Claremont School Board — August 2, 2023

MEDIUM An alternative-education programme was six weeks from opening inside a facility the statute then reserved for career and technical education "exclusively", and the board had never seen it

Candace Crawford brought it back from a visit to the Tech Center that afternoon (2:12:27): "they were looking to put a new old ed [alt ed] program in at the tech center. And I have a concern about that. First of all… It's not an allowed use." Arlene Hawkins established that the board had no description of it — "I have no mental picture of what this alternate ed program is" — and that it "is scheduled to begin in September" (2:22:50). Ben Nester confirmed what the board had been given: "a one page overall structure of the program that included staffing… it wasn't comprehensive or anything like that," and volunteered the process gap himself at 2:20:14: "I apologize for not going through the visioning Committee first."

On the meeting's date RSA 188-E:3, II provided that a facility built or renovated with the education commissioner's career-and-technical construction grant becomes the property of the school district "for use by the career and technical education center exclusively." The clause is unqualified in the 2023 codification. The twenty-year repurposing exception now printed in that paragraph was added later and did not exist in August 2023 — a reviewer reading today's text would find a flexibility the board did not have.

Both members reported the same advice from the same state official, and reported it the same way. The chair, at 2:13:46: "there are there are RSA that indicate or require that we use this facility for CTE related activities. But there is deliberately per doctor beard, no, teeth in those RSA or sanctions for not doing so to allow flexibility within use for the facility." Crawford, at 2:15:50: "he said it it is not an acceptable use. However there is there are no teeth in, in the, in the law. However, the State Department makes an evaluation once a year and they note noncompliance." This page does not adopt the "no teeth" characterisation and has not verified it; it is reported as what two board members said a state official told them. What the record does not establish is whether the SRVRTC space at issue was in fact built or renovated under RSA 188-E:3 — the chair says only that "monies were given by the state" — so the provision is put in front of the reader as the one the discussion was about, not as an adjudicated answer.

Two things weigh on the board's side. It took no decision and made no commitment: it declined a special meeting only after weighing one, and required a presentation with locations, pros and cons before anything opens. And the chair's own framing of the risk — "we may not receive money in the future for renovations, etc., if it was not kept for CTE activities" — is a fair statement of the practical exposure, whatever the enforcement position. The governance point that survives is narrower and harder: a programme with a September start date, a staffing plan and a named building had reached the point of site visits and lunch logistics ("the kids would be going to the high school for lunch") before the board that must approve it had seen a page of it.

Sources: RSA 188-E:3, II as codified in 2023 (facility becomes district property "for use by the career and technical education center exclusively"; source note ends 2021, 210:2, Pt. II, Sec. 2, eff. Oct. 9, 2021 — no twenty-year exception); RSA 188-E:3 as it reads today, for comparison; RSA ch. 188-E (career and technical education, chapter index); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (the Visioning Committee, as a subordinate body of the board, is itself a public body).

MEDIUM The board extended a parental liability release for minors that its own counsel had said is not liability-free — and did not amend the form to carry the limit it voted

Exhibit G is a one-page "Transportation Waiver Form." A parent signing it "release[s], waive[s], discharge[s] and covenant[s] not to sue the District, the Board, and it's individual members, officers, agents, servants, or employees from any and all liability… including death, that may be sustained by my minor child(ren) or me," and separately agrees "to indemnify and hold harmless the releasees." It carries a notary line.

Frank Sprague put counsel's advice on the record while moving to limit the extension (1:08:59): "According to our lawyer, this is not liability free. This is not car launch [carte blanche]. And so I'm. I really don't want to use this. I really don't." That advice is consistent with the state of New Hampshire law. The Supreme Court has never decided whether a parent may sign away a minor child's claim before an injury; what is settled is the other end — a minor's claim cannot be compromised after the fact without court approval, and RSA 464-A:42 requires superior or district court approval, plus proof of a probate-appointed guardian of the estate, for any settlement paying a minor more than $10,000 while still a minor. Federal and superior courts applying New Hampshire law have declined to enforce parental pre-injury releases, reasoning from that rule. A signed waiver therefore buys the district less protection than its face suggests, which is precisely what Sprague reported.

The board's response was proportionate: Bonnie Miles asked that the extension be formal — "I think we should formally extend it. So we're not questioned about that" — and the motion that carried, Crawford's at 1:11:09, was limited to "the fall sports season for the Claremont Middle School." That is a materially tighter authorisation than the open-ended arrangement Tempesta described, and it forces the question back to the board in November.

