Claremont School Board — September 20, 2023 | The tax-rate primer, and a set of minutes that never came

Participants

Everyone in the record. Name spellings follow the official minutes and the agenda's own rosters; where the automatic transcript renders a name differently, the row says so. Attendance is taken from the minutes' roll, which the recording corroborates. Rows marked *listed, not heard* appear on the agenda's central-office roster but do not speak on this recording.
Name	Role	Participation
Frank Sprague	Vice Chair, Claremont School Board — presiding; chair, Budget subcommittee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee representative	Ran the whole meeting in the chair's absence: I'd like to bring the Claremont School Board meeting for September 20th, 2023 to order, please (0:00:16). Asked Nester for the roll, opened the agenda amendments with one of his own — the NHSBA delegate slot, which he had been given as an SAU 6 appointment and which he correctly identified as a district appointment instead — and then abstained on the amendment that put his own nomination on the agenda (0:04:33). Moved the nonpublic session, moved the ten-year seal, and reordered the agenda so the business administrator could present early: I appreciate that Mrs. Henry can't stay with us for the whole evening tonight (0:05:07). Later seconded Hawkins's motion to nominate him (flag 11), gave the meeting's longest single piece of testimony — his account of Claremont's 2012 competency rollout under the same state figure now proposing the minimum-standards rewrite (1:01:50) — and closed by declining to run the future-dates item in detail. 103 of 512 transcript rows. The transcript renders his abstention as So Frankenstein's for ice, this corpus's standard garble for “So Frank abstains, four ayes”.
Arlene Hawkins	Board member (elected March 14, 2023); Chair, SAU 6 Board; Policy subcommittee	The meeting's most active member — 92 rows and every substantive motion but two. Opened the student-board-member point from a document she had shown the presiding officer before the meeting; delivered the first read of policy GBE in the policy chair's absence, paragraph by paragraph, distinguishing existing language from the new grey-shaded language and identifying which came from board members and which from the New Hampshire School Boards Association; moved its first read; asked the superintendent for the city's actual field-maintenance costs; and wrote out and read the motion postponing the minimum-standards listening session. Pressed the pre-kindergarten staffing answer to a number and got Nester's it would be disingenuous for me to say that we're 100% quiet — the last word is garbled in the transcript and this page does not guess at it. Also the member who asked whether the board could lawfully appoint a district clerk (flag 12). Her surname reaches the roll call as Carly Hawkins.
Candace Crawford	Board member (appointed July 19, 2023); Budget subcommittee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee	Put three items on the agenda herself at 0:01:51: the Eagle Times article, the listening session, and the field-use licence with the city — and every one of the three became a substantive item. Said of the listening session, before any of it was debated, I don't have enough information about what I'm supposed to be listening to or asking about, and reported that a meeting the administration had led in Plainfield the previous night was very helpful in preparation to listening to these changes on minimum standards. Gave the SRVRTC Visioning Committee update from a conversation with its chair that day. On the field licence supplied the institutional memory nobody else had: I know that it's been in place for at least 30 years, and I know that $30,000 does not even begin to pay for all costs that are involved (0:55:29). Moved the adjournment. The presiding officer calls her Candy; the superintendent, Candice.
Jennifer Gallagher	Board member (elected March 14, 2023, one-year seat); chair, Curriculum subcommittee and Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors subcommittee	Asked the two sharpest procedural questions of the night. First, on the student board member: when do those elections take place? and whether the statutory description had been referenced for the position so students know what they're signing on for (0:10:17). Second, on the policy motion: Did you motion to accept it or to move it to second reading? (0:45:58) — the question that the October 4 meeting turned into a formal correction to these very minutes (flag 6). Also supplied When in doubt, roll call when the board hesitated over whether the seal vote needed one, reported the first meeting of the disruptive-behaviours committee, mapped the November-panel-then-January-session timetable against the state's March deadline, and used Other Business to advertise the vacant clerk's post. Moved the return from nonpublic session.
Bonnie Miles	Board member; chair, Capital Improvement subcommittee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee representative	Reported the Capital Improvement subcommittee's forthcoming walkthrough of Stevens High School with the maintenance director — We are going to see Stevens High. School next Wednesday afternoon at 2:30, open to any member who wanted to come (0:42:57) — and noted that the visit had been moved because Skillen, a committee member, was away. Then made the meeting's quietest useful intervention: I've noticed that we don't have Candy Crawford in our visioning committee listed. So if we could have Chelsea for that, put that in there (0:48:27) — a correction to the public record of subcommittee membership, made on the record. The October 4 minutes carry the corrected roster. She seconded the GBE first read per the minutes; on the recording that second is not separable from Hawkins's own voice (see the method footer). 14 rows.
Heather Whitney	Chair, Claremont School Board; Budget subcommittee	Absent. Recorded absent in the minutes and unanswered in the roll, which the transcript renders Craig. Ivan. Whitney. Referred to twice from the chair — I'll let Chair Whitney do that when she comes back — and once by Crawford, asking that the field-licence history be summarised for the absent members. Not to be confused with member Whitney Skillen.
