Claremont School Board — September 6, 2023 | Board governance, the Yondr rollout, and a meeting with no minutes

Participants

Everyone in the record. **With no minutes, there is no independent check on attendance or on any name.** Spellings follow the agenda's own rosters and the packet documents; where the automatic transcript renders a name differently, the row says so. Rows marked *listed, not heard* appear on the agenda's central-office roster but do not speak on the recording — which covers only the first fifty-two minutes.
Name	Role	Participation
Frank Sprague	Vice Chair, Claremont School Board — presided over the opening	Called the meeting to order and led the Pledge; asked Nester to call the roll; declined to run a consent agenda — No, I'm looking for a motion just on old school tonight. We'll just do item by item (0:01:06) — and put every item to a separate motion. Handled Hawkins's corrections to the August 16 minutes, tabled them, and asked her to send the corrections to the minute-taker. Closed citizens' comments and handed the gavel to the chair. Later asked the principal to get us a student rep for the board (0:39:04) and clarified what an eight-period day would mean. He had submitted seven written questions to the special-education director on September 3, published in the packet. The transcript renders him Greg Sprague in the roll call.
Heather Whitney	Chair, Claremont School Board	In the room from the start — she takes part in the August 16 minutes discussion before the gavel passes to her — and presided from 0:10:37. Opened the superintendent's report by telephone, ran the two administrative reports, and asked the meeting's two sharpest questions: what the pouches will cost the district next year (0:39:26) and whether the vendor would extend the grant to the middle school. She also asked Nester to summarise his written answers aloud rather than let the packet stand alone — the single most useful transparency act of the meeting (flag 10). Relayed a constituent's question about Chromebooks. She had submitted written questions to both administrators. Elsewhere in this corpus the transcript renders her name Heather Whitman; here Sprague's handover comes through as turn the meeting over to heaven. Not to be confused with board member Whitney Skillen.
Arlene Hawkins	Board member (elected March 14, 2023); Chair, SAU 6 Board	Did the closest reading of any member. Moved approval of the August 9 minutes, then produced three specific defects in the August 16 draft — an unfinished sentence, a motion approving amendments the minutes never identify, and a Facebook entry that states the opposite of what happened. All three are verifiable in the packet copy and all three are real (flag 6). Agreed to send the corrections to the minute-taker: I can do that. Also asked a procedural question at the outset about whether a consent-agenda motion was wanted. She had submitted written questions to both administrators, including the sharpest one in the packet — whether the district is duplicating services between the new charter school and its own alternative programme. The transcript renders her surname Hopkins and Hocking elsewhere in this corpus; here the roll call gets it right.
Candace Crawford	Board member (appointed July 19, 2023); Tech Center Visioning Committee	Spoke twice, both times on the phone policy. Reported that members of the community have approached me and said they are delighted at the policy for the phones and stressed it was unprompted — it was totally unsolicited, and, people said, we think it's a great idea (0:37:35). Later suggested the Stevens experience be written up as a case study for the teacher-education programmes at Plymouth or Keene. Her written questions in the packet asked whether the charter school had absorbed the twelve to sixteen students on the alternative-programme list, for a hiring update, for the free-and-reduced-lunch status, and whether the visioning committee had met its August 28 data deadline. The transcript renders her name and is Crawford in the roll call; Pratt thanks her by first name at 0:37:44, which is what fixes the attribution.
Bonnie Miles	Board member; chair, Capital Improvement subcommittee	Named in the roll call, not otherwise identifiable on this recording. Nester's roll reads And Bonnie Myles here — the transcript's standing garble for her name — but the members' one-word answers are pooled into his segment and hers is not separable. Several unattributed board comments during the phone discussion could be hers; this page does not assign them. With no minutes, nothing independently establishes whether she was present.
Whitney Skillen	Board member; chair, Policy subcommittee	Named in the roll call, not otherwise identifiable. Her name reaches the transcript as with me still here — one of this corpus's standard renderings of her answering the roll with her own name. As policy chair she is the member who would normally have carried the BEDH second reading that the packet prepares and the agenda omits (flag 4); nothing on the recording reaches that item. With no minutes, her attendance cannot be confirmed. Note that the August 16 minutes in this very packet list neither her presence nor her absence.
Jennifer Gallagher	Board member (elected March 14, 2023, one-year seat); chair, Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors subcommittee	Named in the roll call, not otherwise identifiable. The roll reaches the transcript as Jennifer Gallagher and is Crawford here? — her name is read but no answer is preserved. She is the only one of the seven who submitted no written questions to either administrator in the packet. With no minutes, nothing establishes whether she was present.
Michael C. Tempesta	Superintendent of Schools, SAU 6 — attending by telephone	Joined by phone after about ninety seconds of audio trouble at the board table. Apologised for his absence — I can't be with you today. I have a very serious family illness that that we're working through (0:12:14) — and gave a two-minute report thanking the administrative team, central office and particularly Mike Kosky [Koski] for the opening of school, and praising the principals' hiring. Nobody asked him a question: Does anyone have any questions for Mike? drew We have no questions (0:13:25). He does not speak again on the recording, though the agenda assigned him the athletic-fields presentation at item IV.6 — an item the recording never reaches (flag 5). The transcript's rendering of his own praise conflates the two principals: Principal Romeo who principal profit [Pratt] to science teachers coming in from out of state and also Chris Romeo — Frank Romeo is the middle-school principal, Chris Pratt the high school's.
Chris Pratt	Principal, Stevens High School	The meeting's dominant voice — 95 of 257 transcript segments and about twenty-eight minutes of speech. Worked straight through the board's written questions: I got everyone's questions, so I figured I'd just go right through them. I believe you also have a hard copy of that (0:13:55). Reported American Sign Language enrolment, the free-and-reduced-lunch drive, the Yondr phone rollout and its funding, the discipline matrix and restorative panels, a dropout rate down by half, the tobacco and vaping programmes, staffing vacancies and the contingency built with River Valley Community College, and the case for moving off block scheduling. Also delivered the meeting's one safety report: third-floor classrooms at 110 degrees and, in his words, at an unsafe level right now in the building (flag 7). In 2023 Pratt is the high-school principal. He did not become interim superintendent until January 2024; the packet's Questions for C. Pratt is his principal's report, not a candidacy.
Ben Nester	Director of Special Education, SAU 6; the board's de facto secretary	Called the roll at the presiding officer's request — the clerk's seat being vacant — and returned at 0:46:58 for the alternative-programme update. Reported one student starting that week and about seven within a fortnight, one out-of-district student transitioning back, and a group of identified students the high-school team could not locate because they had not shown up to school. Offered the board a choice — go through the written answers item by item or take questions — and, when the chair asked him to summarise aloud, did so. His written answers, published in the packet, are the most detailed staffing document of the season: 92.3% of special educators licensed, 100% of related-service providers, 93% of paraprofessionals and behaviour specialists, and about 27% of non-professional staff without a state-recognised certification (flag 8). His last sentence is cut off by the end of the recording. The transcript renders him Mr. Nestor.
Andy (Lafrienere) surname not spoken on this recording	Chair, Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center Visioning Committee — citizens' comments, the meeting's only public speaker	Self-identified from the podium as currently serving as the chair of the sugar River sugar River Valley Community Technical Center Committee (0:06:32) — the centre's actual name is the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center. Gave a four-minute update on the Southern Regional Education Board career-path study: an August 28 data deadline set personally with the superintendent in June after delay, biweekly summer communication meetings, roughly 70% of the data is collected, three forthcoming community discussion sessions with a shareholder roster that needs to be reviewed and whittled down, labour-market data being gathered, and Newport still undecided about participating. The surname is this page's inference, not a self-identification: the district's own August 9, 2023 draft minutes, in this packet, record "Andy Lafrienere (Ward 3) & a member of the Visioning Committee" speaking on the alternative programme, and the February 8, 2023 minutes spell it Lafreniere. He is a different person from Andy Bernier of the NH School Funding Fairness Project, who appears elsewhere in this corpus. The transcript renders the consultant sRGB and SRGB for SREB.
Michael Koski	Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation & Assessment	Listed, not heard. On the agenda's central-office roster. Named once, in the superintendent's thanks for the opening of school, rendered Mike Kosky by the transcript.
Mary Henry	Business Administrator, Claremont School District / SAU 6	Listed, not heard. On the agenda's central-office roster. She had presented the free-and-reduced-lunch application drive at the August 16 meeting, with an October 1 deadline — the campaign Pratt reports on here.
Angela Vivian	Human Resource Director, SAU 6	Listed, not heard. On the agenda's central-office roster.
Jeff Small	Director of Technology, SAU 6	Listed, not heard. On the agenda's central-office roster. The Facebook page whose removal the board discusses at 0:04:57 was taken down at his suggestion on August 2.
Chelsea Weatherford	Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent; produced the district's minutes	Not present as a speaker but named twice from the chair as the person to receive Hawkins's corrections — Arlene, if you could make a note of these and put them to to Chelsea (0:04:43). She signed the August 9 and August 16 drafts in this packet. No minutes of this meeting bearing her name, or anyone's, have ever appeared.
Unidentified board members	Voices at the board table not separable by the diarizer	Four passages are board-member speech this page will not attribute. The mover of the agenda motion at 0:01:18 and its seconder, whom the presiding officer names as Alain — nobody of that name is in the room, and it is a failure to identify the seconder, not a person. The member who asks Pratt whether any classes had to be dropped (0:37:49). The member who says I was like, walking back in time to 20 years ago when I was teaching (0:42:52). And the two members who propose contacting WMUR and writing an NHSBA white paper (0:43:27). With no minutes and no roll-call vote anywhere on the recording, none of these can be resolved.
Student Representative	Seat printed on the agenda	None seated. The agenda carries a Student Representative heading with no name. Sprague asked Pratt to supply one at 0:39:04 and got We can do that. The August 16 minutes name Hannah Petrin in the same slot; she was the 2022–23 representative and no successor had been named for 2023–24.

Agenda

From the posted agenda, CSB Agenda 9.6.23. There are no minutes, so the disposition column is drawn from the recording alone — and the recording ends during item IV.2. Items IV.3 to IX are marked accordingly: they are not recorded as skipped, they are simply unrecorded. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text. The agenda's roman numerals run I–VI and then jump to IX for adjournment; that is the district's numbering, reproduced as posted. Exhibit G, the second reading of public-comment policy BEDH, is in the packet but appears against no agenda item at all — see flag 4.

