Participants
Everyone in the record: the six sitting board members, the student representative, the central-office administrators named on the agenda, the building leaders and specialists who presented, the four citizens'-comment speakers the minutes name, and two people named on the record who were not heard from. 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 the budget item by framing the board's power narrowly — the deliberative session "added $1 million back into the budget, which now creates about $2 million gap between the proposed budget and the default budget. The default budget can, with this new information, with this change can be changed and ended [amended] by the by vote from this board." Stopped the administration's presentation at 1:08:48 to say "the only thing we're here to decide tonight is the default budget." Restated the exact resulting figures before the vote, ordered a roll call when he could not hear one member's voice vote, and voted Yes. Ran for the one-year seat on the March 14 ballot and lost. Rendered Mike / Patron in this recording's own roll call and Michael Patron, Patrone elsewhere in this corpus. |
| Heather Whitney | Vice Chair | The motion's most substantive opponent, and the only member to put a principled objection on the record. Established through five exchanges that the positions in question were already covered — "every, every position that we're talking about refunding would already be funded by the default budget" — citing the board's attorney: "that's what I understood from Matt Upton is regardless, all the positions would be funded." Then, at 1:22:18, the sentence this page returns to twice: putting positions back that the board might later choose not to fund would be "disingenuous"… "to artificially inflate the default budget." Voted No. Also asked the night's sharpest programme question — how the district would guarantee that new pre-K is "high quality." Not to be confused with member Whitney Skillen. |
| Steven Horsky | Board member | Moved approval of the 2023–24 school calendar. Pressed the literacy specialist twice on whether teacher coaching would be voluntary or required — "if we're developed, we have an ability to develop our teachers… I see a bunch of missed opportunities." On the budget he made the case against the motion in arithmetic: "adding $1 million on one side still doesn't change the fact that the teachers contract on the other side is not there with the default budget… we can back fill positions back in, but they're already funded through." Closed with "Let's let the voters decide." Voted No. Author of the January 17 reduction document that started the whole sequence; he resigned from the board on June 21, 2023. Rendered Hauschka, Steve Gorski, Mr. Horse Keeper across this corpus; the chair and the roll call both call him "Stephen". |
| Bonnie Miles | Board member | Asked three questions, all of them practical and none recorded in the minutes: whether a teacher whose students are not progressing could be required into the coaching programme; how many of the district's "free and reduced" students are in the free tier; and, at 1:00:17, the one that produced new information — "why are we not using a head start? Those are… kids that are, at the poverty level. They need the same interventions as you're describing." That drew the answer that Head Start's two Claremont classrooms of 18 are full and a third "could not hire that third teacher." Also asked how absorbing grade 8 squares with a proposed six-period day. Voted Yes. As in nearly every 2023 recording in this corpus, nobody says her name aloud until the roll call; the identification of her earlier turns rests on elimination, and this page flags that rather than letting repetition harden into certainty. |
| Frank Sprague | Board member | Moved the agenda; seconded Skillen's motion expressly "for discussions sake." His question to the business administrator is the one that opened the legal ground: whether restoring money to the default budget would "put ourselves in a deficit type of position" next year, and, in support of it, the reference at 1:11:06 to advice already received — "when we were at our meeting, we were talking with, with with our attorney and we were concerned with, I'm assuming that's a public wasn't a non wasn't a non public" (see flag 4). Voted Yes. A candidate for a three-year seat on the March 14 ballot. Rendered Frank. Strange. in this recording's roll call; also Greg, Craig, Spriggs across this corpus. |
| Whitney Skillen | Board member | Moved to add $600,000 to the default budget — the night's only motion of substance — and gave two separate rationales for it. The first is a grant-cliff argument: money in the budget rather than in grants means "when those grants run out, if we decide these positions are necessary, they're already in the budget… I'd rather cut them if we don't need them, than to not have the funding if we do need them." The second, at 1:38:26, explains the $600,000 rather than the full $1,000,000 and opens with a candid disclaimer: "I'm not going to explain it 100% correct because I don't have a full grasp on it myself. But from what I understand, from explanation from our district's attorney…" Voted Yes; also moved the adjournment. Rendered Whitney. Skilling in this recording's roll call — the caller apologised for it — and Miss Gillan by a public speaker. |
| — vacant seat — | Seventh board seat | Vacant. Three board seats went to the March 14, 2023 ballot — two three-year terms and one one-year term. The board sat six all evening; all six answered the roll and all six were called in the roll-call vote. |
| Hannah Petrin | Student representative, Stevens High School | Gave the student report at 0:03:13: winter enrichment, the Snow Queen performance on the ninth, "A Tribute to Broadway" auditions at two elementary schools, a Maple concert on the 22nd, an eighth-grade parent meeting on the 23rd about the trip and fundraising, the principal's corner update on the Stevens website, senior play rehearsals, the All District Band Festival, and the tech center's Region 10 meeting on the 22nd. The minutes summarise it in six bullets and attribute the website update to "SHS Principal Pratt"; the recording renders his name as an inaudible "Mr.." The chair's daughter; she held the role for the 2022–23 year only. |
| Michael C. Tempesta | Superintendent of Schools, SAU 6 | Presented for about an hour with his administrative team and answered questions throughout. Framed the reconfiguration as urgent rather than optional — "It's February now. So we we we don't have the luxury. We have to have a plan. We have to whether it goes or doesn't go, we have to get on it that way" — and was explicit that the principals were not being managed: "there's no coercion. There's no like, tamp down on this." On the budget question he confirmed the fact the motion's opponents relied on, that the default budget already contained the positions "Including the those that were. Eliminated as part of. The million dollars coming out. Yes." Closed the meeting by asking members to come sign the warrant article, the MS-26 and the default budget form the next afternoon. Superintendent from July 2019 until his dismissal in January 2024. Rendered Mr. Dempster elsewhere in this corpus — a garble that reads as a real surname and is dangerous. |
| Michael Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation & Assessment | Presented ten years of state testing data — "we just haven't moved out of the bottom 25%, with the exception of a couple of schools, a couple of years in a couple of subjects" — and then the John Hattie effect-size table that is the intellectual core of the administration's case. His summary of it at 0:34:40 is the sentence a reader should weigh against the reconfiguration: reducing class size "has a positive impact. It's just not as great at impacting with kind of limited resources. We'd like to focus on those things that are going to give us the greatest bang for our buck." Also gave the plain-language gloss of each influence in the table when the superintendent asked for one. The minutes credit him with thanking Zach Hurst at the end of the meeting; the recording places that in the superintendent's voice — see the method footer. Rendered Mr. Kosky throughout. |
| Richard Seaman | Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations (business administrator), SAU 6 | Spoke five times, all on the default budget, and did two things worth marking. First, asked to explain how the default budget is calculated, he declined to paraphrase: "I prefer if you give me a moment, I can read it directly from… the way the statute is written as opposed to my interpretation of it" — then read RSA 40:13, IX(b) aloud at 1:34:24 and correctly dated the clause the whole meeting turned on to 2018. Second, he stopped where his role stopped: "it's up to the board's interpretation of these words as far as what can be put in and how it is explained." Also warned what the default budget means for staff — "we have the positions. We just aren't paying them. What the market says" — and called the roll at the chair's request. He read his retirement letter to the SAU 6 board on March 30, 2023, effective April 14. Rendered Assistant Superintendent Simmons elsewhere in this corpus. |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education, SAU 6 | Spoke twice. Questioned whether a full day is right for four-year-olds — "when you have your children in front of you for 12 hours, there is only so much… time on learning" — and supplied the history of the letters of agreement at 1:16:06: "there's always been a pretty, pretty large number of lows [LOAs] in the district, right. Truancy officers, social workers, etc.. And then right around 2018, 2019 when we… worked really hard to build in district programs to bring kids back over the course of the next two years, we added roughly ten behavior specialists." He was the board's usual roll-caller while the clerk's seat was vacant; on this night he was absent from that duty and the chair told the business administrator "Pretend I'm Ben." Rendered Mr. Nestor. |
| Jeff Small | Director of Technology, SAU 6 | Listed on the agenda's central-office roster; not heard on this recording and not named in the minutes. |
| Kristina Sanford | Early Childhood Director / preschool director, Claremont School District | The evening's most-quoted presenter. Made the case for universal pre-K — "free public preschool for all is, I think the dream" — and described what arrives without it: "Often we see kids, who come to us completely non-verbal. They've never been around peers before. They've never sat at a table and done any structured activities before." Answered Horsky's clarification that the sending-school table shows 20 total with 14 already on an IEP, not 34. Then, at 0:38:37, put her own coaching evaluations on a public screen: 60 percent of key practices as a third-year teacher, 87 percent, 91 percent, 97 percent — "I put myself on blast here just so you guys could see what coaching looks like" (see flag 11). Finally gave the capacity arithmetic: twelve students a classroom, four half-day classes per elementary school, and a total she gave as 144 slots. The minutes and the superintendent's report both spell her Kristina Sanford; the recording says only "Christina", and the project's dialogue file carries her as Christina Sanford. |
| Stephanie Hurst | Literacy specialist / curriculum director, SAU 6 | Presented TeachUNITED at 0:31:26 — "Out of 15 schools in the entire state, six of ours were chosen to be a part of this teach United cohort" — and gave the meeting its most repeated line, brought back from a school visit: "there's no unicorns, only strong horses… We put so much on our teachers and expect them to be unicorns when they're strong horses." Was careful about the limits of coaching: it is voluntary ("you go where you're wanted"), it is not a quick fix, and full implementation runs "over the course of five years." Told the board she already does this work alone across the district — "I can't sustain that on my own and all the buildings K-12." The minutes are the only source that gives her surname and they title her Literacy Specialist; the project's dialogue file carries her as Stephanie (surname not stated) with the role "Curriculum Director," and the corpus notes previously had the surname only at medium confidence. This meeting's minutes settle the name and complicate the title. |