Whitney Skillen	Board member; chair, Policy subcommittee; Capital Improvement subcommittee	Absent. Recorded absent in the minutes. Her absence has two visible effects on this meeting: Hawkins presented the policy subcommittee's first read in her place, and the Capital Improvement walkthrough of Stevens was pushed a week — We were going to go this week. But witness the way. And she's on the committee, the transcript's rendering of “but Whitney's away”. Crawford also asked that the field-licence history be put before her: Miss Skilling isn't here tonight and I would appreciate, a summary of the history so that Whitney can hear that and be fully apprized. This corpus renders her name Skillet, Skilling, Gillen and Miss Gillan; two of those appear on this recording.
Michael C. Tempesta	Superintendent of Schools, SAU 6	The single most-recorded voice — 109 rows. Gave the superintendent's report on pre-kindergarten staffing and the Bluff Elementary split classes, answered on the student-board-member vacancy with We should have that already, but I. I'll follow up with Chris Pratt (0:10:08), and carried the municipal field-licence item alone: the meeting with the city manager that afternoon, his own reservations about a six-year term, the missing cost breakdown, and It. It didn't exist in the budget line that we imported in from the budget (0:51:01). On the minimum standards he argued for pushing the session to the spring and disclosed his own footing: when I was deposed for the lawsuit, I had to do crazy crash course on all of this (1:07:34), and separately that I was in another state at that time during Claremont's 2012 competency rollout. Gave contradictory answers on whether the board may appoint a district clerk and referred the question to counsel. Tempesta was superintendent of SAU 6 from July 2019 until the SAU board voted to end his employment in January 2024; he is the superintendent here, and Chris Pratt — whom he names — was in September 2023 the principal of Stevens High School.
Mary Henry	Business Administrator, Claremont School District / SAU 6	Presented twice and left early. The FY23 budget update was brief and candid — about a little over $400,000 of fund balance still showing, with items yet to be moved to grants, possible fiscal-year-22 charges not yet sorted and tuition receipts still outstanding — and ended on the annual financial report: I'm working on it, for the Doe 25. So hopefully I can really start getting started on that. So that's my goal next week is to be into that (0:26:48), nineteen days after the statutory filing date (flag 3). Then the twelve-minute tax-rate walkthrough that is the substance of the meeting: MS-22R appropriations, MS-24R revised revenues, net assessment, the statewide education property tax and adequacy aid, followed by fifteen years of assessment, valuation and rate history (flag 15). Also answered on the failed payroll and the technical centre's unpaid vendor accounts (flag 7). She had been appointed on May 11, 2023 and started in early July — this was her third month. 49 rows. The transcript renders the DRA portal the drey portal and the DOE-25 the Doe 25.
Michael Koski	Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation & Assessment, SAU 6	Gave the VLACS answer, which is the meeting's clearest picture of the staffing hole at Claremont Middle School: there's a shortage of math and science at both seventh and eighth grade; two science and two math posts per grade level are the establishment and seventh grade had one of each; the gap was filled by enrolling students in the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, with account and e-mail problems parents had to verify; and the year was structured so that halfway through the year they'll switch and they each get a half year with a live teacher (0:22:15). Told the board the postings were still up and that a transition plan out of VLACS depended on filling them. 23 rows. Rendered Mr. Kosky throughout; VLACS comes through as Vlachs, Black's and VLS.
Ben Nester	Director of Special Education, SAU 6; the board's de facto secretary	Called both roll calls at the presiding officer's request, the clerk's seat being vacant. Supplied the pre-kindergarten numbers the superintendent did not have to hand — mid 60s children, three-year-olds in the morning and four-year-olds in the afternoon, classes of 15 or a little less, one classroom running on a substitute — and gave the meeting's most carefully hedged answer on whether children's service obligations were being met: our message to families, as is the same message from other districts, is we're making an absolute good faith effort to to hire and meet our obligations. So, so by and large, we are. But it would be disingenuous for me to say that we're 100% quiet. Also produced the one sentence that bears on what the nonpublic session was for: I didn't know how much of this was going to be covered in nonpublic (0:13:04). 17 rows. Rendered Mr. Nestor.
Angela Vivian	Human Resource Director, SAU 6	Listed, not heard. On the agenda's central-office roster and on the minutes' masthead. Does not speak on this recording and is not named in it.
Jeff Small	Director of Technology, SAU 6	Listed, not heard. On the agenda's central-office roster and on the minutes' masthead. Does not speak on this recording and is not named in it.
Chelsea Weatherford	Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent; produced these minutes	Not a speaker, but named four times as the person who maintains the board's paperwork: to add Crawford to the visioning-committee roster, to receive the NHSBA resolutions for the next agenda, and twice in the clerk discussion — the superintendent explaining that Chelsea, who's not a Claremont, has been filling in and that Chelsea's making those calls back to people who had expressed interest in the elected post. She signs these minutes.
Student Board Member	Seat printed on the agenda under Student Representative	Vacant. The agenda carries the heading with no name and the agenda item Student Representative Report produced no report: student rep. Not yet (0:08:58). RSA 189:1-c had required at least one nonvoting student member since January 1, 2023. See flag 2. The October 4, 2023 minutes' masthead changes the heading to Student Board Member — the statutory term Hawkins gave the board here — two weeks later.
Citizens' comments	Public speakers	None. The presiding officer opened and closed the period in a single breath at 0:08:54: Citizens comments. / Seeing none closed. Nobody was turned away and no time limit was announced. See flag 14.
