SAU 6 Board — May 11, 2023

MEDIUM The adopted policy still directs the SAU to monitor departing employees' ethnicity "to comply with the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000" — a United Kingdom statute

The text adopted at 0:29:52 contains this sentence, quoted from the packet document: "Also, to comply with the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, the LEA must have systems in place to monitor the ethnicity of employees who either leave or move to another employer". The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (2000 c. 34) which extended the Race Relations Act 1976 to the police and other public authorities; "LEA" is the British term Local Education Authority. Neither reaches a New Hampshire school administrative unit, and no United States provision makes the sentence correct.

This board found the problem itself. On the March 30, 2023 recording, at the policy's first read, Jennifer Gallagher — at her first SAU 6 meeting — says she had looked the Act up: "what I came up with was a UK statute law from the United Kingdom" (that quotation is from the March 30 transcript, not this one), and the March 30 minutes record the sentence being removed by amendment before the policy went to second read. It was still there, word for word, in the second-read document on April 13. It is still there in the document adopted here. Three readings, one identified defect, no change.

The practical consequence is limited and should be stated as such: the SAU's own exit-interview form, also in this packet, collects no race or ethnicity data at all, so the policy directs a monitoring system that the instrument it governs does not implement. That internal contradiction is the reason this is graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH — the record shows no ethnicity data actually being gathered. What remains is a governing document, adopted by recorded vote, whose stated legal basis for collecting employees' racial data is a foreign statute, and an amendment history in which the board's correction was voted and then lost. Escalated from the OBSERVATION applied on April 13 because the text is no longer a draft.

Sources: GCQB-R as adopted (the sentence); Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (UK Public General Act c. 34, long title and contents — verified 2026-08-29); SAU 6 exit interview form (no ethnicity field). Related: March 30, April 13, flag 6.

MEDIUM The motion into nonpublic session named no exemption, and the posted agenda's citation was "RSA 91-A:3" followed by a footnote listing eight of them

RSA 91-A:3, I(b) provides: "Any motion to enter nonpublic session shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II which is relied upon as foundation for the nonpublic session. The vote on any such motion shall be by roll call, and shall require the affirmative vote of the majority of members present." That text was in force on May 11, 2023; the section's only later amendment, 2023, 189:1 effective October 3, 2023, added a new paragraph IV and left I(b) untouched.

What the record contains. The chair's prompt: "Can I get a motion to go into the nonpublic under RSA 91 a three" (0:07:33) — a chapter and section, no paragraph. The motion: "I'd like to make a motion to move into nonpublic" (0:07:47) — no citation at all. The posted agenda, which is the document the public had before the meeting, lists the item as "Non- Public RSA 91-A:3,*", with the asterisk leading to a footnote that reproduces eight separate exemptions — (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), (j), (k) and (l) — running to most of a page. A notice that names eight grounds names none.

The mitigation, and it is real: the roll call the statute requires was taken (0:08:13), and the draft minutes retitle the item "Non- Public RSA 91-A:3,II (a)" — dismissal, promotion, compensation or discipline of an employee — so a reader of the minutes learns after the fact which exemption was relied on. Graded MEDIUM on that basis rather than HIGH. But the statute's requirement is that the motion state the exemption on its face, at the moment the public body closes its doors, and a citation supplied five days later in a document nobody in the room could see does not do that work. This board did it correctly four weeks earlier: the April 13 nonpublic motion recited RSA 91-A:3, II(c) in the statute's own words.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (motion shall state the specific paragraph II exemption on its face; roll call required) and II(a) (dismissal, promotion, compensation or discipline of an employee) — text as it stood on the meeting date, verified 2026-08-29; posted agenda 5.11.23; draft minutes 5.11.23. Contrast April 13, flag 13.

MEDIUM The nonpublic minutes were sealed for ten years with none of the three statutory grounds stated by the motion, the chair or the minutes

RSA 91-A:3, III makes nonpublic minutes public within 72 hours unless two-thirds of the members present determine, by recorded vote, that one of three specific circumstances applies: that divulgence would likely affect adversely the reputation of a person other than a member of the body, that it would render the proposed action ineffective, or that the information pertains to terrorism or emergency-preparedness matters. The determination is the operative act; the two-thirds vote is how it is made.

The whole exchange on the record is four sentences. The motion: "I'd like to make a motion to seal the minutes for ten years" (0:10:46). The chair: "Do I have a second? Seconded by Kelly. Can I get a roll call? Vote, please." The roll (0:10:58). The chair: "And that passes" (0:11:16) — no tally announced. The minutes record eleven yes votes and the phrase "motion passes", and state no ground either. Nothing in either record identifies which of the three circumstances the board found.

