmed that the default budget had also fallen by $1,000,000. Told the board that once the default budget is set "it stays set at that number", pointed them to RSA 40:13 by name, and twice recommended that counsel be present — see flag 11. Corrected the chair on the filing deadline: "it's 5:00 right by statue. It needs to be 5:00." He read his retirement letter to the SAU 6 board on March 30, 2023, effective April 14. Rendered Assistant Superintendent Simmons and Richard Sheets in this corpus. |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education, SAU 6 | Called the roll at the chair's request — "Ben, could I have you do roll call tonight?" — the standing arrangement while the clerk's seat was vacant. Supported the pre-K move on curriculum alignment and on the school week: pre-K then ran Monday to Thursday because "Friday is the day where teachers can get their planning time," and the move "would go from a four day to a Monday through Friday." Named by a resident in the second round as the person who should say whether every state-mandated one-to-one paraprofessional is staffed; he was not asked to answer and did not. Rendered Mr. Nestor. |
| Jeff Small | Director of Technology, SAU 6 | Listed on the agenda's central-office roster; not heard on this recording. Thanked by name in the opening citizens' comment, per the minutes, for help navigating the district website. |
| Chris Pratt | Principal, Stevens High School | Opened the discussion items with the boys' varsity ice hockey cooperative, then made the case for grade 8 at the high school: an "eighth grade academy approach" in a designated section, the house system, advisories and structured study time, and the possibility of finishing credits in three years. Was candid about the cost — "half the school really is going to be middle school students" — and about the climate risk. In February 2023 Pratt was the high school principal; he did not become interim superintendent until January 11, 2024. |
| Frank Romeo | Principal, Claremont Middle School | Set out what receiving grade 5 would require: age-appropriate library books, playground and Gaga-pit equipment, morning-meeting structure, and a start-time problem — roughly 250 students "who are not used to getting up and being at school at 720 in the morning." Proposed sending middle-school teams down to the elementary schools before any move. Named in a parent's testimony as an administrator who, on her account, had never received her reports. On the record here from at least this date; an earlier project note placing him in Claremont only from 2024–25 was wrong. |
| Melissa Lewis | Principal, Disnard Elementary School | Spoke for the elementary principals and moderated the administrators' turn at the table. Made the case for pre-K in the buildings and for grade 5 at the middle school, then gave her two concerns plainly at 0:56:28: staff reduction — "Numbers are one thing. And what's behind the numbers is another level of need" — and making sure parent voice is "heard and planned around." Thanked from the floor later by one of her own teachers as "the lady in red over here". Rendered Alyssa elsewhere in this corpus. |
| Christine Baker | Principal, Bluff Elementary School | Spoke once, at 0:50:45, welcoming an earlier pre-K entry point and noting that Bluff had run a single fifth-grade section "for a long time" — the capacity problem the administration said had started this review. |
| Kristina Sanford | Preschool / Early Childhood Center director | Described the preschool's isolation at the tech center: substituting in a classroom herself that day rather than closing it with five staff out, no administrative assistant, "I'm answering phones, I'm subbing, I'm answering the door." Gave the figure that two later speakers picked up — "I've gotten 26 bed referrals in the last three months", the stray word being a transcription artifact; a resident later in the evening repeats it as "26 referrals coming in in three months" — and called it "a crisis right now in early childhood crisis in Claremont." The minutes spell her Kristina Sanford; the recording gives only "Christina", and the project's dialogue file carries her as Christina (surname not stated). |
| Alex Herzog | Director, Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center; chair of the tech center visioning committee | Took the Region 10 question at 2:33:34: whether renovation money is "contingent on us being still partners with Newport", answering his own question "To the best of my knowledge, yes." Described the six-seat reciprocal reservation with Newport held until June 1, the lapsed transportation arrangement, and the February 22 Region 10 meeting. Was told by the superintendent the same evening that the committee would be restructured with an appointed chair and that he would become "the administrative support" rather than the chair. |
| Chelsea Weatherford | Administrative assistant to the superintendent | Recorded and submitted the minutes. Thanked by name in the opening citizens' comment, per the minutes, for help navigating the district's website and for quick email responses. Not heard on the recording. |
| Arlene Hawkins | Citizens' comments — Ward 3, 592 Redwater Brook Road | Spoke twice. The opening citizens' comment at 0:03:31 is hers per the minutes — a thank-you to two staff members; the recording catches only the tail, "In helping me navigate the website and for their quick responses to my emails," and the dialogue file leaves that voice unidentified. Her main comment at 1:31:02 cited the SAU 6 organisational study, asked whether central-office salaries should track the teachers' increase, and closed on the night's most quoted line: "Educational support has to reflect the needs specific to our community, not minimum standards." Said she had emailed questions ahead and heard none of them answered. A citizen at this meeting — she was elected to the board on March 14, 2023. |
| David Putnam | Citizens' comments — Ward 2 | First speaker of the main comment period. Put the question the rest of the evening kept returning to: "if you are producing a plan of to improve student achievement, how would that compare with what you're presenting tonight? And what kind of data and information can you provide to us to prove that this plan will improve student achievement". Endorsed moving preschool into the elementary schools and argued for starting at age two. Pressed for a "gut feeling about how it will improve test scores" and drew the superintendent's admission that the district had "been pretty underperforming for a long time, you know, admittedly almost decades." |
| Mimi Rhines | Citizens' comments — Ward 1; Stevens High School staff member | Spoke twice, "wearing both hats". Her first turn is the sharpest process objection on the record: "you guys cut $1 million and there was no discussion. There was no asking them. Hey, what about this one we going to do? It was just cut," and "these plans have just been like, no offense, rushed in a week." Drew from the vice chair the answer that the reconfiguration would go ahead even if the money were restored, and the chair's caution that one member could not answer for the board. Returned to relay a colleague's concerns and to answer the athletics question herself: eighth graders would keep playing at the middle school. The minutes spell her "Mimi Rhimes" and place her in Ward 1 on her first turn and Ward 2 on her second; she says Ward 1 both times. Rendered Mimi Ryan's and Meeting your eyes by the transcript. |
| Candace Crawford | Citizens' comments — Ward 2 | Spoke twice, self-identifying both times. Brought comparative cost-per-pupil figures — "The average cost per student for New Hampshire is 19,400. For Claremont in the same report was 18,400" — with Fall Mountain, Newport, Lebanon and Cornish above it — and the retention figures "35% of our students don't do not go on to any further education" and "25% of our beginning freshmen do not graduate." Rejected the framing of the choice: "I don't think it's fair to the voters of Claremont to make this an either or." Asked the technical question about whether adding money at the deliberative session raises the default budget, and agreed that counsel should be present. A citizen at this meeting — she was appointed to the board on July 19, 2023. |
| Lisa Holtz | Citizens' comments — Claremont resident and elementary school teacher | Argued the plan misreads what the district's students need: "absorbing more students with into classes with less teachers is not indicative to quality teacher student relationships," and directly disputed the vice chair's use of the free-and-reduced-lunch trend as a proxy for need — "I don't think that addresses our social emotional needs of our students. That does not address it at all." The only speaker the chair stopped on the three-minute rule; she said she had sent the full letter to every board member. |
| Jennifer Austin | Citizens' comments — parent of three district students (Ward 2 per the minutes) | Prompted for her name and ward, gave her name and said she had moved out of her ward. Testified that her seventh-grade daughter "is sexually being assaulted at school", that other students, "not only female but male", were affected, that "we have notified the proper people and it gets lost", and that after she spoke with the principal "he never heard about it. Never. Not one report, one request… I never heard back." Returned near the end of the meeting to say the fault was not one person's and that "there's a very high issue with communication in administration." See flag 1. |
| Raquel Fluette | Citizens' comments — Ward 2; PTO president at Maple Avenue School | The evening's most persistent questioner, at the podium four times. Parent of twin fifth graders "who will be going to the middle school no matter what you decide." Traced her own path through four Claremont reconfigurations and drew the distinction the plan does not address: supported children survive transitions, unsupported ones do not — "I had 48 classmates that didn't graduate as seniors in our class." Asked what happens when enrolment creeps above the projected class sizes, and whether students shuffled to another elementary school stay there; the assistant superintendent answered the first and said of the second, "I don't know the answer to that question." Her surname comes from the minutes; the recording gives only her first name, at low transcript confidence. |
| Ann Fine | Citizens' comments — Ward 2, 101 Ledgewood Road | Educator, assistant professor at Landmark College for 26 years, grandparent, "a retiree living on a fixed income, and two often cuts are made in my name." Argued that development cannot be accelerated to fit a budget — "You cannot make the brain and body prepared to do what it is not physically capable of doing" — and that "going for minimum standards, especially New Hampshire, minimum standards is not the way to go. Restore the cuts." |
| Marion Lovett | Citizens' comments — Ward 2; Stevens High School class of 2017 | Spoke twice, both times on alternatives to cutting: the US Secretary of Education's January 24 "Raise the Bar" address, Perkins funding, NHDOE-funded Running Start dual enrolment, a partnership with River Valley Community College, and an AmeriCorps VISTA grant. On her second turn warned that dual-enrolment and AP credit only counts if the courses transfer — "on the AP exam you usually need a three or higher. Well, now it's getting more competitive." Also raised access to information: "accessibility of information makes a informed voter." The minutes spell her Marion Lovett; the recording says "Mary Lovett"; the project's corpus notes carry "Marian / Mary Ann". Unreconciled — all three are given here rather than one being chosen. |
| Jenna Gage | Citizens' comments — second-grade teacher at Maple Avenue School, resident off Washington Street | Wrote her remarks during the meeting. Asked for her ward she said "I'm sorry, I don't know what word [ward]"; the minutes record her faithfully as "Jenna Gage (Ward ?)". Said her students are "mostly looking at my data two grade levels below where they should be," so "we don't need these more electives, the reduction of teachers or the bigger class sizes. What they need is actually more teachers and more individualized instruction." Argued each additional transition interrupts learning and increases behaviour, and asked whether the staffing exists to absorb that. |