Unidentified voices	Board table and room, not separable by the diarizer	24 rows this page does not attribute. Most are one-word roll-call answers pooled at segment edges, the collective Aye on three voice votes, and the person off-microphone at 0:07:22 saying I'm just recording the timer. Coming back in session. Four are substantive board speech that cannot be assigned: the questions during the field-licence discussion about whether the memorandum runs from this year, who signs it, and the labour of lining and lighting the fields (0:53:00 to 0:54:10), the school-resource-officer parallel at 0:58:15, and the embedded-credits observation at 1:06:29. With five members in the room and no roll-call vote after 0:08:24, none of these can be resolved from the record.

Named in the record but not present: Chris Pratt (principal, Stevens High School — to run the student-member election); Frank Romeo (principal, Claremont Middle School) and Christine Baker, principal of Bluff Elementary, credited with the split-class plan named on this recording only as Principal Baker; the given name is not spoken here; Kristen Lawler, hired as pre-kindergarten director about three weeks after the previous director resigned on August 8; Lori Morey of the business office, on the FY23 reconciliation — a surname this corpus has seen spelled six ways; Steven Holt, maintenance director, host of the Stevens walkthrough called only Mr. Holt here; the full name is from the October 4 minutes; Mr. Pascucci, the restorative-justice lead at Stevens; the SRVRTC Visioning Committee chair, called only Andy on the recording and Mr. Lafriene in the minutes; board counsel Matt Upton, the superintendent's Esquire. Upton; Barrett Christina of the NHSBA, to facilitate the October 11 board self-evaluation; and Fred Bramante, named by Sprague as the figure behind both the 2012 competency rollout and the current minimum-standards review.

Agenda

From the posted agenda, CSB Agenda 9.20.23, with dispositions from the official minutes and the recording. Quoted agenda and minutes wording is from those documents, not from the recording. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text. Two defects in the posted agenda are the district's and are reproduced as posted: the roman numerals run I–VI and then jump to IX for adjournment, and the listening-session reminder is dated 9/21/20203. The board also took Future Dates before Other Business, which Gallagher caught — We saved over other business.

Taken up	Item	Agenda text / disposition
0:00:16	I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance	Agenda: "6:30 PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance." Minutes: "Meeting called to order by vice-chair Frank Sprague." Sprague called the meeting and then led the Pledge himself. No clock time is stated on the recording or in the minutes.
0:00:45	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)." Minutes: "Present: Frank Sprague, Arlene Hawkins, Candace Crawford, Bonnie Miles, Jennifer Gallagher / Absent: Heather Whitney, Whitney Skillen." Sprague: Okay, Mr. Nestor, could you do a roll call? Attendance, please? The whole roll lands in one transcript row and the answers are pooled with it: Craig. Ivan. Whitney. Frank Sprague here. Bonnie miles here. Jennifer Gallagher, present. Carly Hawkins. Here and here. Five present, two absent — one below the seven this board usually seats, and a quorum of four is the minimum. The agenda still calls this a Secretary roll call although the district had no clerk.
0:01:06	II. Consent Agenda — 1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda (vote required)	Agenda: "Consent Agenda (vote required) 1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda." Four amendments were offered. Sprague added his own NHSBA delegate nomination, explaining that the appointment he had been given at the SAU 6 board was the wrong one — that's actually not a district. It's not an essay, you representative. It's a district representative. Crawford then added three: the Eagle Times article of September 16th 17th, the listening session scheduled for the following night, and the licensing agreement with the city of Claremont regarding the field use that came up last time. Sprague numbered them 3A, 5, 6 and 7 on the floor. Motion by Sprague, seconded by Hawkins, carried on a voice vote with Sprague abstaining (0:04:33) — his own words, And I think I'm going to abstain on that one. The minutes record the same and add "Motion passes unanimously," a description that sits oddly with a recorded abstention.
0:05:53	IV.1. Non-Public Session moved to the head of the meeting	Agenda: "1. Non-Public Meeting Session- Title IV Section 91-A-3 I (j) (j) Consideration of confidential, commercial, or financial information that is exempt from public disclosure under RSA 91-A:5, IV in an adjudicative proceeding pursuant to RSA 541 or RSA 541-A." Sprague moved it as printed, citation and all: I would like to make a motion to, go into nonpublic under title for section 91-83. I j. Seconded by Hawkins; roll call at 0:06:41; the board returned at 0:07:30 on Gallagher's motion, seconded by Miles. Sprague then moved to seal the minutes for ten years, seconded by Gallagher, roll call at 0:08:24. Neither the minutes nor the recording records how any individual voted, and no statutory finding is stated for the seal. The cited paragraph is wrong twice over. See flags 4 and 5.
0:08:39	II. Consent Agenda — 2. Minutes Approval, 9.6.23	Agenda: "2. Minutes Approval- 9.6.23 (Postponed)" — the agenda was posted with the postponement already printed on it. Sprague, from the chair: Minutes. Approval postponed. So will we not discussing minutes at nine? Six? Because I didn't see them. Did we get them? Gallagher: I think there's a delay on the minutes. So I think we're postponing them. No motion, no vote — postponed by agreement. The September 6 minutes never returned: the October 4 consent agenda approves only the 9.20.23 minutes, and no 9.6.23 minutes exist in any district share three years later. See flag 1.
