SAU 6 Board — July 13, 2023

MEDIUM The nonpublic minutes were sealed for five years with none of the three statutory grounds stated — the fourth different term this board has chosen in four months, on the same silent formula

RSA 91-A:3, III makes the minutes of a nonpublic session 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 five sentences. The prompt, from an unnamed voice: "Motion to seal the minutes" (0:13:05). The chair, uncertain: "Yeah. Do we need to do that?" Heather Whitney: "Yes we do. If we want them sealed. Okay. So I'd like to make a motion to seal the minutes for five years." The roll at 0:13:16. Then Okay. No total is announced. The minutes record ten Yes and "Frank Spargue- No", and state no ground either.

The pattern is now four meetings long, and the terms do not repeat. Fifty years on April 13; ten on May 11; five here; two on August 17. Four different durations in four consecutive meetings of the same board, and in none of the four does the motion, the chair or the minutes identify which of the three circumstances the board found. RSA 91-A:3, III supplies no duration at all, so a term is a judgment the body should be able to point to a reason for — and the spread from two years to fifty suggests the number is not carrying much meaning.

Graded MEDIUM, with the limb stated. The vote plainly cleared two-thirds; the roll call is recorded name by name, including the dissent; and the exemption the minutes assign the session, II(a), is one under which a reputational or effectiveness concern would be unsurprising. The defect is documentary rather than a seal with no plausible basis. A reviewer should also note the sequel, which does not apply to this meeting: RSA 91-A:3, IV, added by 2023, 189:1 effective October 3, 2023 — twelve weeks after this vote — requires a public body to review such a seal within ten years. It did not exist on July 13, 2023 and is not applied against this meeting; it does mean this five-year seal expired in 2028 on its own terms.

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 7.13.23; draft minutes 8.17.23 (two-year seal).

MEDIUM The nonpublic session appears on no posted agenda, and the only agenda in the public folder still describes a meeting that did not happen

The agenda posted for this meeting has eight numbered sections and none of them is a nonpublic session. Its item IV is "6:45 PM Superintendent Report". The session was added from the floor at 0:09:53 and inserted ahead of that report, and the minutes written afterwards retitle item IV "Non-Public Session: RSA 91-A:3, II (a)" — so the two documents in the district's public share disagree about what the fourth item of this meeting was.

What the law does and does not require. RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of "the time and place" of a meeting at least 24 hours in advance, "including a nonpublic session". It does not require a final agenda, and a public body may take up business not listed. So adding the item from the floor is not itself a violation, and the board handled the mechanics correctly — see flag 16. What the paragraph does require for the session itself, RSA 91-A:3, I(b), is a motion stating the specific exemption and a roll-call vote in public, and both were done: the minutes give the citation as II(a), and the recording carries two members supplying the subparagraph aloud — A letter. and Letter. (0:11:44, 0:11:45). That is better than this board managed on May 11, where the motion named no exemption at all.

Where the gap actually is. A citizen who read the packet folder before this meeting would have had no way to know the board intended to go into nonpublic session, and a citizen who reads that folder today still cannot tell that it did. The only agenda in the folder shows a superintendent's report where a closed session was held. It is a record problem more than a notice problem, and it is compounded by the sealing of the resulting minutes for five years (flag 2): with the agenda silent, the minutes sealed and the recording cut, the public account of roughly seventeen of this meeting's forty-five minutes is one subparagraph citation.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (24-hour notice of time and place, including a nonpublic session; notice covers the meeting, not a final agenda) — the text in force on this date is the 2019 codification, the section's last amendment before this meeting being 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019; RSA 91-A:3, I(b) and II(a); agenda 7.13.23; draft minutes 7.13.23.

MEDIUM The minutes' list of who was present contradicts its own roll calls and its own vote count — and the board later struck from that list a member the same document records voting three times

Three counts of the same room appear in one four-page document, and no two agree.

Ten. The minutes' roll of attendance reads: "Present: Rocco Ruggeri, Shannon Popesu, Arlene Hawkins, Jennifer Gallagher, Whitney Skillen, Bonnie Miles, Kelly Simpson, Frank Sprague, Heather Whitney, Atonya Hart". Marjorie Erickson is not on it, and there is no Absent: line to put her on either. She was demonstrably in the room: she was nominated for chair, she moved the adoption of policy BCB, she reported the superintendent-evaluation subcommittee, and eighteen rows of the dialogue transcript are hers.

Eleven. Each of the three roll-call votes lists eleven members, Erickson among them — "Marjorie Erickson- Abstain" on the motion into nonpublic session, and Yes on the return and on the seal. The recording corroborates: the reader's Harrison. is answered Abstain. at 0:11:57.