| Laura Snelling | Citizens' comments — Ward 3; school nurse at Maple Avenue School | Split her position precisely: "I fully support pre-K going to elementary schools… I fully support fifth grade moving to the middle school," but "I do not want my 13 year old daughter at a high school with 1819 [18, 19] year old boys." Proposed a 5–6 and 7–8 team structure instead and worked through the athletics consequences. Described doing discipline as the school nurse "because there is not enough bodies." Then did the taxpayer arithmetic against herself: the cut saves her "a hundred bucks, $0.30 a day" on a "$12,000 a year tax bill" — "I'll give you the money at the next meeting, voting for the million dollars." She says Ward 3; the minutes record Ward 2. |
| Michelle Beaton | Citizens' comments — Ward 2; three years on the district restructuring committees | At the podium three times. Brought a competing inflation adjustment of the same NHDOE data — "if you look for inflation, it looks like we have a 14% increase instead of a 57% increase" — see flag 7. Asked whether three preschool rooms could "Cover least restrictive environment" against 26 referrals in three months, and whether every state-mandated IEP paraprofessional is staffed; neither was answered — see flag 6. Asked for "full transparency" about whether the budget cut was a vehicle for a restructuring proposal, and said she had asked for the supporting evidence "for three years" without receiving it. Her closing question is in the minutes as "When the ESSER funds are done what happens next?"; the recording renders it "When the funds for funds are done, what happens next?" Rendered Michelle, be in / Shall be in throughout. |
| Nick Stone | Citizens' comments — Ward 3; 2023 school board candidate | Opposed "the majority of this decision", said the earlier restructuring work "couldn't figure out in a year. So we're supposed to figure this out in a week", and noted that high school college credit "That's not new. I did it." Closed by reading the room to the board: "this amount of people did not come to say that they agree with you." Identification note: the dialogue file leaves this voice unidentified because his self-introduction survives only as the garble "Next on Ward three". He is named here because the minutes list "Nike Stone (Ward 3)" at exactly this position in an otherwise speaker-for-speaker match with the recording, and because the corpus glossary records that garble as this speaker. The minutes' spelling is the district's. |
| Molly DeLuca | Citizens' comments — Ward 2; recently on the restructuring committee | Parent of a second and a fourth grader at Bluff. Opposed moving her fourth grader up "with all the behavior issues", and described a child who "cannot learn" in his current classroom — "My husband and I are actually teaching him at home. We work full time jobs" — as the reason larger classes would not work. The minutes spell her "Molly Deluca". |
| Scott Pope | Citizens' comments — Ward 2; retired tech center teacher | Made two distinct contributions. First, the students nobody had mentioned: "there's about 70% of the kids that just seem to get lost in the middle." Second, the procedural question that produced the meeting's most consequential financial exchange — that the default budget for 2023–24 had itself dropped by $1,000,000, and his own objection to the explanation: "But wouldn't that just be on the presented budget? The default is the default based on the last year." See flag 2. Returned under the visioning item to argue the committee cannot "be just a committee that's working in a vacuum away from the board." |
| Cassandra Edwards | Citizens' comments — Ward 3; teacher at Disnard Elementary School | Argued that the new contract alone will not fix turnover: Disnard "lost no classroom teachers last year, and it's not because of our pay," but because of building leadership. Described what the cut felt like from a staff meeting — "the school board has boated [voted], has approved your contract and voted to cut $1 million, and we have no idea why." Named central-office churn as a driver: "I don't know who HR is right now. We've had turnover there." |
| Unidentified citizens'-comment speaker | Citizens' comments — second round | Spoke once at 2:25:21 on projected grade-3 class sizes of 21 in two schools and on the board's posture toward its own voters: "I heard a statement tonight about the community can come and restore the budget. And as I sit here, I think how unfortunate that our school board would have the community come forward to vote against you rather than work hand in hand with you." Never self-identifies, is never recognised by name, and is not in the minutes — the minutes' speaker list ends three speakers before the recording's does. |
Agenda
From the posted agenda, 2.1.23 CSB Agenda.docx.pdf, with dispositions from the minutes. Quoted agenda and minutes wording is marked as such. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:28 | I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance | Agenda: "6:30PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance". Minutes: "Meeting called to order at 6:30 PM by chair, Michael Petrin". The recording opens 28 seconds earlier on table talk. |
| 0:01:13 | II. General Business — roll call | Agenda: "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members (Board Members who arrive after the meeting begins will be noted as 'present' at the point in the agenda at which they arrive)." Minutes: "Present: Michael Petrin, Heather Whitney, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen, Steven Horsky, Frank Sprague" — all six sitting members, no absences. With the clerk's seat vacant the chair asked the special-education director to read it: "Ben, could I have you do roll call tonight?" On the recording the answers run together and one comes through as "Skilling here"; the minutes are the authority for who answered. |
| 0:01:40 | II. Agenda — amendments and final approval | The chair struck one item before approval: "One change to the agenda. Item number three, the school calendar. We're going to have to push that off until the next meeting." Minutes: "Frank Sprague makes a motion to accept the agenda as amended; seconded by Whitney Skillen; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote." On the recording the chair could not identify the seconder — "Second. By. I think it was Bonnie or Whitney" — and the minutes resolve it to Skillen. The calendar vote was carried forward as a future agenda item. |
| 0:02:22 | II. Minutes approval — January 11 and January 17, 2023 | Both sets of draft minutes were in the packet. Whitney's motion misstates the dates on the recording — "the minutes of January 9th and January 11th" — and she corrects herself after the chair prompts: "17th, 11th and 17th as written." Minutes: "seconded by Whitney Skillen; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote." The chair also called for abstentions; none were recorded. |
| 0:03:13 | II. Citizens comments | Opened with "Anything, outside of the agenda items?" and the podium prompt the transcript renders as "Nathan Ward, please" — the ASR's version of "name and ward, please", not a person. One speaker: per the minutes, "Arlene Hawkins (Ward 3)- publicly thanks Chelsea Weatherford and Jeff Small for assisting her in navigating the district's website and for their quick responses to her via email." The recording catches only the tail of it. |
| 0:03:56 | II. School Board Chair Report added by the chair that night | Minutes: "Chair Michael Petrin addresses the board and public in regards to some of the last meetings and how they have been run." On the record it is a self-criticism: the board runs on Robert's Rules, "I run the meeting differently than Frank or Steve or anybody else up here", there had been "some disturbances from the audience" at the January 17 meeting that he chose to ignore, and "That may not have been my best choice. I probably should have stopped and asked for order." He asked for no calling out from the audience going forward. See flag 11. |
| 0:06:30 | II. Student Representative Report — Hannah Petrin | Building-by-building report; the minutes summarise it in five bullets. Winter enrichment at Bluff and Maple, the hundredth day of school at Disnard, Respect Week and sports at the middle school, and two tech-center dates — the February 10 culinary lunch and the February 22 Region 10 meeting in the Goodrich Community Room. The vice chair asked her to repeat the Region 10 date, which is the date the tech-center discussion turned on two hours later. |
| 0:08:34 | III.1. Stevens High School boys' varsity ice hockey cooperative — adding Mascoma | Agenda: "Stevens High School Boys Varsity Ice Hockey Cooperative- Adding Mascoma". Principal Pratt explained the co-op keeps the program alive by combining schools that cannot field their own teams. Minutes: "Frank Sprague makes a motion to continue the boys varsity ice hockey with the addition of Mascoma; seconded by Heather Whitney; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote." The chair noted a further approval was needed beyond the board. The transcript renders Mascoma as Gomer, Macedonia and Manitoba — three times in ninety seconds, in both recordings of this meeting. |
| 0:10:43 | III.2. Budget Reduction Presentation; follow-up from CSB 1.17.23 | Agenda: "Budget Reduction Presentation; Follow-up from CSB 1.17.23". The item ran two hours and nineteen minutes — from 0:10:43 to 2:30:11 — and consumed the evening. Minutes: "Superintendent Tempesta presents a slideshow on the proposed budget reduction. Reduction plan can be found on the SAU6 website within the school board meeting packet for the 2.1.23." No motion was made and no vote was taken on the plan at this meeting. The minutes record the four building leaders and the preschool director speaking, then seventeen named citizens' comments across two rounds, then the item closing. The chair opened public comment inside the item at 1:14:27 and closed it at 2:29:15. |
| — withdrawn — | III.3. Vote on Claremont School year Calendar | Struck from the agenda before approval and carried to the next meeting. The minutes nonetheless reprint the heading "3. Vote on Claremont School year Calendar" in the body with nothing under it, and list it again under future agenda items — a formatting artifact of the district's template, not a second consideration. |
| 2:30:11 | III.4. Visioning Committee Continuation | Agenda: "Visioning Committee Continuation"; the minutes retitle it "SRVRTC Visioning Committee Continuation". Minutes: "Michael Petrin spoke with some committee members and citizens recently about continuing the work that the visioning committee has started. He requests that the committee comes to the first meeting in March to report to the school board." On the record the discussion went further than the minutes suggest: Skillen argued the committee needed only "a blessing" and no deadline, Whitney said no progress was possible until the board decides whether to stay in the Region 10 agreement, Herzog answered that renovation money is probably contingent on staying, and the superintendent announced the committee would be restructured with an appointed chair and Herzog moved to "administrative support". Miles asked whether a motion was needed to keep it on the agenda; none was taken. |
| 2:39:10 | IV. Other Business / Future Agenda Items / Future Meeting Dates | Agenda: "A. Future Dates: Deliberative Session- February 8, 2023- snow date February 9, 2023". Confirmed on the record at 6:30 p.m. in the Stevens High School auditorium, entering through the event entrance and checking in with the supervisors of the checklist. The minutes add two items the agenda did not carry: the February 28 school board forum at the tech center's Goodrich Community Room, and Skillen's formal request to the administration. Before the dates, Sprague raised two state forms for signature, rendered "a an miss 226 and a miss DSB"; the board signed them at the table. The chair announced the filing deadline for the March election — two days off — and was corrected by the business administrator from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. "by statue [statute]". |