0:08:54	II. Citizens Comments	Agenda: "Citizens Comments." Opened and closed in one breath — Citizens comments. / Seeing none closed. No speakers. Nobody was turned away, no limit was announced, and no member of the public is recorded as present. See flag 14.
0:08:58	II. Student Representative Report	Agenda: "Student Representative Report." No student member existed, so there was no report — student rep. Not yet. What followed instead was Hawkins reading the statute into the record: student board members "replaces the student representative or student liaison," elected by the student body, one-year term, and the purpose being that the member can give us a picture of the culture, climate and needs of the school, not just provide a report of what's happening around the district. Gallagher asked when elections take place and whether the description had been published for students; Tempesta answered We should have that already and undertook to follow up with the high-school principal. Minutes record both exchanges. See flag 2.
0:10:44	III. Superintendent Report	Agenda: "6:45 PM Superintendent Report." Minutes: "Superintendent Tempetsa provides an update on the pre-k and current staffing throughout the district," "Discussion regarding the split classes at Bluff Elementary," and "Assistant Superintendent Koski provides an update on how VLACs classes are going at CMS." Framed by Tempesta as picking up questions from an earlier meeting that got missed. About fifteen minutes: the pre-kindergarten director's resignation on August 8 and Kristen Lawler's hiring three weeks later; the plan to embed pre-kindergarten in the elementary schools, prepared and then shelved when a director was found; current pre-kindergarten short by two teachers and a paraprofessional; the Bluff split classes; and the middle-school VLACS arrangement. Discussion only; no motion. The minutes misspell the superintendent's own name in the first bullet.
0:25:35	IV.2. Claremont District Budget Update (Discussion) — Business Administrator	Agenda: "2. Claremont District Budget Update (Discussion) Update from Business Administrator, Mary Henry on FY 2023." Minutes: "Mary Henry provides an update to the board regarding the fiscal year 2023." Two minutes, no handout — I didn't bring you a print out because I, I'm not totally there yet. About $400,000 of FY23 fund balance showing, subject to items still to be moved to grants, possible FY22 charges and outstanding tuition receipts; reconciliation being done with Lori Morey; and the DOE-25 annual financial report not yet begun. Sprague invited questions and there were none. No motion. See flag 3.
0:27:15	IV.3. School Tax Rate (Presentation, Board and Public Education) — Business Administrator	Agenda: "3. School Tax Rate (Presentation, Board and Public Education) Presentation by Business Administrator, Mary Henry How the state and local government sets the school portion of the tax rate." Minutes: "Mary Henry presents the school tax rate to the board. Presentation can be found on the SAU6 website in the 9.20.23 board meeting packet." Twelve minutes against the packet's School Tax Rate slides, delivered as civic education rather than as a decision item — she had circulated it only that day: I got this so late to you today but I was still working on it. The figures and the formula are set out in the timeline below and checked in flag 15. Discussion only; no motion. One statement in the deck and in the presentation misassigns the statewide rate-setting authority — flag 10.
0:40:25	IV.3A. Newspaper article discussion added from the floor	Not on the posted agenda; added by Crawford, who asked for clarification and response. From the administration on the Eagle Times article of September 16 or 17. Sprague put it as unpaid miss payroll and, accounts being turned off and Our inability to purchase. Minutes: "The payroll was made however there was a technical error that caused some delays in getting the checks into people's accounts," and "Some of the bills did not have invoices available but things have been resolved and no vendors have stopped providing products to SRVRTC." About two minutes in total. No motion, no written report requested, no date to report back. See flag 7.
0:42:50	IV.4. School Board Sub-Committees (Discussion)	Agenda: "4. School Board Sub-Committees (Discussion) Reports by subcommittee chairs if available, consider topics board would like referred to committee for investigation or review." Six subcommittees reported in the order printed. The agenda names the chairs: "a) Capital Improvement Committee- Chair Bonnie Miles b) Budget Sub-Committee- Chair Frank Sprague c) Policy Sub-Committee- Chair Whitney Skillen ... d) Curriculum Committee - Chair Jennifer Gallagher e) SRVRTC Visioning Committee Board Representatives F. Sprague & B. Miles f) Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors Committee- Chair Jennifer Gallagher." 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; none of these six has minutes in any district share.
0:42:57	IV.4(a). Capital Improvement Committee — Chair Bonnie Miles	Minutes: "Steven High School visit will take place on Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 2:30PM." The misspelling of Stevens is the district's. Miles reported the walkthrough with the maintenance director, open to any member — usually he meets us at the front door — and that it had been moved a week because Skillen was away. Report only. The October 4 minutes record what the visit found: a replaced roof section and others due, south-side room temperatures and possible solar film, sub-floor installed incorrectly under the newer floors, and a building management system needing replacement.
0:43:39	IV.4(b). Budget Sub-Committee — Chair Frank Sprague	Minutes: "Nothing new to report but the process will begin soon." Sprague from the chair: Budget subcommittee. That's me. Nothing new to report. We're going to be starting that process soon. We saw tonight we were getting some background information on taxes and the budget. Report only. The FY24–25 budget calendar had already been fixed — public hearing January 3, ratification January 17, deliberative session February 7, 2024.