The gap is documentary. Tempesta had identified it himself at 1:07:01 — "on the form itself, it didn't have an expiration" — and nothing in the record amends the form. The version in the packet still has no expiry, no reference to a season, and no reference to the board's vote; a parent signing it in October signs the same open document. Two smaller defects sit on its face: it requires an "Approved Adult" to be "a person 25 of age or older" (a word is missing), and it is styled "this electronic document" while requiring a handwritten signature and a notary. The waiver also states that "Claremont School District rules require that student athletes ride district transportation," so the waiver is a departure from the district's own rule; no policy citation for that rule appears in the packet or the minutes.

Sources: Exhibit G-Transportation Waiver .pdf; RSA 464-A:42 (settlements on behalf of minors require court approval above $10,000 net, with a probate-appointed guardian of the estate); RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes record the names of the members who made or seconded each motion — the minutes do so here); background on the unsettled state of parental pre-injury releases in New Hampshire, cited as commentary and not as law: Welts, White & Fontaine, "Enforceability of Liability Waivers Against Children in New Hampshire".

MEDIUM Three student handbooks in one packet give three different answers on Title IX and Section 504 — and one gives none at all

The packet carried the Stevens draft (Exhibit D), the CMS handbook (Exhibit F) and the shared elementary draft (Exhibit E). The board reviewed two of the three and approved none. On the federal notices that every recipient of federal funds must publish, the three documents diverge:

Stevens prints a full notice: "Title IX Coordinator, Mike Koski, Assistant Superintendent, mkoski@sau6.org 165 Broad Street, Claremont, NH 03743, (603)543-4200," and separately "Title VI, Title VII, and 504 Coordinator, Mr. Ben Nester, bnester@sau6.org." The elementary handbook names the same Title IX coordinator but gives only "Title: Michael Koski, Assistant Superintendent / Address: 165 Broad St., Claremont NH. 03743 / Telephone: 603-543-4200" — no electronic mail address — and designates a different set of Section 504 coordinators, the building principals: "Christine Baker Bluff Elementary School Principal Bluff Elementary School Section 504 Coordinator," and Melissa Lewis for Disnard. The CMS handbook contains no Title IX notification and no Section 504 coordinator at all: the strings "Title IX" and "504 Coordinator" do not occur in it.

The rule in force in August 2023 is the 2020 Title IX regulation, promulgated at 85 FR 30026 and effective August 14, 2020. Under 34 CFR 106.8(a) as it then read, a recipient must notify students, parents and employees of "the name or title, office address, electronic mail address, and telephone number" of its Title IX Coordinator. 34 CFR 104.7 requires a recipient employing fifteen or more people to designate a Section 504 coordinator and to adopt grievance procedures. The regulations require notification; they do not dictate that it appear in a particular handbook, and the record does not establish where else a CMS family would find it — which is why this is graded MEDIUM rather than higher. But three documents presented to one board on one night, naming two different Section 504 arrangements and giving the required contact set once out of two attempts, is a consistency problem the review that produced them did not surface.

Two further citation errors sit in the same documents and were not raised at the table. The Stevens draft's non-discrimination clause cites "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1965" and "Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1966"; Title VII is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and §1981 derives from the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The elementary handbook's parallel list cites the "Americans With Disabilities Act of 1975"; the ADA was enacted in 1990.

Sources: 85 FR 30026 (2020 Title IX rule; "These regulations are effective August 14, 2020" — the version governing in August 2023); 34 CFR 106.8(a), 2022 CFR annual edition (notice must give "the name or title, office address, electronic mail address, and telephone number"); 34 CFR 104.7 (Section 504 coordinator and grievance procedures at fifteen or more employees); packet documents Exhibit D- draft SHS Student Handbook .pdf, Exhibit E- 2023-2024 DRAFT elementary student handbook (1).pdf, Exhibit F- CMS Parent-Student Handbook 23-24.pdf.

MEDIUM The adequacy presentation misstates the hold-harmless phase-out by a factor of two; the correction was made on the record two hours later and reached neither the minutes nor the posted exhibit

Slide 6 of Exhibit H says: "Starting in FY26 they will start the Hold Harmless phase-out process. They will do this at the rate of 20% per year for 10 years." Mary Henry read it out at 1:20:30. Frank Sprague did the arithmetic aloud twice — "For ten years." and, at 1:21:01, "2,000% was 200%" — and Bonnie Miles repeated the objection. Henry held to the slide at the time: "They do that. Yeah, that's what they said. 20% of the amount for ten years."

