Claremont School Board — July 19, 2023

MEDIUM The three letters of interest — the only documentary record behind the appointment — were not in the public copy of the packet

The board filled an elective public office on the strength of three letters and a five-minute statement each. Under other business, an hour after the vote, Gallagher reported a citizen's complaint about the appointment process (1:49:39). Her sentence is garbled in the transcript and appears to have lost a negation, so this flag rests on the two unambiguous answers it drew rather than on the complaint's wording. The chair's first answer was that the letters had gone out with the agenda a week earlier. Hawkins, who had gone looking, corrected her: "I looked for that and it was attached in our package, but I didn't see it as part of the public. And it should be" (1:50:12), and again, "I also did find the listing of just the three names, but not any of the [letters]." The chair accepted the correction without hesitation: "If it's not, then I was not aware of that… I want every exhibit to be available to the public… it was absolutely an oversight."

Letters of interest sent to the district's central office and circulated to the board are governmental records: information "created, accepted, or obtained by, or on behalf of, any public body … in furtherance of its official function." Every citizen has the right to inspect them. What the Right-to-Know Law requires here is availability on request, not proactive posting — no denied records request appears anywhere in this record, so this is not an adjudicated violation and is not flagged as one. The gap is nonetheless real and the board identified it itself: the public was invited to watch a competitive appointment whose written basis it could not read, and the correction came after the seat was filled. The district's own written process, Exhibit E, had told applicants that "the School Board will receive all Letters of Intent as a packet and review [them] before the School Board Meeting on July 19, 2023" — the members' packet, not the public one, and nothing in that document promises publication.

A related timing point sits in the same exhibit. The appointment-process memo in the packet is dated July 11, 2023 in the district's own file name, while the deadline it announces is "5pm on Monday, July 10, 2023" — the written process was in the packet a day after the window it set had closed. The record does not establish when or where the process was first published to residents, so this is noted as a date on the face of the document rather than a finding about notice.

Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, III (definition of "governmental records"); RSA 91-A:4, I and IV (right to inspect; five-business-day response); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice covers the meeting, not the contents of the packet); Exhibit E- New Board Member Appointment Process 7.11.23.pdf.

MEDIUM A federally funded communications engagement was already under way, with no competition described, no board vote, and ESSER II ten weeks from its obligation deadline

By the time the board discussed it, the work had started. Tempesta at 1:22:19: "she came in, we spoke to her about doing contract work… This is all … using [ESSER] money that is already written for grants for outreach," and her written online-presence review "we just got in today." Two meetings had been held, "one by phone and then one in person," about two and a half weeks earlier. The amount was soft — Nester asked and got "I believe about 10,000" (1:27:30) — and grew in the telling: "once we have a scope and scale of what we want to do, I would estimate there's a 30, 40, $50,000 we could apply to that" (1:29:58). Skillen asked what the deeper audit and the implementation would each cost and got no figure. The board took no vote and tabled the item.

Federal procurement standards attach to the money, not to the size of the district. Purchases at or below the micro-purchase threshold may be made without soliciting competitive quotations if the price is documented as reasonable; above it, "price or rate quotations must be obtained from an adequate number of qualified sources." The micro-purchase threshold is set by the Federal Acquisition Regulation and has moved over time — a reviewer should check the figure in force in mid-2023 rather than the current one — but the range Tempesta sketched runs from roughly the threshold to several times it, and no quotation process, no scope of work and no written procurement determination is described anywhere in the record. The general standards also require documented procedures and records "sufficient to detail the history of procurement," including the rationale for the method and the basis for the contractor selection.

Timing compounds it. Tempesta named the source as one "that we're closing out rapidly now" — rendered "SO2" by the transcript, i.e. ESSER II; the second fund he names comes through as "that's a three", ESSER III. The ESSER II obligation deadline, after the automatic one-year Tydings extension, was September 30, 2023 — ten weeks after this meeting. Starting a scope-undefined engagement against a fund that must be obligated within the quarter is the classic path to a late obligation or an unsupported one. Fairness cuts two ways here: Tempesta was explicit that he was not asking for a decision that night and that the board could redirect the money, Skillen said she was "in favor of hiring a consultant" in principle, and Hawkins used the item to ask a genuinely useful control question — "Do we have any other consultants that are presently part of our school district?" (1:57:22). The two ESSER-funded buses reported earlier (0:10:21) raise the separate, standard one-time-money question of what happens to the replacement cycle after the fund ends.

Sources: 2 CFR 200.320 (procurement methods; micro-purchase and small-purchase quotation requirements); 2 CFR 200.318 (general procurement standards; documentation of the history of procurement); 2 CFR 200.303 (internal control over federal awards); 20 U.S.C. §1225(b) (GEPA §421 Tydings period — one additional fiscal year to obligate); deadline dates: Congressional Research Service, IF12978, "Late Liquidation Period for Elementary and Secondary Education Funds Provided During COVID-19 Pandemic" (ESSER I Sept. 30, 2022; ESSER II Sept. 30, 2023; ARP ESSER Sept. 30, 2024).