Taken up	Item	Agenda text / disposition
0:00:02	I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance	Agenda: "6:30 PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance." Sprague, as vice chair: "I'd like to call the school board meeting of September 6th, 2023 to order, please. Please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance." He then leads the Pledge himself. No clock time is stated on the recording and none is recorded anywhere else.
0:00:29	II. General Business — Secretary Roll Call of Attendance	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)." Sprague: "Mr. Nestor, could you roll call attendance for us, please?" All seven names are read across two segments, six of them inside Nester's cluster: "And Bonnie Myles here with me still here. Jennifer Gallagher and is Crawford here? Arlene Hawkins here." The members' one-word answers are absorbed into the same segment and are not separable. The transcript therefore records that a roll was called, not who answered it, and there are no minutes to supply the answer.
0:00:45	II. Consent Agenda — 1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda	Agenda: "Consent Agenda 1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda." Sprague declined to take it as a consent agenda when Hawkins asked — "May I ask a clarifying question? Are you looking for a motion for the consent agenda?" / "No, I'm looking for a motion just on old school tonight. We'll just do item by item." No changes to the agenda were offered. Motion by an unidentified member, "So I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as presented"; Sprague: "Second seconded by Alain. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed?" Carried on a voice vote with no count. The seconder is not identified — Alain is nobody in the room. See flag 1.
0:01:22	II. Consent Agenda — 2a. Minutes Approval, August 9, 2023	Agenda: "Minutes Approval- 8.9.23 & 8.16.23." Sprague: "We have a couple of weeks of minutes here. We'll start with eight. Nine of 23." Hawkins moved — "I move that we approve the eight nine agenda a minutes" — an unattributed voice seconded, and it carried on a voice vote with no count. Approved. The document is draft CSB meeting minutes 8.9.23, in this packet: all seven members present, and the 4–3 roll of the alternative-programme vote — for, Whitney, Gallagher, Hawkins, Skillen; against, Miles, Sprague, Crawford.
0:02:05	II. Consent Agenda — 2b. Minutes Approval, August 16, 2023	Hawkins: "I have a couple of corrections." Sprague asked for a motion first; she began one, he reversed himself — "Actually you can first" — and she read three defects into the record. Sprague: "I would like to table this until we do, we know what that says," and "let's just table that eight, 16 minutes until we know what that is." Tabled, by agreement, with no motion and no vote. Hawkins undertook to send the corrections to the minute-taker. There is no record of the August 16 minutes ever being taken up again: the next set filed by the district is 9.20.23. See flag 6.
0:06:20	II. Citizens Comments Non-Agenda Items	Agenda: "Citizens Comments Non-Agenda Items." Sprague: "Citizens comments again on non-agenda items. We have any citizens who would like to speak. Andy, come on up." One speaker, the visioning-committee chair, for about four minutes. Closed at 0:10:28: "Any other citizens that would like to speak? Seeing none. I'll close citizens comments." Nobody was turned away and no time limit was announced or enforced. The period ran roughly four minutes against the thirty-minute floor in RSA 189:74 and in the board's own policy BEDH — see flag 9.
0:10:37	III. Superintendent Report	Agenda: "6:45 PM Superintendent Report," no exhibit. Delivered by telephone after about ninety seconds of audio failure. Roughly two minutes of content: thanks to the administrative team and central office for the opening of school, praise for hiring at both secondary schools, and an apology for absence. The chair asked for questions and got none. No document, no action.
0:13:33	IV.1. Stevens High School Update — Mr. Pratt, SHS Principal	Agenda: "7:10 PM Discussion/Action Items 1. Stevens High School Update Mr. Pratt, SHS Principal." Structured entirely around the board's written questions, whose text and written answers are in the packet as Questions for C. Pratt CSB Meeting 9.6.23. About thirty-three minutes including board discussion: ASL enrolment, the free-and-reduced-lunch drive, the Yondr rollout and its funding, discipline and restorative practice, the dropout rate, tobacco and vaping programming, staffing vacancies, scheduling and the heat in the building. Discussion only; no motion, no vote.
0:46:58	IV.2. Alternative Program Update — Mr. Nester, Director of Special Education	Agenda: "2. Alternative Program Update Mr. Nester, Director of Special Education." Written questions and answers in the packet as Questions for B. Nester CSB Meeting 9.6.23. About six minutes on the recording before it stops: programme operational with one student, roughly seven expected within a fortnight; the charter-school relationship; the memorandum of understanding still unsigned. Cut off mid-sentence at 0:52:15; no disposition recorded anywhere. See flag 3.
not reached on the recording	IV.3. Optimizing Board Effectiveness and Collaboration/Communication with Administrative Team (Discussion) — led by Chair H. Whitney; Review of School Board Retreat Goals	Agenda: "3. Optimizing Board Effectiveness and Collaboration/Communication with Administrative Team (See Exhibits A-E) (Discussion) led by Chair H. Whitney Review of School Board Retreat Goals Exhibit F." The largest governance item of the meeting, and there is no record of it whatsoever. Its five exhibits are in the packet: ethics policy BCA, board–superintendent relationship BDD, administration in policy absence BFE, board–employee communications BHC, and the NHSBA paper "Roles and Responsibilities for New Hampshire School Boards" — whose opening rule is that "individual board members have NO AUTHORITY beyond that exercised in a board meeting/non-meeting conforming to the requirements of RSA 91-A." Exhibit F, the 2023 board goals, sets five student-achievement, two budget and four climate goals, including a self-evaluation and a commitment statement for the tech centre.
not reached on the recording	IV.4. Volunteers for Collective Bargaining Units	Agenda: "4. Volunteers for Collective Bargaining Units a. Claremont Association of Maintenance and Custodial Employees (mid- September) b. Claremont Association of Secretaries." No exhibit. Board members were to volunteer for two negotiating teams, one of which was to convene in mid-September, within days. No public record exists of who volunteered, or whether anyone did.
not reached on the recording	IV.5. School Board Sub-Committees (Discussion)	Agenda: "5. School Board Sub-Committees (Discussion) Reports by subcommittee chairs if available, consider topics board would like referred to committee for investigation or review." The subcommittee memberships read into the record four weeks later, on October 4, 2023, were: Budget — Crawford, Sprague, Whitney; Capital Improvement — Skillen, Crawford, Miles; tech centre and alternative programme — Sprague, Miles, Crawford; Policy — Skillen (chair), Hawkins, Whitney; Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors — Gallagher (chair) with Nester; NHSBA delegate — Sprague. Whether any of that was settled at this meeting is unrecorded. A school board subcommittee is itself a public body under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) and carries its own notice and minutes duties.
not reached on the recording	IV.6. Non-Exclusive License Agreement With City of Claremont for Use of Athletic Fields — presentation by Mr. Tempesta (Exhibit H)	Agenda: "6. Non-Exclusive License Agreement With City of Claremont for Use of Athletic Fields Introduction presentation by Mr. Tempesta, Superintendent (Exhibit H)." A six-year licence over Monadnock, Barnes and Veteran's Parks, two sets of tennis courts and the Claremont Savings Bank Community Center pool, at $30,000 a year with a consumer-price escalator floored at 2% and capped at 6%, running September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2029. The superintendent, who was to present it, had been on the telephone and left the meeting after his report; the recording never reaches the item; and the licence had already commenced five days earlier. See flag 5.
not reached on the recording	IV.7. Non-Public Session, RSA 91-A:3, II (c)	Agenda: "7. Non-Public Session, RSA 91-A:3, II (c): Matters which, if discussed in public, would likely adversely affect the reputation of any person, other than a member of the school board itself, unless such person requests an open meeting." There is no public record that this session was held, that the motion stating the exemption was made, that a roll-call vote was taken, that minutes were kept, or that anything was sealed or disclosed. The board had entered a nonpublic session under the same paragraph three weeks earlier and sealed those minutes for ten years. See flag 2.
not reached on the recording	V. Other Business · VI. Future Dates/Future Agenda Items · IX. Adjournment	Agenda: "8:20 PM Other Business," "8:25 PM Future Dates/Future Agenda Items," "8:30 PM Adjournment." The listed future dates were the September 20 budget-deadline meeting, the SAU 6 meeting of September 14, a Fred Bramante listening session in the Stevens auditorium the following evening, a board self-evaluation facilitated by the NHSBA on October 11, and the budget calendar — public hearing January 3, ratification January 17, deliberative session February 7, 2024. No adjournment time exists in any record.

Discussion timeline

Chronological, from the dialogue transcript. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording. Quotations are the automatic transcript exactly as recorded; square brackets mark this page's correction and the garbled wording is left visible wherever the correction changes the sense. Quotations attributed to the agenda, a packet exhibit, the August minutes or a statute are from those documents, not from the recording.