Sprague was right. RSA 198:41, III, as amended by 2023, 79:156 effective July 1, 2023 — five weeks before this meeting — steps the hold-harmless grant down by twenty percentage points every two fiscal years: 80 percent of the calculated fiscal-year-2025 amount in FY2026 and FY2027, 60 percent in FY2028 and FY2029, 40 percent in FY2030 and FY2031, 20 percent in FY2032 and FY2033, and nothing from FY2034. Ten years, five steps, twenty points each — not twenty points a year.

Henry corrected herself unprompted at 2:36:31, as the board was adjourning: "I want to correct one of my statements is 20% every other year." That is the right answer and it is creditable that she went back to it without being asked. The problem is what happened to the correction. It is not in the minutes — which record nothing at all from the last ten minutes of the meeting except the permit exchange and adjournment — and Exhibit H as posted in the district's public Drive folder still carries the erroneous slide. A resident who downloads the packet reads the wrong number; a resident who watches to 2:36 gets the right one.

The figure matters. Claremont's FY2024 hold-harmless grant is $287,307.09 on Exhibit H's own table, and it is the mechanism Henry said was pinning the district's adequacy aid in place: "our adequacy at this point is not going to change… because we meet the hard harm [hold harmless]." Whether that support falls away over five years or ten is a budget-planning difference of real size. Two smaller defects on the same document: its title slide is headed "Changes in Adequacy Aid Formula FY 2024-2025" immediately above "Adequacy Aid Formula Changes FY 2023-2024", and the hold-harmless slide reads "Hold Harmless Grant was establish to guarantee 104% of FY24 estimated Adequacy Aid."

Sources: RSA 198:41, III (hold harmless: 80% FY2026–27, 60% FY2028–29, 40% FY2030–31, 20% FY2032–33, none from FY2034; the paragraph was inserted by 2023, 79:156, eff. July 1, 2023); Exhibit H- Claremont School District Adequacy Aid Presentation Final.pdf; RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes must give "a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions").

MEDIUM Two policy motions were made and seconded; neither has a recorded disposition

The Right-to-Know Law requires minutes to include "a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions," and — since 2018, 244:1, effective January 1, 2019, so throughout this corpus — "the names of the members who made or seconded each motion." The August 2 minutes do the second part well. They name every mover and every seconder. What is missing is the first part, twice, in the same agenda item.

Policy JLCB. Sprague moved it to second read, Gallagher seconded, the chair proposed an amendment, Sprague moved the amendment, the chair seconded, and the amendment carried. The chair then restated the amended main motion at 1:58:20 and put it: "All in favor?" (1:58:39). The only answer on the recording is Bonnie Miles at 1:58:40: "I'm not opposed." No result is announced, and the minutes record the amendment carrying "via voice vote" but say nothing about the main motion. Whether JLCB is at second read is therefore not answerable from either record.

Policy JLCC. Crawford moved it to second read at 1:59:01 — the chair's own statement of it, "to first, second read," is itself ambiguous — Hawkins seconded, and the board debated for ten minutes. The item ended with the chair undertaking to draft four changes and Hawkins fixing the next step: "First read at the next meeting." The motion on the floor was never put, never withdrawn and never ruled out of order. The minutes reproduce the motion and second, then jump to the chair's suggestion, leaving a live motion with no disposition on the district's permanent record.

Neither omission changes what happened in the room, and a reader who watches the video can reconstruct the intent. But the minutes are the permanent record, they are what a resident who cannot watch two hours and forty minutes will read, and on this item they leave two motions hanging. The fix is one clause per motion.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes: names of members, persons appearing, subject matter and final decisions, and the names of the members who made or seconded each motion; the mover/seconder clause enters at 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019 — the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements were added later, by 2025, 112:1, and do not apply to this meeting); minutes of August 2, 2023.