Graded MEDIUM, with the limb stated. The vote plainly cleared two-thirds, the roll call is recorded name by name, and the underlying exemption the minutes assign the session, II(a), is one under which a reputational concern would be unsurprising — so the defect is documentary rather than a seal without any plausible basis. What is missing is the finding itself, and the ten-year term is not a number the statute supplies: RSA 91-A:3, III sets no duration, so a term is a judgment the body should be able to point to a reason for. This is the third seal this board has voted in four months on the same silent formula — fifty years on April 13, ten here, five on July 13 — three different terms, no stated ground for any of them. A reviewer should also note the sequel: RSA 91-A:3, IV, added by 2023, 189:1 effective October 3, 2023, now requires a public body to review such a seal within ten years. It did not exist on May 11, 2023 and is not applied against this meeting; it does mean this particular seal is now subject to review by 2033.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III (72 hours unless two-thirds determine one of three circumstances; no duration specified) and RSA 91-A:3, IV (added 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023 — after this meeting); draft minutes 5.11.23; draft minutes 7.13.23 (five-year seal).

MEDIUM The SAU's business administrator was appointed on an item the posted agenda does not contain — and the agenda in the room had five discussion items where the public's had four

The posted agenda, created in Drive on May 8 and the only version the public could read, lists four discussion items: 1. Information request from board members/procedure; 2. Budget Update; 3. Policies; 4. Non-Public. There is no nomination of a business administrator anywhere on it. Yet the chair opens the amendment by moving "number five of the non public to number one" (0:01:27), the mover repeats "item number five" (0:01:58), and the minutes number five items in the body, inserting "Nomination of Business Administrator (Action)" at position 2.

The arithmetic resolves cleanly and in only one way. Take the posted list, insert the nomination as item 2, and everything below it shifts by one: Budget Update becomes 3, Policies 4, Non-Public 5 — exactly the number three separate speakers and the minutes all use. The most economical reading is that the agenda in the room carried the nomination and the agenda in the packet did not. The alternative, that the chair and the mover independently miscounted a four-item list the same way and the minutes then adopted the miscount, is available but strained. Either reading leaves the same public-facing fact: a person reading the posted agenda before this meeting had no way to know the SAU's chief financial officer would be appointed at it.

The honest legal limit. New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law requires notice of the meeting — time and place, posted at least 24 hours ahead — not a final agenda, and it does not forbid a body from acting on business its agenda omitted. So this is not a violation of RSA 91-A:2, II and is not graded as one. It is a process gap: the SAU posted an agenda three days early, which is good practice, and then transacted its most consequential personnel action of the night outside it, on a voice vote with no count taken, in a body where RSA 194-C:8 makes the two districts' voting strength unequal if a majority demands a weighted vote. Nobody did.

Sources: posted agenda 5.11.23 (four discussion items, no business-administrator item); draft minutes 5.11.23 (five items, nomination at position 2); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice of the meeting, 24 hours; no agenda requirement); RSA 194-C:8 (weighted voting on demand of a majority); RSA 194-C:5 (the SAU board fixes the salaries of SAU personnel).

MEDIUM The budget report the board spent thirteen minutes on reached the public five days after the meeting — and its totals are not the totals the board was given

The budget update is the longest item of the night: David Jack speaks 1,958 words, a third of the meeting, walking the board line by line through a six-page year-to-date expenditure report from 0:15:03 to 0:28:10. Google Drive records SAU6 Budget Update 5.11.23.pdf as created in the district's public share on May 16, 2023. The other six items in this packet were uploaded on May 8. A member of the public watching this meeting, live or on CCTV, had no document in front of them.

The copy that was eventually posted is also not the copy the board worked from, and it says so on its own face: its pages carry two different print timestamps. Pages 1, 3 and 4 are stamped "Printed: 05/11/2023 3:09:46 PM" — three hours before the meeting. Pages 2 and 5, including the page with the superintendent's-office lines and the page carrying the grand total, are stamped "Printed: 05/04/2023 1:12:17 PM", a week earlier. The public's copy is a splice of two print runs.

The consequence is visible in the numbers. The chair reports "we're projecting currently a 77,000 surplus" (0:25:09) and Jack reports "there's $217,000 worth of encumbrances there" (0:25:41). The posted report's grand total line reads: budget $1,795,945.23, year-to-date $1,501,377.64, balance $294,567.59, encumbrance $196,794.01, budget balance $97,773.58 (5.44%). Subtract the encumbrance figure the board was actually given from the same balance — $294,567.59 less $217,000 — and the surplus comes to about $77,500, which is the chair's figure. The two men were reading a newer report than the one the public got; the difference is roughly $20,000 of encumbrances booked in the week between the two print runs. Several individual lines Jack narrates line up with the posted copy (Supt Office Salaries at ($12,319.92); Contracted Services $5,000 budgeted against $16,119.99; Supplies at ($7,151.35); Merit Pool $36,190.41 wholly unspent; Business Office Software $17,614.73 remaining), while the figure he gives for the posting error — "$6,047.50" — matches no line in the posted copy at all.

