SAU 6 Board — November 9, 2023

MEDIUM The minutes name a mover or a seconder the recording contradicts in four of the night's motions, and three of those names belong to a member with no attributed speaking row at all

The rule. RSA 91-A:2, II, as it stood on this date: "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." That clause has been in force since 2018, 244:1, effective January 1, 2019. The minutes here do name a mover and a seconder for every motion — which is more than several other bodies in this corpus manage — so the concern is not omission but accuracy.

The four. On the October minutes: the minutes say "Rocco Ruggeri moved to approve the minutes as amended; Jennifer Gallagher seconded", where the recording has Gallagher moving (0:08:36) and the chair answering "I'll second Jen" (0:08:38) — an identification made aloud, by name, in the room. On the policy subcommittee: the minutes say "Heather Whitney moved to nominate those three … Frank Sprague seconded", where the recording has a full-sentence motion from Marjorie Erickson naming all three appointees (0:23:11) and the chair saying "I'll second here" (0:23:25). On policy GBE and on the objectives and key results, the minutes name Rocco Ruggeri as seconder both times; the transcript labels both one-word seconds Jennifer Gallagher (0:21:03, 1:00:43). On adjournment, the minutes name Sprague and Simpson; the transcript attributes the motion to the superintendent (1:02:14) and the second to an unidentified voice.

How much weight the transcript can carry. Not much on its own, and this page does not treat it as decisive. Rocco Ruggeri has no attributed speaking row anywhere in this 334-row file, so a one-word "Second" in his voice would have had nowhere to land except in a neighbouring cluster; six of the twelve members are in the same position. But two of the four are different in kind: the minutes-approval pair and the policy-subcommittee pair each rest on a full sentence plus the chair naming the person aloud in the next breath, which is independent of how the diarizer clustered anything.

The mitigation, and it is a real one. These minutes were produced by a clerk appointed four minutes into the meeting they record — her first night, and the first meeting in this corpus with a clerk at all. The December 1 copy is signed "Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, SAU#6 School Board Clerk". Against that, the same document itemises the agenda vote by name, ten in favour and one abstention, so the capacity to record a vote precisely was there.

Continuity. The same pattern was flagged at July 13, flag 6 and August 17, flag 8, when there was no clerk at all.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — names of members who made or seconded each motion).

MEDIUM A motion was made, seconded, debated for two minutes and withdrawn — and the minutes record only the motion that replaced it

What happened. At 0:02:24 the chair moved "We accept the nomination of Noel Cronenberg as our school and Claremont school board clerk", and a second follows in the same breath. The superintendent objects on jurisdiction (0:02:35, 0:02:39); the chair says "So we will withdraw that motion and make a new motion" (0:02:45); the room spends two minutes working out why (0:02:51 to 0:03:58); and only then, at 0:04:05, does the chair move the appointment to the SAU 6 clerk's post alone. Two motions, one withdrawal, and a substantive change of scope between them.

What the minutes say. One motion: "Arlene Hawkins made a motion to appoint Noelle Kronberg; Atonya Hart seconded", under which it lists "discussion on clarification of which boards this position is for", the superintendent’s clarification "that Unity has their own clerk and this clerk is for Claremont and the SAU6 board", and "vote unanimous". The clarification is recorded; the withdrawn motion is not, and neither is the fact that the motion the board voted on was narrower than the motion it started with.

Why it matters. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to record the names of the members who made or seconded "each motion" and "a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions". A reader of these minutes cannot tell that the board was one vote away from purporting to fill a Claremont elected office, nor that it stopped itself. That is the most creditable thing the board did all night (see flag 15), and the minutes lose it.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — each motion; subject matter discussed and final decisions); RSA 671:33, II(a).

MEDIUM A member asked the October minutes to record why the board was not following the superintendent's contract or its own policy; the wording adopted was narrower, and he said so on the record

What was asked for. Twice, in the member's own words: "the discussion that we had as to why we're not following the superintendent's contract or our approved policy on the topic" (0:07:02), and "a discussion pertaining to, the methodology being followed, the current methodology being followed by the school board not aligning with the superintendent's contract or the policy that was approved" (0:07:33).