Eleven again, from a different direction. The minutes on the chair election: "3 votes for Marjorie Erickson and 8 votes for Arlene Hawkins" — eleven hands on an eleven-seat board, which is only possible if nobody was absent.

And then the board amended it. On August 17, approving these minutes, "Heather Whitney makes a motion to accept the minutes from July 13, 2023 as presented; seconded by Atonya Hart" — and then: "Atonya Hart was not present at that last meeting. Motion amended to remove Atonya from the present list." That correction removes a name from the ten-person list but touches none of the three roll calls in which Hart is recorded voting Yes, and it cannot be squared with an eleven-hand tally in the chair election. The recording is no help: what the transcript renders "On your heart? Yes." at 0:13:28 is the documented ASR rendering of Atonya Hart's name with an answer attached, and the dialogue file leaves the voice unidentified.

Why it matters, and why MEDIUM. Who was in the room is the fact from which quorum, majority and every recorded vote follow, and a public body's minutes are the record the public relies on for it. Recording a vote by a member the body later determined was absent is not a spelling error. It is graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH on the mitigated limb: the board itself identified an attendance error and corrected it on the record at the next meeting, no decision of the night turned on one vote (the closest margin was 8–3 and every roll call was 10–1 or better), and the correcting minutes are themselves of uncertain reliability — the August 17 minutes list Whitney Skillen as both present and absent in the same sentence. This page reports the contradiction and does not resolve it.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes shall include the names of members and a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions; names of movers and seconders recorded) — 2019 codification, in force on this date; draft minutes 7.13.23; draft minutes 8.17.23 (the amendment, and the Skillen contradiction).

MEDIUM Two sets of minutes were approved as amended in this room, and neither amended text exists in any district share

The first is the May 11 minutes, approved at this meeting. The chair found two misspelled member names, the correction was made on the floor, and Frank Sprague moved the minutes as amended (0:11:12). The copy filed in this meeting's own packet — draft SAU 6 School Board meeting minutes 5.11.23 (1) (2).pdf, created in Drive on July 11, two days before the vote — still reads Alrene Hawkins and Frank Spargue. So does the copy in the May 11 folder. The corrected text is in neither.

The second is these minutes. They were approved on August 17 as amended, striking a member from the attendance list (flag 4). Two copies exist: one in this meeting's folder, created July 20, and one in the August 17 packet, created August 14. They are the same file — identical text, identical 111,199 bytes — and both are the pre-approval draft, listing Atonya Hart among those present.

The general shape of it. After a two-stage search — this meeting's own folder, then every later SAU 6 folder by filename date as the project's document map lists them, then the Claremont Meeting Minutes share, which holds no SAU 6 file of any kind — no approved-form minutes of any 2023 SAU 6 meeting exist in either share. Everything the public can read is a draft that predates the vote approving it, and where the board amended a draft on the floor, the amendment survives only in the next meeting's minutes describing it.

Graded MEDIUM. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to be "promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting", and drafts satisfy it — both of these drafts were filed inside or at the edge of that window, which is why this is not the HIGH limb. The statute does not separately command the filing of an approved version. But the amendments were the board's own corrections to its public record, made in public, and a reader of the district's share cannot see any of them.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes promptly recorded and open to inspection within 5 business days; drafts suffice) — 2019 codification; Drive file metadata for both copies of these minutes and both copies of the May 11 minutes, read 2026-08-29; the May 11 page, flag 9.

MEDIUM Six of eleven members say nothing the transcript can attribute, and every mover and seconder in the minutes but one rests on the minutes alone

RSA 91-A:2, II requires that "the names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes" — a requirement in force since 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019, so it applies to this meeting in full. These minutes comply: every one of the night's motions carries a named mover and a named seconder. That is worth saying plainly, because it is the part the law actually commands and this board does it consistently.

The difficulty is corroboration. Of the eleven motions and nominations the minutes attribute, the recording independently supports one: the agenda amendment moved by Frank Sprague at 0:10:30 and seconded by Rocco Ruggeri at 0:10:33, where the dialogue file attributes both voices. Everywhere else the second arrives as a one-word fragment inside another speaker's row — the BCB adoption is the clearest case, where Second sits inside Marjorie Erickson's own transcript row at 0:21:01 and cannot be separated from her motion.

The underlying reason is that six of the eleven members — Skillen, Gallagher, Miles, Simpson, Hart and Popescu — have no speaking row attributed to them anywhere in this transcript, and 67 of the 313 rows (21.4%) are left Unidentified, more than double this corpus's usual rate. Between them those six members are credited by the minutes with the nonpublic motion, four seconds and the seconding of both chair nominations. A citizen checking the minutes against the recording cannot verify any of it, and this page does not name a single one of those voices on the strength of the minutes alone.