| 2:42:17 | V. Closing Activities | Minutes, item C: "Whitney Skillen makes a formal request to the administration to get with the middle school principal in regards to a sexual harassment claim. Ms. Skillen refers to personal experiences that she has had in the past." That single sentence covers eight minutes of recording, including the parent's reply, Skillen's two policy questions, the chair's call for order and the superintendent's statement that the matter was already in hand. See flag 1 and flag 9. |
| 2:46:54 | VI. Adjournment | Minutes: "Heather Whitney makes a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by Whitney Skillen; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote." On the recording the mover is not named and the cluster carries several voices; the minutes are the authority. The chair's last words are "All right. Stop here." The agenda had scheduled adjournment for 8:15 p.m.; the meeting ran about an hour longer. |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue CSV. Times are the start of the cited exchange, taken from the CSV's own second count. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell for the full entry.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:28 | Call to order, pledge, roll | Gavel at 6:30, pledge, a reminder about cell phones, then the roll read by the special-education director at the chair's request. All six sitting members present. The seventh seat is vacant and so is the elected district clerk's. | |
| 0:01:40 | Agenda amended; January minutes approved | The school-year calendar vote pulled to the next meeting. Sprague moved the amended agenda; the chair could not tell who seconded — "I think it was Bonnie or Whitney" — and the minutes record Skillen. Both January minute sets approved on a single voice vote. | |
| 0:03:56 | Chair's report: how the last meeting was run | Unscheduled, added by the chair. "This board is run and, based off of Robert's Rules of Orders… I am learning the trial by fire sometimes. Learning from my mistakes. And last meeting was not a pretty meeting." He named his own error — ignoring disturbances rather than calling for order — and set the expectation for the night: participation at the open times, "no calling out from the audience." | POSITIVE |
| 0:08:34 | Ice hockey cooperative with Mascoma | The only vote of the evening on a substantive item. Pratt: the agreement lets Stevens keep hockey "by lumping it in with Gomer [Mascoma] and some other smaller schools that are in the same situation." Sprague moved it "with the addition of Macedonia [Mascoma]"; Whitney seconded; carried on a voice vote with the chair noting "there's further approval after us." | |
| 0:10:43 | Budget reduction presentation opens | The chair introduced it as "a follow up from the school board meeting of 11723 [1/17/23]". Tempesta set the frame: "on on the on the 17th, we had a meeting. There was a board vote to cut an additional million from the budget, kind of predicated upon looking in budget committee at the at the minimum requirements that 306 is." He noted the deliberative session was "one week from today" and that the teachers' contract sits inside the operating budget rather than in a separate warrant article. Preparation time: "we had about 6 or 7 days to get it together." | MEDIUM |
| 0:17:11 | How the $1,000,000 is made up — the key figures | The four-part split, in the superintendent's own words: "we estimate that about 15% would be elementary staff reduction of the million dollars, 25% at the secondary level, and shifting teachers to another budget to title one entitle two [Title I and Title II] would be about 20% in the behavioral assistance going to academic support specialists… That is supported by the Esser grant that we already have for for a year, with plans to move them into another, sunset them out is another way that we would get the 40% remaining." The packet's own summary carries the identical four items and percentages. So 40 percent of the reduction is fewer staff; 60 percent is the same people paid from a different fund. | HIGH MEDIUM MEDIUM |
| 0:19:56 | "Not necessarily the elimination of those positions" | The sentence that matters most for the default budget, offered as an aside while advancing a slide: "when we when we looked at the numbers overall the entire FTE reduction reduction. And that's not necessarily the elimination of those positions. Some of those positions would move up to the other buildings would be above them." | HIGH |
| 0:20:17 | Class-size tables, building by building | Bluff's fifth grade is the origin of the review: "we currently have 27 students in fifth grade at bluff". Tempesta walked the projected averages — Bluff roughly flat, Disnard and Maple up — and named the administration's own floor: "we couldn't endorse is going much beyond 12 or 13 in the early in the K in pre-K." The cells the administration remained worried about "are the ones that we remained in pink." | MEDIUM |
| 0:27:50 | Miles: traffic, congestion, and the police department | First board question. "That's going to change the flow of traffic coming in and out and the congestion. Do we need to run that by the police department? We offer [for] safety purposes." Tempesta: the district consults police and fire on configurations and would here; the middle school's headcount would be unchanged and "There would be another 125 kids… in the high school." | |
| 0:29:16 | Sprague on middle-school scheduling arithmetic | Four exchanges to get to a straight answer about how six sections of grade 6 English are covered by teachers who each teach five. Koski eventually: "there are two English teachers who teach three English… plus an enrichment block." Sprague: "I was just curious. How does how do you teach six sections with five slots?" The WIN block comes through as "the Wind blows". | |
| 0:31:10 | Skillen: Title I and students with one-to-one aides | "What will the impact be on title one for the restructuring of moving fifth grade and eighth grade to different buildings, and the impact on students who have, I [IEPs] and special and special needs, especially the students who require Aids or one on one aids". Tempesta on special education: "the IEP follows this the student… everything that they need would would follow." On Title I: "I think that would be minimal… with Luft [Bluff] being our longest standing title, one highest free and reduced numbers following that staffing." Asked specifically about Maple's Title I room, he answered "We're not that granular yet." | MEDIUM |
| 0:33:21 | Whitney's reasons, part one: cost per pupil | "the New Hampshire Department of Education recently came out with a press release… Our enrollment has dropped since the year 2,024.6% [2000, 24.6%], and our cost per pupil has increased 57.2%, and that is adjusted for inflation. I did get a question about that from our community… I confirmed the Doe [DOE]." She also asked whether the district's free-and-reduced concentration had risen since about 2015 and reported the answer was no. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:35:16 | Whitney's reasons, part two: the contract, paras, and the ESSER cliff | "the single most important thing that we can do… is to ensure that we increase our salaries for our teachers." On paraprofessionals: "We pay less than McDonald's pays for a paraprofessional if we do not have flexibility in our budget years down the road, we will not be able to go with those eclectic [collective] bargaining agreements that we need to go with." On a tech-center renovation, her characterisation: "the state will cover 75% of the cost, the taxpayer in this community will have to come up with 25%." And the cliff: the ELA and mathematics literacy specialists and the grant manager "are currently covered by Esser grants, which are going to go away… we're looking at probably well over $100,000 per person, including their benefits." | MEDIUM |
| 0:37:35 | The state class-size standard, read into the record | "we also had really did not have a good understanding of what the minimum minimum requirements were by the state. And in additionally, the ones that we were provided at the last meeting have actually changed… So in kindergarten, kindergarten to 225 students or fewer per educator learning level, 3 to 5, 30, 30 students or fewer per educator and middle school to high school 30 students, students and fewer per educator." The garbled "kindergarten to 225 students" merges the rule's kindergarten-through-grade-2 band with its limit of 25; the three figures she gives otherwise match the rule then in force exactly. She added: "we're not even coming anywhere close to even meeting the minimum standards. We are well below the minimum standards on any metric… except… we are touching 30 in some of our classrooms in middle and high school" — and she and the superintendent then correctly identified those as band and chorus, which the rule exempts. | MEDIUM POSITIVE |
| 0:39:14 | The evidence Whitney asked for, and what came back | "does our achievement data show that Claremont students at attend elementary school that have historically had smaller class sizes perform in a statistically significant way, in a better way? And the answer with a scatter plot and everything that I received was the answer was no." On whether pre-K to 4 buys more classroom support, Koski: "The grades 1 to 4 will not get more support… But pre-K would benefit from that arrangement." On universal pre-K space: "we think there'd be there would be room to do that in the future. It would require additional funds." | |
| 0:42:43 | The building leaders take the table | Lewis opened for the group: "As Mr. Tempesta shared with you, it's been a very quick 6 or 7 days to to flush out some thinking on this… our conversations have been if these changes are made. What are the potential benefits for children." Every principal, the preschool director and the special-education director spoke in sequence, without leaving and returning — the superintendent's suggestion "so that they're not getting up and down." | POSITIVE |
| 0:43:24 | Preschool: isolation at the tech center, and 26 referrals | Sanford: "being alone at the tech center. It's kind of hard to access all of the supports… today I subbed in a classroom because otherwise if I didn't sub, I would have had to shut that classroom down. I had five staff out." And: "We have a really, really high, I almost want to call it a crisis right now in early childhood crisis in Claremont. I've gotten 26 bed referrals in the last three months." Nester added the schedule gain — pre-K would move from four days to five, because Friday exists only to give teachers planning time. | MEDIUM |
| 0:51:54 | Romeo: what receiving grade 5 actually costs | "we would would incorporate roughly 250 new students… who are not used to getting up and being at school at 720 in the morning." Library books, playgrounds, "Foursquare and Gaga pits", entry and exit logistics, morning meeting, and trust: "sending teams down to the elementary school to spend days with students… so they can tour over the summer." He and Pratt both endorsed the move; both listed the work first. | |
| 0:54:10 | Skillen asks for the concerns, not the benefits | "I understand the benefits, and I agree with all of them, but what are the challenges that are worrying you most right now." It is the question that produced Romeo's logistics list and Lewis's two concerns at 0:56:28 — staff reduction, and whether parent voice would be "heard and planned around… we have to listen to that, respond to that and learn from it." | POSITIVE |
| 0:57:23 | Pratt on grade 8 at the high school | An "eighth grade academy approach… where they would designate a certain section of the high school", the house system, advisories, structured study time Tuesday to Friday, and early credit accumulation. The cons stated plainly: "if we move to this direction next year, that means half the school really is going to be middle school students… there's going to be a lot of unknowns there," and the climate work of that year "might go back a little bit." | |