Time	Topic	What was said	Flags
0:00:02	Call to order by the vice chair	Frank Sprague, not chair Heather Whitney, opens: "I'd like to call the school board meeting of September 6th, 2023 to order, please." He leads the Pledge. Whitney is in the room — she speaks during the minutes discussion four minutes later — but does not take the gavel until 0:10:28. Nothing on the recording explains the arrangement, and there are no minutes.
0:00:29	Roll call by the special-education director	"Mr. Nestor, could you roll call attendance for us, please? Heather Whitney, Greg Sprague here." Nester continues: "And Bonnie Myles here with me still here. Jennifer Gallagher and is Crawford here? Arlene Hawkins here." Seven names are read. The one-word answers are pooled into the same segment and no individual answer survives. The clerk's seat was vacant all year, which is why a district administrator rather than a clerk calls the roll.	HIGH
0:01:02	The consent agenda is declined in favour of item-by-item votes	Hawkins: "May I ask a clarifying question? Are you looking for a motion for the consent agenda?" Sprague: "No, I'm looking for a motion just on old school tonight. We'll just do item by item." A deliberate choice to separate the agenda approval from the two sets of minutes — which is what allowed the August 16 draft to be tabled on its own a minute later. The agenda motion carried on a voice vote; the seconder was named as Alain, which corresponds to nobody at the table.
0:01:50	August 9 minutes approved	Hawkins: "I move that we approve the eight nine agenda a minutes. Second." Sprague: "Further discussion. All those in favor?" Voice vote, no count, no named seconder. The document approved is in this packet and records the alternative-programme decision of August 9 — a 4–3 vote with every name recorded, the fullest roll of the season.
0:02:16	Hawkins reads three defects in the August 16 minutes into the record	First, an unfinished sentence: "under handbook approval from those minutes. The fourth bullet down… It says the Claremont School Board would like to have Stevens High School in Claremont Middle School handbooks be." The packet copy does end there, mid-clause. Sprague: "I'm trying to recall what we were trying to say there. I think, and I missed the meeting that they were" — he had been absent on August 16, which the minutes confirm. Hawkins: "I did not look at the video from that night, so I don't know. But I think we wanted them coordinated. Or should we wait until we look at the video?"	MEDIUM
0:03:22	A motion whose amendments the minutes never identify	Second defect: "Jen Gallagher makes a motion to approve the handbooks with the amendments that have been proposed by the school board, but the amendments are never identified. Do they need to be as part of the minutes?" Sprague: "Probably should be. Yes." The board then tried and failed to reconstruct its own amendments — "Right. Then what were the adjustments?" / Hawkins: "I don't recall." / an unidentified member: "Are the adjustments those listed in these bullets? Some of them seem like suggestions for." / Whitney: "Them highlighted. And some of them are just circles." The handbooks had been approved as amended three weeks earlier; nobody in the room could now say what the amendments were.	MEDIUM
0:04:43	The August 16 minutes are tabled	Sprague: "Let's, as I said, table this and we'll if you. Arlene, if you could make a note of these and put them to to Chelsea," and at 0:06:13 "if you'd be so kind as to get that to Chelsea early. That'd be great." Hawkins: "I can do that." No motion to table was made and no vote taken. Nothing in the district's public shares shows the August 16 minutes ever being corrected or approved.	MEDIUM
0:04:57	The board's Facebook page: a minute that says the opposite of what happened	Third defect, and the sharpest. Hawkins: "Under Roman numerals. Five other business Claremont school book, school board, Facebook page. No complaints have been received regarding the board Facebook page. I think it's because we removed it. Didn't we do something to it?" Sprague agreed and dictated the fix: "So what I should say is no objections have been received regarding the removal. Of the Facebook. Page of the Claremont Board Facebook page." The page had been taken down as an experiment after the August 2 meeting; the August 16 minute, read literally, reports the absence of complaints about a page that no longer existed. The correction was never filed: the August 16 minutes remain in the district's share in their original wording.	MEDIUM
0:06:20	Citizens' comments — one speaker	"Citizens comments again on non-agenda items. We have any citizens who would like to speak. Andy, come on up." The chair of the tech centre's visioning committee is the only member of the public to address the board all evening. The period is opened and closed in about four minutes.	OBSERVATION
0:06:32	The tech-centre study: a deadline set with the superintendent after delay	"currently serving as the chair of the sugar River sugar River Valley Community Technical Center Committee… back in the spring, the Vision Committee recommended and the board approved the hiring of Southern Regional Education Board as the consultant." On the delay: "In April, district personnel with an interest in the study were notified about the requirements for the data collection. And just due to the volume of what was needing to be done, getting organized took some some time and that caused some delay. By June, it was evident that we had to correct this, and Mike Tempesta and myself met personally to formally set a timeline for the study with a date end date for the data collection phase of August 28th, and we also established biweekly communication meetings."
0:08:38	Seventy per cent of the data, nine days after the deadline	"They believe that approximately 70% of the data is collected, which is is good news. But there's more work to be done over the next week." Next comes an expanded stakeholder round: "the convening of several. And by several, I mean three. Discussion sessions with an expanded group of shareholders made up of people from the community, a roster of which is has been developed and needs to be reviewed and whittled down to people. That would be manageable. There's way too many people on it." Candace Crawford's written question in the packet had asked exactly this — whether the August 28 deadline was met — and the answer given in the room is that it was not.
0:09:52	Newport has not said whether it will take part	"Newport at this time has not indicated their willingness or not to participate in the study. If it's done thoroughly, we really should include information from their facility and an on site visit to their campus, in addition to on site visit from sRGB [SREB] to our campus. Still to be determined." Newport had been formally invited in June and attended one communication meeting. He closes by thanking the board "for the patients [patience] that you guys have exhibited as we work through this process."
0:10:28	Comments closed; the gavel passes to the chair	"Any other citizens that would like to speak? Seeing none. I'll close citizens comments and turn the meeting over to heaven" — the transcript's rendering of the handover to Heather Whitney, and one of the corpus's recurring garbles. Whitney: "Thank you. Discussion item number one. Or is going to be the superintendent's report."
0:10:52	Ninety seconds of failed audio with the superintendent	"We have Michael Tempesta, who is available to us via phone. Mike, can you hear us?" What follows is a full minute and a half of crosstalk — "The volume is low," "The volume muted. You're muted. Mike," "No he's not. He's not unmuted," "But we can't hear him," "It says unmute with a line through it. No. That's us. There you go." The superintendent's report to a public body was audible to the room only after the fourth attempt; nothing in the record indicates how well it carried on the broadcast.
0:11:26	The superintendent's report, in full	"Joining in a living room here. Sorry… So tenants [superintendent's] report the. The biggest thing I would really like to give my heartfelt, appreciation for the administrative team for the opening of school principals. Central office staff. Particularly Mike Kosky [Koski]. Everyone. We had a great opening, and we are almost. We've done an amazing job on hiring." He then explains his absence: "I can't be with you today. I have a very serious family illness that that we're working through." On staffing: "Principal Pratt gets the award for the the amazing hiring job… not to be outdone by Principal Romeo who principal profit to science teachers coming in from out of state and also Chris Romeo just got as a lead on two math teachers" — quoted as recorded. The transcript is conflating the two principals: principal profit is Principal Pratt, profit to science teachers is two science teachers, and Chris Romeo merges Chris Pratt with middle-school principal Frank Romeo. Which principal hired whom is not recoverable from this sentence, and this page does not reconstruct it.
0:13:25	No questions for the superintendent	Whitney: "Does anyone have any questions for Mike?" then, after a pause, "Thank you. Mike." An unidentified voice: "We have no questions." Four of the seven members had put written questions to two administrators for this meeting; none put one to the superintendent, and he does not speak again on the recording — including on the athletic-fields licence the agenda assigned to him at item IV.6.	MEDIUM
0:13:33	Stevens High School update begins — the principal works from the board's own questions	Whitney introduces "Mr. Pratt from principal of Stevens High School to give us a quick update on the happenings of that are going on in the high school and to let us know how the yonder [Yondr] phone initiative is going." Pratt: "I got everyone's questions, so I figured I'd just go right through them. I believe you also have a hard copy of that." And, before starting: "I'll get the questions that the board posed to me and I'll answer is the first thing" — he reads each question aloud before answering it, so a viewer who has not seen the packet still hears what was asked.	POSITIVE
0:14:37	American Sign Language: 76 of 80 seats filled	"we have, seven sections of American Sign Language, and we have a total enrollment of 76 spots filled out of 80. And as of today, it's even higher. So all the sections of full, the lowest section is 18, the highest section is 20, and the maximum enrollment for the Ace [ASL] classes is 20." The packet's answer to Frank Sprague's question gives the same totals in a table — 7 76 80 — with the teacher named as Christopher Rosinski. Pratt adds that most classrooms are now arranged "in a circular or an oval where teachers can. It's more open to conversation with students."
0:15:20	Free and reduced lunch: forms brought to the house if necessary	"we did speak about it at the House meetings with students. We also posted it on the school website, the Facebook. We've emailed all parents." Then, beyond what the written answer promised: "Myself and Courtney will also be putting out email that any parents who can't make it to open house or don't feel comfortable coming to the school, we're willing to bring the forms to them and help them film [fill] out at their house… we're trying to do everything we can to get the word out there and making an easy process, a non-threatening process, and also a confidential process." Open house was set for September 28, 6 to 7.30 p.m. The eligibility count drives state adequacy aid: an additional $2,300 per eligible pupil under RSA 198:40-a as amended for the biennium beginning July 1, 2023.	POSITIVE
0:16:52	Yondr: the state denied the grant, so the vendor gave the product	"initially when I looked into these phone pouches, I submitted a grant, a title grant, and whatever reason, the state didn't approve it. So I had to go back and tell John to [Yondr] saying, under the circumstances, I just don't have it in the budget, to do this. And they said, well, if you're willing to continue with the program, we're willing to because you're the first school in New Hampshire to undertake this, we're willing to grant you, the product and help you out with the process. And that worked out to be probably a little over $11,000." The written answer in the packet puts it at "$11,500 worth of product for being the first school in NH" — the two figures differ, and the packet's is the one in writing.	POSITIVE
0:17:33	How the rollout works	"the rollout with students, faculty and staff, everyone did a great job, especially the students. They come in the morning, all students have pouches. Will they have phones or not? They all have pouches. Some kids don't have phones… They keep the phone pouches on them, so we're not taking them with them. We have a total of five stations in the lobby and another three stations that a portable that myself and the other two and the other two assistant principals were dispersed at the end of the day." The empty pouch has a second function: "it's kind of like, using almost like a student ID to get in the building, whether you have a phone or not."
0:18:52	The stated reason is safety, not attention	"helping and taking away that distraction from education is only second to the reason why we did that and that safe and healthy schools… intruders have been able to locate where students are in the building because phones are going off. They're able to locate where people are in the building because of the social media and posted. It's also when people have phones in the building, they're making calls out there, bringing more people to the area that's unsafe, not allowing to first responders to go about their first priority, which is, getting to the students and and securing the area."
0:20:15	Hall-pass data: ten minutes down to three	"We keep data. We know how long every kid is out of the classroom. We've seen the average time of being out of classroom to ten minutes gone down to like three." And at 0:21:29: "Close to 500 kids. We haven't really had any problems. We have not had, knock on wood, any vaping in the bathrooms at this point." He immediately qualifies it himself: "I'm not saying this is all because of the phones. We're still on that honeymoon period." The measurements are the school's own and were not tested by the board.
0:23:20	Discipline matrix and restorative panels	"with three of us. We've really continued to use the discipline matrix as in a consistent level… I think it really helps with the students where we're seeing that. They're seeing that we're not making different decisions for anyone based on who you are, what you do. It's all same across the board." On restorative practice: student panel members to be recruited and trained by about December, hearing peers rather than judging them — "It's not to say this is what the discipline is… the student leaders on the restorative panel, will listen to what the student said." Last year's example: a bullying and harassment matter resolved with a learning project presented to a health class.