| Melissa Lewis | Principal, Disnard Elementary School | Answered the space question with the concrete numbers the presentation lacked: "every space at Disney [Disnard] is completely utilized… I would have three currently right now, three fifth grade classrooms exiting. And I would be welcoming two preschool classrooms" — a net gain of one room against an influx she has seen before, "one year I had an influx over the summer of 11 first graders." Made the practitioner's case for coaching without observation, through team meetings and common planning. Returned at the end of the meeting to describe the winter enrichment programme — "we sent off almost four hundred… almost 500 children into the community" — and to turn the credit outward, to the staff, the bus department and Michelle Beaton. Rendered Alyssa elsewhere in this corpus. |
| Christine Baker | Principal, Bluff Elementary School | Spoke once, at 0:28:42, and gave the single figure that started the whole review: Bluff "has One fifth grade classroom and the student the class sizes 25, so it's a very big class size. Our need for next year would be two fifth grade classrooms, given our enrollment" — a room the building does not have. |
| Chris Pratt | Principal, Stevens High School | Not heard on this recording. Named twice: the student report credits him with the principal's corner update, and the superintendent credits the ten-year enrolment and class-size slides to him — "These are Mr. Pratt's slides he made for us actually I think they're wonderful." In February 2023 Pratt was the high school principal; he did not become interim superintendent until January 11, 2024. |
| Chelsea Weatherford | Administrative assistant to the superintendent, SAU 6 | Recorded and submitted the minutes, as she did for every Claremont meeting in this period, the elected district clerk's seat being vacant. Named on the record once, at 1:41:38, as the person who would put the school board forum notice on the district website. Not otherwise heard. |
| Zach Hurst | CanAm — funder of the elementary winter enrichment programme | Invited to the table at 1:44:41 — "And Zach. Would you mind. Coming up?" — and thanked for "funding and helping provide supplies for that program." No words are attributed to him in the dialogue file. The minutes spell the company Canam; the transcript renders it Kent, M. |
| Matt Upton | Attorney for the Claremont School Board | Not present and not heard. Named once by the vice chair as the source of the advice that all the positions would be funded under the default budget regardless; referred to twice more, without a name, by Frank Sprague ("our attorney") and Whitney Skillen ("our district's attorney"). The advice itself is in no public record — see flag 4. |
| Candace Crawford | Citizens' comments — Ward 2 | The only speaker to take the podium twice, self-identifying both times as "Candy Crawford, Ward two." First on the calendar, asking whether it was coordinated with Newport as the visioning committee had been told it must be. Then, opening the budget comment period, she offered the evening's best account of why the deliberative session voted as it did: voters perceived "a pairing of the reorganization of the schools with the budget, and they were not happy with the reorganization." Her diagnosis of the timing — "I think that they think this is February having summers vacation. And how in heaven's can this be done for September? There's there's no community support for it yet" — went unanswered, and she supported the motion: "I don't understand why that wouldn't be going back into the default budget." A citizen at this meeting — she was appointed to the board on July 19, 2023. |
| Gary Merchant | Citizens' comments — Ward 2; New Hampshire state representative | Self-identified from the podium after being reminded the microphone is "not for the room. It's for the people at home." Made three points and numbered them: that the object of the evening is passing the teachers' contract, and "if we don't find a way to close the gap between the proposed budget and the default budget, it puts it a greater risk"; that money spent on coaching is wasted unless teachers are retained; and that the deliberative session had been confusing — "Facts were presented. What wasn't there was enough information to understand the facts." Returned under other business with a constituent question the minutes do not record: where absentee ballots come from, and when. He is the only speaker to state a legal basis for the motion, and he stated it as belief: "I believe the statute is written, you can add back in the default budget positions that were cut." |
| Michelle Beaton | Citizens' comments — Ward 2 | Pressed hardest on process. Her account of January 17 is the sharpest in the record: "I was at the board meeting January 17th, $38 million was about to be passed. Quick five minute recess by the board. Million dollars is cut. No explanation." Asked whether the plan really delivers universal pre-K — "Can you tell me that in this plan, every child in Claremont that wants a space can have it?" — and worked the arithmetic against the answer until the chair asked the preschool director to supply the numbers. Supported the motion, and asked whether the district had surveyed its teachers: "if we don't support them and listen to them, they will continue to walk out our door. I have a lot more questions. I'll email." Returned at the end of the meeting, praised by the Disnard principal as the driver of the winter enrichment programme, to redirect the credit to the principals. Rendered Michelle, be in Ward two in her own self-identification. |
| Ann Fine | Citizens' comments — Ward 2 | Spoke once, briefly, at 1:37:41, and put the case for the motion in three sentences: "To me, the deliberative session was clear about the desire to support the teachers and the schools keeping the default budget at the stage it's at seems to run contrary to that. It it seems like a backdoor effort to do the million dollar cut. I support the motion to add the $600,000 to the default budget." Identification note: the dialogue file leaves this voice unidentified because her self-introduction survives only as the garble "And fine. Ward two." She is named here because the minutes list "Ann Fine (Ward 2)" at exactly this position in an otherwise speaker-for-speaker match with the recording. The February 8 minutes spell the same speaker "Anne Feln"; this page uses the February 15 minutes' spelling. |
Agenda
From the posted agenda, 2.15.23 CSB Agenda, 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 |
|---|
| 0:00:03 | I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance | Agenda: "6:30PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance". Minutes: "Meeting called to order by chair, Michael Petrin" — the minutes, unlike the February 1 set, record no clock time for it. The recording begins part-way through the pledge, so neither the gavel nor the opening of the pledge is captured; the first transcribed words are "in order States of America and to the Republic for which it stands." |
| 0:01:34 | 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. On the recording the names being called are inaudible and only the answers survive, five of them one word long; the minutes are the authority for who answered. The chair's cell-phone reminder immediately before it comes through as "Clay, are you the video of the results of everyone here?" |
| 0:01:56 | II. Agenda — amendments and final approval | Minutes: "Frank Sprague makes a motion to approve the agenda as presented; seconded by Whitney Skillen; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote." No amendments were offered — the chair asked "Any changes?" and moved straight to the motion. On the recording the chair records the second as coming from "Brittany", a name that belongs to nobody in the room; the minutes resolve it to Skillen. |
| 0:02:33 | II. Minutes approval — February 1, 2023 | Agenda: "Minutes approval: February 1, 2023". Minutes: "Whitney Skillen makes a motion to approve the 2/1/23 meeting minutes as presented; seconded by Heather Whitney; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote." On the recording the mover is not identifiable — the words "I'll make a motion to approve the minutes as presented. Second." arrive in a single cluster — and the chair records only "Second by Heather." The draft approved here is in this meeting's own packet folder. The chair also called for abstentions; none were recorded. |
| 0:03:03 | II. Citizens Comments | Agenda: "Citizens Comments". Nobody rose. The chair: "Citizens. Comments. Any citizens I would like to speak at this time" — then, ten seconds later, "Seeing none. I'm going to run to our student representative report." The minutes print the heading with nothing under it. Public comment was nonetheless taken twice later in the meeting, inside the two discussion items; see flag 6. |
| 0:03:13 | II. Student Representative Report — Hannah Petrin | Building-by-building report, about seventy-five seconds; the minutes summarise it in six bullets. The recording adds detail the minutes drop — the Snow Queen performance on the ninth, the eighth-grade parent meeting running "from 5 to 6 p.m.", senior play rehearsals and the All District Band Festival. The minutes add the name the recording loses: "SHS Principal Pratt updated the principal corner on the Stevens website." |
| 0:04:41 | III.1. 2023–2024 School Year Calendar Review and Approval | Agenda: "2023-2024 School Year Calendar Review and Approval". Minutes: "Steven Horsky makes a motion to approve the 2023-2024 school year calendar as presented; seconded by Heather Whitney; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote." Ran about five minutes. The superintendent said the calendar had been "vetted by the by the union", that the only change was the placement of teacher workshop days, and that "we have 178 student days" — see flag 5. Two open ends were flagged and neither was resolved: the January primary date was a placeholder because "Even the secretary of state doesn't know", and the superintendent undertook to "bring that back to you for approval" if it moved. The calendar itself is not in the posted packet. Candace Crawford asked from the floor whether it was coordinated with Newport; the minutes record the answer as "yes, they coordinated with Newport and Sunapee," a place the recording never mentions. |
| 0:10:33 | III.2. Reconsideration of Operating/ Default Budgets | Agenda: "Reconsideration of Operating/ Default Budgets". The item ran one hour and thirty-one minutes, from 0:10:33 to 1:41:19, and consumed the evening. Only the default budget was reconsidered; the operating budget was no longer the board's to change, the deliberative session having amended it and sent it to the ballot (flag 7). Fifty-eight minutes went to a grade-reconfiguration presentation by the whole administrative team before the chair brought it back at 1:08:48. Disposition, from the minutes: "Whitney Skillen makes a motion to add $600,000 (six hundred thousand) to the default budget for the positions such as the LOAs (letter of agreement) that were going to be funded by ESSER grants and the positions that were going to be funded by title grants. Seconded by Frank Sprague… roll call vote; Heather Whitney: No, Steven Horsky: No, Bonnie Miles: Yes, Frank Sprague: Yes, Whitney Skillen: Yes, Michael Petrin: Yes; motion passes 4 yes to 2 no." Four residents spoke inside the item. See flag 1. |
| 1:41:25 | IV. Other Business / Future Agenda Items / Future Meeting Dates | Agenda: "A. Future Dates: School Board Forum February 28, 2023 at the SRVRTC Goodrich Community Room. B. Future Agenda Items: SRVRTC Visioning Committee Report March 1, 2023." Both confirmed on the record, with detail the agenda lacked: the forum runs 6:00 to 7:30, CCTV will film it live, and it is "being facilitated by Hampshire listens of the car see school at 81" — NH Listens of the Carsey School at UNH. The minutes add the Region 10 meeting on 2.22.23 and the full candidate list for the March 14 ballot. Two items appear on the recording and not in the minutes: Gary Merchant's question about absentee ballots, answered "Would all would all come from the city clerk" with no date available, and the superintendent's request at 1:48:06 for board signatures on the warrant article, the MS-26 and the default budget the following afternoon — "Once we have those, we can put ballots together." |