| 1:05:03 | Horsky owns the motion and corrects the record | "it's a problem that I guess I technically created and I will, I will own that. There was misconceptions about what was said at the meeting. Clearly there was people thinking that it was clearly stated to cut the tech, not the case. Athletics once again, not the case. It was specifically said not to do so." He commended the administration for producing the plan "in six seven days time" and asked to hear from building administrators "more often". | POSITIVE |
| 1:07:12 | Skillen on high achievers; Koski on dual enrolment cost | "where do you see or do you see any leverage points to increase opportunities for our high achieving students… specifically AP courses and, and and more rigorous electives". Pratt described three-year graduation paths and a senior year of college or workplace credit. Koski gave the funding detail: "The state offers two Stem courses for free at any community college while they're in high school… And then River Valley… is also agreed to work with us for reduced expenses." He also pushed back on the premise: "these are discussions we've been having for a little while, and it's just accelerated… the the cut really accelerated the process." | |
| 1:13:12 | Warrant Note A does not reflect the reductions | Whitney to Seaman: "the note A in our warrant article, does this increase reflect the decrease in total FTE East [FTEs]?" Seaman: "No… That's the list of teachers as they were as of that time." Asked whether it would be updated before the ballot: "No, it's still it's still based on the best information that we had at the time that the negotiation was done." Whitney: "this is it's not a criticism, but this is an interactable [intractable] number." Seaman: "We don't know which positions. We don't know which people… So the point that we use is the one that was utilized during negotiation." The warrant's Note A figures — an estimated $1,002,364 increase in 2023–24 and $573,097 in 2024–25 — therefore stood before the voters unadjusted for a proposed reduction of the same order. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:14:27 | Public comment opens inside the item | "we're going to open it up for public comments? We're we're trying to follow the rule of three minutes per person." First round ran to 2:09:02; a second round at two minutes each ran to 2:29:15. Seventeen identified speakers, several returning — roughly 74 minutes of public comment in total, against a statutory floor of 30. | POSITIVE |
| 1:14:42 | Putnam: where is the evidence this raises achievement? | "It's obvious that this current situation is driven by your, budget cut… what kind of data and information can you provide to us to prove that this plan will improve student achievement". Tempesta answered from experience and enthusiasm, then conceded the gap: "in terms of proven studies that would prove exactly where this is right now. I don't have those for you." Pressed for a "gut feeling", he said the district had "been pretty flat… pretty underperforming for a long time, you know, admittedly almost decades." | |
| 1:21:10 | Rhines: "there was no discussion" | "you guys cut $1 million and there was no discussion. There was no asking them. Hey, what about this one we going to do? It was just cut… you all have always said you want transparency and accountability." She then asked the question the room wanted: if the money goes back at the deliberative session, does the reconfiguration still happen? Whitney said it would not, the chair stopped the exchange — "I don't think you can take that answer from one, I mean, from one board member" — and Whitney explained her January vote: "I knew what the reduction of $1 million would mean… I knew it meant compressing classes… because almost 90% of our budget… is teacher salary." Rhines: "Simply no, no brainer, $1 million without asking them what that would look like." | |
| 1:27:08 | Crawford: comparative costs, retention, and the false choice | "The average cost per student for New Hampshire is 19,400. For Claremont in the same report was 18,400… below the state average and below all the other surrounding districts." Then: "35% of our students don't do not go on to any further education, 35% and 25% of our beginning freshmen do not graduate." And the framing objection: "I don't think it's fair to the voters of Claremont to make this an either or. Either you support the teachers contract and cut $1 million, or you leave the million dollars in and you don't support teachers." Her closing question — how many positions is a 15 percent staff reduction — drew "6 to 9" from Koski and "For 4 to 7, I think" from Tempesta. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:31:02 | Hawkins: the organisational study, and questions sent ahead | "I've read the organization study report that was commissioned by the SEO [SAU]… that report reinforced our problem… about high teacher turnover." She asked whether central-office salaries should be aligned with the teachers' increase, whether crowded classrooms leave room for students to move, and "have we looked at certifications for teachers, specifically middle school, moving into the high school". Her closing line: "Educational support has to reflect the needs specific to our community, not minimum standards." She had emailed questions in advance; the chair replied they arrived "probably three three hours before the meeting" and asked the administration to respond in writing. | |
| 1:39:19 | Austin: a parent's account of assault at the middle school | "my seventh grade daughter is sexually being assaulted at school. I've notified and I would like answers… her friends multiple not only female but male students are being affected by students and we have notified the proper people and it gets lost." She described her daughter's calculation — "If I hit him, I will get in trouble… If I say something, he gets more mean" — an escalation "from her being sexually assaulted to verbally picked on pictures, body shaming", and the failure of the reporting chain: "I did report these to an administrator. And then after speaking with the principal, he never heard about it. Never. Not one report, one request. I requested the second offense… and I never heard back." The chair thanked her for "sharing those difficult" and moved on; no board question followed at this point. | HIGH OBSERVATION |
| 1:44:42 | Fluette: who actually falls through the cracks | "I don't see where we're going to build in guidance counselors, where we're going to have the support for students who aren't socially, emotionally ready to jump." She traced four reconfigurations she had lived through and the distinction they hid: supported children "thrived. Didn't matter that we changed grades or schedules every year"; the others "fell through the cracks. I had 48 classmates that didn't graduate as seniors in our class." Her conclusion: "I think this plan, this budget, needs more work… there's too many more planning that needs to happen for this to be effective." | |
| 1:48:33 | Fine, Lovett, Gage: development, alternatives, and what the classroom needs | Fine: "You cannot make the brain and body prepared to do what it is not physically capable of doing… going for minimum standards, especially New Hampshire, minimum standards is not the way to go. Restore the cuts." Lovett brought funding alternatives — Perkins, NHDOE-funded Running Start, a River Valley Community College partnership, an AmeriCorps VISTA grant. Gage, a second-grade teacher: her students are "two grade levels below where they should be", so "we don't need these more electives, the reduction of teachers or the bigger class sizes. What they need is actually more teachers and more individualized instruction." | |
| 1:56:35 | Snelling: supports the two moves, opposes the third, and does the tax arithmetic | "I fully support pre-K going to elementary schools… I fully support fifth grade moving to the middle school. However… I do not want my 13 year old daughter at a high school with 1819 [18, 19] year old boys." She proposed a 5–6 and 7–8 team model instead and worked through the athletics eligibility problem. As school nurse: "I'm responding to behavior calls… and doing discipline because there is not enough bodies." As taxpayer: the cut saves her "a hundred bucks, $0.30 a day… That's a slap in the face… I'll give you the money at the next meeting, voting for the million dollars just to keep that staffing." | |
| 2:01:11 | Beaton: a competing inflation adjustment, and the LRE question | "my husband, rod also did quick calculations… if you look for inflation, it looks like we have a 14% increase instead of a 57% increase." Then, on the preschool model: three rooms of 24 in two sessions against the 26 referrals just described — "Can we even next year if we go for this proposal? Cover least restrictive environment for those preschool students who will be entering our district?" Neither question was answered. She also asked for "full transparency" about whether the cut was a vehicle for a restructuring the district had wanted anyway, and noted she had asked "for three years for the evidence… No one has given it to me." | OBSERVATION MEDIUM |
| 2:05:01 | Stone and DeLuca close the first round | Stone: "I don't think increasing class sizes ever will achieve a better student outcome… when we did talk about the restructure, we couldn't figure out in a year. So we're supposed to figure this out in a week." On the college-credit theme: "That's not new. I did it." And to the board: "this amount of people did not come to say that they agree with you." DeLuca described a fourth grader who "cannot learn" amid classroom disruption — "My husband and I are actually teaching him at home. We work full time jobs" — as her reason for opposing larger classes. | |
| 2:09:23 | Beaton's paraprofessional question — asked, not answered | "before we look at increasing class sizes, I want to know from Ben Nester if we are, every para that is required, state mandated in a child's e, I p [IEP] is fully staffed within our school district… We're going to increase last [class] sizes, but not provide the supports to the students." Nester was in the room and had spoken earlier. No answer follows in the recording, and the minutes do not record the question. | MEDIUM |
| 2:11:01 | The default budget also dropped by $1,000,000 | Scott Pope: "The default for 2324 is 37 million 342… and under the new presentation tonight, it's 36 million. The defaults also cut by $1 million. Is that correct?" Seaman's answer was one word: yes. Asked how, he answered: "It's based on the proposed budget that the board brings to the deliberative session. So the vote by the board at the last meeting was to drop by $1 million, which is begin to establish what the default budget will be." Pope pushed back: "But wouldn't that just be on the presented budget? The default is the default based on the last year." The chair closed it — "we run by legal counsel" — and Seaman offered to go through it with him. The warrant in the packet confirms the outcome: a proposed operating budget of $37,345,312 against a default of $36,342,948. | HIGH |
| 2:15:57 | Whitney corrects the public's reading of the class sizes | "I have a feeling that folks think that we're going up to 25 kids in a classroom, or even 20 children in a classroom. The proposed the proposal that we have, it's not not anywhere close to that. And in reality, bluff doesn't change really at all… There's decreases, actually." And the clearest statement of the board's use of the rule: "we're not we're not we're not looking to go to minimum standards. We were using minimum standards as a metric to look at, because when we look at the budget, we know there's no ceiling. But we were we needed to know what the floor was." Fluette pressed on where the physical classrooms come from; Whitney: "I don't know where the physical classrooms are." | MEDIUM |