0:25:01	The state telephoned to ask whether the dropout figure was real	"I was told by our registrar that the state called the and wanted to know if our graduation, if our dropout rate was reported accurately because we had such a significant lower dropout rate at the high school." Asked for the number, he could not produce it: "I tried to get the numbers for today, but it was, it was a little difficult. What I can tell you is that our numbers went down at least half of what they were over the previous year." The packet's written answer breaks off in the same place — "Our dropout rate went down so much during the 22-23 school year the state called the SAU to make sure it wasn't reported wrong. We went from" — with no figures after it. Neither the recording nor the packet contains the actual rate.	OBSERVATION
0:26:59	110 degrees on the third floor	"I think the biggest one we have is the heat in the building… I went around today and took temperature and all the classrooms. Right now we're averaging probably around 11:00, 1030 to 11:00 today. The third floor by the windows were 110. The classrooms were 90. And that's not including humidity." Second floor: "you're looking between 88 and 90, without humidity" — with fans running and doors and some windows open. Then, at 0:27:45: "So that's been the biggest challenge right now, is dealing with the heat. I think it's at an unsafe level right now in the building. The air is very stagnant. It's muggy. The walls are actually, you know, sweating." The written answer in the packet, prepared two days earlier, had said only "Only after two days, nothing unexpected at this time." No board member responded, and no motion or referral follows on the recording.	MEDIUM
0:28:26	The principal asks the board for an eight-period day	Reading the question aloud first: "What two things do you see as barriers to improving academic achievement, and what can the board provide policy and resource wise, to rectify the deficiencies you identify? I think one of the things we want to continue to talk about, and I would ask the board support on, is really continue to try to get an eight period scheduled day for the 2425 school year… attendance and truancy are another high priority… that is a domino effect directly tied to student dropout." On phones as the third barrier: "in the past, phones have been a huge problem learning, causing classroom disruptions, instruction, lack of instruction, lack of social interactions, harassment and bullying takes place if something happens in the school." The written answer is blunter on truancy than the spoken one: "I just don't have any idea how the board could support in addressing the problem."
0:29:42	Vacancies, and the guidance department	"right now we're still looking like any school, some power educators [paraeducators] and some special educators. And we still have one guidance counselor position to fill. But beyond that, I think we're in pretty good shape… We hired a new guidance counselor, Haley Haley Berlin, and she's doing a great job, along with, Mimi Rhines." The written answer to Arlene Hawkins is the same but plainer: asked whether all high-school vacancies are filled, the single-word answer in the packet is No, followed by "One school Counselor and a few Special Education teachers and para's."	OBSERVATION
0:30:48	The contingency built for science classes that nearly did not open	"right up until I think. Two weeks before school, we still had two science teachers and a council [counselor] in position to fill… I spent a lot of time working with the River Valley Community College in regards to what could they do to help us out… We can even find a way to get ninth grade, online instructional time through RVC [RVCC], the sciences. And, we built into the schedule, you know, if we needed to that upperclassmen could actually go to the college and take their classes and freshmen would be, in the building with a person monitoring the online classes." The teachers were hired about a week before school and, at 0:31:33, "We're still waiting for two of those science teachers to start sometime next week" — with a study-hall position funded in the interim, "it wasn't budgeted it. We had the money in there."	OBSERVATION
0:32:14	Scheduling conflicts: music against high-level academics	"we have power. School runs about $100,000 of difference of scenarios in regards to maximize and school scheduling based on what we put in for, restraints in the system" — the packet's written version reads "PowerSchool runs 100,000 scenarios to maximize student scheduling," so the dollar sign is the transcript's, not the principal's. "The past years, there's been a lot of restraints put in… We took out a lot of those restraints. So there are always some students who must make a choice between two classes." The proposed fix is an independent-study route inside extended learning opportunities: "we don't really have, the extended learning opportunities for independent study in some areas."
0:33:55	An eight-period day, costed only in outline	"I'm actually I'm tomorrow going to start working on creating an eight period schedule and power scheduler and power school to see what it looks like. So we're not waiting to the last minute." The shape: "45 minute periods, eight periods 45 minutes long. We'll have two lunches. We still have the advisory. We still have four minutes of changing time." What the board would have to decide: "if we decide to go with the period schedules, what does that look like in regards to how many classes kids must take to be fully enrolled?" His own recommendation is seven of eight. Asked at 0:36:15 whether there were budget requirements in high-school budget prep: "Not as of today… I not as of yet have I had any conversations with superintendents [the superintendent] of myself in regards to the budget."
0:37:25	Board discussion: unsolicited praise for the phone policy	Candace Crawford: "Of the community have approached me and said they are delighted at the policy for the phones." Pratt: "It's good to hear you don't hear that." Crawford: "That's why I'm saying it… I mean, it was totally unsolicited, and, people said, we think it's a great idea." A second member at 0:37:49: "I hadn't realized that children going for lunch and and they were all quiet because they were on their phones, and the interaction is just opening their eyes." The same member then asked the only critical question of the report — "were there any classes that have to be dropped in the last couple of years?" — and got: "we didn't not offer any because of teaching. It was just because that's how the schedule kids were scheduled."
0:39:04	Sprague asks for a student representative	"Get us a student rep for the board. If you could." Pratt: "We can do that." The seat had been empty since the start of the school year; the agenda prints the heading with no name under it. Sprague then confirmed what an eight-period day means: "when you say period days, that's. Is that seven classes plus lunch is out" — Pratt: "That's including lunch, eight periods, including lunch. Because one of the pairs, two of the periods are longer."
0:39:26	The chair asks what the pouches will cost next year	Whitney: "I have one question and one comment for next year's funding for the pouches. What do you anticipate and how will that." Pratt: "The price isn't going to be as much… I'll find a way to work it into the budget… if there are pouches that are damaged unintentionally, we send, the company comes in, we give them to them, and they give us more." And at 0:40:01: "it's not a high cost now that the initial investment has been made with no cost to the taxpayers. So next year should be a very minimal cost." No figure was given and none was pressed for.	POSITIVE
0:40:21	The chair restates the dropout figure as a percentage	Whitney: "my comment is hearing that the dropout rate as reported to the state is down 50%." Pratt: "Yeah, that's that's my understanding when I said, can I have an idea of what that means? So it was significant." He then redirects the credit: "I want to thank my staff in my administration because I'm only as good as them. I look at myself as a systems manager. They're the ones on the ground doing the work." The 50% figure is the chair's paraphrase of "at least half"; no underlying number appears in any record of this meeting.	OBSERVATION
0:41:16	Middle-school alignment, and whether the vendor would extend the grant	Whitney asks about schedule alignment with Claremont Middle School — "no, because I really just right now I'm just doing the initials getting, like the the punch list down" — then the more consequential question at 0:41:55: "do you think that yonder would be willing to give a grant if we decided this should happen in the middle school?" Pratt: "I could ask them… with the first school in New Hampshire, the first school in New Hampshire to to have yonder I know, a lot of schools in Massachusetts do it. I think the entire state of Rhode Island does it, Connecticut does it. And so they're trying to get up in this area. So this is a big selling point." He adds that the tech centre had already adopted the pouches.	POSITIVE
0:43:27	Two publicity proposals, and the chair holds them for outcome data	One member: "Since we're the first, town community in New Hampshire to have this and to get the word out to to other parts of the state. Wouldn't it be a good idea if we contacted WMUR? And so they do that segment about the yonder in Claremont, and it would give us a good name." Another: "would does the New Hampshire School Board Association have a forum for things like white papers or blogs? Because to me, this. Yeah. The Stevens High School case study with yonder seems like a really great topic for a white paper." Crawford adds Plymouth and Keene teacher-education programmes. Whitney declines to move yet, and gives a reason worth recording: "I think most impactful will be to see if it has a bump, see academic achievement right at the end of the year… if we see a bump that we can make a direct alignment."
0:46:06	A constituent's question about Chromebooks, relayed and answered	Whitney: "I did have a constituent citizen reach out and say that they were waiting for Chromebooks to go out. Is there anything we can tell the community about that today?" Pratt: "I checked on that today, and, we're we're right on schedule. We had planned on getting all the Chromebooks out by the end of the week, or actually had a schedule. I think all the Chromebooks will finish being passed out today… the kids go into the Chromebooks, they're not going to be penalized for not being able to access some of their stuff at home." A small exchange, and a model of what the public-comment and constituent-contact channels are for.
0:46:58	Alternative programme update: one student in, about seven expected	Whitney introduces "the alternative program update from Mr. Ben Nester, Director of Special Education." Nester: "the program we discussed several weeks back is operational. We have we have one student starting this week… I believe Chris is thinking, is that within the next two weeks, the program will be, we'll have roughly seven students in it at that point." Then a fact the board did not follow up: "There's a there's a small group of students that were identified that the high school team is still attempting to locate. They haven't shown up to school yet." One out-of-district student is transitioning back. Lee Malloy, the programme's teacher, is being set up in space upstairs at the tech centre, and Nester offers the board a tour after the meeting.
0:48:22	The chair asks that the written answers be read into the record	Nester offers a choice: "I can certainly go through each item. Or if you had a chance to review ahead of time. I can answer questions or offer clarity on any of the, the items I responded to. Whatever your pleasure is." Whitney: "I think it's important that the community here is what said yes. So, if you would just you don't need to do word by word for word, but if you could paraphrase what the questions were." Here is what said is the transcript's rendering of the chair saying the community should hear what was said. It is a deliberate choice to put the packet's written exchange onto the public record rather than leave it to be looked up.	POSITIVE
0:49:15	The charter school: capacity, enrolment, and an unsigned memorandum	"there was a question about the charter school and the potential of the the new program, the academy, we're calling it being housed at the charter school. This is something that we've we've discussed internally, but not something we've formally approached the charter school about." On capacity, at 0:49:41: "the charter school has set a cap for themselves at 20 students this at present time, due to lack of staffing to support the full 40 students that they're licensed for. They are licensed for 40 students grades 9 to 12. And last week or the 25th, when we met with the director, they have 13 students enrolled, 12 of which are high school Stevens High School students. And for the students have an IEP" — the written answer reads "Four of these students have an IEP", which supplies the number the transcript loses. The memorandum of understanding with the charter school is "a template… developed by the Department of Bad [Education] and other stakeholders… We're going to have that signed and you know, on file with the state" — not yet signed as of this meeting.
0:50:27	What the district owes the charter school	"I just want to offer clarity that the the only obligation the the district has is to provide special ed services to the students in the charter school. That's required. But there is no financial obligation to to fund the school or pay tuition." On the relationship: "we're thrilled that there's a charter school in town. We see them as a partner, not as a competitor." He names Kathy Pellerin and Heather Shepherd as people he already knows. The written answer adds what the spoken one omits — that the district is "in the process of assigning a staff member to work in the charter school to provide special education services to the students with IEPs."
0:51:52	Duplication of effort, conceded — and then the recording stops	Answering Arlene Hawkins's sharpest written question: "There was a question about is there a duplication of efforts, meaning the charter school and the academy. And yes, to some degree, there's there's somewhat of a level of duplication there." His proposed control, in the last words of the recording at 0:52:15: "one of the things that I'll be doing is assessing, along with Chris and his team, assessing the success of the Academy. At the end of the first semester, or if not earlier, I think it's important that we we have some level of, you know, metric on the program, especially as we go into the, you know, 25 budget cycle, in case there are." The sentence ends there. So does the recording, five seconds later, with five agenda items still to come.	HIGH MEDIUM