| 1:44:33 | IV.C. Other Business — elementary winter enrichment not on the posted agenda | Minutes, item C: "Elementary school Winter Enrichment program that just finished up. Assistant Superintendent Koski thanks Zach Hurst from Canam for helping fund the school program. Melissa Lewis, Principal of Disnard Elementary speaks about how wonderful the program was and thanks Michelle Beaton for all of her hard work along with the staff." On the recording the four weeks of activities are described by the Disnard principal — bowling, a foreign language, "yarn crafts. I have kids that now know how to knit and crochet" — and the numbers grow as she speaks, from "almost four hundred" to "almost 500 children into the community." Michelle Beaton, who had spoken against the process an hour earlier, returned to redirect the credit: "the principals themselves did so much legwork behind this." |
| — no separate item — | V. Closing Activities | Agenda: "8:10PM Closing Activities". Nothing was taken up under this heading. The minutes print it with nothing beneath it, as they do the citizens' comments heading; the winter enrichment item was taken under IV.C immediately before adjournment. |
| 1:48:43 | VI. Adjournment | Minutes: "Whitney Skillen makes a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by Bonnie Miles; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote." On the recording the mover is clear and the seconder is not — an unidentified "I'll second" — and the chair's last audible words are a question the transcript renders "That. What's your favorite?" The agenda had scheduled adjournment for 8:15 p.m.; on the recording's clock the motion came about four minutes later. |
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 |
|---|
| 0:00:03 | Pledge already under way; roll call | The recording joins the pledge mid-sentence. Cell phones, then a roll the transcript captures only as answers — "Here.", "In here? Yep. Right here.", "Here." All six sitting members present per the minutes; the seventh seat and the elected clerk's seat are both vacant. | |
| 0:01:56 | Agenda and February 1 minutes approved | Two voice votes in under a minute, no amendments, no discussion. The chair could not identify either seconder on the record — he names "Brittany" for the first and "Heather" for the second; the minutes give Skillen and Whitney. | |
| 0:03:03 | Citizens' comments called — nobody rises | "Citizens. Comments. Any citizens I would like to speak at this time." Ten seconds later: "Seeing none." Four residents would speak later inside the discussion items, but the agenda's dedicated comment period drew no one. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:13 | Student representative report | Winter enrichment, the Snow Queen on the ninth, "A Tribute to Broadway" auditions at two elementary schools, a Maple concert on the 22nd, an eighth-grade parent meeting on the 23rd "from 5 to 6 p.m.", the senior play, the All District Band Festival, and the tech center's Region 10 meeting on the 22nd "from 6 to 7." | |
| 0:05:01 | 2023–24 calendar: 178 student days, and a primary nobody can date | The superintendent: the calendar "is really vetted by the by the union", the only change is where teacher workshop days fall, "We are aligned. With Newport", and "we add now we have 178 student days, and we did coordinate everything." The January primary is a placeholder — "I just third Tuesday as a placeholder" — because, as Sprague put it, "Even the secretary of state doesn't know." He undertook to "bring that back to you for approval" if the date moved. The calendar document is not in the packet. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:07:07 | Calendar approved on a voice vote | Horsky moved, Whitney seconded; the chair took a question from Sprague on what had changed, then Candace Crawford's from the floor on coordination with Newport, then the vote. The minutes record it "all in favor via voice vote." | |
| 0:10:33 | The chair states the question: only the default budget is on the table | "So that's what we're talking about tonight. I don't recession [the deliberative session], publicly and added $1 million back into the budget, which now creates about $2 million gap between the proposed budget and the default budget. The default budget can, with this new information, with this change can be changed and ended [amended] by the by vote from this board." That is a close paraphrase of RSA 40:13, XI(b), which lets the governing body adjust the default budget "acting on relevant new information at any time before the ballots are printed." | HIGH |
| 0:11:03 | Superintendent opens the reconfiguration presentation | Two framings, both worth keeping. On urgency: "It's February now. So we we we don't have the luxury. We have to have a plan. We have to whether it goes or doesn't go, we have to get on it that way." On the principals who would speak next: "I assure you that there's there's no coercion. There's no like, tamp down on this. They're going to say what they, what they want to say." | |
| 0:13:16 | The room shortage, described concretely | "we have a really, significant overcrowding, overcrowding and lack of space in the elementary schools right now. Title services are done in front of other kids in the library that Maple Bluff. We are short rooms." The packet's report puts the same point as "Alleviates Current Room Crisis at all elementary schools!" | |
| 0:14:18 | The ten-year class-size averages | "the average in all the elementaries for ten years is 16 students." The packet's report gives the same pair on one line — "2013-2023 AVG. for Elementary (16) and SHS (14)" — which is the administration's central claim: high school classes are already smaller than elementary ones, so the room to grow is at the top. | |
| 0:17:57 | Ten years of state testing scores | Koski: "The red lines are Claremont. The blue lines are the state average"… "we just haven't moved out of the bottom 25%, with the exception of a couple of schools, a couple of years in a couple of subjects." The packet's report is blunter: "As a district, Claremont has tested in the bottom 25% (1st quartile) of the state for the past 10 years," and adds the enrolment context — "total enrollment down 299 students since 2012 (from 1922 students to 1623 currently)." | |
| 0:20:20 | Universal pre-K: the case for it | The preschool director: moving grades around would "make space for universal preschool model… free public preschool for all is, I think the dream." Asked what a child arriving without it looks like: "Often we see kids, who come to us completely non-verbal. They've never been around peers before. They've never sat at a table and done any structured activities before" — and the consequence a year later, "teachers cannot handle those class loads that they have because the the needs are so broad and the behaviors are so intense… So we can't wait till kindergarten." | |
| 0:24:33 | Horsky reads the enrolment table correctly | "is it 20 total students. Which means the 14 with the I p [IEP] are already in that 20? Or are we looking at 34 students plus six on a waiting list?" Answer: 20 total, 14 already on an IEP, six more waiting. The superintendent then owned the slide's ambiguity — "I was the slide master… the waiting list of 19 is a current waiting list of 19" — and said the count "could be more." | |
| 0:26:17 | Sprague: how does removing grade 5 free space if pre-K moves in? And what federal money pays for it? | "this is the first I've heard of universal pre-K… it looks like we're taking the fifth out, but we're bringing pre-K in… I don't understand how that works." The funding half of his question drew the answer that matters most for this page: "The the federal funds so far? Okay. We have s s are [ESSER] funds okay as well. And some of the some of the title funds, we have three rooms budgeted right now for next year." Then: "there's also other federal funding in the works. Supposedly you can't go to the bank on it." | MEDIUM |
| 0:27:48 | The principals answer the space question with numbers | Disnard: "every space at Disney [Disnard] is completely utilized… I would have three currently right now, three fifth grade classrooms exiting. And I would be welcoming two preschool classrooms" — net one room, against a school that once absorbed "an influx over the summer of 11 first graders." Bluff: one fifth-grade classroom at 25 students, "Our need for next year would be two fifth grade classrooms, given our enrollment." The superintendent's summary: "about a room left over at each building." | |
| 0:29:40 | Skillen: is pre-K weighted to Maple, and could parents opt across schools? | "if space becomes an issue because of the pre-K program, would there be an option to… the parent can opt in to shuttle their kid to a different school that's not in their neighborhood." The answer was flexibility in principle — "there's a lot we can do with that" — plus the observation that other area districts charge "$15 a day", and a reminder that pre-K sat in the elementary schools once before, in 2013. | |
| 0:31:26 | TeachUNITED: the grant, and what it is | "Out of 15 schools in the entire state, six of ours were chosen to be a part of this teach United cohort." Two years: year one trains teacher leaders as coaches, year two is "full implementation." The vendor deck in the packet describes a cohort of three to six teacher leaders per school at four to five hours a month. The deck in this meeting's packet is titled "TeachUNITED Presentation 2.16.23" — the day after this meeting, and the date of the SAU 6 board meeting; the same material also appears inside the superintendent's own 2.15.23 report. This page notes the date rather than assuming which meeting the deck was prepared for. | |
| 0:32:58 | "There's no unicorns, only strong horses" | Brought back from a school visit to look at a curriculum programme: "they talked about there's no unicorns, only strong horses. Well, when we were talking about this, I was debriefing with the team. And that's a wonderful analogy… We put so much on our teachers and expect them to be unicorns when they're strong horses." And the corollary: "There's no mythical creature coming out of the woodworks to be able to save us right now, but there are some really strong things that we can do to boost student achievement." The line is printed on a slide in the packet's report. | |
| 0:33:50 | The Hattie table — the intellectual case for larger classes | Koski walked the effect sizes: collective teacher skill at the top, and near the bottom, "one of those has been to reduce class sizes. And it appears that for a long time there's there's been an effort to reduce class size for many reasons. And it has a positive impact. It's just not as great at impacting with kind of limited resources. We'd like to focus on those things that are going to give us the greatest bang for our buck." The packet's report prints the numbers: Collective Teacher Skill 1.57, Direct instruction 0.82, Feedback 0.74 — against Reduce Class Size 0.21. When the superintendent asked him to define each influence, he did so in plain language, including "Direct instruction is just dumping information at you. It's effective. It's boring as can be, but it works." | |
| 0:38:37 | A district employee puts her own evaluation data on the screen | "So this is my personal teaching data up here. From when I, I was a preschool teacher for the district." Chosen by the state for a systematic improvement plan in 2017, she was the subject of the coaching: "as a third year teacher, I was only demonstrating 60% of the skills that we wanted to see"… "by May 2018… I made a 27 and 27% improvement in my teaching skills"… "by the end of my second year of coaching, I was demonstrating 97% of the skills that they wanted to see. So I put myself on blast here just so you guys could see what coaching looks like." The superintendent framed it beforehand: "I want everyone to know this was voluntary, not our idea." Her named TPOT reports are reproduced in the packet. | POSITIVE |
| 0:43:05 | Skillen: is the coaching grant connected to the restructuring at all? | "I am curious how this relates to the restructuring. And is was it what were we going to be doing this program before the restructuring was planned?" The answer conceded the point: "I don't want to over speak, but I think that this process could happen with or without that." The superintendent said the same later — "we could do the coaching either way… and we are going to do it either way." So the evening's most persuasive material was, on the administration's own account, independent of the decision being taken. | |