| 2:18:23 | Crawford: does adding money at the deliberative session raise the default? | "If if money was added to the general budget, would the default budget also go up correspondingly for the same amount? I mean, since since the reverse is true, if you went down $1 million". Seaman: "as we heard from council last year… once the default budget is set, it stays set at that number." He then pointed to the statute by name — "reference you over to the RSA, which covers this 40-13… it does show the ability to be able to modify the default budget. I think we ought to have council here" — and recommended "a pretty detailed look at the wording in there". Crawford: "I couldn't agree more that having counsel present at the meeting is invaluable." | HIGH POSITIVE |
| 2:20:46 | Edwards: turnover is about support, not only pay | "at Disney [Disnard] Art school for the first time. And I don't know how long. We lost no classroom teachers last year, and it's not because of our pay." She described hearing about the cut in a staff meeting — "the school board has boated [voted], has approved your contract and voted to cut $1 million, and we have no idea why" — and named central-office churn: "I don't know who HR is right now. We've had turnover there. It's confusing." | |
| 2:25:21 | An unrecorded speaker on the board's posture toward its voters | "I heard a statement tonight about the community can come and restore the budget. And as I sit here, I think how unfortunate that our school board would have the community come forward to vote against you rather than work hand in hand with you in support of our students and our families." This speaker, and the two who follow, are not in the minutes. | |
| 2:29:15 | Comment closed; Miles relays a parent's alternative | The chair: "Seeing all of us from citizens, I'm going to close that now." Miles then relayed a call: "what if we took the bluff school and had all the little all the little children in there, the youngest ones right through the first grade. So the other two elementary schools would house all the second two, three, four and five… and then six, seven, eight could still stay here and… they wouldn't have to go to the high school." It drew no discussion and no motion. | |
| 2:30:11 | Tech center visioning committee: continued, then restructured | The chair proposed a March report. Skillen: the committee "don't need much from us other than a blessing… if there's no budget impact… I think we should allow that to happen." Whitney made the Region 10 decision the precondition: "I don't think we can really move forward in any meaningful way until we make a decision on that." Herzog on the money: renovation funding is "contingent on us being still partners with Newport… To the best of my knowledge, yes." Then Tempesta announced a change nobody had asked for: "We will do a restructuring with an appointed chair. And then the Alex who has been the chair will be the administrative support." No vote was taken on any of it. | |
| 2:39:10 | Two state forms signed at the table | Sprague: "just housekeeping. I've got a an miss 226 and a miss DSB." The chair: "We need to sign… both of them", and Sprague: "You need one signed by… Everybody right here." The second form is identifiable from its name as the district's default budget form; the first is garbled beyond safe identification and this page does not guess it. Neither form is in the Drive packet. | HIGH |
| 2:39:43 | Future dates; the forum; the filing deadline; the clerk's seat | Deliberative session February 8, snow date February 9, Stevens High School auditorium at 6:30, entry through the event entrance, registration with the supervisors of the checklist. Sprague announced the February 28 school board forum, moved to the tech center to avoid a rental fee and facilitated by what the transcript renders "our car school of Public Policy of H" — the Carsey School of Public Policy at UNH. The chair said filing for the March election closed Friday "at close of business was at 4:00"; Seaman corrected him: "it's 5:00 right by statue [statute]. It needs to be 5:00." A board member prompted that the secretary and clerk seats were also open. | |
| 2:42:17 | Skillen's formal request, and the exchange that follows | "I would like to formally request, and I don't want to make a motion for this, but just from me, on behalf of the parents of the middle school students, I need you as soon as possible to get with the principal of the middle school, investigate these accusations and events of sexual assault, and literally shut it down." She then disclosed her own experience as a seventh grader in similar terms, and closed: "Little boys who are not reprimanded when they are acting like sexual deviants, turn into sexual predators. And I will not have it. Not on my watch." Austin replied that "it's not all administration's fault… there's a very high issue with communication in administration", and that a stalking order was not available to her because the other student is entitled to an education. | HIGH |
| 2:45:21 | Skillen asks what is missing; the chair calls for order; the superintendent answers | Skillen: "do we do we need a policy on personal space? Do we need a policy on consent? Or what is the hold up for holding people accountable?… What is lacking in our system to bridge this gap of accountability?" The chair: "I'm going to get back to order here. I think I think we've we've asked the administration to take a look at this and make sure it's addressed." Tempesta: "we have taken a look at it. We've been in communication… I don't want to give the impression that we haven't done that yet. We have… I can't talk about specifics of this. I urge all of us not to talk about specifics of this and an open forum like this for a variety of legal and ethical reasons for the students." Austin had the last word: "the consequences that they are receiving are not working." No Title IX coordinator, grievance procedure or policy number is named by anyone. | HIGH OBSERVATION |
| 2:46:54 | Adjournment | "Closing activities. I have a motion." An unnamed voice moves to adjourn; the chair puts it and the recording ends on "All right. Stop here." The minutes name Whitney as mover and Skillen as seconder. | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the state and federal law in force on February 1, 2023 — several of the provisions below have since been renumbered or amended, and each flag says so where it matters. They are not findings of violation, and nothing here is legal advice. Each flag cites the rule it rests on; where no verified rule applies, the flag says so and is recorded as an observation. Eleven flags follow, ordered by severity.
HIGH A parent testified that two reports of sexual assault at the middle school never reached the principal — in a district where notice to any employee is the federal trigger
At 1:39:19 Jennifer Austin told the board that "my seventh grade daughter is sexually being assaulted at school", that other students were affected, and that "we have notified the proper people and it gets lost." The specific allegation is at 1:43:41: "I did report these to an administrator. And then after speaking with the principal, he never heard about it. Never. Not one report, one request. I requested the second offense. I said, this is a two time offense. I would like this research as assault at this point and I never heard back." At 2:42:18 Whitney Skillen said the pattern was not new to her: "All last year when I was campaigning and walking through those carpool lines, parent after parent of daughter after daughter was telling me about what was happening in the middle school to their children."
The Title IX rule that governed on this date is the 2020 rule, effective August 14, 2020. Two of its provisions are directly engaged. First, the trigger: "Actual knowledge means notice of sexual harassment or allegations of sexual harassment to a recipient's Title IX Coordinator or any official of the recipient who has authority to institute corrective measures on behalf of the recipient, or to any employee of an elementary and secondary school." In a K–12 district, a report to any employee is notice to the district; a report that stalls between an administrator and a principal does not undo it. Second, what the trigger requires: a recipient with actual knowledge "must respond promptly in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent", and "The Title IX Coordinator must promptly contact the complainant to discuss the availability of supportive measures… and explain to the complainant the process for filing a formal complaint." Sexual assault falls inside the rule's definition of sexual harassment. Nothing in this record indicates that any such contact occurred; the parent's account is that it did not.
Three things belong on the other side. The superintendent stated on the record, at 2:45:57, that the district had acted: "we have taken a look at it. We've been in communication. That that has happened. I don't want to give the impression that we haven't done that yet. We have. So there is, it is being dealt with." Nobody contradicted him, and this page has no visibility into what the district actually did — a parent's account that a report did not arrive is not proof that no response exists. He was also right to add "I can't talk about specifics of this. I urge all of us not to talk about specifics of this and an open forum like this for a variety of legal and ethical reasons for the students." And Austin herself was careful: "it's not all administration's fault… after speaking with Mr. Romeo, because this is I'm he had no idea. So it wasn't his fault."
Two structural points remain, and they are what makes this a flag rather than a note. Across eight minutes of discussion, no one named a Title IX coordinator, a grievance procedure, or a policy number. Skillen's questions at 2:45:21 — "do we need a policy on personal space? Do we need a policy on consent? Or what is the hold up for holding people accountable?… What is lacking in our system to bridge this gap of accountability?" — were never answered, and the 2020 rule already required the district to have designated a coordinator and to have adopted, published and implemented grievance procedures. Second, and cutting the other way: Skillen's request that the administration "investigate these accusations and events of sexual assault, and literally shut it down" describes summary action, where the rule in force required a grievance process with due-process protections for both the complainant and the respondent. A board's role here is to satisfy itself that the process exists and works, which is exactly the question nobody put.
Sources: Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex…, 85 FR 30026 (May 19, 2020) — the Title IX rule in force on this date, effective August 14, 2020; 34 CFR 106.30(a) (2022 CFR annual edition — "actual knowledge" includes notice "to any employee of an elementary and secondary school"); 34 CFR 106.44(a) (2022 CFR annual edition — respond promptly, not deliberately indifferent; Title IX Coordinator must promptly contact the complainant about supportive measures); 34 CFR 106.8 (designation of a Title IX Coordinator; adopt, publish and implement grievance procedures) — note the text now served here is the 2024 rule, 89 FR 33888; the 2020 version applied on this date.
HIGH The default budget was cut by the full $1,000,000, but the administration's own breakdown puts only about 40 percent of that sum in eliminated positions
This is the most consequential exchange of the evening and it lasted ninety seconds. At 2:11:01 Scott Pope asked: "The default for 2324 is 37 million 342… and under the new presentation tonight, it's 36 million. The defaults also cut by $1 million. Is that correct?" Richard Seaman's answer was a single word: yes. Asked how, he explained: "It's based on the proposed budget that the board brings to the deliberative session. So the vote by the board at the last meeting was to drop by $1 million, which is begin to establish what the default budget will be." Pope objected on the spot — "But wouldn't that just be on the presented budget? The default is the default based on the last year" — and the chair closed the exchange with "we run by legal counsel." The warrant in the same packet confirms the result: an operating budget of "$37,345,312" against a default of "$36,342,948", the pair exactly $1,000,000 apart from the figures Pope quoted.