0:43:59	IV.4(c). Policy Sub-Committee — First Read, Policy GBE "Employee Right and Responsibilities" (Vote) (Exhibit A)	Agenda: "c) Policy Sub-Committee- Chair Whitney Skillen First Read Policy GBE 'Employee Right and Responsibilities' (Vote) (Exhibit A)" — the agenda's singular Right is the district's; the policy itself is headed "EMPLOYEE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES". With the policy chair absent, Hawkins presented: a policy that has been part of the Claremont School Board policy book since 2004, revised, with new language shaded grey — the grey in paragraph 1 supplied by board members, the grey in paragraphs 2, 3 and 6 and the closing sentence taken from the NHSBA sample policy. Motion by Hawkins to accept the first read; seconded, per the minutes, by Miles; carried on a voice vote with no count (0:46:10). Gallagher's clarifying question — accept, or move to second reading? — is what the board later corrected the minutes to reflect. Adopted at second read on October 4. See flags 6 and 13.
0:46:22	IV.4(d). Curriculum Committee — Chair Jennifer Gallagher	Minutes: "Meeting will be scheduled soon." Gallagher: The curriculum committee hasn't met yet this school year. Koski added that the office was still getting organized with different initiatives, and Sprague acknowledged the reason without naming anyone: It's tough losing none losing key people. Report only. Context, not asserted from this record: the SAU's curriculum director post had changed hands in August 2023.
0:46:57	IV.4(e). SRVRTC Visioning Committee — F. Sprague & B. Miles	Minutes: "Candace Crawford spoke with Mr. Lafriene (chair of SRVRTC Visioning committee). All information has been submitted to SREB." Crawford reported from a conversation that day: updates sought a fortnight earlier had been clarified and resubmitted, and the committee was waiting on the Southern Regional Education Board's assessment — the ball is in court to give us a report back. Sprague corrected the roster on the record — Actually, there are three of us on that one — and Miles asked that Crawford be added in writing. Report only. The October 4 agenda lists all three.
0:47:55	IV.4(f). Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors Committee — Chair Jennifer Gallagher	Minutes: "First meeting took place a couple weeks ago and went well. They will be bringing some policies forth for review." Gallagher reported a lot of key players, at the table — juvenile justice, building administrators, and the restorative-justice lead from Stevens High School — and that the committee had policies to bring to the board. Report only. No minutes of that first meeting exist in any district share.
0:48:36	IV.5. Nomination for NHSBA Representative added from the floor	Not on the posted agenda; added by Sprague, who explained the SAU 6 board had nominated him for a slot that is a district appointment: We erroneously, it isn't an essay appointment. It's a it's a local appointment. Minutes: "Arlene Hawkins moves to nominate Frank Sprague as the Claremont NHSBA Representative for the October delegate ; seconded by Frank Sprague; no further discussion; all in favor via voice vote; motion passes." Carried on a voice vote with no count, on a second from the nominee (0:49:11). Sprague undertook to send the NHSBA resolutions to the minute-taker for the next agenda so the board could vote them one by one — which the October 4 meeting did, twelve of them. See flag 11.
0:49:29	IV.6. MOU with City of Claremont — athletic fields added from the floor	Not on the posted agenda; added by Crawford as follow-up to the licence introduced on September 6, an item the September 6 recording never reached. Minutes: "Superintendent Tempesta & Mary Henry met today with the City Manager and the new finance director for the city," "they will be working on getting the MOU signed for this school year," Crawford asking for "a summary of the history of this agreement," and "Discussion regarding having a joint meeting with the school board and the City of Claremont." Eleven minutes of substance: the six-year term Tempesta wanted cut to two, the missing schedule of the city's actual costs, the escalation clause Skillen had queried, the conflict-of-interest disclosures because both bodies use the same law firm, and the appropriation. Discussion only; no motion, no vote. See flag 8.
1:00:07	IV.7. Listening Session 9.21.23 added from the floor	Not on the posted agenda, which carried only the reminder "Public Reminder! Listening Sessions 9/21/20203 SHS Auditorium @ 6:30"; added by Crawford. Fourteen minutes on the state's review of the Ed 306 minimum standards and the board's readiness to host public feedback on it the following evening. Motion by Hawkins, read from a written text, to postpone the session; seconded by Crawford; carried on a voice vote with no count (1:14:25). Minutes record the timeline the motion set: "November for admin to host an education session for the board and public to prepare for the Listening Session that would take place in January." See flag 9.
1:14:37	VI. Future Dates/Future Agenda Items taken before Other Business	Agenda: "8:25 PM Future Dates/Future Agenda Items." Ten items printed, from the next night's listening session to a July 2024 review of the cell-phone policy's effect on academic performance. Sprague read a few and stopped: And I'm reading you things that you can read yourself. So, but I don't want to get into too much detail. I'll let Chair Whitney do that when she comes back. Named: the October 4 meeting (Program of Studies, vote on any budget surplus), the NHSBA-facilitated board self-evaluation on October 11, and the October 18 meeting. No motion.