| 0:44:44 | Miles and Horsky: can coaching be required of a struggling teacher? | Miles: "if you have a teacher whose students are not progressing, that teacher is not taking this course… would they be required to take this?" Horsky pressed the same point twice more: "if we're developed, we have an ability to develop our teachers… I see a bunch of missed opportunities where we're trying to get things a little bit more streamlined across." The answer stayed on the research: "it's almost never forced upon teachers," and "So it's not a quick fix." The Disnard principal offered the middle ground — coaching through team meetings and shared planning, "without having to observe someone." | |
| 0:52:19 | Seven years of enrolment, staffing and free-and-reduced data, school by school | The superintendent walked each building's table from the packet, noting the 2021–22 break in the free-and-reduced series — "going from 63 to 41. They relaxed the rules. And also they were giving out lunches then" — and naming the district's highest-need school: "the most in need. School for a very long time because of the catchment has been bluff." He also credited the data pull to a staff member the transcript renders "D Skinner", and said the numbers had been assembled "as best we could as fast as we could." | |
| 0:56:32 | Stevens: fewer teachers, smaller classes than the elementary schools | "So the total teachers of Stevens, okay has declined. And then the average class size all the way across, okay. For those seven years is 147 [14.7]. It's even less, actually. When you go ten years, it's like 136 [13.6]." The packet's report confirms both readings: the Stevens semester-2 class-size row averages 14.7 across seven years, and teacher counts fall from 47.8 to 39. He drew the conclusion from experience — "I'm 15 years as a high school principal… it's easier to have higher class sizes if you had to choose in the secondary level." | |
| 1:00:17 | Miles on Head Start — and the answer that a classroom sits empty for want of a teacher | "why are we not using a head start? Those are those are the those are kids that are, at the poverty level. They need the same interventions as you're describing… Why are we taking it all on". The preschool director: "we have an agreement with Head Start. We work very closely with them. They currently have two classrooms of 18 that are full. And they were supposed to have a third classroom this year, but they could not hire that third teacher." Neither the question nor the answer is in the minutes. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:04:09 | Whitney: what guarantees the new pre-K is "high quality"? | "if you have high quality childhood education, it decreases, it by 8%, disruptive behaviors by 8 to 12%… increasing your graduation rate roughly 16%… But the key word that was in all the literature that I, that I looked at was high quality. And… my only concern is or how are we going to make sure that what we are offering is high quality?" She also named the district's own mixed evidence: gains for children with IEPs, none visible for the rest. The answer was about programme design — integrated therapy, play-based learning, closer alignment with kindergarten — and about who currently gets in: "the kids that were capturing are our are at risk kids… it's not equitable. So when you're looking at that data, I think there are some skewed things to think about." | |
| 1:08:48 | The chair stops the presentation and restates the question | "I kind of want to bring us back. You know, we had a nice presentation on what we're looking at… What the only thing we're here to decide tonight is the default budget. Do we put money back into the default budget?" Then the sentence that defines the legal theory of the night: "The only way we can do that would be to restore positions that have been deemed to be cut or moved. There are some positions that were going to be moved or changed to other sources, grant funded." The statute's own words are narrower — RSA 40:13, IX(b) provides that eliminated positions "shall not include vacant positions under recruitment or positions redefined in the proposed operating budget." | HIGH MEDIUM |
| 1:10:13 | The motion: add $600,000 to the default budget | Skillen, restating it on request: "I'm making a motion to restore $600,000 to the default budget, which that would, and that that $600,000 would be used to fund the lows [LOAs] that were going to be funded by Esser. So that would be funded by the 600,000 and the positions that we're going to be funded by title grants." Sprague: "I'll second, for discussions sake." | HIGH |
| 1:10:47 | Sprague's question, and a reference to advice the public has not seen | "Are there implications for next year budget. That would be negative… it would be a put ourselves in a deficit type of position." Then the sentence this page flags: "when we were at our meeting, we were talking with, with with our attorney and we were concerned with, I'm assuming that's a public wasn't a non wasn't a non public. So we were talking about the fact that we could be, setting ourselves up if we do things incorrectly." Neither the meeting nor the advice appears in any record this page could find. | MEDIUM |
| 1:11:49 | The grant cliff, stated plainly by three people | The chair: "if we move positions Esser funding, Esther [ESSER] is going to write out [run out] in two years. Correct. Those positions then need are deemed to be valuable or valuable will need to continue." The superintendent added the qualification: "it's not mandatory that they come back into the budget… They could be sunset. They could be funded by another revenue source." And Skillen gave the motion's own rationale: money in the budget "so that when those grants run out, if we decide these positions are necessary, they're already in the budget. And it doesn't put us at risk for a structural deficit… I'd rather cut them if we don't need them, than to not have the funding if we do need them." | MEDIUM |
| 1:13:34 | What a letter of agreement is, and why the district uses them | Whitney: "I just want some clarification about why they were letters of government [agreement] to begin with… one of the benefits of being low [LOA] is that they are not contracted employees." The answer: "In many cases behavioral interventionists… with students who are combative, disruptive and things like that, that it was tough to have other parents [paras]… to incentivize them to work with, with those students." Roughly "20 or 30 low folks" sit outside a bargaining unit. Nester dated the growth: "right around 2018, 2019… we added roughly ten behavior specialists." Whitney's summary was sharper than the answer: "our current pair of contract is not a rigorous enough or robust enough at this point in time to support bringing these level of interventionists into. Our district." | |
| 1:18:28 | "Every position… would already be funded by the default budget" | The exchange the whole flag turns on. Whitney: "am I correct as well. And I think I am. Is that all? All of the positions would be covered by the default budget if the proposed amended budget were to be were to fail. So every, every position that we're talking about refunding would already be funded by the default budget." She attributed it to counsel: "that's what I understood from Matt Upton is regardless, all the positions would be funded." The superintendent confirmed it, including for the cut positions: "Including the those that were. Eliminated as part of." — "The million dollars coming out. Yes. So all the." The minutes render the same passage as Seaman clarifying "that the default budget would not include the new teacher's contract but would include the other positions there were proposed to be cut." | HIGH |
| 1:19:24 | What the default budget does to teachers, from the finance office | "if we are left with the default budget, we don't have the teachers contract. So the teachers… without the contract next year will make exactly what they're making this year and they will not receive a step increase… that is a near catastrophic issue… from a recruiting perspective, from maintaining our teachers perspective and from having to correct it in future years. It's just kicking a can down the road so we have the positions. We just aren't paying them. What the market says". That is the whole strategic problem of the March ballot in six sentences. | |
| 1:20:09 | The board settles what the motion actually does | The chair: "Whitney's motion means that those positions are" — "Are funded. Differently through taxes instead of through grants. That's correct." The business administrator: "that's the motion you say." Whitney: "So we're not expanding anything or contracting anything. It's how those positions are funded." That is a description of a funding preference, not of the statutory calculation, and nobody at the table said which line of the default budget form it would change. | HIGH MEDIUM |
| 1:20:35 | Horsky against: the arithmetic does not change | "Whether we would have came out with our 38 million budget versus cutting the 1 million that was cut, we were still looking at $1 million difference on the teacher contract. So to be very clear, adding $1 million on one side still doesn't change the fact that the teachers contract on the other side is not there with the default budget… we can back fill positions back in, but they're already funded through. The real question is, is what are we doing with the additional million dollars? Right. Well, we don't know if we have it. So quite honestly, I'm not going to put the cart before the horse. Let's let the voters decide." | HIGH |
| 1:22:18 | Whitney: putting positions in you may not fund is "disingenuous" | "if we put more positions back in, we're essentially saying to the public, and I and I, I firmly believe this, it's disingenuous to say that we're going to find [fund] positions and then later on decide kind of arbitrarily or not arbitrarily, but just decide not to fund those positions to artificially inflate the default budget." She then made the political argument for leaving it alone: the public had the fact sheets, "at deliberative session 47, people chose to put $1 million back in the budget" — the minutes of that session record the amendment carrying 41–27 — "And so I think we should present that to the voters, knowing that, regardless, the default budget funds everything that we need funded… maybe it's going to pass. Fine." | HIGH |
| 1:24:29 | Crawford: why the deliberative session voted as it did | "my sense was from the deliberative meeting that… citizens thought that there was a, a pairing of, the reorganization of the schools with the budget, and they were not happy with the reorganization, and they were fearful if the budget went through without that extra million dollars… the funds wouldn't be there to continue as it is." Told that fact sheets had been handed to everyone at the door, she answered on timing: "I think that they think this is February having summers vacation. And how in heaven's can this be done for September? There's there's no community support for it yet… until you get the community and the parents involved, it's not going to be successful." She supported the motion. | |
| 1:29:03 | Merchant: close the gap to protect the contract | "the reason we all are here tonight, for the most part, is trying to ensure as much as possible that we passed the teachers contract… And if we don't find a way to close the gap between the proposed budget and the default budget, it puts it a greater risk. So I think by adding money back into it, and I believe the statute is written, you can add back in the default budget positions that were cut." He is the only speaker to offer a legal basis, and he offered it as belief. On the deliberative session: "Facts were presented. What wasn't there was enough information to understand the facts." | HIGH |
| 1:31:45 | Beaton: five minutes, a million dollars, no explanation | "I was at the board meeting January 17th, $38 million was about to be passed. Quick five minute recess by the board. Million dollars is cut. No explanation. So as a public, we're left being very confused." Then the test she set for universal pre-K — "Can you tell me that in this plan, every child in Claremont that wants a space can have it?" — and, when the numbers did not immediately add up, "I think the public deserves the answer." She supported the motion and closed on teachers: "if we don't support them and listen to them, they will continue to walk out our door. I have a lot more questions. I'll email." An unidentified voice moved the previous question at 1:31:37; the chair did not put it and comment continued. | |