New Hampshire's official-ballot statute defines the default budget arithmetically, and it does not start from the proposed budget. It is "the amount of the same appropriations as contained in the operating budget authorized for the previous year, reduced and increased, as the case may be, by debt service, contracts, and other obligations previously incurred or mandated by law, and reduced by one-time expenditures contained in the operating budget and by salaries and benefits of positions that have been eliminated in the proposed budget." Pope's objection was therefore right about the starting point and Seaman's phrasing was not — but the statute's final clause supplies a real route from a cut in the proposed budget to a smaller default, so the outcome is not on its face wrong. The question is quantum.
On the record made at this meeting, the quantum does not reach $1,000,000. The superintendent's own four-part breakdown, given at 0:17:11 and repeated verbatim in the packet, is: "about 15% would be elementary staff reduction of the million dollars, 25% at the secondary level, and shifting teachers to another budget to title one entitle two would be about 20% in the behavioral assistance going to academic support specialists… supported by the Esser grant… is another way that we would get the 40% remaining." Forty percent — roughly $400,000 — is fewer staff. Sixty percent is the same people, paid from Title I, Title II or ESSER instead of local appropriation. And at 0:19:56 the superintendent said so in terms: "the entire FTE reduction reduction. And that's not necessarily the elimination of those positions. Some of those positions would move up to the other buildings would be above them."
A third possible derivation sits in the packet's own arithmetic and nobody named it either. The proposed operating budget of $37,345,312 and the default of $36,342,948 differ by exactly $1,002,364 — which is, to the dollar, the warrant's own stated first-year cost of the collective bargaining agreement in Note A. On that reading the default is the proposed budget less the new contract's cost item, which would be a coherent construction of a statute that adjusts for "contracts, and other obligations previously incurred or mandated by law": a contract still contingent on the March ballot is not previously incurred. It is also a different account from either of the two given at the table, and it does not depend on the board's $1,000,000 vote at all. This page does not choose between the three; it records that the packet supports an exact arithmetic relationship that the meeting never mentioned.
Whether a position that is still filled but paid from a federal grant has been "eliminated in the proposed budget" is a genuine question of construction, and it is one this page does not resolve. It matters because the answer determines whether roughly $600,000 belongs in the default budget — the figure that governs the district if the operating budget fails at the March 14 ballot. What the record shows is that nobody at the table asked it. Two further points of fairness. Seaman's second answer, at 2:18:23, is straightforwardly correct: asked whether restoring money at the deliberative session would raise the default correspondingly, he said "once the default budget is set, it stays set at that number" — and the statute agrees, providing that the default budget amount "shall not be amended by the legislative body", with adjustment reserved to the governing body on new information before ballots print. He then pointed the board to the statute by name and twice urged that counsel be present. And the document that would settle the arithmetic is the default budget form the board signed at the table that night, which Sprague raised at 2:39:10 as "a miss DSB"; it is not in the Drive packet. The statute requires the default budget to be "disclosed and presented for questions and discussion at the first budget hearing", with certified copies of the default budget form posted alongside the proposed operating budget and the warrant. Vintage note: the disclosure duty in RSA 40:13, XI(a) is unchanged since 2019 and governed on this date; the posting duty is quoted from RSA 32:5, VII(b) as that section currently reads, and RSA 32:5 was amended in 2025, after this meeting — a reviewer turning on its exact 2023 wording should check the earlier text. Without it, this flag records a gap between the explanation given and the amount moved — not a finding that the form is wrong.
Sources: RSA 40:13, IX(b) (definition of "default budget") and XI(a)–(b) (disclosure at the first budget hearing; "This amount shall not be amended by the legislative body"); RSA 32:5, VII(b) (governing bodies under RSA 40:13 "shall post certified copies of the default budget form or any amended default budget form with the proposed operating budget and the warrant") — current text; this section was amended in 2025, after the meeting; Budget Reduction Emergency Action from 1.17.23 CSB Budget Hearing (packet) — the warrant text and the four-part reduction rationale.
MEDIUM Forty percent of a permanent budget reduction was placed on ESSER money at the same meeting where the board was told ESSER money is ending
The two halves of this appear forty minutes apart and nobody put them together. At 0:17:45 the superintendent described the largest single component of the $1,000,000: behaviourist assistants becoming academic support specialists, "supported by the Esser grant that we already have for for a year, with plans to move them into another, sunset them out is another way that we would get the 40% remaining." At 0:37:13 the vice chair described the position the district is already in: the ELA and mathematics literacy specialists and the grant manager "are currently covered by Esser grants, which are going to go away. So how are we going to make sure we can provide the salaries for those folks that are absolutely critical for our district to have? And we're looking at probably well over $100,000 per person, including their benefits." The board's own January 17 reduction document had proposed moving still more onto the same money — a grade 7 dean that "should be ESSER Funded but in tax funded budget", and a restorative justice position marked "ESSER Funded?"
Federal pandemic education money is one-time money with a fixed end. Under the Tydings amendment, federal education formula funds remain available for obligation for one additional fiscal year beyond the year of appropriation, which is the mechanism that set ARP ESSER's obligation deadline at September 30, 2024 — nineteen months after this meeting, and inside the second year of the positions being moved onto it. Using it for recurring salary is not prohibited; building a permanent reduction in the local appropriation on top of it is how a district arrives at a cliff, which is precisely the problem the vice chair had just described for the three positions already there.
A resident put the question directly at 2:04:42 and it went unanswered. Michelle Beaton, closing her remarks: "When the funds for funds are done, what happens next?" — rendered in the minutes as "When the ESSER funds are done what happens next?" The chair's entire reply, at 2:04:48, was "Right. That's the question. Thanks. Thank you." No answer follows anywhere in the recording. In fairness, the superintendent's phrase "plans to move them into another, sunset them out" indicates the administration had a sequencing intention; no plan, timeline or dollar figure for it was presented to the board or the public that night.
Sources: 20 U.S.C. §1225(b) (GEPA §421, Tydings amendment — funds remain available for obligation one additional fiscal year); Congressional Research Service, IF12978 (ESSER obligation deadlines: ESSER I Sept. 30, 2022; ESSER II Sept. 30, 2023; ARP ESSER Sept. 30, 2024); 2 CFR 200.303 (internal control over federal awards).
MEDIUM Two teacher salaries were moved onto Title I and Title II to reduce the local appropriation, with no allocation-methodology analysis on the record
Twenty percent of the $1,000,000 — roughly $200,000 — is described in the packet as "Shifting two teachers from local budget to Grants budget (20%) (Title I, II)", and by the superintendent at 0:17:11 as "shifting teachers to another budget to title one entitle two". Asked directly at 0:32:51 where those positions sit, he answered: "We do have a couple of teachers more at the secondary level who are going to become coaches. When we when we talked about those two positions, going to title one, that was at the secondary level."
Title I money must supplement, not supplant. The statute is explicit that a local education agency "shall use Federal funds received under this part only to supplement the funds that would, in the absence of such Federal funds, be made available from State and local sources", and equally explicit about how compliance is now tested: the agency "shall demonstrate that the methodology used to allocate State and local funds to each school receiving assistance under this part ensures that such school receives all of the State and local funds it would otherwise receive if it were not receiving assistance under this part." This matters in both directions. Since the 2015 reauthorisation no district may be required "to identify that an individual cost or service supported under this part is supplemental", so moving a particular teacher onto Title I is not supplanting on its face, and a page that said otherwise would be wrong. What the methodology test does ask is whether each Title I school still receives the state and local funds it would otherwise get — the exact question raised when the stated purpose of a shift is to reduce the local appropriation by the amount shifted.
No such analysis appears anywhere in the record. Whitney Skillen asked about Title I twice — at 0:31:10 about the effect of the reconfiguration generally, and at 0:32:41 about whether Maple's Title I classroom or its location would change — and received "I think that would be minimal" and "We're not that granular yet on on how and where title one would be in the same number." At 2:29:07 Michelle Beaton reported the opposite from the building: "Maple is also losing, I think, a title one teacher." Both statements cannot be right, and neither was reconciled. A further question this record raises without answering: the district's highest free-and-reduced concentration was described at 0:31:55 as being at Bluff Elementary, while the two positions being moved onto Title I are at the secondary level. Only the supplement-not-supplant provision is cited here; the school-selection rules are not, because no verified reading of them was applied to these facts. Title II is named alongside Title I in the packet and on the record; this flag does not cite a Title II provision, because none was verified for this page.
Sources: 20 U.S.C. §6321(b)(1)–(3) (Title I supplement not supplant; the allocation-methodology test; no requirement to identify individual costs as supplemental); Budget Reduction Emergency Action from 1.17.23 CSB Budget Hearing (packet), "Rationale for Grade Shift" — item 3, "Shifting two teachers from local budget to Grants budget (20%) (Title I, II)".
MEDIUM A school-approval ceiling was used as a budget floor — and the same rule contains a lower target the board's framing skipped
The packet document states the origin plainly: the January 17 reduction was "based on adherence to strict ED 306 minimum standards by board followed by motion voted (5-1) to cut an additional $1,000,000 from proposed budget." The superintendent gave the same account at 0:11:49: the cut was "kind of predicated upon looking in budget committee at the at the minimum requirements that 306 is", and "if we went to the minimum standards, we wouldn't need as many teachers in situations."
The rule the board was reading is New Hampshire's minimum standards for public school approval. On February 1, 2023 the class-size provision was Ed 306.17, and its numbers are maxima: kindergarten through grade 2, "25 students or fewer per educator"; grades 3 through 5, "30 students or fewer per educator"; middle and senior high school, 30 students or fewer per educator. Heather Whitney read those three figures into the record at 0:37:35 essentially correctly — the transcript's "kindergarten to 225 students" merges the rule's kindergarten-through-grade-2 band with its 25 — and she and the superintendent then correctly identified the classes already at 30 as band and chorus, which the rule expressly exempts along with study halls and other large-group instruction. That is accurate work, and it is why this flag is not about arithmetic.