Graded MEDIUM, not HIGH: there is no statutory deadline for publishing a discussion document, nothing suggests the discrepancy is anything but a stale printout, and the report was posted eventually. It is a control weakness with a straightforward remedy — print the packet once, post it before the meeting, and let the public read the same page the board is reading.

Sources: SAU6 Budget Update 5.11.23 (page print timestamps and grand total); Drive file metadata for all seven packet items, read 2026-08-29; RSA 91-A:2, II (notice requirement, for the limit on what the law requires here).

MEDIUM The minutes name a mover and a seconder for all nine motions, as RSA 91-A:2, II requires — and two of them are not the names the chair spoke into the microphone

RSA 91-A:2, II provides that "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." That clause entered the statute at 2018, 244:1, effective January 1, 2019 and so binds this meeting fully. (The same paragraph's start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements came later, at 2025, 112:1 effective August 22, 2025, and are not applied here.) On the face of it this board complies: all nine motions in the draft minutes carry both names.

Two do not match the recording. The agenda amendment. The minutes read "Rocco Ruggeri makes a motion to move item number 5 in the discussion and action items to item number 1"; the dialogue transcript attributes the voice at 0:01:58 to Frank Sprague, and no attributed row anywhere in the file belongs to Ruggeri. The chair names neither, so the recording cannot settle it, and per this project's convention the minutes are preferred and the transcript's rendering noted. The ten-year seal. The chair says "Seconded by Kelly" (0:10:49); the minutes say "seconded by Whitney Skillen". Kelly Simpson is in the room — she is in that same roll call — so this is not a case of the minutes correcting an impossible attribution.

A third case is the reverse of a defect and worth naming: on the motion into nonpublic the chair could not identify the second — "Motion by Heather and seconded by Whitney or Jen? It was a tie. You guys were pretty quick" (0:07:52) — and the minutes record a definite seconder, Whitney Skillen. Someone resolved in the writing a question the chair left open in the room; the record does not show who or on what basis. Two further errors sit inside the minutes themselves: the roll call into nonpublic session lists Rocco Ruggeri twice, so eleven entries carry ten distinct names, and Kelly Simpson, who the same minutes say arrived at 7:00 p.m., is absent from that roll and present in the two that follow — consistent, but only if a reader notices the arrival note.

Graded MEDIUM. The statutory duty is discharged — names are recorded — and the discrepancies are the ordinary drift of minutes written from notes, not evidence of anything worse. They matter because a mover-and-seconder record exists precisely so that a citizen can tell who did what, and on two of nine motions this one cannot be reconciled with the audio.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (names of movers and seconders recorded in the minutes; clause in force from 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019 — amendment history verified 2026-08-29); draft minutes 5.11.23; Output/Dialogue/15073 SAU6051123.mp4.CSV.

MEDIUM The board approved these minutes as amended on July 13; the amended text is in neither district share, and both public copies are the superseded draft

Two copies of these minutes exist in the district's shares and they are the same document: draft SAU 6 School Board meeting minutes 5.11.23.pdf in this meeting's own packet folder, and draft SAU 6 School Board meeting minutes 5.11.23 (1) (2).pdf in the July 13 folder. Both are the pre-approval draft.

The board did not approve that draft as written. The July 13, 2023 minutes record: "Arlene Hawkins notes a couple of typos. Frank Sprague's and Arlene Hawkin's names were spelt incorrectly on pages 2, 4, & 5. Frank Sprague makes a motion to approve the amended minutes; seconded by Whitney Skillen; all in favor via voice vote." The errors are visible in both public copies: "Frank Spargue" appears three times, "Alrene Hawkins" once, in the roll of attendance. The corrected text the board actually adopted was never posted, so the only public record of this meeting is a version its own board voted to change.

Graded MEDIUM under the mitigated limb, and the mitigation is substantial: minutes exist, they are detailed, they were posted quickly (see flag 14), the corrections are two misspelled names rather than substance, and the July 13 minutes disclose on their own face what was changed. The gap is that a citizen reading the SAU's public folder cannot obtain the operative document, and the same is true of every 2023 SAU 6 meeting: after a two-stage search — this meeting's own folder, then every later SAU 6 packet folder by filename date, then the Claremont Meeting Minutes share — no approved-form minutes of any 2023 SAU 6 meeting exist in either district share. Only drafts.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes open to public inspection within 5 business days; a draft suffices); draft minutes 5.11.23; the second copy, filed in the July 13 packet; draft minutes 7.13.23 (the approval and the corrections).