| 1:34:24 | The business administrator reads RSA 40:13, IX(b) into the record | Having offered to "read it directly from the statute, as opposed to interpreting it in my words," he read the definition aloud — "means the amount of the same appropriations as contained in the operating budget authorized for the previous year. Reduced or increase as a case may be by debt service contracts and other obligations previously incurred or mandated by law, and reduced by the one time expenditures it contained in the operating budget, and by salaries and benefits of positions that have been eliminated in the proposed budget" — and then dated the operative clause: "this was updated in 2018." He is right; it was added by 2018 N.H. Laws ch. 313 (SB 342). He stopped there: "it's up to the board's interpretation of these words as far as what can be put in and how it is explained." He did not read the next sentence, which excludes redefined positions, nor the paragraph's closing direction that the governing body "shall follow the statutory formula." | HIGH POSITIVE |
| 1:36:06 | The pre-K capacity arithmetic, finally | "I can have 12 students for each early childhood classroom. So if we're still looking at a half day program, that would be four classes, per elementary school. So 48 slots per elementary school would get us to… 144." Against roughly 110 three- and four-year-olds Beaton had counted, that is close to universal at half days — "trying to get as close to a true universal as we can" — but it needs six classrooms, where the funding answer given an hour and nine minutes earlier had been "we have three rooms budgeted right now for next year." | MEDIUM |
| 1:37:41 | Ann Fine: "a backdoor effort to do the million dollar cut" | "To me, the deliberative session was clear about the desire to support the teachers and the schools keeping the default budget at the stage it's at seems to run contrary to that. It it seems like a backdoor effort to do the million dollar cut. I support the motion to add the $600,000 to the default budget." The chair closed public comment thirty-five seconds later. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:38:26 | Why $600,000 and not $1,000,000 — the mover explains, and disclaims | "I just wanted to make a point of clarity for why I chose for why my motion was for the 600,000, not the full million. And I'm not going to explain it 100% correct because I don't have a full grasp on it myself. But from what I understand, from explanation from our district's attorney, is that the school board has the power to make a motion like this to restore funding for the positions that were redefined. And according to the information, I have only those low positions and positions that were moved to the title grant are under the jurisdiction of the school board at this time." "Redefined" is the statute's own word for the category it excludes — see flag 1 and flag 4. | HIGH MEDIUM |
| 1:39:11 | The chair states the resulting figures before the vote | "So to to restate, Whitney made the motion to add the 600 000 back into the default budget, which featured, by my calculation here, that would bring the net to be raised by taxes to $15,845,186 in the total appropriations for the default budget would be $36,942,948." The business administrator's whole reply: "Correct." The arithmetic checks: $36,342,948 + $600,000 = $36,942,948, and $36,942,948 is the default budget printed on the March 14, 2023 ballot. Neither figure appears anywhere in the minutes. | MEDIUM POSITIVE |
| 1:39:42 | A voice vote the chair could not read — and the roll call he ordered instead | "All those in favor? Aye, aye." Then confusion: an "Opposed I", a "May or no", an "I'm in favor", and Skillen's own guess, "I think it was 4 to 2." The chair stopped it: "But I didn't hear your vote, so I. I'd like to. We need a revolt [re-vote]." Then, at 1:40:36, "Richard, can you do a roll call? Vote for us. Pretend I'm Ben" — the special-education director being the board's usual roll-caller while the clerk's seat sat vacant. | POSITIVE |
| 1:40:43 | Roll call: the motion passes 4–2 | Name by name on the recording: "Heather. Whitney." — "No."; "Stephen." — "No."; "Bonnie. Miles." — "Yes."; "Frank. Strange. Yes." [Sprague]; "Who am I missing? Whitney. Skilling, I apologize." — "Yes."; "And myself" / "Mike." "Patron." [Petrin] — "Yes." Then: "The motion passes 4 to 2." The minutes record the identical result: "Heather Whitney: No, Steven Horsky: No, Bonnie Miles: Yes, Frank Sprague: Yes, Whitney Skillen: Yes, Michael Petrin: Yes; motion passes 4 yes to 2 no." This roll call is also the passage that proves Petrin chaired this board, in his own voice. | HIGH POSITIVE |
| 1:41:38 | The February 28 forum, and the March 14 candidates | The forum: 6:00 to 7:30 in this room, CCTV filming live, the police department putting the sign up, breakout spaces upstairs, and facilitation by "Hampshire listens of the car see school at 81" — NH Listens of the Carsey School at UNH. The chair read the ballot: three candidates for two three-year seats — "Frank Sprague, Nicholas Stone, and Arlene Hopkins [Hawkins]" — and two for the one-year seat, "Jennifer Gallagher and myself." Candidates without a district email would be reached by robocall: "It's public information now." | |
| 1:43:11 | Absentee ballots: where, and when nobody could say | Merchant, from the floor: "people have asked me where do they go to get the ballot if they want to vote absentee, do they go to the saw [SAU]? Do they go to the city clerk?" Answer: "Would all would all come from the city clerk." On timing, the business administrator: "I can't tell you the exact date because all the information" — the superintendent finishing that the clerk had not yet been given what she needed, and "We'll just have to communicate what the date is." Four weeks before the election, and not in the minutes. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:44:44 | Winter enrichment: four weeks, five hundred children, one funder | "We just finished an elementary school winter program, and we spent four weeks kids running all around to the community." Thanks to "Zach Hurst from Kent, M [CanAm] for funding and helping provide supplies." The Disnard principal described it — bowling, a foreign language, "yarn crafts. I have kids that now know how to knit and crochet" — and the scale grew mid-sentence from "almost four" hundred to "Almost 500 children into the community". She named a driver, "every cause needs a champion", and Michelle Beaton came back to the microphone to hand the credit to the principals instead. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:48:06 | Signatures wanted tomorrow: the warrant article, the MS-26 and the default budget | "Mister chairman, can I just make a request to board members? Tomorrow I'll be able to find to finalize the Warren [warrant] article, the miss 26 [MS-26] and the default budget. I'm going to need your signatures. Or at least the majority of signatures on each… let's say after 1:00, they'll be waiting down there for your signatures. Please. Once we have those, we can post. Once we have those, we can put ballots together." So an amended default budget form was prepared the next day. It is not in any district share this page could search. | MEDIUM |
| 1:48:43 | Adjournment | Skillen moved, an unidentified voice seconded, and the recording ends fifteen seconds later, mid-exchange, on the chair's "That. What's your favorite?" The transcript's last row ends at 1:48:58. | |
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 15, 2023 — where a provision has since changed, or where the rule's numbering has moved, the flag says so. 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 The board added $600,000 to the default budget minutes after being told, on the record and on the authority of its own attorney, that the default budget already funded those positions
The default budget is the appropriation that governs the district if the operating budget fails at the ballot. Going into this meeting it stood at $36,342,948 against a proposed budget the deliberative session had just raised to $38,345,312 — a gap of $2,002,364. Whitney Skillen moved at 1:10:13 "to restore $600,000 to the default budget, which… would be used to fund the lows [LOAs] that were going to be funded by Esser… and the positions that we're going to be funded by title grants." It carried 4–2 at 1:41:15. The chair had already stated the arithmetic: the default budget "would be $36,942,948", with the net to be raised by taxes rising to $15,845,186. That is the figure the March 14, 2023 ballot printed — "Should this article be defeated, the default budget shall be… ($36,942,948)" — so the vote taken here is the number Claremont voters saw four weeks later.
What the record establishes about those positions. Twenty-two minutes before the vote, at 1:18:28, the vice chair asked directly whether they were already covered: "am I correct as well. And I think I am. Is that all? All of the positions would be covered by the default budget if the proposed amended budget were to be were to fail. So every, every position that we're talking about refunding would already be funded by the default budget." She named her source — "that's what I understood from Matt Upton is regardless, all the positions would be funded" — and the superintendent confirmed it, extending it to the positions cut in January: "Including the those that were. Eliminated as part of." … "The million dollars coming out. Yes. So all the." The minutes give the same passage as the business administrator clarifying "that the default budget would not include the new teacher's contract but would include the other positions there were proposed to be cut." Steven Horsky said it a third time at 1:20:35: "we can back fill positions back in, but they're already funded through." Nobody contradicted any of it. The board then voted to add $600,000 to fund them.
What the statute requires. RSA 40:13, IX(b) defines the default budget as "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." Two further sentences of the same paragraph bear directly on this vote and neither was read aloud. First, the exclusion: "eliminated positions shall not include vacant positions under recruitment or positions redefined in the proposed operating budget." Second, the direction: "In calculating the default budget amount, the governing body shall follow the statutory formula which may result in a higher or lower amount than the proposed operating budget." The adjustment power the chair relied on, at XI(b), is real but conditioned: the amount "may be adjusted by the governing body… acting on relevant new information at any time before the ballots are printed, provided the governing body… completes an amended default budget form."
Why the two do not meet. On the board's own description, the motion changed a funding preference rather than a calculation. The chair summarised it at 1:20:09 — the positions "Are funded. Differently through taxes instead of through grants" — and the vice chair agreed: "So we're not expanding anything or contracting anything. It's how those positions are funded." A default budget is not a plan for how to pay for things; it is the output of the IX(b) formula. And the category the mover named is the category the statute excludes. Her stated basis, at 1:38:26, was that the board may "restore funding for the positions that were redefined" — using the statute's own word for positions that are not eliminated positions and so were never a lawful ground for reducing the default budget in the first place. The chair's version at 1:09:13 was the same: "restore positions that have been deemed to be cut or moved."
There is a lawful reading, and it is worth stating fully. If the original $36,342,948 had itself been computed by subtracting the salaries and benefits of these LOA and Title-funded positions as "eliminated", then that subtraction was wrong — redefined positions are excluded — and putting the money back is a correction the formula requires, not a discretionary top-up. On that reading the board did the right thing for imprecise reasons. But the record cuts against it: three people at the table said the positions were already in the default budget, and the two accounts given a week earlier at the deliberative session were that the whole difference was the teachers' contract, or that positions had been eliminated (see the February 8 page, flag 1). Nobody asked the one question that would have settled it — what the original default budget calculation actually subtracted, line by line — and the document that answers it, the DRA default budget form, is not in any district share this page could search (flag 2).