Graded MEDIUM as a records-quality concern, not a violation. Nothing here suggests the minutes are wrong; the point is that the two public records of this meeting cannot be used to check each other on the one attribution the statute specifically requires. The same problem produced two demonstrable divergences on May 11, where the minutes and the chair's spoken attribution named different seconders. One divergence is visible here too: the minutes credit the superintendent-evaluation agenda addition to Marjorie Erickson, and the recording has the chair raising it at 0:09:19. A second substantive exchange, Heather Whitney's request for a published budget timeline at 0:25:47, is absent from the minutes entirely.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (names of movers and seconders in the minutes; 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019) — 2019 codification, verified 2026-08-29; the dialogue transcript; draft minutes 7.13.23.

MEDIUM Money withheld from teachers' pay for their retirement went unforwarded for three or four months, and the board heard about it because the chair asked

The exchange is thirty seconds long and it is the most consequential thing said at this meeting. The chair: "There a letter went out and guards [in regards] to the teachers retirement funds. Can you tell me if that's been rectified?" and then, specifically, "For the last 3 or 4 months who weren't getting their retirement funds, has that been rectified?" (0:19:41). The business administrator, twelve days into the post: "When it was rectified, believe as of last week, I'd have to get you the exact date. But I met with an employee today to finish that off." Asked whether everybody is now whole, she says she is "working with one of the companies to make sure everything's in. I know checks have cleared. I just making sure the funds are in the right places at this point" (0:20:02). On interest: "it wasn't a lot of interest on it. And the tool we use was at the state level. So from the Department of Labor to figure out their interests that they needed on their money" (0:20:14).

What the record establishes and what it does not. It establishes that money identified with employees' retirement was not reaching its destination for three or four months, that a letter went out to affected staff, that the problem was fixed the week before this meeting, and that interest was computed and paid. It does not establish which plan was involved, how many employees, or how much money. The plural companies points away from the New Hampshire Retirement System, which is a single system, and toward the district's supplemental retirement vendors; the reference to a Department of Labor tool for computing interest points the same way, since that is a wage-and-hour remedy rather than an NHRS one. This page does not pick between them.

The rules that would apply on either reading. If these were NHRS member contributions, RSA 100-A:16, I directs the employer to deduct them "on each and every payroll of such employer for each and every payroll period" and provides that "each of such amounts, when deducted, shall be paid to the retirement system at such times as may be designated by the board of trustees" — a duty to remit, on a schedule the trustees set rather than one the statute fixes. If these were authorised deductions from wages for a supplemental plan, RSA 275:48 is directly on point: it permits withholding only where the employer is empowered by law or holds "a written authorization by the employee for deductions for a lawful purpose", and provides that where an employer making such a deduction "fails to make any payment relative to such deduction on the employee's behalf", the employer "shall be liable for such lost benefit or failed obligation." Either way the money was the employees' and the employer held it.

Graded MEDIUM, and the mitigation is real. By the time the board was told, the failure had been found, employees had been notified in writing, the arrears had been paid and interest had been calculated at a state-published rate; the chair pressed on exactly the right point — "I wasn't so concerned with the interest as was that they were getting their money" (0:20:25) — and got a direct answer. What makes it a flag rather than a closed matter is the governance path: a payroll control failure spanning a third of a year reached the board that employs the central-office staff only when a member happened to ask a question under a budget item that had no report, and the minutes of the meeting record none of it. The same superintendent gives payroll staff turnover as the reason the audit slipped a year (flag 8), which places both problems in the same office in the same period.

Sources: RSA 100-A:16, I (member contributions deducted each payroll period and paid to the retirement system at times designated by the board of trustees — verified 2026-08-29); RSA 275:48 (withholding of wages; employer liable for a failed payment relative to a deduction made on the employee's behalf; last amended 2018, 312:3, eff. June 25, 2018 — verified 2026-08-29); the dialogue transcript at 0:19:32–0:20:31.

MEDIUM The audit presentation slipped a full year — promised for spring 2023, now spring 2024 — and the reason given is turnover in the payroll staff

Asked "how's the auditing situation" by an unnamed member, the superintendent answered: "they I believe they put the, the final audits for us to be completely out into the spring of next year. But we'll be hearing more from Mike Campo on that for both unity and for, Claremont as well as for the SA" (0:17:50). The chair asked whether there would be a public presentation and was told "Oh, absolutely. In the spring, by by the auditors themselves." Then the history: "It was supposed to be this spring. But then with the turnover in the payroll staff, it got pushed out" (0:19:08), and on the timing generally, "it's pretty typical. They try to have it by in March" (0:19:18). The minutes compress the whole exchange into one line: "An update on the audits and presentation will occur in the Spring of 2024."