What was recorded. The chair reformulated it live, with the superintendent supplying the missing word: "a discussion about the board vote to suspend" (0:08:06) "The superintendent evaluation. Does that say it?" (0:08:12). The member's reply is on tape: "It's a little whitewash, but I'll accept it" (0:08:21). The minutes carry the chair's version — "there was a discussion pertaining to a vote to suspend the superintendent evaluation" — and not the member's.

Why it matters. The two formulations are not the same. The adopted one records that a vote was discussed. The requested one records an allegation that the board's own methodology was not aligning with the superintendent's contract and an adopted policy — policy CBE, which this board voted on August 17 to suspend "In light of the fact the Superintendent has not been evaluated in a timely manner", per the October 12 minutes' own amendment of the August 17 minutes. RSA 91-A:2, II requires "a brief description of the subject matter discussed". Nothing in the statute entitles a member to dictate wording, and the board adopted the amendment it adopted; the concern is that the narrowing happened on camera, was named as a narrowing by the person who asked for it, and is invisible in the document that survives.

Nine weeks later this board terminated the superintendent, so the completeness of the contemporaneous record of the evaluation dispute is not a small matter.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — brief description of the subject matter discussed); district policy CBE, SAU Superintendent Evaluation and Goal Setting, cited as the board's own rule and not as law.

MEDIUM The October 12 minutes reached this packet folder twenty-eight days after that meeting, and the meeting itself has no recording, no agenda and no folder anywhere in the district's shares

The rule. RSA 91-A:2, II: minutes "shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting", business days being 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday excluding national and state holidays.

The date evidence. _SAU 6 unapproved School Board Agenda minutes 10.12.23.docx (3).pdf was created in Drive on November 9, 2023 at 8:27 a.m. — twenty-eight calendar days and roughly nineteen business days after the October 12 meeting, and about ten hours before the meeting at which they were approved. The file name still calls them unapproved.

The limits of that evidence. A Drive creation timestamp records when a copy entered this folder, not necessarily when the minutes first became open to inspection; the (3) in the file name implies earlier copies existed somewhere. The SAU 6 share does contain a folder 13. SAU 10.12.23 in its 2023 Meeting Packets archive, inventoried by this project on 2026-08-28 and listed there among the SAU 6 folders for which no recording exists; its contents have not been opened, and Drive title searches on 10.12.23 return nothing. So an earlier posting cannot be located from here, and it cannot be excluded either. This is graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH on that ground: the minutes exist and are in the public record, and only the timing is in doubt.

The October 12 meeting itself. It was a two-hour-ten-minute regular meeting — called to order 6:30, adjourned 8:40 — at which the board approved three sets of minutes, amended the August 17 minutes to record the suspension of policy CBE, took a first read of policy GBE, approved changes to the exit-interview form, and recessed "to confer in a non-meeting with legal counsel". It has no Cablecast recording in this project's map and no separate agenda in any district share; the only account of it anywhere is the minutes document filed here. The board's own agenda states that its meetings are "Audio Broadcasted on CCTV Channel 8", and no statute requires a recording, so the absence of one is not itself a defect — but it means the amended text approved on November 9 cannot be checked against anything.

And the amended text does not exist. The board approved the October minutes as amended (0:08:36). The only copy in any share is the unamended one. The same problem was flagged at July 13, flag 5.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — minutes open to inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting); RSA 91-A:2, I(b) (consultation with legal counsel is not a meeting).

MEDIUM The entire public packet folder, agenda included, was created about ten hours before the gavel, so nothing in the public record evidences the notice RSA 91-A:2, II requires

The rule. RSA 91-A:2, II: "a notice of the time and place of each such meeting, including a nonpublic session, shall be posted in 2 appropriate places one of which may be the public body's Internet website, if such exists, or shall be printed in a newspaper of general circulation in the city or town at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings."

What the record shows. The Drive folder 14. SAU 11.9.23 was created on November 9, 2023 at 8:27:02 a.m. Three documents — the agenda, the policy GBE draft and the October 12 minutes — were created within the same minute, twenty-one seconds after the folder; the agenda's own creation stamp is 8:27:23 a.m. The draft objectives and key results the board voted on landed at 4:26 p.m. the same day, about two hours before the meeting. The board's agenda is the only document in the folder that carries the time and place.