It is about what the rule is for. Ed 306 is the standard a school must meet to be approved; nothing in it authorises or recommends a staffing level, and a district that sits below the ceiling is complying, not overspending. The same rule also contains a second, lower tier the evening never mentioned: schools are to strive for 20 students or fewer per educator in kindergarten through grade 2 and 25 or fewer in grades 3 through 5 — so the standard's own aspiration runs in the opposite direction from the way it was used. A third provision, likewise unmentioned, caps laboratory classes in science and career and technical education at 24 students by work station and room design, which bears on a plan whose stated benefit is putting more students into tech-center courses.
The board did not claim otherwise, and the record should say so. Whitney's own summary at 2:16:54 is careful: "we're not we're not we're not looking to go to minimum standards. We were using minimum standards as a metric to look at, because when we look at the budget, we know there's no ceiling. But we were we needed to know what the floor was" — which is a fair description of using the rule as a reference point, even though the number she calls a floor is the rule's ceiling. The projections bear her out in part: Bluff decreases. Two residents rejected the framing outright — Arlene Hawkins at 1:33:34, "Educational support has to reflect the needs specific to our community, not minimum standards", and Ann Fine at 1:49:41, "going for minimum standards, especially New Hampshire, minimum standards is not the way to go." Citation caution for anyone checking this today: Ed 306 was extensively amended and renumbered effective December 13, 2024, and the class-size rule is now Ed 306.14, "Student-Educator Ratios". A reader who looks up Ed 306.17 will find a rule about alternative programs.
Sources: N.H. Admin. Code Part Ed 306, Minimum Standards for Public School Approval (part page; Doc. #14150 / #14151, eff. 12-13-24, amended and renumbered the former rules); NHDOE side-by-side of the minimum-standards revision — the pre-revision Ed 306.17 "Class Size" text, including the "strive for" targets and the study hall / band and chorus and 24-student laboratory provisions; Ed 306.14, Student-Educator Ratios (the successor rule, for readers checking the current text).
MEDIUM Two questions about federally mandated special-education services were put on the record and neither was answered
The first came from a resident at 2:02:19. Michelle Beaton had done the arithmetic from the slides — one preschool room in each elementary school, "24 students, with 12 in the morning and 12 in the afternoon" — against the referral figure the preschool director had given an hour earlier, and asked: "I heard Christina mentioned tonight that there's 26 referrals coming in in three months. Can we even next year if we go for this proposal? Cover least restrictive environment for those preschool students who will be entering our district? Are we going to cover that in three classrooms that are moving forward?" The second came from a board member at 2:09:23: "before we look at increasing class sizes, I want to know from Ben Nester if we are, every para that is required, state mandated in a child's e, I p [IEP] is fully staffed within our school district… We're going to increase last [class] sizes, but not provide the supports to the students." The special-education director was in the room and had spoken twice that evening. Neither question draws an answer anywhere in the remaining forty minutes of recording, and neither appears in the minutes.
Both go to binding federal duties. A free appropriate public education must be available to all children with disabilities aged 3 through 21 residing in the state, and the services in a child's IEP are what that obligation consists of — a staffing shortage is not an exception to it. Least restrictive environment requires that "To the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities… are educated with children who are nondisabled", with removal from the regular educational environment only where "education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily."
On the merits, the plan's preschool component probably helps rather than hurts on this measure, and nobody said so. The district's preschool was, as its director described it at 0:43:24, "alone at the tech center" in a building with no other children — a separate setting. Moving it into three elementary schools puts preschoolers with disabilities in buildings full of nondisabled peers, which is the direction the rule points. That is a real argument for the proposal that went unmade all evening, while the capacity question that actually needed an answer — 26 referrals in three months against three rooms — went unanswered. Earlier in the meeting the superintendent had given a correct general answer on the reconfiguration and IEPs, at 0:31:32: "the IEP follows this the student. So if a kid goes up everything that they need would would follow in terms of the number of interventions assistance one to ones". That answers the transfer question; it does not answer whether the positions are filled.
Sources: 34 CFR 300.101 (FAPE must be available to all children with disabilities aged 3 through 21); 34 CFR 300.114(a)(2) (least restrictive environment).
OBSERVATION Two irreconcilable inflation adjustments of the same state data were asserted at the same meeting, and neither was reconciled
At 0:33:55 the vice chair grounded her vote in a state figure: "Our enrollment has dropped since the year 2,024.6% [2000, by 24.6%], and our cost per pupil has increased 57.2%, and that is adjusted for inflation. I did get a question about that from our community, a community member, whether or not that was adjusted for inflation. I confirmed the Doe [DOE]." Ninety minutes later, at 2:01:20, the community member's household answered: "my husband, rod also did quick calculations. He's the one that emailed you today, Heather, that you responded to… if you look for inflation, it looks like we have a 14% increase instead of a 57% increase."
A third set of numbers entered from a different direction at 1:27:14, where Candace Crawford reported Claremont's cost per pupil below the state average and below every neighbouring district she named: "The average cost per student for New Hampshire is 19,400. For Claremont in the same report was 18,400… Fall mountain is 19,900, Newport is 19,000… Lebanon is 23 for [23,400] and Cornish is 256 [25,600]." Those figures are about level; the 57.2 percent and 14 percent figures are about growth, so they are not strictly in conflict — but the growth figures are, and a 57.2 percent real increase and a 14 percent real increase over the same period cannot both be right.
No verified rule is engaged and none is cited. It is recorded because the disputed number was offered as a reason for a $1,000,000 reduction, because the dispute happened in public with both parties present, and because it was never resolved: nobody asked which deflator or which base year produced which figure, and the meeting moved on. This page does not adjudicate it either — the underlying NHDOE release is not in the packet.
Sources: the record itself — the vice chair at 0:33:55 and the resident at 2:01:20. No statute or rule is asserted, and none applies.
OBSERVATION The packet's own budget documents do not reconcile with each other, and the warrant's contract note was known to be stale before the ballot
The packet's single budget exhibit contains two different accounts of the same reduction. Its warrant text puts the proposed operating budget at "THIRTY-SEVEN MILLION THREE HUNDRED FORTY-FIVE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED TWELVE DOLLARS? ($37,345,312)" with a default of "($36,342,948)". Its "Rationale for Grade Shift" page, describing the same $1,000,000 action, says the shift is "one of four specific areas of reduction targeted in the Claremont School Board Budget to reduce the budget from $34, 880, 312.00 to $33, 880, 312.00" — a base $2,465,000 below the warrant's. The two may be measuring different things; the document does not say which, and nothing in the meeting reconciles them. Two smaller artifacts sit in the same file: the itemised savings shown for the middle school ($613K) and the high school ($282K) do not visibly sum to the "Grand Total Savings $2,206,000" printed beneath them, and the tax-rate line "$350K expended =0.50 cents on tax rate" states fifty cents as "0.50 cents". The tax-rate arithmetic that follows from it is internally consistent: $2,206,000 at that rate yields the "$3.15/1,000" printed, and $3,866,000 yields "$5.52/1000".
Separately, and more consequentially for a voter, the warrant's Note A was known at this meeting to be out of date and was not going to be corrected. At 1:13:12 the vice chair asked Richard Seaman whether the collective-bargaining increase in Note A reflects the proposed reduction in staffing. "No… That's the list of teachers as they were as of that time." Asked whether it would be updated before the ballot: "No, it's still it's still based on the best information that we had at the time that the negotiation was done." His reason is a good one — "We don't know which positions. We don't know which people we don't know who might be leaving, who might be coming" — and a negotiated cost item is properly priced as negotiated. The result is nonetheless that the ballot's stated first-year increase of $1,002,364 and second-year increase of $573,097 stood beside a proposed reduction of the same order of magnitude, with no note on the warrant saying so.
Recorded as an observation. No verified rule requires a district to restate a bargained cost item mid-cycle, and none is cited.
Sources: Budget Reduction Emergency Action from 1.17.23 CSB Budget Hearing (packet) — warrant Articles 1 and 2 with Note A, and the "Rationale for Grade Shift" page; RSA 40:13, II (the first session explains, discusses and debates each warrant article and may amend it).
OBSERVATION The chair had an express statutory tool for limiting identifiable testimony about students, and the board reached for it only at the end
Two speakers gave detailed public accounts involving identifiable minors: a parent describing her own seventh-grade daughter and a named school at 1:39:19, and a board member describing "these accusations and events of sexual assault" at the middle school, and her own history, at 2:42:18. Both were speaking about real harm and both had every right to raise it with their school board; nothing here suggests either should have been silenced.
The point is narrower. New Hampshire's public-comment statute, in force since September 2022, both guarantees the comment period and equips the chair to manage exactly this: a school board may "reasonably restrict public comments that disclose student personally-identifiable information, teacher personally-identifiable information, or other confidential or privileged information." That tool was not used while the testimony was being given. The first intervention came at 2:45:49, after the second account, when the chair said "I'm going to get back to order here", and the substantive caution came from the superintendent a moment later at 2:45:57: "I can't talk about specifics of this. I urge all of us not to talk about specifics of this and an open forum like this for a variety of legal and ethical reasons for the students."
That caution was correct and it came from the right person — but it came from the administration rather than the chair, and after roughly eight minutes in which a middle-school student's circumstances were described in a broadcast public meeting alongside enough detail to identify her. A board weighing how to handle the next such comment has a statutory answer available in advance, and the chair may also be limited in practice: the same statute requires the opportunity to be given, and a chair who cuts a parent off risks the appearance of suppressing a complaint about the district. This is recorded as an observation, not a violation: nothing in RSA 189:74 obliges a board to restrict such comments, and the record contains no student's name.