1:15:35	V. Other Business	Agenda: "8:20 PM Other Business." Gallagher: We saved over other business — and then used it to advertise the vacant district clerk's post: $150 a regular meeting, $200 for the deliberative session, three meetings a month per Hawkins, and a registered voter of Claremont. That opened a five-minute exchange on whether an appointee must be a resident, which Tempesta answered both ways and then referred to counsel. Minutes record the advertisement and the qualification but not the confusion. Hawkins closed with the Disnard Elementary open house. No motion. See flag 12.
1:19:59	IX. Adjournment the agenda's numbering skips VII and VIII	Agenda: "8:30 PM Adjournment." Minutes: "Candace Crawford makes a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by Arlene Hawkins; no further discussion. Motion passes. Meeting adjourned." Carried at 1:20:02 on a voice vote, roughly forty minutes ahead of schedule. No adjournment time is recorded in the minutes.

Discussion timeline

Chronological, from the dialogue transcript (512 rows, last row ending 1:20:09). 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, the minutes, the packet or a statute are from those documents, not from the recording.

Time	Topic	What was said	Flags
0:00:16	Call to order; roll	Sprague opens as vice chair and leads the Pledge himself, then asks the special-education director to call the roll — the district having no clerk. The entire roll and its answers arrive in one transcript row: Craig. Ivan. Whitney. Frank Sprague here. Bonnie miles here. Jennifer Gallagher, present. Carly Hawkins. Here and here. The opening name is the transcript's mangling of Heather Whitney's, called and unanswered; Skillen is not audible in the row at all. The minutes settle it: five present, Whitney and Skillen absent. This is the attendance Addendum 4 of the project's attribution briefing predicted for 9/20 — chair and Skillen both away, Sprague presiding — and the minutes confirm it.
0:01:06	Agenda amendments — the NHSBA delegate slot	Sprague opens the amendments with his own: the SAU 6 board had nominated him for a New Hampshire School Boards Association delegate seat that belongs to the district, not the SAU — that's actually not a district. It's not an essay, you representative. It's a district representative — so he asks to put the Claremont nomination on tonight's agenda and probably nominate myself to be the Claremont representative. The transcript renders SAU as essay throughout this corpus.	OBSERVATION
0:01:51	Crawford's three additions	Crawford adds three discussion items and states her reason for each. The Eagle Times article of September 16th 17th, on which she wants clarification and response. From the administration. The listening session set for the following night, which she says got postponed for two weeks and then reappeared — and on which she is blunt: if I were going to be there, I don't have enough information about what I'm supposed to be listening to or asking about. She reports that the administration had led a session in Plainfield the previous night and that people who went said it was very helpful in preparation to listening to these changes on minimum standards, and asks to be educated before Claremont hosts one. Third, the licensing agreement with the city of Claremont regarding the field use that came up last time. All three became substantive items; the third and second produced the meeting's two longest debates.	MEDIUM OBSERVATION
0:04:08	The agenda motion, and an abstention	Hawkins seconds. Sprague asks about the memorandum of understanding — the superintendent says he will cover it in his report — and then puts the question: All those in favor posed. And I think I'm going to abstain on that one. The transcript's next words, So Frankenstein's for ice, are this corpus's standing garble for “So Frank abstains, four ayes” — and four ayes from five present is exactly right. He abstained because the amendment carried his own nomination, which makes the second he gives that nomination forty-five minutes later the harder thing to square. The minutes record the abstention and then describe the motion as passing "unanimously."	OBSERVATION
0:05:07	Business reordered for the administrator	Sprague renumbers the new items on the floor — payroll becomes 3A, the delegate nomination 5, the memorandum 6, and after a query from Gallagher the listening session 7 — and gives his reason for taking the finance items first: I appreciate that Mrs. Henry can't stay with us for the whole evening tonight. So when you get her done as quickly as we can.