Items flagged for review

Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the state and federal law in force on September 6, 2023. 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. Twelve flags follow, ordered by severity.

HIGH No minutes of this meeting exist anywhere in the district's public records, and nothing on the record explains why

The Right-to-Know Law is unambiguous about what a public body owes after it meets. Minutes must include the names of the members, the names of persons appearing before the body, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and the final decisions, and "the names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." They must be "promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting" — a draft satisfies this. Nearly three years on, no minutes of the September 6, 2023 Claremont School Board meeting exist in any district share.

The search was two-stage and is described in full in the appendix. The 2023 Meeting Minutes folder runs from 13. CSB Meeting Minutes 8.16.23 directly to 14. CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23. The following packet folder, 21. CSB 9.20.23, carries only the September 20 and October 4 drafts — this district files a meeting's minutes with a later meeting's packet, so that folder is where they would be, and they are not there. Quoted-date searches on the district's shares return nothing. The gap is not a lost file: the district's own sequence number was never issued. This is the second Claremont board meeting of 2023 whose minutes are missing and whose number is skipped — the May 17, 2023 meeting, at which policy BEDH had its first reading, is the other, its numbering running 7 = 5/3, 8 = 6/7, 9 = 6/21.

Which limb, and why. This project grades a missing-minutes finding HIGH where the absence is unmitigated and MEDIUM where the record mitigates it — where someone on tape says the minutes exist elsewhere or are coming, where the body lacked a quorum and transacted nothing, or where the meeting was noticed and packeted and only the minutes are missing. The mitigating limb does not reach this meeting, for three reasons. First, the board transacted business: it approved its agenda, approved the August 9 minutes, and tabled the August 16 minutes — decisions with movers and seconders that the statute requires to be recorded and that are recorded nowhere. Second, this is not a case where a complete recording stands in for the paper: the recording ends after fifty-two minutes on the second of seven discussion items (flag 3), so for items IV.3 through IX there is no record of any kind, minutes or video. Third, nothing anywhere on the record explains the absence — no member says minutes are coming, no one refers to them at the next meeting on the recording, and the district's numbering treats the meeting as though it never happened. On the unmitigated limb, a public body met, transacted business, and produced no minutes. That is a missed statutory deadline.

One consequence runs through this whole page and is stated here once. With no minutes there is no independent check on attendance or on any name. The transcript records that a roll was called and preserves the seven names read, but the members' one-word answers are pooled into a single segment; three members — Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen and Jennifer Gallagher — are named in the roll and are not otherwise identifiable anywhere on the recording. This page therefore does not assert that any of them was present, and does not attribute any unlabelled board voice to a named member.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes: members, persons appearing, subject matter, final decisions, movers and seconders; open to public inspection within 5 business days) — the mover/seconder clause has been in force since 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019, and so applies to this meeting; the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements were added later, by 2025, 112:1, and are not applied here; RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) ("public body" includes any board of a school district "or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto"); 2023 Meeting Minutes folder; 21. CSB 9.20.23 packet folder.

HIGH A nonpublic session was on the agenda, and no part of the record required to accompany one exists

Item IV.7 of the posted agenda reads: "Non-Public Session, RSA 91-A:3, II (c): Matters which, if discussed in public, would likely adversely affect the reputation of any person, other than a member of the school board itself, unless such person requests an open meeting." Every step that must accompany such a session is a public act with a public paper trail, and none of it exists here.

The statute requires that 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," and that the motion be carried by a roll-call vote taken in public. Minutes of the nonpublic session must themselves be kept, and must be "made public within 72 hours of the meeting" unless two thirds of the members present determine, by recorded vote in public session, that divulgence would adversely affect the reputation of a person other than a member, render a proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism. None of that is in the record, because there is no record. The recording stops during item IV.2 and no minutes were ever produced, so the public cannot establish whether the session was held at all, whether a motion naming the exemption was made, who voted, whether nonpublic minutes were kept, whether they were disclosed within seventy-two hours, or whether they were sealed and on what statutory finding.

This is not hypothetical for this board. Three weeks earlier, on August 16, 2023, it entered nonpublic session under the same paragraph, took a roll-call vote to enter and another to return, and then voted to seal those minutes for ten years — a motion the minutes record with a roll call but with no statement of which of the three statutory circumstances the seal rested on. Both records are in this meeting's packet. A dating caution for anyone following that up: the ten-year figure now familiar from RSA 91-A:3, IV, which requires periodic review of sealed minutes, was added by 2023, 189:1 and did not take effect until October 3, 2023 — four weeks after this meeting and seven after the seal. It cannot be applied to either meeting, and the ten-year term the board chose on August 16 was not statutorily driven at the time.

What would resolve this is ordinary: nonpublic minutes, sealed or not, are governmental records whose existence and disposition a citizen may ask about. Nothing in this record shows such a request being made or refused, so no denial is asserted.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (motion must state the specific II exemption on its face; roll-call vote), II(c) (reputation of a person other than a member), and III (nonpublic minutes public within 72 hours unless sealed by 2/3 recorded vote on one of three findings); RSA 91-A:2, II; CSB Agenda 9.6.23, item IV.7; draft CSB Meeting Minutes 8.16.23, item 7. Not applied, for vintage: RSA 91-A:3, IV (added 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023).

MEDIUM The recording ends mid-sentence at fifty-two minutes, on the second of seven discussion items

The dialogue transcript's last row ends at 0:52:47 with Ben Nester's unfinished clause, "especially as we go into the, you know, 25 budget cycle, in case there are." The project's copy of the Cablecast recording is 0:52:52 long, so the audio itself stops about five seconds later. This is not a short meeting that finished early: the agenda ran from 6:30 p.m. to a scheduled 8:30 p.m. adjournment, and the four neighbouring Claremont board meetings in this corpus run 2:02:29 (July 19), 2:40:14 (August 2), 1:14:26 (August 16) and 1:20:38 (September 20). Five discussion items, Other Business, Future Dates and Adjournment all fall after the cut.

Nothing in the Right-to-Know Law requires a public body to record or broadcast its meetings, so an incomplete recording is not itself a violation — which is why this is graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH. Its significance is what it does to flag 1. A missing set of minutes is sometimes mitigated by a complete video record; here the video record stops during the second of seven discussion items, so the two absences compound instead of offsetting. The items lost are not minor: the board's own governance-and-communication discussion built on five policy exhibits, volunteers for two collective-bargaining teams (one convening within days), the subcommittee round, a six-year municipal licence, and a nonpublic session.

Two honest caveats. First, this page has tested the project's archived copy of the show, not the Cablecast stream; whether the stream carries anything beyond 0:52:52 was not tested, and a reader can check in one click from the Recording link above. Second, the cause is unknown — an encoder failure, a truncated capture and an early end to the broadcast are all consistent with what is here, and nothing in the record distinguishes them. What can be said is that the district's own agenda and minutes templates promote the CCTV Channel 8 broadcast as the way "Citizens without access to CCTV 8" follow the board, and that for this meeting the archived broadcast is not a substitute for minutes.

Sources: Cablecast show 15286; Output/Dialogue/15286 SchoolBoard090623.mp4.CSV (257 rows, last row ends 0:52:47.70); Input/Videos/15286 SchoolBoard090623.mp4 (3,172.77 s = 0:52:52, measured with ffprobe); RSA 91-A:2 (no recording requirement; minutes requirement); CSB Agenda 9.6.23.

MEDIUM The policy governing public comment was packeted for adoption against no agenda item, and its adoption line is still blank

Exhibit G in this packet is BEDH, Public Comment and Participation at Board Meetings, marked "Second Read" — four pages setting out who may address this board, for how long, on what subjects, in what manner, and on what grounds the chair may cut a speaker off. It is the policy a citizen has to satisfy in order to be heard.

The agenda has no item for it. The posted agenda cites Exhibits A–E against discussion item IV.3, Exhibit F against the retreat-goals review, and Exhibit H against item IV.6. Exhibit G appears against nothing. The recording never reaches any item after IV.2, and there are no minutes, so no public record shows whether BEDH was read a second time, amended, adopted or deferred. The copy in the packet is itself unresolved: its history block reads "First reading: May 17, 2023 Second reading/adopted:" with the second line empty, and its footer says "Last modified May 2023."

The first reading compounds it. The May 17, 2023 meeting is the other 2023 Claremont board meeting with no minutes in any share and no number in the district's sequence. So both readings of the district's public-comment policy — the one that created it and the one that would have adopted it — sit in documentary gaps. A resident who wants to know when this policy took effect, and in what form, cannot find out from the district's records.

This is graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH because the underlying legal failure is the missing minutes already flagged, and because notice under RSA 91-A:2, II attaches to the meeting rather than to a final agenda — a body may take up business its agenda does not list. The gap is still real and specific: RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to record "final decisions," and the final decision on the rules governing public participation in this district was never recorded. For what it is worth on the other side, the board was plainly working on the policy in good faith, and the document itself is careful (flag 9).

Sources: Exhibit G- BEDH Public Comment and Participation -Second Read.pdf; CSB Agenda 9.6.23; RSA 91-A:2, II (notice; minutes must record final decisions); RSA 189:74 (school board public comment period; 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022).

MEDIUM A six-year, $30,000-a-year licence was brought to the board for "introduction" five days after it had commenced and after the first payment had been made

Exhibit H is a signed-form licence agreement between the City of Claremont and New Hampshire School Administrative Unit #6 over Monadnock, Barnes and Veteran's Parks, the Monadnock and Moody Park tennis courts and the Claremont Savings Bank Community Center pool, for the named Stevens and Claremont Middle School teams. The commercial terms: "The Initial Annual Fee for this non-exclusive license shall be Thirty Thousand Dollars ($30,000.00)," escalating each October 1 by the Northeast CPI-U with "an annual upward adjustment in the Annual Fee of a minimum of two percent (2%) per year with all upward adjustments to the Annual Fee capped at a maximum of six percent (6%) per year." Term: "This license shall commence on September 1, 2023 and shall continue until August 31, 2029."

Three dates matter. The agreement is executed "on this ____day of August, 2023" — the day is blank in the packet copy. The term began September 1. The agenda brought it to the board on September 6 as an "Introduction presentation by Mr. Tempesta, Superintendent." And the fee clause records, in a parenthesis, that the first payment was already gone: the escalator applies to "the Initial Annual Fee ($30,000.00) as well as the application of the sum derived from the Consumer Price Index… (that the School District has already provided to the City)."

The relevant control is straightforward. A district treasurer "shall pay out the same only upon orders of the school board." No board vote authorising this licence or its first payment appears in either set of draft minutes in this packet — the August 9 and August 16 meetings — and the agenda for this meeting describes the item as an introduction rather than an action. This page does not assert that no authorising vote was ever taken: earlier 2023 meetings were not searched exhaustively for it, and such a vote may exist. What can be said is that the item reached the board framed as new information after the obligation had attached, and that the recording never reaches it, and that no minutes exist to record what the board did with it.