Sources: RSA 189:74, I (School Board Public Comment Period; boards may reasonably restrict comments disclosing student or teacher personally-identifiable information or other confidential or privileged information; source 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022); RSA 91-A:3, II(c) (nonpublic session available for matters likely to affect adversely the reputation of a person other than a member of the public body — not invoked at this meeting).
POSITIVE Seventy-four minutes of public comment across two rounds, and every building leader answering questions in person
The statutory floor is thirty minutes. The chair opened public comment inside the budget item at 1:14:27 with "we're we're trying to follow the rule of three minutes per person", ran a full first round to 2:09:02, then opened a second round at two minutes each — "anybody wants to speak a second time" — which ran until he closed the floor at 2:29:15. Sixteen named speakers took part, several of them three and four times, plus one who never gave a name; the minutes list twenty separate entries from residents during this item, and record the vice chair answering twice. No one who came to the podium was refused the floor — one speaker was stopped at the three-minute limit, and the chair prompted another who had a second question to give it rather than sit down.
The administration matched it. At 0:42:35 the superintendent proposed that the building leaders come to the table together "so that they're not getting up and down", and the principals of all three levels, the Bluff and Disnard principals, the preschool director and the special-education director each spoke in sequence and then stayed to take questions. When a board member asked at 0:54:10 to hear the concerns rather than the benefits — "I understand the benefits, and I agree with all of them, but what are the challenges that are worrying you most right now" — they answered with specifics against their own proposal: playground and library costs, a 7:20 a.m. start time for 250 additional children, "half the school really is going to be middle school students", and, from the Disnard principal, "a reduction of staff concerns. Me… Numbers are one thing. And what's behind the numbers is another level of need."
Two caveats keep this honest. Length is not the same as responsiveness: several of the sharpest questions of the night — the preschool capacity question, the paraprofessional staffing question, and "when the ESSER funds are done what happens next" — drew no answer, and residents who emailed questions in advance were told there had not been time to read them. And a board that gives the public seventy-four minutes on a plan it has already voted to require is doing something narrower than consultation. Neither point takes away from what the record shows: this board and this administration sat and listened for well over two hours.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (public comment period of no less than 30 minutes; equal time limits may be set and applied uniformly); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice and minutes); CSB Public Notice Ad 2.1.23 (2).pdf (the posted notice, in the packet).
POSITIVE A chair who criticised his own conduct on the record, a member who took ownership of an unpopular motion, and a business administrator who declined to be the lawyer
Three moments in this meeting are worth marking because they are the opposite of what a transparency review usually finds.
The chair's report at 0:03:56 was added by him to the agenda for the purpose of criticising his own handling of the previous meeting: "I run the meeting differently than Frank or Steve or anybody else up here would run the meeting. I am learning the trial by fire sometimes. Learning from my mistakes. And last meeting was not a pretty meeting." He named the specific error — choosing to ignore disturbances from the audience rather than calling for order — and the specific correction: "That may not have been my best choice. I probably should have stopped and asked for order… I need to be probably tightening the ship up a little bit and steering us better. So that is my goal for myself."
Steven Horsky, at 1:05:03, opened his only remarks of the evening by claiming the motion the whole room had come to object to: "it's a problem that I guess I technically created and I will, I will own that." He then corrected two specific misunderstandings that had been running in the community — "there was people thinking that it was clearly stated to cut the tech, not the case. Athletics once again, not the case. It was specifically said not to do so" — and used the rest of his time to commend the staff who had to build the plan and to ask for building administrators at the table "more often".
Richard Seaman, asked twice to state the law on the default budget, gave the part he was sure of and stopped. At 2:19:09, on whether restoring money at the deliberative session raises the default: "as we heard from council last year, that once the default budget is set, it stays set at that number." Then, rather than extending it: "there is language within the law. And what I just looked to do is reference you over to the RSA, which covers this 40-13. And reading down through that, it does show the ability to be able to modify the default budget. I think we ought to have council here to identify some of the pros and cons of that… I would recommend that you take a pretty detailed look at the wording in there." That is the right instinct on a question that, as flag 2 sets out, turns on the precise wording of a definition — and Candace Crawford agreed from the floor: "I couldn't agree more that having counsel present at the meeting is invaluable." He was also the one who corrected the chair on the candidate filing deadline, at 2:41:45: "it's 5:00 right by statue [statute]. It needs to be 5:00." The chair had the day right — he told the room at 2:41:34 that filing runs "two more days. It ends Friday" — and the statute bears that out: filing for school district office follows the town-election rules, under which "The filing period shall begin on the seventh Wednesday and end on the Friday of the following week before the town election." For a March 14, 2023 election that Friday was February 3, two days after this meeting. The closing hour is a different matter: that section names no time of day, so this page records Seaman's correction without endorsing the 5:00 p.m. figure or asserting a provision for it.
A fourth, smaller instance: at 1:24:27 the chair stopped a member from answering a resident's question on behalf of the whole board — "I don't think you can take that answer from one, I mean, from one board member" — which is both correct and rarer than it should be.
Sources: RSA 40:13, IX(b) and XI (default budget definition and amendment limits — the provision Seaman directed the board to by number); RSA 671:19 (RSA 669:19–669:22 apply to school district elections); RSA 669:19 (filing period begins the seventh Wednesday and ends the Friday of the following week before the election; the section states no closing hour).
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast show 14875, "Claremont School Board Meeting 2/1/23" — Claremont Community TV, CLAREMONT SCHOOLS gallery. Runs 2:47:04. Every timestamp on this page links into this recording.
- Drive packet folder "4. CSB Meeting 2/1/23" — 5 documents, listed below by their exact Drive names.
2.1.23 CSB Agenda.docx.pdf — the posted agenda. Names the location, the 6:30 p.m. start, the six sitting board members with Petrin as chair and Whitney as vice chair, the central-office roster, and Hannah Petrin as student representative.Budget Reduction Emergency Action from 1.17.23 CSB Budget Hearing for CSB Meeeting 2.1.23.pdf Meeeting is the district's spelling, reproduced here as filed — the packet's central exhibit. Contains the January 17 reduction menu, the school district warrant with Articles 1 and 2 and Note A, two tax-rate comparison pages, and the "Rationale for Grade Shift". Its first line reads "Superintendents and Snow Days", a heading left over from another presentation; the budget material begins on the line below.CSB Public Notice Ad 2.1.23 (2).pdf — the posted public notice for this meeting.draft 1.17.23 CSB meeting minutes .docx.pdf — draft minutes of the January 17 budget hearing at which the $1,000,000 reduction was voted 5–1; approved at this meeting.draft 1.11.23 CSB meeting minutes .docx (1).pdf — draft minutes of January 11; approved at this meeting.- Minutes:
1.CSB Meeting Minutes 2.1.23 — in the district's shared Meeting Minutes folder. Recorded by Chelsea Weatherford.
- Not in any district share, verified 2026-08-28: the two state forms the board signed at the table at 2:39:10 — the default budget form ("a miss DSB") and a second form the transcript renders "a miss 226". Neither is in the packet folder, and the default budget form is the document that would show how the $1,000,000 reduction to the default budget was derived (flag 2). Also absent: the NHDOE cost-per-pupil release cited at 0:33:55 (flag 7), the SAU 6 organisational study by Dr. William Lupini and Dr. Anne Wilson referred to at 1:31:02, and the slide deck presented at 0:11:00 — the superintendent said "this is what is online" and "this whole presentation is online right now", but the packet holds only the reduction document, not the slides.
Project files
Relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/.
Laws and rules cited on this page
- New Hampshire statutes. RSA 40:13 — official ballot referenda: II (the first session), IX(b) (definition of "default budget"), XI(a)–(b) (disclosure at the first budget hearing; the amount "shall not be amended by the legislative body"). RSA 32:5, VII(b) — posting certified copies of the default budget form with the proposed operating budget and the warrant; cited as currently written, the section having been amended in 2025 after this meeting. RSA 189:74 — school board public comment period, no less than 30 minutes; reasonable restriction of comments disclosing student or teacher personally identifiable information. RSA 91-A:2, II — notice and minutes. RSA 91-A:3, II(c) — nonpublic session for matters affecting the reputation of a non-member (not invoked at this meeting). RSA 671:19 and RSA 669:19 — the filing period for school district office.
- New Hampshire administrative rules. N.H. Admin. Code Part Ed 306, Minimum Standards for Public School Approval. The class-size provision in force on this date was Ed 306.17 ("Class Size"); Documents #14150 and #14151, effective December 13, 2024, amended and renumbered the part, and the successor rule is Ed 306.14, "Student-Educator Ratios". The pre-revision text is reproduced in the NHDOE side-by-side of the revision.
- Federal — education programs. 20 U.S.C. §6321(b) — Title I supplement not supplant, the allocation-methodology test, and the rule that no district must identify an individual cost as supplemental. 20 U.S.C. §1225(b) — GEPA §421, the Tydings amendment.
- Federal — civil rights and special education. The Title IX rule in force on February 1, 2023 is the 2020 rule, 85 FR 30026 (May 19, 2020), effective August 14, 2020: 34 CFR 106.30(a) (actual knowledge; sexual harassment) and 34 CFR 106.44(a) (general response; deliberate indifference; supportive measures), quoted here from the 2022 CFR annual edition because the eCFR now serves the 2024 rule (89 FR 33888) at those section numbers. 34 CFR 106.8 — Title IX Coordinator and grievance procedures. 34 CFR 300.101 — FAPE. 34 CFR 300.114(a)(2) — least restrictive environment.
- Federal — grants administration. 2 CFR 200.303 — internal control over federal awards. Obligation deadlines for the three ESSER funds are taken from Congressional Research Service report IF12978.