MEDIUM All three handbooks were brought for approval still carrying last year's content, and the board — not the legal review — found it

Melissa Lewis described the process at 0:18:19: the district's lawyers were asked to check the handbooks for completeness and redundancy, "and then literally whatever the attorney suggested for revisions, we certainly include those… a review of dates was done." Chris Pratt described the same review for Stevens. What the board found in half an hour of reading is what that review did not:

• Elementary draft. Crawford, 0:20:32: "on page 19 it says first quarter parent teacher conferences are scheduled for November 14th, 2022." It does — and that is the only occurrence of 2022 in the entire 103,000-character document. Miles found the parent-acknowledgement page missing. Its table of contents lists "Allergies 55" for a page-5 entry, gives no page for "Accidents," and runs "School Resource Officer" and "School Website" together as 3737.
• Stevens draft. Its table of contents heads the staff list "Stevens High School Staff 2022-2023" while the body of the same document heads it 2023-2024; the Chromebook section still refers to "the 2022-2023 academic year"; the dress code Pratt cited at page 55 is listed at 62; a teacher Gallagher asked about is absent from the staff list; the sole occurrence of Dean describes a role Pratt confirmed does not exist at the school; the academic-eligibility list numbers two consecutive items 1; and the community-service section states "48 in order to graduate!" with none of the transfer-student proration Pratt described.
• CMS handbook. Not presented — "It wasn't quite, quite ready for us" — and carried to August 16. It refers to "the myHomework Digital Planner system for the 2022-2023 school year" and prints eight staff lines as TBD.
• All three print a school-board roster of six members and TBD for the seventh seat. Candace Crawford had been appointed on July 19 and was sitting at the table. Nobody raised it.

The reason this is graded MEDIUM rather than as housekeeping is that these are the district's principal published notices to families — attendance, discipline, medication, eligibility, complaint routes — and Lewis told the board at 0:19:28 that "the handbooks are attached to the registration process" and would go out in hard copy this year. Pratt's explanation of the mechanism is candid and correct — the contents page is regenerated last, "because we still need to update some names for new teachers and hires" — but "work in progress" is the state of the document the board was asked to approve five weeks before the first day of school. The board's handling was the right one: it approved nothing, sent both drafts back with written changes, and set approval as a future agenda item.

Sources: Exhibit E- 2023-2024 DRAFT elementary student handbook (1).pdf; Exhibit D- draft SHS Student Handbook .pdf; Exhibit F- CMS Parent-Student Handbook 23-24.pdf; RSA 189:15 (the school board "may, unless otherwise provided by statute or state board regulations, prescribe regulations for the attendance upon, and for the management, classification and discipline, of, the schools"); minutes of August 2, 2023 ("The school board recommends some changes to be made prior to the handbook being approved at the next meeting").

MEDIUM The audit backlog was reported for the second meeting running with no completion date, and no board member asked a question about it

Mary Henry's business-office update at 1:13:52 is three sentences long on the subject: the department is being restructured "into, kind of different camps to get things done. Audit being one of them"; "I've been in touch with our auditors on a regular basis. We're having weekly meetings"; and then, at 1:14:38, "I don't have timelines for all the audits yet. Hopefully I can have another update at the next meeting, and I can nail Mike down to a few more, dates." The plural is the point: audits, not an audit. No board member asked which fiscal years were outstanding, what the auditor had found, or when a report would be delivered. The same silence is on the record two weeks earlier, on July 19.

New Hampshire law contemplates that a municipality's audit — and a school district is a municipality for this purpose — be conducted "within one year after the close of the municipality's fiscal year." Claremont's fiscal year ends June 30, so the FY2022 period expired on June 30, 2023, five weeks before this meeting, with the work acknowledged as still in progress. Separately, a district expending $750,000 or more in federal awards in a year — the threshold governing that fiscal-year vintage — owes a single audit whose reporting package is due the earlier of thirty days after receipt of the auditor's report or nine months after period end. Whether Claremont crossed that threshold is not established on this record; nobody stated a federal expenditure total. It is the expected posture for a district that told this same meeting it had bought buses with ESSER money and hoped to buy radios with more of it.

In fairness: Henry was four weeks into the job, inherited the backlog from a business administrator who retired in April and a two-month interim, named the audits as her first restructuring priority unprompted, and put her new staff accountant into the auditors' meeting on her first day. The flag is not about her. It is that the board received "I don't have timelines" as a complete answer, twice, without a follow-up question — and the backlog was not resolved for years afterward.

Sources: RSA 21-J:19 (audit by a licensed public accountant, conducted within one year after the close of the fiscal year); RSA 21-J:34, V (MS-25 financial report to the Department of Revenue Administration by September 1 — four weeks after this meeting); 2 CFR 200.501 (single audit at $750,000 in federal expenditures; the $1,000,000 threshold applies only to fiscal years beginning on or after October 1, 2024); 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1) (reporting package due the earlier of 30 days after receipt or nine months after period end); reporting: Valley News, "Financial audits reveal Claremont schools' long-term struggles" (Jan. 2, 2026).