Two drafting points a reviewer should not miss, recorded as observations rather than findings. First, the parties. The licensee is "New Hampshire School Administrative Unit #6, a duly registered non-profit corporation," which the agreement then defines as "School District" throughout — but an SAU is a creature of RSA chapter 194-C whose costs are apportioned among its member districts, while the teams named in the licence are Claremont School District teams and it is the Claremont district, not SAU 6, that holds an annual meeting and appropriates money. Termination clause (c) makes that mismatch operative: "In the event that the School District's Annual Meeting refuses to appropriate the necessary funds for the applicable license fee, this Agreement shall be considered null and void. The School Board of SAU #6 shall… submit as part of its proposed budget to the School District's Annual Meeting… and recommend the appropriation of the applicable annual fee, for every Annual School District Meeting, for the duration of this Agreement." Second, that clause commits a future board to recommend an appropriation every year for six years — a forward commitment that only the district's legislative body can ultimately fund, and one the Claremont School Board itself, as far as any public record shows, never voted on.

Sources: Exhibit H- SAU License for Athletic Fields .pdf the trailing space in the file name is the district's; RSA 197:23-a (treasurer has custody of district money and "shall pay out the same only upon orders of the school board"); RSA 194-C:9 (SAU budget adopted and apportioned among member districts — an SAU has no annual meeting of its own); RSA 32:1 (chapter applies to towns, school districts and village districts; school administrative units are not named); CSB Agenda 9.6.23, item IV.6.

MEDIUM Three defects in the previous meeting's minutes were identified on the record, corrections were promised — and the minutes in the district's share are still uncorrected

This is the part of the meeting that worked, and then did not finish. Arlene Hawkins had read the August 16 draft closely and brought three problems to the table. All three are verifiable in the copy sitting in this packet, and all three are real.

One: a sentence that stops. Under item 5, approval of handbooks, the fourth bullet in the August 16 minutes reads in full: "The Claremont School Board would like to have SHS and CMS handbooks be". Hawkins at 0:02:29: "I think the bullet. The statement was not completed." Two: an approval whose content is unrecorded. The same minutes record "Jennifer Gallagher makes a motion to approve the handbooks with the amendments that have been proposed by the school board; seconded by Bonnie Miles; all in favor via voice vote. Motion approved." The amendments are nowhere enumerated. Hawkins: "the amendments are never identified. Do they need to be as part of the minutes?" — Sprague: "Probably should be. Yes." The board then could not reconstruct them: "Then what were the adjustments?" / "I don't recall." Three student handbooks governing conduct, dress and discipline were adopted as amended, and the district's record does not say in what form. Three: a minute that inverts the fact. Under Other Business the August 16 minutes state "No complaints have been received regarding the Claremont School Board facebook page." The page had been taken down after the August 2 meeting; the sentence read literally reports satisfaction with a page that no longer existed. Sprague dictated the correction on the record.

Two further defects in that document, which nobody raised. Its attendance line reads "Present: Heather Whitney, Arlene Hawkins, Bonnie Miles, Jennifer Gallagher / Absent: Frank Sprague, Candace Crawford" — six of seven members. Whitney Skillen appears in neither list, though the body of the same minutes names her as policy subcommittee chair. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to record "the names of members." And the seal of the nonpublic minutes for ten years is recorded with a roll call but with no statement of which statutory circumstance the two-thirds finding rested on (flag 2).

What makes this a flag rather than a commendation is the disposition. The August 16 minutes were tabled by agreement, with no motion and no vote; Hawkins undertook to send her corrections to the minute-taker; and the version in the district's public share is still the uncorrected one, with the sentence still unfinished and the Facebook entry still saying "No complaints have been received." No corrected version appears in any later folder. Because this meeting produced no minutes of its own, the fact that the corrections were raised at all survives only in the recording.

Sources: draft CSB Meeting Minutes 8.16.23.docx (1) (1).pdf; draft CSB meeting minutes 8.9.23..docx (1).pdf the doubled full stop is the district's; RSA 91-A:2, II (names of members; brief description of subject matter and final decisions; movers and seconders; drafts open within 5 business days); RSA 91-A:3, III (seal requires a recorded 2/3 vote on a stated statutory circumstance).

MEDIUM The principal told the board that conditions in the high school were unsafe, and no response, motion or referral is recorded

Asked what unexpected challenges he had met, Chris Pratt gave the board a measurement and a judgement. The measurement, at 0:26:59: "I went around today and took temperature and all the classrooms… The third floor by the windows were 110. The classrooms were 90. And that's not including humidity," with the second floor "between 88 and 90, without humidity" and that "with the fans open in the doors open in some of the windows open." The judgement, at 0:27:45: "I think it's at an unsafe level right now in the building. The air is very stagnant. It's muggy. The walls are actually, you know, sweating." He explained why ventilation was not clearing it: "the last few nights, we haven't been able to suck the warm air out in the cold air. And because there really hasn't been any cold air."

New Hampshire does not set a maximum classroom temperature by number, so no numeric threshold is asserted here. Two provisions in force in September 2023 nonetheless bear directly on the report. The department's minimum standards for public school approval require a school facility to provide, "Consistent with RSA 189:24, a clean, healthy, and safe learning environment for all areas of the school building, grounds, and school-related activities" and "Exhaust and outdoor air ventilation, proper temperature and humidity conditions in compliance with the state building code as provided in RSA 155-A." RSA 189:24 in turn defines a standard school as one maintained "in a suitable and sanitary building… with suitable provision for the care of the health and physical welfare of all pupils." A separate statutory duty puts the annual assessment in the principal's own hands: the school principal or designee "shall annually investigate the air quality of any schoolhouse or building used for school purposes and report the findings by completing a survey provided by the department of education."

What is flagged is the response, not the heat. A heat wave is nobody's fault and the building is old; Pratt was reporting a problem, not causing one, and his account is detailed and self-measured rather than vague. But on the recording the sentence "at an unsafe level" draws no question, no motion, no referral to the Capital Improvement subcommittee and no request for a follow-up report; the discussion moves on to scheduling. The chair's only reference to it comes later as a courtesy — thanks "for coming after after a very hot, very well busy day" (0:37:07). Because the recording ends before Other Business and no minutes exist, this page cannot say the board never returned to it — only that no public record shows that it did.

Sources: N.H. Admin. Code Ed 306.07(a), School Facilities (clean, healthy and safe learning environment consistent with RSA 189:24; exhaust and outdoor air ventilation, proper temperature and humidity in compliance with the state building code) — the rule was readopted with amendments effective 12-13-2024; the quoted requirements are those NHDOE's own side-by-side revision draft prints in the existing column, i.e. the text in force in 2023, and the numbering Ed 306.07 was the numbering then in use; RSA 189:24 (standard school: "a suitable and sanitary building… with suitable provision for the care of the health and physical welfare of all pupils"; last amended 2011, 42:2); RSA 155-A:2 (state building code); RSA 200:11-a, I (annual air-quality investigation by the principal or designee, reported on a department survey) — the duty dates from 2010, 319:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2011; the section was amended by 2024, 226:7, eff. Sept. 17, 2024, after this meeting, so only the core annual-survey duty is relied on here; RSA 200:11 (investigation of sanitary conditions on complaint; power to require changes).

OBSERVATION Every number the board heard about staffing, licensure and dropout came from the people being reported on, and none of it can be checked against this record

The two administrative reports carry the meeting's substance, and both are self-reported. That is normal and not improper; it is recorded here because with no minutes and a truncated recording, the packet's written answers are the only durable version of these figures, and a reviewer should know what rests on what.

Special-education staffing. Answering Frank Sprague's seventh written question — what percentage of staff working in special education are fully licensed — Ben Nester's packet answer reports that "92.3% of special educators hold an experience or beginning special educator(1900) license," with two staff making up the remainder, "one being a substitute and the other 'in process'"; "100% of related service providers hold the necessary license"; and 93% of paraprofessionals, behaviour specialists and related staff "hold a degree, have the level of education required to fill the position, and/or are certified if required to be so," the remaining 7% being new elementary paraprofessionals working toward the para 2 certification required in Title I schools. Then the figure that stands out: "About 27% of CSD non-professional staff do not hold a DOE recognized certification." Federal law requires the state to establish and maintain qualifications ensuring that personnel are appropriately and adequately prepared, that special education teachers hold full state certification without emergency or provisional waiver, and that paraprofessionals who assist in providing services be appropriately trained and supervised. The reported figures do not on their face establish any violation — trained and supervised paraprofessionals are contemplated by the rule — but 27% is a number that invites a follow-up question, and the recording ends before anyone asks one.

Vacancies. Pratt's written answer to whether all high-school vacancies are filled is one word: No. Still open: one school counsellor, "a few Special Education teachers and para's." Two science positions were filled about a week before school opened, with the teachers "still waiting… to start sometime next week" as of this meeting, and an unbudgeted study-hall position funded to cover them. The district's contingency — Odysseyware course shells with a compensated teacher of record, expanded Running Start seats at River Valley Community College, VLACS for students meeting the criteria — is a real plan, and Pratt described it in detail. Federal law is equally clear that a free appropriate public education must be available to all children with disabilities and that staffing shortages are not an exception to it, which is why the special-education vacancies in particular are worth tracking forward.

The dropout rate. This is the one figure the board repeated back as a statistic, and it does not exist in any record of this meeting. Pratt: the state "called the and wanted to know if our graduation, if our dropout rate was reported accurately because we had such a significant lower dropout rate," and "our numbers went down at least half of what they were over the previous year." The chair restated that as "the dropout rate as reported to the state is down 50%." The packet's written answer breaks off before the numbers — "We went from" — and no figure follows. A district's own reported statistics are the basis on which state and federal aid is released; the underlying counts are recoverable from NHDOE's published data, and are simply not in this record. The hall-pass measurement ("ten minutes gone down to like three") and the vaping observation are in the same category: school-generated, uncontested, two and a half days into the year, and qualified by the principal himself as being inside a "honeymoon period."

Sources: 34 CFR 300.156 (personnel qualifications: (a) SEA must establish and maintain qualifications; (b) related services personnel and appropriately trained and supervised paraprofessionals; (c) full state certification for special education teachers, no emergency or provisional waiver); 34 CFR 300.101 (FAPE available to all children residing in the State between the ages of 3 and 21, inclusive); RSA 189:28 (statistical reports to NHDOE; state and federal aid withheld until complete and accurate information is submitted); Questions for B. Nester CSB Meeting 9.6.23; Questions for C. Pratt CSB Meeting 9.6.23.

OBSERVATION Public comment ran about four minutes and was announced as being for non-agenda items only; the policy in the packet is better drafted than most, with two clauses worth a second look

Since September 6, 2022 — one year to the day before this meeting — a New Hampshire school board must "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 "the public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes." The same paragraph lets a board request but not require advance registration, apply uniform time limits and other reasonable standards applied evenly, and reasonably restrict comments that would disclose student or teacher personally identifiable information or other confidential material.