0:05:53	Into nonpublic session	Sprague moves the nonpublic session as the agenda prints it, reading the citation aloud: I would like to make a motion to, go into nonpublic under title for section 91-83. I j which is the consideration confidential commercial or financial information that is exempt from public disclosure under Rs 915. Hawkins, before seconding, asks for an assurance on the record — And we will return to public meeting after that — and gets We absolutely will. Roll call at 0:06:41. The citation is wrong in two ways. The Right-to-Know Law sits in Title VI, not Title IV, and the exemption quoted is paragraph II(j), not I(j) — paragraph I is the procedural paragraph that requires the motion to name the exemption in the first place. The text quoted is accurate; the address is not.	MEDIUM
0:07:22	Return to public session	About eleven seconds of recording elapse between the roll call to enter and the return — an off-microphone voice says I'm just recording the timer. Coming back in session. — so the recording cannot show how long the board was in nonpublic, and neither the minutes nor the recording states a time. Gallagher moves to return; Sprague names the seconder aloud, Bonnie seconds, and the minutes agree. Nester reads the roll again.	MEDIUM
0:08:04	Sealing the nonpublic minutes for ten years	Crawford prompts it — Are you going to steal the minutes?, the transcript's rendering of seal — and Sprague moves: Yeah. I'm going to make a motion that we seal the minutes for ten years. Second discussion. Do we need a roll call for seven minutes? Hawkins is unsure whether a roll is needed — I think I think we did that before. I think we think we've done. We're doing okay. Let's do it anyway. — and Gallagher settles it with the best line of the night: When in doubt, roll call. The roll is taken at 0:08:24. No statutory ground for the seal is stated by anyone, and neither the minutes nor the transcript records how any individual member voted. The minutes say only "roll call vote; Motion passes with all saying yes."	MEDIUM
0:08:39	The September 6 minutes are postponed	The whole of it, in two sentences. Sprague: Minutes. Approval postponed. So will we not discussing minutes at nine? Six? Because I didn't see them. Did we get them? Gallagher: I think there's a delay on the minutes. So I think we're postponing them. No motion; no vote; the agenda was posted with "(Postponed)" already printed against the item. They never came. The October 4 consent agenda approves only the 9.20.23 minutes; the district's minute numbering runs 13 = 8.16.23 to 14 = 9.20.23; and no minutes of September 6, 2023 exist in any district share. That meeting's own recording stops after fifty-two minutes of a two-hour agenda, so five discussion items, two bargaining slates, the subcommittee round, a six-year municipal licence and a nonpublic session have no public record of any kind.	HIGH
0:08:54	Citizens' comments	Opened and closed in a single breath: Citizens comments. / Seeing none closed. No member of the public spoke and none is recorded as present. Nobody was turned away and no limit was announced.	OBSERVATION
0:08:58	The student board member — a statute read into the record	The agenda item is Student Representative Report and there is nobody to give one: Seeing none closed. Citizens comments and student rep. Not yet. Sprague says Hawkins had shown him an article and that the title is changing; Hawkins reads the law: It was an essay that was passed affect of January 1st — the transcript's rendering of “an RSA that was passed effective January 1st” — That said that student board members replaces the student representative or student liaison, or just merely providing a student report. They are elected by the student body, serve a one year term, and exist so that the member can give us a picture of the culture, climate and needs of the school, not just provide a report of what's happening around the district. Her account of the statute is accurate.	HIGH
0:10:00	"We should have that already"	Gallagher asks the operative question — when do those elections take place? — and Tempesta answers with the meeting's most consequential sentence: We should have that already, but I. I'll follow up with Chris Pratt. Usually they put it out to faculty and in students. I mentioned it to him in the last meeting. Gallagher then asks whether the statutory description has been published for the position so students know what they're signing on for, and is told That's a good. Thank you. The seat had been required by law since January 1, 2023 — nearly nine months — and the superintendent says on the record that the district should already have filled it. Two weeks later the district's own minutes masthead reads "Student Board Member."	HIGH
0:10:44	Superintendent's report — pre-kindergarten	Tempesta frames the report as picking up questions that got missed at an earlier meeting. The pre-kindergarten director resigned on August 8th; a replacement, Kristen Lawler, was hired in just three weeks, which, frankly, we didn't anticipate. The contingency plan had been to embed pre-kindergarten in the elementary schools — worked out with the principals over the summer, furniture and sites prepared — and was shelved once a director was found: we weren't able to embed it. We thought for sure we would have to do that, but, we had someone fill it. Staffing is short: we're still short a a teacher and a two teachers and a para, against a four-teacher model the district could not afford.
0:13:04	A sentence that bears on the nonpublic session	In the middle of the pre-kindergarten staffing answer, Nester interrupts: I didn't know how much of this was going to be covered in nonpublic. Tempesta replies the just the student student issue was and moves on. This page draws no conclusion about what was discussed in nonpublic session — it cannot, and the minutes are sealed. What can be said is that the exemption the board relied on covers confidential commercial or financial information in an adjudicative proceeding under RSA 541 or RSA 541-A, and that the only clue the public record offers about the subject does not obviously belong to that category.	MEDIUM
0:15:08	Pre-kindergarten by the numbers	Hawkins works the answer to figures and Nester supplies them: Mid 60s children enrolled; two classroom teachers running different sections with a third classroom with a substitute; four days a week, morning and afternoon; the three year olds attend in the morning and then the four year old in the afternoon; class sizes 15 or a little less. Asked directly whether service obligations are being met one paraprofessional short, Nester gives the meeting's most carefully weighed answer: our message to families, as is the same message from other districts, is we're making an absolute good faith effort to to hire and meet our obligations. So, so by and large, we are. But it would be disingenuous for me to say that we're 100% quiet. The final word is garbled in the transcript and is not reconstructed here. Hawkins: I appreciate that. Thank you.
0:16:33	The split classes at Bluff Elementary	Two combined classes, both with senior teachers: a second-and-third-grade class of eighteen — eight second graders. Ten. Third graders — and a fourth-and-fifth of eighteen, ten fourth graders, in that case, an eight fifth graders. Tempesta credits the principal with proposing it after meeting her team, and prices the mitigation: stipends to plan through the year and compensate for the additional load, about 6000 a teacher, which he calls incredibly fair price. The unfilled positions stay in the budget as a buffer and the district keeps recruiting to restore the separate classes. Hawkins tests whether specials and instrumental music survive the merge and gets confirmation from Gallagher, a Maple Avenue parent, that fourth and fifth graders elect an instrument.