What that does and does not prove. It does not prove late notice. Nothing requires an agenda or a packet to be posted in advance at all, and the statutory notice may have been posted in two appropriate places a day earlier without leaving a trace in Drive. What it does establish is that the district's own public record of this meeting cannot demonstrate compliance — a citizen checking whether 24 hours' notice was given finds a folder created on the morning of the meeting. The same finding was made at July 13, flag 13, where the folder's agenda was last modified seventeen minutes before the gavel; on August 17 the packet went up two days ahead, which is what the practice can look like.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — 24 hours' posted notice in 2 appropriate places).

MEDIUM The budget summary now filed in this meeting's folder was printed three weeks after the meeting, and the one percentage the minutes record appears in neither that document nor the recording

The document. Proposed SAU6 FY25 Budget Summary.PDF in the November 9 folder bears the footer "Printed: 11/30/2023 9:27:09 AM" and the header "From Date: 11/1/2023 To Date: 11/30/2023". It was created in Drive on November 30, 2023, twenty-one days after the meeting. A copy was filed in the December 7 packet folder on December 1 as SAU6 FY25 Proposed Budget (1).PDF — byte for byte the same file, 20,902 bytes. The document in this meeting's folder is the December 7 meeting's document, back-filed.

Why that is not a technicality. The first substantive item of this meeting was an eleven-minute review of a budget summary the public cannot now see. Three of the business administrator's figures reconcile exactly to the filed document — the $66,000 health-insurance swing (0:10:40) against a $66,912.97 decrease, contracted services from $5,000 to "around 25,000" (0:12:29) against $5,000 to $25,000, and utilities up 10% and property insurance up 25% (0:12:54) against 10.00% and 25.00%. One does not: "the total of that was $188,000 is in the business line" (0:11:37), where the filed document shows the business-office function rising $176,915.33. That is the signature of a later revision, and it means a reader cannot check the meeting against the paper.

And the minutes' own number is unsourced. The minutes say "Mary Henry presented a summary of the budget and noted a 5.6% increase". No 5.6% figure appears anywhere in the recording; the percentages she actually gives are 5.7% for health insurance, 4.7% for dental and 5% for the proposed SAU wage increase (0:09:21, 0:09:52). The filed document's own bottom line is different again: FY25 proposed $2,590,674.91 against an FY24 budget of $2,396,000.00, an increase of $194,674.91 or 8.12%. Whether the 5.6% is a mishearing of 5.7%, a figure from a superseded draft, or a total from a document nobody has, the public record does not say.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions); RSA 194-C:9 (2023 codification — SAU budget adopted before January 1); the packet's own budget summary.

MEDIUM The Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee met the superintendent again immediately after adjournment, off camera — the third such meeting in five months with no notice, agenda or minutes anywhere

What the record contains. Two sentences. "Right after this meeting. Right after this meeting. That's great. Perfect. Everybody's here" (0:24:33), and, after the gavel, "I know that it's going to be a meeting after this in one of the other classrooms, am I correct?" (1:02:20). The minutes record only that the subcommittee "is moving forward with goals and process, meeting with Superintendent Tempesta and David Ryan". The meeting is not on the agenda, has no separate notice, and produced no minutes in any district share.

Why the subcommittee is covered. RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) defines "public body" to include "Any legislative body, governing body, board, commission, committee, agency, or authority of any … school administrative unit … or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto." The trailing clause is what reaches this body. It was elected by the SAU 6 board on August 17, has a named chair on the agenda, reports to the board monthly, and is engaged with a paid facilitator. RSA 91-A:2, II's notice and minutes requirements apply to it as to the parent board.

The pattern. This is the third documented instance. The subcommittee met the superintendent on or about July 19 with no record (July 13, flag 9); it was rebuilt on August 17 four weeks after that meeting (August 17, flag 7); and here it convenes in an adjoining room the moment the cameras stop, with the superintendent and the outside facilitator both present.

The mitigation. Both mentions are on the public record, from the chair, on camera; nobody concealed that the meeting was happening. That, and the absence of any evidence that a quorum of the parent board attended, is why this is graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH. The unmitigated part is that five months of a superintendent-evaluation process now rest on a body that has left no public record of a single one of its meetings — nine weeks before that superintendent was terminated.

Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (public body includes any committee, subcommittee or subordinate body thereof); RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — notice and minutes).