In fairness, four things. The board did not act in the dark: it sought legal advice, and the mover's account of that advice is that the board had the power she exercised. The chair's opening framing tracked XI(b) almost word for word, and the deliberative session's amendment is a plausible candidate for "relevant new information." The vote was taken by recorded roll call with the resulting figure stated aloud first, which is more transparency than the law then required. And the effect of the vote was to narrow the gap between proposed and default from $2,002,364 to $1,402,364 — which is precisely what the district's finance officer had asked the board to do from the floor of the deliberative session seven days earlier, so that the difference "helps preserve the vote" (February 8 page, flag 3). That is the tension this flag records: the request made on February 8 was for an outcome, and on February 15 the board delivered the outcome without anyone on the record working the formula that is supposed to produce it.
Sources: RSA 40:13, IX(b) (default budget definition; "eliminated positions shall not include vacant positions under recruitment or positions redefined in the proposed operating budget"; "the governing body shall follow the statutory formula") and XI(a)–(b) (default budget form; adjustment only on "relevant new information", on an amended form) — the section's last amendment was 2019, 192:2, eff. July 10, 2019, so this text governed on the meeting date; New Hampshire Municipal Association, "A Few Legislative Changes for Town Meeting Season" (Nov/Dec 2018) — 2018 ch. 313 (SB 342) added the eliminated-positions reduction, a change the author notes "conflates" the proposed and default budgets; New Hampshire Municipal Association, "The Default Budget in SB2 Towns" — the default budget is built from the previous year's approved budget and rests with the governing body; Sample Ballot, Annual School District Election, March 14, 2023 (the $36,942,948 default budget as printed for voters); 2.15.23 CSB meeting minutes (the motion, the roll call and the 4–2 result).
MEDIUM The dollar figure this meeting sent to the ballot was announced on the recording and never written into the minutes, and the form behind it is in no district share
The minutes record the motion — "to add $600,000 (six hundred thousand) to the default budget" — and the full roll call. They do not record what the default budget became. The two numbers the chair read aloud at 1:39:11, "the net to be raised by taxes to $15,845,186" and "the total appropriations for the default budget would be $36,942,948", appear nowhere in the written record of this meeting. A reader of the minutes alone learns that $600,000 was added to something, and cannot learn what the something now is. The figure is recoverable only two ways: by watching the recording, or by finding a sample ballot.
The document that is supposed to carry it is the DRA default budget form. RSA 40:13, XI(a) requires the governing body to "complete a default budget form created by the department of revenue administration to demonstrate how the default budget amount was calculated," with the form showing appropriations from the prior year's operating budget, reductions and increases with line-item identification, one-time expenditures, and reductions for eliminated positions. XI(b) permits an adjustment only "provided the governing body… completes an amended default budget form." The record shows one was prepared. At 1:48:06 the superintendent asked the board for signatures the following afternoon on "the Warren [warrant] article, the miss 26 [MS-26] and the default budget… Once we have those, we can put ballots together." That request is also absent from the minutes.
What this page could and could not find. A full-text search of the district's Google Drive shares on 2026-08-28 returned Claremont MS-DSB default budget forms for fiscal 2025, 2026 and 2027, but none for fiscal 2024 — the year decided at this meeting — and no amended form of any year. The single district document carrying $36,942,948 is the March 14, 2023 sample ballot. The form is a governmental record; nothing here suggests it does not exist, only that it is not where a resident would look.
In fairness. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to contain "a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions", and these minutes do: the motion, its purpose, the citizens who spoke, and every member's vote by name. Recording the resulting total is good practice rather than a stated statutory duty, and the requirement that minutes name the members who made and seconded each motion — which these minutes satisfy anyway — did not enter RSA 91-A:2, II until 2023 ch. 188, months after this meeting. This is a completeness gap in the district's own interest, not a demonstrated breach.
Sources: RSA 40:13, XI(a)–(b) (default budget form; amended default budget form); RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes: subject matter discussed and final decisions; open to inspection within 5 business days); RSA 91-A:4 (governmental records available for inspection); Sample Ballot, March 14, 2023; 2025 MS DSB, Claremont Local School (an example of the form the district files; the fiscal 2024 form was not located).
MEDIUM A permanent universal pre-K programme was proposed on expiring federal money at the one meeting whose entire logic was that federal money expires
The two halves of this sit forty-six minutes apart and nobody joined them. At 0:26:43, asked by Frank Sprague what pays for universal pre-K, the superintendent answered: "The the federal funds so far? Okay. We have s s are [ESSER] funds okay as well. And some of the some of the title funds, we have three rooms budgeted right now for next year." He added that more federal money was "in the works. Supposedly you can't go to the bank on it." The packet's own report is more specific: of the six proposed pre-K classrooms, Maple's two come from the "Existing Local Budget" and the four at Disnard and Bluff are marked "Federally Funded."
Forty-six minutes later the board heard the motion argued on exactly the opposite reasoning. Skillen's stated rationale at 1:13:03: putting the money in the budget rather than in grants means "when those grants run out, if we decide these positions are necessary, they're already in the budget. And it doesn't put us at risk for a structural deficit where we need positions that we don't have funding for." The chair had spelled the risk out a minute earlier: "if we move positions Esser funding, Esther [ESSER] is going to write out [run out] in two years." The board applied that logic to letters of agreement and Title-funded teachers and did not apply it to four of six pre-K classrooms in the same evening. Nobody asked what happens to those rooms in fiscal 2026, and nothing in the minutes shows the question arising.
The deadline was real and known. Federal education formula funds remain available for obligation one additional fiscal year beyond appropriation under the Tydings amendment, which set ARP ESSER's obligation deadline at September 30, 2024 — nineteen months after this meeting, and inside the first full year of a programme presented as historic and permanent: "I think we would be historically not just in Claremont, but in the state of New Hampshire, the first to to have this."
A second, smaller gap sits inside the same item. The model presented needs six classrooms — the preschool director's arithmetic at 1:36:06 is twelve children per room, "four classes, per elementary school. So 48 slots per elementary school", reaching 144 against roughly 110 three- and four-year-olds. The funding answer was "three rooms budgeted right now for next year." Half the model was budgeted. Michelle Beaton's question — "Can you tell me that in this plan, every child in Claremont that wants a space can have it?" — got "That's what we model", which is an honest answer to a different question.
In fairness. Using one-time federal money to start a programme is not prohibited, and the administration said plainly that the funding was not settled — "you can't go to the bank on it" is a caution, not a claim. The district also had a real alternative capacity source on the record: Head Start runs "two classrooms of 18 that are full", with a third unopened because it "could not hire that third teacher." And the pre-K move has an independent merit nobody drew out: it relocates preschoolers with disabilities from a preschool sitting "in isolation" at the tech center into buildings full of children without disabilities, which is the direction the least-restrictive-environment rule points.
Sources: 20 U.S.C. §1225(b) (GEPA §421, Tydings amendment — federal education formula funds remain available for obligation one additional fiscal year); Congressional Research Service, IF12978 (ESSER obligation deadlines; ARP ESSER, Sept. 30, 2024); 2 CFR 200.303 (internal control over federal awards); 34 CFR 300.114(a)(2) (least restrictive environment); Claremont School Board Superintendent and AT Team Report 2.15.23 (packet) — the "Universal Pre-K Model" page marking four of six classrooms "Federally Funded".
MEDIUM The board's reading of the default budget statute rests on legal advice that appears in no public record, and the version relayed from the table is in tension with the statute's own text
Three of the six members grounded their position on advice from the district's attorney, and none of it is written down anywhere a resident can read it. Frank Sprague at 1:11:06: "when we were at our meeting, we were talking with, with with our attorney and we were concerned with, I'm assuming that's a public wasn't a non wasn't a non public. So we were talking about the fact that we could be, setting ourselves up if we do things incorrectly." Heather Whitney at 1:19:12: "that's what I understood from Matt Upton is regardless, all the positions would be funded." Whitney Skillen at 1:38:52: "from what I understand, from explanation from our district's attorney, is that the school board has the power to make a motion like this to restore funding for the positions that were redefined."
The relayed advice does not sit easily with the statute. RSA 40:13, IX(b) says in terms that eliminated positions "shall not include vacant positions under recruitment or positions redefined in the proposed operating budget." A power to restore funding for redefined positions is a power over the one category the paragraph carves out. It is possible — likely, even — that counsel said something more precise and that the precision was lost in relay; Skillen said as much before she started: "I'm not going to explain it 100% correct because I don't have a full grasp on it myself." That candour is to her credit, and it is also the problem: the board's authority for a $600,000 decision reached the public through a member who told them she might be getting it wrong.
On the meeting Sprague refers to. Nothing here asserts that an unnoticed meeting occurred, and the record does not establish one. New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law expressly permits a public body to consider legal advice in nonpublic session — RSA 91-A:3, II(l), "Consideration of legal advice provided by legal counsel, either in writing or orally, to one or more members of the public body, even where legal counsel is not present", which was in force on this date (the section's amendment history shows no change between January 1, 2022 and October 3, 2023). Advice given in writing to individual members is not a meeting at all. But if a quorum did meet, the motion to enter nonpublic session must state the exemption on its face and be carried by roll call recorded in the minutes, and the minutes of the session are public within 72 hours unless sealed by a recorded two-thirds vote with a statutory finding. No such session appears in the minutes of the January 17, February 1 or February 15 board meetings, the February 8 deliberative session could not hold one, and this page found no other Claremont School Board record between February 8 and February 15, 2023 in any district share.
What would resolve it. Either a written opinion released to the public, or a sentence in the minutes recording when and how the board received the advice. Both are ordinary; neither is here. Recorded as MEDIUM rather than HIGH because the mitigating limb applies: the board plainly did seek counsel, the advice may lawfully have been written or delivered in a properly noticed session this page has not seen, and no gap in any required record has been demonstrated.
Sources: RSA 40:13, IX(b) (exclusion of "positions redefined in the proposed operating budget"); RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(l) and III (motion stating the exemption; nonpublic consideration of legal advice; minutes public within 72 hours unless sealed by recorded 2/3 vote with a statutory finding); RSA 91-A:2, II (24-hour notice; minutes open within 5 business days); draft 1.17.23 CSB meeting minutes (budget public hearing and board meeting — no counsel present, no nonpublic session).