Here the period opened at 0:06:20 and closed at 0:10:28 — about four minutes, one speaker, closed on "Seeing none." Nobody was turned away, no time limit was imposed, and the board's own policy reads the thirty minutes as a floor on the opportunity rather than a required dwell: BEDH paragraph B.3 has the chair close the period "after there is no response to the Board Chair's vocal invitation," and B.4 addresses only the opposite case, where thirty minutes have elapsed and people are still waiting. Whether the statute's thirty minutes constrains the opportunity or the elapsed time is not settled by its text, so no violation is asserted. What is worth recording is the framing: the invitation was "Citizens comments again on non-agenda items," and no separate comment period on agenda items was opened, though the meeting ran two substantial reports. The statute speaks of comment on school district matters without that limit, and BEDH itself contemplates comment on agenda items — paragraph B allows comment "on agenda items or any other District matters," and B.6 gives a speaker a further three minutes on an agenda item following board discussion of it.

The policy is careful, and that deserves saying first. Restrictions on school-board public comment are litigated, and the ones that fail are bans on speech because of the attitude it expresses. The Sixth Circuit struck down a school board's prohibitions on antagonistic, abusive and personally directed comment as viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum, holding that the antagonistic restriction "by definition, prohibits speech opposing the Board," while upholding the same board's preregistration requirement as a valid time, place and manner rule. BEDH contains none of those three terms. Its speech restriction is confined to "Defamatory statements, comments threatening bodily harm, or other unprotected speech," which is drawn on the constitutional rather than the civility line, and its disruption provisions — shouting, speaking out of turn, obstructing others' view, refusing to stop when time expires — are content-neutral.

Two clauses invite scrutiny. Paragraph B.10 defines "the public" as Claremont residents, district employees, district parents, guardians or students, and news media, and then provides that "Others may speak at the discretion of the Chair or by a majority vote of the Board." Residency-based preferences in a limited public forum are commonly upheld; a residual category resting on the presiding officer's unguided discretion is the part that carries risk, because a licensing standard with no criteria is the classic constitutional problem. Paragraph B.8 excludes anonymous written comment and gives a statutory reason for it: "Anonymous written comments will not be accepted as part of public comment as RSA 91-A:2, II requires that meeting minutes include the names of persons appearing at public meetings." That statute does require the names of persons appearing before the body — but a person submitting a writing is not a person appearing, and the section imposes no duty to reject unsigned correspondence. The exclusion may well be sound policy; the citation offered for it does more work than the text supports.

Sources: RSA 189:74 (school board public comment period, no less than 30 minutes; 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022); RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes to include the names of persons appearing before the public body); Exhibit G- BEDH Public Comment and Participation -Second Read.pdf; Ison v. Madison Local School District Board of Education, 3 F.4th 887 (6th Cir. July 7, 2021) (school board public-comment bans on antagonistic, abusive and personally directed speech are viewpoint discriminatory in a limited public forum; preregistration upheld as a time, place and manner rule); City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., 486 U.S. 750 (1988) (a licensing scheme vesting unbridled discretion in an official over speech is constitutionally suspect).

POSITIVE Board members put their questions in writing beforehand, the administrators answered in writing, both documents went into the public packet, and the chair had the answers read aloud

Two of the thirteen documents in this packet are things most districts never publish. Questions for C. Pratt CSB Meeting 9.6.23 and Questions for B. Nester CSB Meeting 9.6.23 collect the questions individual board members sent in during the three days before the meeting, each attributed by name and timestamped, with the administrators' answers set out beneath them — the Nester document notes at the top that "Answers in GREEN." Arlene Hawkins, Candace Crawford, Heather Whitney and Frank Sprague each contributed; four of the seven members did preparation that a resident can now read.

The effect on the meeting is visible. Pratt worked the list in order and read each question aloud before answering it, saying so explicitly — "I'll get the questions that the board posed to me and I'll answer is the first thing" — so that a viewer without the packet still heard what had been asked. When Nester offered to skip the recitation because members had the document, the chair declined at 0:48:34: "I think it's important that the community here is what said yes. So, if you would just you don't need to do word by word for word, but if you could paraphrase what the questions were." The transcript garbles the phrase, but the point is unmistakable and it is the right instinct: a packet document is not on the public record in any practical sense until it is spoken at the meeting.

Two things this practice is not, since both are worth ruling out. It is not a superintendent search. Michael Tempesta was Superintendent of SAU 6 at this meeting and remained so until January 2024; Chris Pratt was principal of Stevens High School and Ben Nester was Director of Special Education, and each document is headed as that administrator's report — the Pratt file's own subtitle is "Stevens High School Principals Report September 6, 2023." And it is not deliberation outside a meeting. New Hampshire prohibits a public body from deliberating on matters within its jurisdiction outside a properly held meeting, and forbids communications outside a meeting, "including, but not limited to, sequential communications among members of a public body," from being used "to circumvent the spirit and purpose of this chapter." What these documents show is members putting questions to staff and staff answering — a request for information, not members exchanging positions with each other, and the substance was then taken up in open session. The board's own ethics policy in the same packet points the same way, asking members to "Make decisions only after full discussion at public Board meetings." Nothing here shows a decision being made anywhere else.

Sources: Questions for C. Pratt CSB Meeting 9.6.23; Questions for B. Nester CSB Meeting 9.6.23; Exhibit A- BCA Ethics Policy Statement.pdf; RSA 91-A:2-a, I and II (deliberation only in properly held meetings; communications outside a meeting, including sequential communications, must not circumvent the chapter; 2008, 303:4, eff. July 1, 2008); RSA 91-A:2, I (the statutory definition of a meeting).

POSITIVE A programme the state declined to fund was delivered at no cost to the district, and Claremont was almost two years ahead of state law

The Yondr rollout reached the board with its financing already explained, which is not the usual order. Pratt: "I submitted a grant, a title grant, and whatever reason, the state didn't approve it. So I had to go back and tell John to [Yondr] saying, under the circumstances, I just don't have it in the budget, to do this. And they said… because you're the first school in New Hampshire to undertake this, we're willing to grant you, the product and help you out with the process." The value: "a little over $11,000" on the recording, "$11,500 worth of product" in the written answer. He returned to the point unprompted when the chair asked about next year: "it's not a high cost now that the initial investment has been made with no cost to the taxpayers," with damaged pouches replaced by the vendor.

Three features of the handling are worth naming. The stated purpose was put on the record before the results were: the safety rationale at 0:18:52 — that phones reveal student locations to an intruder, draw crowds toward an unsafe scene and impede first responders — came before any claim about attention or grades. The claims were qualified by the person making them: "I'm not saying this is all because of the phones. We're still on that honeymoon period," two and a half days into the year. And when two members proposed publicity — a WMUR segment, an NHSBA white paper — the chair declined to move yet and gave a reason that is essentially about evidence: "I think most impactful will be to see if it has a bump, see academic achievement right at the end of the year… if we see a bump that we can make a direct alignment." Declining free publicity until you can show an outcome is a defensible instinct and the record should say so.

The timing is the striking part. New Hampshire had no statewide requirement of this kind in September 2023. A standalone bill to require cell-phone-free schools, HB 781 (2025), was vetoed on July 7, 2025; the bell-to-bell requirement that now applies statewide arrived instead through that year's budget trailer and took effect July 1, 2025 — nearly two years after Stevens acted, and by then the school had already run the model, absorbed the operational lessons and extended it to the tech centre. This page does not state a codified RSA section for the statewide requirement, having verified the bill history and the reporting but not a codification.

Sources: Questions for C. Pratt CSB Meeting 9.6.23 (Yondr grant, $11,500 of product, first school in NH); N.H. HB 781 (2025), vetoed July 7, 2025; reporting, cited as reporting and not as law: New Hampshire Bulletin, "As schools implement ban on cellphones, the differences are in the details" (Sept. 19, 2025) (bell-to-bell requirement enacted in the budget trailer, effective July 1, 2025; Yondr pouches among the storage methods districts chose) and New Hampshire Bulletin, June 19, 2025.

POSITIVE The free-and-reduced-lunch drive was designed around the reasons families do not apply, and offered to bring the forms to the house

The board had made meal-application collection a district campaign at its August 16 meeting, where the business administrator set an October 1 deadline and described a QR code, a mailing and a prize drawing. What Pratt reported here goes further than the written answer in his own packet document, which lists only house meetings, the website, Facebook, email and forms at open house. Spoken, at 0:16:10: "we're really going to do what we can to make sure that students feel comfortable enough to fill out the forms will be there to assist them. Myself and Courtney will also be putting out email that any parents who can't make it to open house or don't feel comfortable coming to the school, we're willing to bring the forms to them and help them film [fill] out at their house." And on the design principle: "we're trying to do everything we can to get the word out there and making an easy process, a non-threatening process, and also a confidential process. And I know sometimes open houses aren't the most confidential, but we're hoping to have it in spot where families can come in and feel safe to do so."

Two reasons this matters beyond goodwill. First, money: eligibility drives differentiated adequacy aid, which for the biennium beginning July 1, 2023 was an additional $2,300 per eligible pupil on top of the $4,100 base — figures enacted by 2023, 79:150 and therefore the correct text to quote for a September 2023 meeting. Under-collection is a direct revenue loss to a district that spent much of this season discussing money. Second, confidentiality is not merely a courtesy: information on a household's meal application is protected by federal law, and a process that treats stigma as a design problem rather than an applicant's failing is the practical form of that protection.

One vintage note for a reader comparing this to today. The Community Eligibility Provision, the alternative that lets a high-poverty school serve all meals at no charge without individual applications, required a minimum identified-student percentage of 40% when this meeting was held; the reduction to 25% took effect on October 26, 2023, seven weeks later. The individual-application drive described here was the tool available at the time.

Sources: RSA 198:40-a (cost of an adequate education: $4,100 base plus $2,300 for each pupil eligible for a free or reduced price meal; amounts enacted by 2023, 79:150, eff. July 1, 2023, for the biennium beginning July 1, 2023); 42 U.S.C. §1758(b)(6) (confidentiality of information on free and reduced price meal applications); RSA 189:28 (statistical reports; aid withheld pending complete and accurate submission); 88 Fed. Reg. 65778 (Sept. 26, 2023), effective Oct. 26, 2023 (CEP minimum identified student percentage lowered from 40% to 25%) — the 40% floor governed on the date of this meeting; draft CSB Meeting Minutes 8.16.23 (Mary Henry's application drive; October 1, 2023 deadline).