MEDIUM Three different per-pupil figures were used at the table for the same aid, and none of them is the number in the packet

The board spent roughly twenty minutes on the proposition that under-collected meal applications are costing Claremont state aid. The proposition is sound and the packet documents it. The arithmetic in the room did not match the packet.

Henry, at 0:06:32: "$3,116 a kit [kid] for adequacy." Crawford, from the floor at 1:13:12: "the money coming into the school district is more … and it's like $8,500 per student." The packet's own NHDOE exhibit, which Whitney had put in for exactly this purpose, gives the FY2024 and FY2025 rates: a base of $3,866.18 per pupil in average daily membership, plus $1,933.08 for each free-or-reduced-eligible pupil, plus $2,079.89 per special-education pupil, $756.43 per English learner and $756.43 per third grader below proficient in reading. The marginal value of one additional eligible application is therefore the $1,933.08 differentiated amount, plus relief aid and any extraordinary-needs grant — not $3,116 and not $8,500. Neither figure was challenged at the table.

Where the record is precise, it is precise because someone read the exhibit aloud. Whitney did exactly that at 0:59:00 — "So I'm just reading this out for the public" — and her relief-aid recitation tracks the packet nearly word for word: eligibility beginning at 12% free-and-reduced average daily membership at $150 per eligible pupil, rising to a maximum of $600 at 48%. That is the model to follow. It matters beyond bookkeeping: the October 1 count Henry identified as the "drop dead date" is the data the district reports to the state, and state and federal aid is withheld until a district has submitted complete and accurate information.

One citation caution for any reader following this up. RSA 198:40-a is the statutory home of these rates, but the amounts currently in that section — a $4,100 base, $2,300 for a free-or-reduced-eligible pupil, $2,100 special education, $800 English learner, and no third-grade reading category — reflect amendments enacted after this meeting. For what governed in July 2023, the packet's November 15, 2022 NHDOE exhibit is the correct source and is linked below.

Sources: Exhibit H- fy2024-adequacy-grants-explained-november-15-2022.pdf (NHDOE Office of School Finance); Exhibit I- estimate-fy-24-adequacy-aid-by-muni-11.15.22.pdf; Exhibit G- FRL Trend 2012-2023 Comparison.pdf; RSA 198:40-a (cost of an adequate education; base and differentiated per-pupil amounts — current text reflects post-2023 amendments); RSA 189:28 (statistical reports to NHDOE; aid withheld until complete and accurate information is submitted).

MEDIUM The district's translation control is labelled only in English, its forms are English-only, and nothing on the site is built for screen readers

Hawkins found the problem by using the website the way a resident would. There is a translation control in the corner of the page — and, she pointed out at 1:51:04, "how do I know what that word is?" if I do not read English. The paper is no better: "even the directions on the outside of the yellow sheet are written in English." Skillen supplied the fix — the universal translate icon, "kind of like the save icon looks like a floppy disk" — and Tempesta agreed the district's known languages should be surfaced. Hawkins added that the same should apply to the Facebook page. Gallagher then broadened the point in a single sentence that nobody followed up: "we should probably look into making sure we have other accessibility options like readers for people that … may have visual impairments."

Several current obligations bear on this, which is why it is recorded as a process gap rather than a passing remark. As a Title I district, Claremont must, "to the extent practicable," provide required information and school reports to parents "in a format and, to the extent practicable, in a language such parents understand" — a duty that runs to parents with limited English proficiency and to parents with disabilities alike. Beyond Title I, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act makes it a denial of equal educational opportunity for an educational agency to fail "to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs," and Title VI bars national-origin discrimination in federally assisted programs — the pair behind Lau v. Nichols and the federal expectation that a district communicate with limited-English-proficient parents in a language they understand. On the disability side, a public entity must operate each program so that, "viewed in its entirety," it is readily accessible to people with disabilities, and a public entity with fifty or more employees must designate an ADA compliance coordinator and publish grievance procedures — neither of which came up when Gallagher raised screen readers. Nester's count at this meeting was about seven students learning English as a second language plus others on monitoring status, and both he and Tempesta noted immediately that the number that matters is the number of parents, which nobody had. Separately, the Department of Justice's ADA Title II rule now sets a hard technical standard for public entities' web content and mobile apps: WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA. For a public entity with a population under 50,000 or one that is a special district government — a school district on both counts — the compliance date is April 26, 2028. That rule post-dates this meeting and is cited here as the current law a reviewer would apply, not as something the board could have known in 2023. No verified rule is asserted for the specific translate-icon complaint; it is recorded because a board member found it, said so on the record, and no one assigned it to anyone.

Sources: 20 U.S.C. §6318(f) (Title I parent and family engagement — information in a format and, to the extent practicable, a language parents understand); 20 U.S.C. §1703(f) (EEOA — failure to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers); 42 U.S.C. §2000d (Title VI); 28 CFR 35.150(a) (program accessibility viewed in its entirety); 28 CFR 35.107 (ADA coordinator and published grievance procedures at 50+ employees); 28 CFR 35.200 (ADA Title II web and mobile app accessibility; WCAG 2.1 A and AA; April 26, 2027 and April 26, 2028 compliance dates by entity type).