OBSERVATION A school calendar approved "as presented" is not in the posted packet, and the one figure given for it was 178 student days
The board approved the 2023–24 calendar on a voice vote at 0:07:07 after about five minutes. Two things about the record of that vote are worth a resident's attention. First, the document approved is not in the Drive packet folder for this meeting, which holds an agenda, a public notice, a superintendent's report, a vendor deck, and two sets of minutes — so "as presented" cannot be checked against anything. Second, the only quantity stated on the record was the superintendent's: "we add now we have 178 student days, and we did coordinate everything."
New Hampshire's requirement is statutory and stable: "The school board of every district shall provide standard schools for at least 180 days in each year, or the equivalent number of hours as required in the rules of the department of education." The hours alternative is real and widely used, and the department's minimum-standards rules set the hour equivalents, so 178 longer days can comply. Nothing in this record shows the hour calculation, because nobody asked for it and the calendar is not published. This is recorded as an observation, not a concern about compliance: the calendar had been "vetted by the by the union", it was aligned with Newport, and the superintendent flagged the one open variable himself — the January primary date was "a placeholder" because "Even the secretary of state doesn't know", with an undertaking to "bring that back to you for approval" if it moved.
Citation note: the minimum-standards rules were extensively amended and renumbered effective December 13, 2024. The school-year rule is now Ed 306.15; its number in February 2023 was different, and this page cites the part page rather than guessing a subsection.
Sources: RSA 189:1 ("at least 180 days in each year, or the equivalent number of hours as required in the rules of the department of education") — last amended 2011, 42:1, eff. July 8, 2011, so this text governed on the meeting date; N.H. Admin. Code Part Ed 306, Minimum Standards for Public School Approval (part page; the school-year rule is Ed 306.15 in the text effective 12-13-24); 2.15.23 CSB meeting minutes (the motion and voice vote).
OBSERVATION Nobody rose when citizens' comments was called; the evening's public comment ran about sixteen minutes in total, and nobody was refused the floor
The agenda placed "Citizens Comments" in general business. At 0:03:03 the chair opened it — "Any citizens I would like to speak at this time" — and closed it ten seconds later: "Seeing none." The minutes print the heading with nothing beneath it. Comment was then taken twice inside the substantive items: about ninety seconds on the calendar from 0:08:10, and roughly fourteen minutes inside the budget item, opened at 1:23:54 and closed at 1:38:16 with "Do I have anybody else from public that would like to speak see nobody." Four residents spoke; one spoke twice. No one who came to the podium was refused, cut off, or timed out, and when a voice moved the previous question at 1:31:37 the chair did not put it and let two more speakers finish.
RSA 189:74 requires a school board to "provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters at a meeting of the school board held under RSA 91-A:2", and provides that "The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes." Whether that thirty minutes is a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time is not settled by the text, and this page does not assert a violation: on any reading of the section the opportunity was offered three times, and nobody was turned away. What the record shows is a total under thirty minutes and a scheduled comment period that produced no speakers — on a night when the board reversed part of a $1,000,000 decision and set the number that would have governed the district if the March ballot failed.
Two points cut in the board's favour and are worth stating. Opening comment inside the budget item, immediately before the vote, put residents at the podium at the moment their comments bore on the decision, which is more useful than a comment period an hour earlier. And the four who spoke were answered: the preschool director was called up twice to give numbers a resident had challenged, and the business administrator read the governing statute aloud in direct response to Candace Crawford's question.
Sources: RSA 189:74, I (School Board Public Comment Period; "no less than 30 minutes"; source 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022); RSA 91-A:2, II (meetings and notice); CSB Public Notice Ad 2.15.23.pdf (the posted notice, in the packet).
OBSERVATION The agenda offered a "Reconsideration of Operating/ Default Budgets" — but only half of that was still the board's to do
Item III.2 as posted reads "Reconsideration of Operating/ Default Budgets", and the minutes reproduce the heading unchanged. Under the official-ballot procedure the operating budget had already left the board's hands. RSA 40:13, IV puts explanation, discussion, debate and amendment of each warrant article at the first session — held on February 8, where a voter moved from the floor and the amendment carried 41–27 — RSA 40:13, VI then provides that "All warrant articles shall be placed on the official ballot for a final vote, including warrant articles as amended by the first session", and RSA 40:13, VII sends them to the second session, the official ballot, "to vote on all warrant articles from the first session on official ballot." Article 2 went to the March 14 ballot at $38,345,312, exactly as the first session left it. There was no mechanism by which a school board meeting on February 15 could reconsider it.
The chair understood this and said so twice. At 0:10:33 he framed the item entirely around the default budget, and at 1:08:48 he stopped a fifty-eight-minute presentation to repeat it: "the only thing we're here to decide tonight is the default budget." The minutes record the same: "Michael Petrin discussed that the only decision that will be made at tonight's meeting will be in regards to adding money back to the default budget." So no error was made in the room.
The observation is about what the posted agenda told the public. A resident reading "Reconsideration of Operating/ Default Budgets" three days before a meeting could reasonably have come expecting the board to revisit the $38,345,312 the deliberative session had just set — the very thing several of them had voted for — and Candace Crawford's opening comment suggests exactly that confusion was abroad: she was still explaining what voters thought they had done on February 8. No rule requires an agenda at all under RSA 91-A:2, II, which governs notice of the meeting rather than the contents of an agenda; this is recorded as an observation with no provision asserted against it.
Sources: RSA 40:13, IV (first session: explanation, discussion, debate and amendment of warrant articles), VI ("All warrant articles shall be placed on the official ballot for a final vote, including warrant articles as amended by the first session") and VII (second session: official ballot voting on all warrant articles from the first session); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice covers the meeting, not a final agenda); 2.15.23 CSB Agenda (item III.2 as posted); Sample Ballot, March 14, 2023 (Article 2 at $38,345,312).
OBSERVATION What the minutes leave out — three board members' substantive questions, two exchanges with the public, and the meeting's closing request
These minutes are good where it counts most: they name every citizens'-comment speaker with a ward, they reproduce the motion in full, and they record every member's vote by name. They are thin everywhere else, and the omissions are not random — they are the questions board members asked and did not get answers to.
Absent from the minutes: Bonnie Miles's three questions, including the Head Start exchange at 1:00:17 that produced the fact that a Head Start classroom sits unopened for want of a teacher; Steven Horsky's two attempts to establish whether teacher coaching could ever be required; Whitney Skillen's question about whether coaching depends on the restructuring at all, and the answer that "this process could happen with or without that"; Heather Whitney's high-quality-preschool question and the answer that the district's own pre-K data is skewed by who can access a half-day programme; Frank Sprague's question about federal funding for pre-K and the answer naming ESSER; Gary Merchant's absentee-ballot exchange at 1:43:11; the superintendent's request for signatures on the warrant article, the MS-26 and the default budget at 1:48:06; and the resulting default budget figure itself (flag 2).
Two places where the minutes and the recording actually differ, rather than the minutes simply being shorter. The minutes record the superintendent answering that the calendar was coordinated "with Newport and Sunapee"; the recording has him say only "not just with Newport, but also with some of the as we're all in the region", and Sunapee is never named. And the minutes attribute the closing thanks to CanAm's Zach Hurst to "Assistant Superintendent Koski"; the project's dialogue file places that passage in the superintendent's voice, while flagging the whole stretch as uncertain attribution. This page reports both rather than choosing.
No provision is asserted. RSA 91-A:2, II requires "a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions", which these minutes provide; nothing obliges a district to record every question. The observation is recorded because for a meeting of this kind the minutes are the only record most residents will ever read, and on this night the recording is the only place several material facts exist.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes: names of members, persons appearing, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions) — the clause requiring the names of the members who made or seconded each motion has been in force since 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019, and these minutes satisfy it for all five motions taken; 2.15.23 CSB meeting minutes; the dialogue CSV, rows 500–530 (the winter-enrichment attribution).
POSITIVE An unreadable voice vote became a recorded roll call, and the chair put the resulting dollar figures on the record before anyone voted
Two pieces of practice here exceed what New Hampshire law then required, on the meeting's most consequential decision.
The figures came first. At 1:39:11, before calling the vote, the chair restated the motion and worked out what passing it would mean: "that would bring the net to be raised by taxes to $15,845,186 in the total appropriations for the default budget would be $36,942,948." The business administrator confirmed it in one word. Members voted knowing the number, the public heard it, and the arithmetic holds — $36,342,948 plus $600,000 — and matches the March 14 ballot. A board that votes on "add $600,000" without ever stating the total is common; this one did not.
The vote was re-taken because the chair could not hear it. The voice vote at 1:39:42 produced crosstalk, an ambiguous "May or no", and a member guessing at the result — "I think it was 4 to 2." Rather than record the guess, the chair stopped: "But I didn't hear your vote, so I. I'd like to. We need a revolt [re-vote]", and then ordered a full roll call: "Richard, can you do a roll call? Vote for us." Every member was called by name and every answer is on the recording and in the minutes. On February 15, 2023 nothing in RSA 91-A required a roll call on an ordinary motion. The Right-to-Know Law's roll-call requirement attaches to entering nonpublic session, not to a budget vote. What the law did require of these minutes was narrower, and the board met it: RSA 91-A:2, II has provided since 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019 that "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes," and each of the five motions taken this night is recorded with both names. Recording how every member voted, by name, on a split question goes beyond that requirement — and the board did it anyway.
A small third instance: the chair had already declined to accept his own guess about a seconder earlier in the evening, recording "a second by Brittany" rather than assigning it to a member he could not identify. The minutes corrected it; the recording preserves the honest uncertainty.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes; the movers-and-seconders clause has applied since 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019 — met here for all five motions; the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer clauses added by 2025, 112:1 post-date this meeting and are not applied); RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (the roll-call requirement that does exist, for entering nonpublic session — not engaged here); Sample Ballot, March 14, 2023 (confirming the announced figure reached the voters).