Appendix — source files

Official and public sources

Remote video: Claremont School Board Meeting 9/6/23 (Cablecast show 15286) — the project's archived copy runs 0:52:52 and stops mid-sentence during agenda item IV.2, with five discussion items, Other Business, Future Dates and Adjournment still to come (flag 3).
Packet folder: 20. CSB 9.6.23 — 13 documents: the agenda, Exhibits A through H, two sets of board questions with written administrative answers, and the August 9 and August 16 draft minutes.
Minutes: none exist. Verified 2026-08-28 by a two-stage search. Stage one, this meeting's own packet folder 20. CSB 9.6.23: holds the 8.9.23 and 8.16.23 drafts and no 9.6.23 minutes. Stage two, the district's dedicated 2023 Meeting Minutes folder, which runs 13. CSB Meeting Minutes 8.16.23 to 14. CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23 with no entry between, and the following packet folder 21. CSB 9.20.23, which carries only the 9.20 and 10.4 drafts — this district routinely files a meeting's minutes with a later meeting's packet, so that folder is the second place they would be. Quoted-date searches across the district's shares return nothing. See flag 1.
Adjacent meetings on this project: Claremont School Board — August 2, 2023 (handbooks, adequacy aid, and the decision to take down the board's Facebook page) and the next meeting, Claremont School Board — September 20, 2023 (Cablecast show 15311), for which minutes do exist — 14. CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23.docx.pdf, and whose page is now built: Claremont School Board — September 20, 2023, at which this meeting's minutes were postponed for want of a draft and never returned. The two meetings whose minutes this board handled here are Claremont School Board — August 16, 2023, whose draft minutes were tabled at this meeting, and the August 9, 2023 meeting, whose draft minutes were approved here; both drafts are in this packet.
Also not located: no minutes exist for the May 17, 2023 board meeting either, at which policy BEDH had its first reading — searches on that date in every format return nothing, and the district's minute numbering skips it (7 = 5/3, 8 = 6/7, 9 = 6/21). Two of the 2023 Claremont board meetings have no minutes at all, and both readings of the public-comment policy fall in those gaps (flag 4).

Packet documents

Names are reproduced exactly as they appear in the district's Drive folder, including the trailing space in "Exhibit H- SAU License for Athletic Fields .pdf", the doubled full stop in the 8.9.23 minutes file, and the duplicated parentheticals. The oddities are the district's, not this page's.

CSB Agenda 9.6.23 — gives the location, the 6:30 p.m. start, the board and central-office rosters, a "Student Representative" heading with no name, and the item structure used in the agenda table above. Its roman numerals run I–VI then jump to IX. It cites Exhibits A–E at item IV.3, Exhibit F for the retreat goals and Exhibit H at item IV.6; Exhibit G is cited nowhere.
Questions for C. Pratt CSB Meeting 9.6.23.pdf — subtitled "Stevens High School Principals Report September 6, 2023 C.Pratt, Principal". Written questions from Frank Sprague, Heather Whitney and Arlene Hawkins with the principal's written answers, an ASL enrolment table naming teacher Christopher Rosinski, and the Yondr grant figure of $11,500. The dropout answer breaks off at "We went from" with no numbers.
Questions for B. Nester CSB Meeting 9.6.23.pdf — "Answers in GREEN." Questions from Arlene Hawkins, Candace Crawford, Heather Whitney and Frank Sprague, each with the date and time it was sent, and the special-education director's written answers: charter-school capacity and enrolment, the five proposed measures of the new programme's success, four elementary self-contained programmes serving 24 students with 4 teachers and 11 staff, and the licensure percentages discussed at flag 8. The document names the new programme the FLY Academy.
Exhibit A- BCA Ethics Policy Statement.pdf — eleven ethical provisions adopted November 15, 2006, including "Make decisions only after full discussion at public Board meetings" and the recognition "that no individual member has authority to speak or act for the entire Board, except as specifically designated to do so by Board action."
Exhibit B- BDD Board - Superintendent Relationship.pdf — adopted June 2, 2004, reviewed December 19, 2018: policy-making is the board's primary function, execution the superintendent's, and delegation "frees the Board to devote its time to policy-making and appraisal functions."
Exhibit C- BFE Administration in Policy Absence.pdf — adopted June 2, 2004, reviewed December 19, 2018: in the absence of policy the superintendent may act, but "his/her decisions shall be subject to review and ratification by action of the Board at its regular meeting," and it is the superintendent's duty "to inform the Board promptly of such action and of the need for policy."
Exhibit D- BHC Board - Employee Communications (Also GBD).pdf — adopted June 2, 2004, reviewed December 19, 2018: all staff communications to the board go through the superintendent; board members visiting schools inform the superintendent and arrange through principals; and "discussions of personalities or personnel grievances by either party will be considered unethical conduct."
Exhibit E- Roles and Responsibilities of NH School Boards.pdf — a New Hampshire School Boards Association paper. Its fundamental rule: "individual board members have NO AUTHORITY beyond that exercised in a board meeting/non-meeting conforming to the requirements of RSA 91-A, the New Hampshire Right to Know law… When the meeting is adjourned, that power is gone." Also: "the school board governs the district, while the Superintendent manages it," and "the role of a school board is not to run the schools, but to see that they are run well." The extracted text of this PDF begins with a line of scanning noise where the NHSBA logo sits.
Exhibit F- Claremont School Board 2023 Goals.pdf — five student-achievement goals (including piloting the alternative programme in SY 23-24 with findings reported to the board in May or June 2024, and a board statement of commitment to the tech centre), two budget goals (every programme to carry at least one quantitative metric; out-of-district placements to fall by 50%), and four climate goals — one of which is to "Start each Claremont School Board meeting with an affirmative belief statement to school communities." This meeting opened with the Pledge and went straight to the roll; no belief statement is on the recording.
Exhibit G- BEDH Public Comment and Participation -Second Read.pdf — four pages, footed "Last modified May 2023", history block reading "First reading: May 17, 2023 Second reading/adopted:" with the adoption line blank. Legal references: the First Amendment, RSA 91-A:2, RSA 91-A:3, RSA 189:65 VII and VII-a, RSA 189:74 and RSA 644:2. See flags 4 and 9.
Exhibit H- SAU License for Athletic Fields .pdf — the City of Claremont / SAU 6 licence: six named venues, $30,000 initial annual fee with a CPI-U escalator floored at 2% and capped at 6%, term September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2029, executed "on this ____day of August, 2023" with the day left blank. See flag 5.
draft CSB Meeting Minutes 8.16.23.docx (1) (1).pdf — tabled at this meeting and, as far as the district's public shares show, never corrected or approved. Four members recorded present, two absent, one unaccounted for; an unfinished sentence under item 5; an approval of handbook amendments the minutes never enumerate; a nonpublic session sealed for ten years with no stated statutory finding; and "seconded by Jennier Gallagher". See flag 6.
draft CSB meeting minutes 8.9.23..docx (1).pdf — approved at this meeting. All seven members present; the alternative-programme decision recorded with a full 4–3 roll and every name; nine members of the public recorded by name and ward, among them "Andy Lafrienere (Ward 3) & a member of the Visioning Committee", the entry on which this page's identification of the citizens'-comment speaker rests.

Project files (relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/)

Dialogue transcript: Output/Dialogue/15286 SchoolBoard090623.mp4.CSV (257 rows; last row ends 0:52:47.70)
Diarized transcript: Input/Transcripts/15286 SchoolBoard090623.mp4.json
Video file: Input/Videos/15286 SchoolBoard090623.mp4 (0:52:52)
Meeting/document map: Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md (§ 20)

Laws and rules cited on this page

Right-to-Know: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (a school district board "or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto" is a public body); RSA 91-A:2 (I, definition of a meeting; II, notice, and minutes recording members, persons appearing, subject matter, final decisions and the names of movers and seconders, open to inspection within 5 business days); RSA 91-A:2-a (deliberation only in properly held meetings; communications outside a meeting, including sequential communications, not to circumvent the chapter; 2008, 303:4, eff. July 1, 2008); RSA 91-A:3 (I(b), motion stating the specific exemption and roll-call vote; II(c), reputation of a non-member; III, nonpublic minutes public within 72 hours unless sealed by recorded two-thirds vote on a stated finding)
Public comment: RSA 189:74 (school board public comment period, no less than 30 minutes; 2022, 333:1, eff. September 6, 2022 — one year to the day before this meeting)
School money and reporting: RSA 197:23-a (treasurer pays out district money only upon orders of the school board); RSA 194-C:9 (SAU budget apportioned among member districts); RSA 32:1 (municipal budget law applies to towns, school districts and village districts; school administrative units are not named); RSA 198:40-a (cost of an adequate education: $4,100 base, $2,300 free-or-reduced, $2,100 special education, $800 English learner — these amounts were enacted by 2023, 79:150, eff. July 1, 2023 for the biennium beginning that day, so the current statutory text is the right one to quote for a September 2023 meeting; it is not the right text for a meeting earlier in 2023); RSA 189:28 (statistical reports to NHDOE; aid withheld pending complete and accurate submission)
School buildings and health: RSA 189:24 (standard school maintained "in a suitable and sanitary building… with suitable provision for the care of the health and physical welfare of all pupils"; last amended 2011, 42:2); N.H. Admin. Code Ed 306.07, School Facilities (the numbering in force in 2023; the part was readopted with amendments effective 12-13-2024, and the quoted requirements are those NHDOE's own side-by-side prints in the existing column); RSA 155-A:2 (state building code); RSA 200:11 (investigation of sanitary conditions on complaint) and RSA 200:11-a, I (annual air-quality investigation by the principal or designee — the duty dates from 2010, 319:1, eff. January 1, 2011; the section was amended by 2024, 226:7 after this meeting)
Federal: 34 CFR 300.156 (IDEA personnel qualifications); 34 CFR 300.101 (FAPE available to all children residing in the State between the ages of 3 and 21, inclusive); 42 U.S.C. §1758(b)(6) (confidentiality of free and reduced price meal application information, with criminal penalty for unauthorised disclosure); 88 Fed. Reg. 65778 (Sept. 26, 2023), eff. Oct. 26, 2023 (CEP minimum identified student percentage lowered from 40% to 25% — the 40% floor governed on the date of this meeting)
Case law: Ison v. Madison Local School District Board of Education, 3 F.4th 887 (6th Cir. 2021) (school-board public-comment bans on antagonistic, abusive and personally directed speech are viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum; preregistration upheld as a time, place and manner rule); City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., 486 U.S. 750 (1988) (a licensing scheme vesting unbridled discretion in an official over expressive activity may be challenged on its face)
Legislation cited for timing, not applied to this meeting: N.H. HB 781 (2025), vetoed July 7, 2025 — the standalone cell-phone bill that failed; the statewide bell-to-bell requirement arrived instead in the 2025 budget trailer effective July 1, 2025, per the reporting cited at flag 11. This page states no codified RSA section for that requirement.
Expressly NOT applied, for vintage: RSA 91-A:3, IV (periodic review of sealed nonpublic minutes; added by 2023, 189:1, eff. October 3, 2023 — four weeks after this meeting, so it governs neither this meeting nor the August 16 seal); and the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements added to RSA 91-A:2, II by 2025, 112:1.