What that means against the statute. RSA 21-J:19, I frames the engagement in terms of an audit conducted "within one year after the close of the municipality's fiscal year". A New Hampshire school district's fiscal year ends June 30. An audit presentation that was expected in spring 2023 and is now expected in spring 2024 is, on the superintendent's own account, at least a year late against the schedule the district had set for itself. The paragraph is permissive as to hiring — it says a school board may hire the accountant — so this is not a missed statutory deadline, and no statute in force in July 2023 set a filing deadline for a New Hampshire school district's annual audit with a consequence attached. That gap is precisely what the legislature addressed three years later in 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 272 (SB 586), which requires an annual independent audit or certified financial report within six months of fiscal year end, a chair's certification under the pains and penalties of perjury, and the withholding of all state funding until the filing is made. That law did not exist in 2023 and is cited here only to show what the legislature later thought the problem was.

Graded MEDIUM as a control and oversight concern. The board is the body that employs the central-office finance staff, and it learned the audit's status from a question asked under an item that had no report. Two mitigating facts belong on the record: the superintendent gave a direct, dated answer with the auditor named rather than deflecting, and the chair immediately secured a commitment that the results would be presented to the public rather than filed. One caution: his estimate that the firm does "a 80% or so of the entire state" is his characterization of Plodzik & Sanderson's market share and is not verified here.

Sources: RSA 21-J:19 (audits by a certified or licensed public accountant, conducted within one year after the close of the fiscal year; audits cover the accounts of all officials responsible for receipt, custody and disbursement of public funds; source 1985, 204:1; 2008, 174:1, eff. Aug. 10, 2008 — verified 2026-08-29); 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 272 (SB 586), eff. 7/1/26 — not applied to this meeting; draft minutes 7.13.23.

MEDIUM The Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee met the superintendent six days after this meeting, and no notice, agenda or minutes of it exists in any district share

RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) defines public body to include "Any legislative body, governing body, board, commission, committee, agency, or authority of any county, town, municipal corporation, school district, school administrative unit, chartered public school, or other political subdivision, or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto." That trailing clause is what carries this flag: a subcommittee of the SAU 6 board is a public body in its own right, owing notice under RSA 91-A:2, II and minutes on the same five-business-day clock as its parent, and its size is irrelevant to that.

The meeting was announced here, on the record, six days ahead. Marjorie Erickson: "The evaluation committee is meeting together with Mike on the 19th. So next week. And you should hear updates after that" (0:21:20). The minutes fix the date: "They will be meeting on July 19, 2023." The subcommittee had been constituted at the March 30 meeting — Whitney Skillen, Frank Sprague, Shannon Popescu and Marjorie Erickson — and its work was to meet the superintendent and review the results of his formal evaluation.

The record of that meeting is empty. No notice, agenda or minutes for the Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee appears in any 2023 SAU 6 packet folder recorded in this project's document map, and the Claremont Meeting Minutes share holds no SAU 6 file of any kind. What happened instead is visible five weeks later: on August 17 the board reconstituted the subcommittee entirely — "Arlene Hawkins makes a motion to appoint Rocco Ruggeri, Atonya Hart, Frank Sprague, & Whitney Skillen", with Atonya Hart as its chair, and a third motion "to hire David Ryan to work with the evaluation sub-committee in putting together the Superintendent's evaluation." Two of the four members changed — Popescu and Erickson out, Ruggeri and Hart in, with Sprague and Skillen retained and the 2-Claremont/2-Unity balance unchanged (3/30/23 minutes against 8/17/23 minutes) — and a paid outside facilitator was engaged, four weeks after a meeting of which no public record exists. Corrected 2026-08-29: this sentence previously read “three of the four”.

Graded MEDIUM. The scheduling was announced in public, at a properly noticed meeting, by the member responsible — nothing here was concealed, and Erickson used the same breath to ask that the subcommittee's status become standing business so the board would be told regularly. The gap is that the subcommittee's own duties under RSA 91-A ran independently of the parent board's, and nothing in the public record shows them discharged. A reviewer should also weigh the policy adopted by this board on April 13: policy CBI provides that the subcommittee "will meet with the superintendent in non-public meeting, unless the Superintendent requests a public meeting" — a standing rule which, as the April 13 page sets out, cannot substitute for the per-session motion and roll call RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires.

Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (public body includes a school administrative unit and any committee, subcommittee or subordinate body thereof); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice; minutes within 5 business days); RSA 91-A:3, I(b) and II(a); draft minutes 7.13.23; draft minutes 8.17.23 (reconstitution and the facilitator); the April 13 page, flag 5.