POSITIVE Asked to explain the law, the business administrator read the statute instead of paraphrasing it, dated it correctly, and stopped where his role stopped
Candace Crawford asked why money could not simply go back into the default budget. The answer at 1:27:48 was a refusal to improvise: "the difference between the proposed and the default. And I prefer if you give me a moment, I can read it directly from. Let me read it directly from the way the statute is written as opposed to my interpretation of it. And then we'll know what the calculation is that takes place." He repeated the point when the microphone caused a delay — "I was asked to explain how the default is calculated. What I'd like to do is read it directly from the statute, as opposed to interpreting it in my words" — and then, at 1:34:24, read RSA 40:13, IX(b) aloud into a public meeting.
He also got the legislative history right, unprompted. "What I can say is this was updated in 2018. The law was to include the line that says… salaries and benefits of positions that have been eliminated in the proposed budget." That is correct: the eliminated-positions reduction was added by 2018 N.H. Laws ch. 313 (SB 342), effective August 24, 2018 — a change the New Hampshire Municipal Association described at the time as one that "conflates" the proposed operating budget and the default budget, which is precisely the confusion the rest of this meeting ran into. And he marked the boundary of his own authority rather than crossing it: "it's up to the board's interpretation of these words as far as what can be put in and how it is explained."
Two qualifications keep this honest. He read the definition but not the two sentences that follow it — the exclusion of vacant and redefined positions, and the direction that the governing body "shall follow the statutory formula" — and those are the sentences that bear hardest on the motion then pending (flag 1). And a reader who goes looking for the clause he read will have trouble finding it on the state's own paperwork: the DRA's MS-DSB default budget form, which Claremont signs every year, prints RSA 40:13, IX(b) in a version that stops at "one-time expenditures contained in the operating budget" — omitting the eliminated-positions clause entirely — and its columns run "Prior Year Adopted Budget / Reductions or Increases / One-Time Appropriations / Default Budget", with no line for eliminated positions. That is verified on Claremont's fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2027 forms; the fiscal 2024 form was not located. Reading the statute rather than the form was therefore the right instinct, and the record shows him taking it.
Sources: RSA 40:13, IX(b) (the paragraph read aloud, and the two sentences that follow it); New Hampshire Municipal Association, "A Few Legislative Changes for Town Meeting Season" (Nov/Dec 2018) — 2018 ch. 313 (SB 342) and its effect; 2025 MS DSB, Claremont Local School and Claremont School District Default Budget FY 2027 (2026 MS-DSB) — both printing the pre-2018 text of RSA 40:13, IX(b) on the form's face.
POSITIVE A district employee put her own evaluation data on a public screen, and the superintendent said on the record that it was her idea
At 0:38:37 the district's early childhood director showed the board her own coaching assessments from her third year as a Claremont preschool teacher: "as a third year teacher, I was only demonstrating 60% of the skills that we wanted to see"… "by May 2018… I made a 27 and 27% improvement in my teaching skills"… "by the end of my second year of coaching, I was demonstrating 97% of the skills that they wanted to see. So I put myself on blast here just so you guys could see what coaching looks like, why it's important, and really what it could do for our students in this district." Her named assessment reports are reproduced in the packet document.
Two things make this worth marking rather than merely noting. Public bodies almost never show the public a real, named, unflattering starting number from inside their own workforce; a 60 percent baseline for a serving administrator is the opposite of a public-relations slide, and it is the only piece of local evidence offered all evening for the intervention the administration was asking the board to fund. And the consent was put on the record before the slide went up. The superintendent, at 0:37:58: "I want you to I, I want everyone to know this was voluntary, not our idea. And Christina wanted to do all these things to to talk about this model because she is the subject of this."
The caution that belongs with it. Publishing an identified employee's evaluation results is a step a district should take only with the employee's agreement, and a board watching it happen should hear the agreement stated — which here it did. The literacy specialist immediately drew the general lesson in the other direction, warning that coaching works only where it is wanted: "there's lots of teachers that may be watching at home thinking, I don't want you in my classroom… a very important thing about a coaching model is you go where you're wanted."
Sources: the record itself — the presentation at 0:38:37 and the superintendent's statement at 0:37:58; Claremont School Board Superintendent and AT Team Report 2.15.23 (packet) — the "NH State Instructional Coaching 2017-2019" pages and the named TPOT reports. No statute or rule is asserted, and none applies.
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast show 14909, "Claremont School Board 2/15/23" — Claremont Community TV. Every timestamp on this page links into this recording. It begins part-way through the Pledge of Allegiance and the dialogue file's last row ends at 1:48:58; the show page prints no duration.
- Drive packet folder "6.CSB 2.15.23" the missing space after "6." is the district's, reproduced here as filed — 6 documents, listed below by their exact Drive names.
2.15.23 CSB Agenda — 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 five central-office administrators, and Hannah Petrin as student representative. Item III.2 is "Reconsideration of Operating/ Default Budgets" (flag 7).CSB Public Notice Ad 2.15.23.pdf — the posted public notice: "The Claremont School Board will be holding a Regular Meeting February 15, 2023 at 6:30pm Location Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center", with the CCTV links and a pointer to sau6.org for the agenda.Claremont School Board Superintendent and AT Team Report 2.15.23 — the packet's central exhibit and the deck presented for the meeting’s first fifty-eight minutes: the reconfiguration rationale, ten years of state testing results, the universal pre-K model marking four of six classrooms "Federally Funded", the TeachUNITED overview, the Hattie effect-size table, the 2017–19 instructional-coaching results with named TPOT reports, and seven years of enrolment, free-and-reduced and staffing data for every school.TeachUNITED Presentation 2.16.23 (1).pdf the file's own first line is "TeachUNITED Presentation 2.16.23" — the day after this meeting, and the date of the SAU 6 board meeting — the vendor's teacher-coaching and administrator-coaching decks. Overlapping material appears inside the superintendent's own 2.15.23 report, which is what was on screen at 0:31:26. This page records the date discrepancy without inferring which meeting the deck was prepared for.draft 2.15.23 CSB meeting minutes .docx.pdf the space before .docx is the district's — the draft of this meeting's own minutes, filed into this meeting's packet folder. Its text is identical to the approved version linked below.draft 2.1.23 CSB Meeting Minutes — the February 1 minutes approved at this meeting; see the February 1 page.- Minutes:
3. 2.15.23 CSB meeting minutes — in the district's shared Meeting Minutes folder. Recorded and submitted by Chelsea Weatherford.
- District documents outside this packet that bear on the meeting:
Sample Ballot.pdf for the March 14, 2023 annual school district election — the only district document located that carries the $36,942,948 default budget this meeting set, alongside Article 2 at $38,345,312 and Note A's collective-bargaining costs; and draft 1.17.23 CSB meeting minutes .docx.pdf, the budget public hearing at which the $1,000,000 reduction was voted after a 3–3 secret ballot — the meeting Michelle Beaton described from the podium.
- Not located in any district share, searched 2026-08-28: (1) the fiscal 2024 default budget form (MS-DSB), in either its original or its amended version — the document RSA 40:13, XI(a)–(b) requires and the one that would show how $36,342,948 and then $36,942,948 were derived (flag 1, flag 2). Claremont MS-DSB forms for fiscal 2025, 2026 and 2027 are in the shares; fiscal 2024 is not. (2) The 2023–24 school calendar approved "as presented" at 0:07:07 (flag 5). (3) The MS-26 the board was asked to sign the next afternoon. (4) Any record of the board's consultation with counsel between February 8 and February 15 (flag 4).
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: IV (the first session explains, discusses, debates and may amend each warrant article), VI (all warrant articles go on the official ballot for a final vote, "including warrant articles as amended by the first session"), VII (the second session votes on all warrant articles from the first session by official ballot), IX(b) (definition of "default budget"; the exclusion of vacant and redefined positions; "the governing body shall follow the statutory formula"), XI(a) (the DRA default budget form and its disclosure at the first budget hearing), XI(b) ("This amount shall not be amended by the legislative body"; adjustment by the governing body only on "relevant new information" and on an amended form). The section's last amendment was 2019, 192:2, eff. July 10, 2019, so its current text is the text that governed on February 15, 2023; a 2025 bill to change the eliminated-positions rules (HB 475) was vetoed. RSA 91-A:2, II — notice and minutes; the clause requiring minutes to name the members who made or seconded each motion was added by 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019 and was in force at this meeting, which satisfied it for all five motions; the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer clauses added by 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025 do post-date this meeting and are not applied to it. RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(l) and III — nonpublic session: the motion must state the exemption; legal advice is an available exemption; minutes public within 72 hours unless sealed. RSA 91-A:4 — governmental records available for inspection. RSA 189:74 — school board public comment period, no less than 30 minutes. RSA 189:1 — at least 180 days in each year, or the equivalent number of hours required by department rules.
- New Hampshire session laws. 2018 N.H. Laws ch. 313 (SB 342), eff. Aug. 24, 2018 — added the reduction for "salaries and benefits of positions that have been eliminated in the proposed budget" to RSA 40:13, IX(b); described in NHMA, "A Few Legislative Changes for Town Meeting Season" (Nov/Dec 2018). N.H. HB 475 (2025) — would have removed long-vacant positions from default budgets; vetoed July 15, 2025, so RSA 40:13, IX(b) is unchanged.
- New Hampshire administrative rules. N.H. Admin. Code Part Ed 306, Minimum Standards for Public School Approval — the hour equivalents referred to by RSA 189:1. The part was amended and renumbered effective December 13, 2024 (Documents #14150 and #14151); the school-year rule is now Ed 306.15 and its number in February 2023 was different, so this page cites the part page rather than a subsection.
- Federal. 20 U.S.C. §1225(b) — GEPA §421, the Tydings amendment (federal education formula funds available for obligation one additional fiscal year), the mechanism behind ARP ESSER's September 30, 2024 obligation deadline as set out in CRS report IF12978. 2 CFR 200.303 — internal control over federal awards. 34 CFR 300.114(a)(2) — least restrictive environment.
- Secondary sources, attributed as commentary rather than law. New Hampshire Municipal Association, "The Default Budget in SB2 Towns".