0:19:29	Online classes filling a staffing hole at the middle school	Gallagher asks how the VLACS courses are going and Koski answers with the clearest statement of the problem anywhere in the record: there's a shortage of math and science at both seventh and eighth grade. The establishment is two science and two math teachers at each grade level; seventh grade has one math and one science. Students were enrolled with the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School to cover the gap — with some technical issues about getting emails and accounts, and parents had to verify those — and a transition back to classroom teaching depends on hiring: we might be able to fill with extra teachers teaching extra sections. So that we could we can move our way out of the. No advanced mathematics this year beyond an eighth-grade algebra section.
0:22:06	Half a year with a live teacher	Crawford pins down what the arrangement means for a child: Half of the seventh grade have a teacher and half have this program. Koski: And halfway through the year they'll switch. Crawford: Yeah. Koski: So they each get a half year with a live teacher. Asked how parents feel, he does not oversell it: they could only have a half year of science content or a half year of math content, because that's all we had for staff, and what he has heard is positive feedback that people are happy with the creative solutions even though it's not ideal with a teacher in the classroom. Tempesta adds that the licences are held for the full year for any student wanting remediation or acceleration, and that the cost is nil — the alternative products the office reviewed all carried one. Nothing will replace a teacher in front of kids but it's helping.
0:25:40	FY23 fund balance — about $400,000, provisionally	No handout: I didn't bring you a print out because I, I'm not totally there yet. I'm one of those people that likes to be there. The number, hedged four ways: right now, as it stands, is about a $400,000, a little over $400,000 fund balance left in 23. That could fluctuate, because I believe there's some items that need to be moved to grants. The hedges are items yet to be moved to grants, charges that may have belonged in fiscal belong in fiscal year 22, and tuition receipts still outstanding. What she is confident of is cash: general expenses out of the bank accounts are verified Through the work that Lori Morey and I have done. Going back, reconciling stuff and making sure that our, our balance is match up.
0:26:48	The annual financial report is not yet started	The budget update ends on the state filing: But like I said, I'm working on it, for the Doe 25. So hopefully I can really start getting started on that. So that's my goal next week is to be into that. The DOE-25 is the district's annual financial report. Its statutory filing date was September 1 — nineteen days before this meeting — and the plan stated in public is to begin it the following week. Sprague invites questions: So questions for the business manager. There are none, and the board moves on. This is the second state filing deadline this board has passed in 2023: the MS-22 certifying the appropriations voted at the March annual meeting was signed on August 16, 135 days after its own twenty-day deadline.	HIGH
0:27:50	Tax rate, step one — what the district voted	Henry starts from the DRA's own form: this is your miss 22 R which is provided to us from the Department of Revenue after they've gone through all our financials at the end of the year. The starting figure: fiscal year 23, we had $38,139,852 was voted on and appropriated. The packet slide puts it the same way — "Warrant Articles + General Budget = Total Voted Appropriations for the FY 22-23" and "Total Voted Appropriations for the FY 22-23 are $38,139,852". MS-22R and MS-24R are the Department of Revenue Administration's revised appropriation and revenue forms; the transcript renders them "miss 22 R" and "miss 24".	POSITIVE
0:28:59	Step two — revenues, and what the board chose to keep	The MS-24R is your revised estimates of revenues that we turn in right before tax rate setting, the point at which adequacy aid is known and tuition or Medicaid estimates can be adjusted. Then the fund balance: the unassigned fund balance for this year or 22 was $1,712,100. You guys voted to retain 426 for 94. The retained amount is $426,494 and the remainder goes to reduce taxes — the figure the transcript mangles as 1,000,200, 500, $285, $606 resolves to $1,285,606, because $1,712,100 less $426,494 is exactly that. Retention is a board decision, not an automatic one, and $426,494 is well inside the statutory ceiling.	POSITIVE
0:29:35	Step three — net assessment, and the statewide education tax	So your net assessment right off the start before you do any adequacy is 31,000,392 419 — $31,392,419, appropriations less revenues and credits. Then the statewide education property tax: This rate is calculated on an annual basis. And it is set by the Commissioner of Education for 2023. The rate was 1.37783 or $1.38 rounded. The rate figure is right and the deck repeats it; the office named is not — RSA 76:3 assigns the setting of the education tax rate to the commissioner of the Department of Revenue Administration. She describes the arithmetic exactly: they take your amount for your assessment, they divide it by 1000 and then times it by the rate to get to your dollar amount.	OBSERVATION POSITIVE
0:30:02	The statewide tax dollars, and a one-year discount	Now as you can see for that year actually it was only $975 975,000. I'm sorry. This year it's gone back up again because this is a one year deal they gave us. The slide gives the calculation in full: "Claremont ($707,811,780 / 1000) x $1.37783 = $975,244" — and that multiplication is exact. She is also right about the discount: the amount the statewide education property tax was set to raise was cut by $100 million for state fiscal year 2023 alone, from $363 million to $263 million, which is why Claremont's share was unusually low that year and why she warns the board swept again, dropped way down here, but it's gone way back up in 24. So you're going to see a huge spike here.	POSITIVE
0:31:09	Step four — adequacy aid, and what Claremont must raise	The last step. I'm going to say to you that total adequacy aid is 15,000,400, of which you raise 975,000 locally. So really the adequacy you're getting is 14 million from the state. Then the bottom line: the total amount that you're required to raise is 15,992,143. The garbled adequacy figure resolves to $15,400,276 — the difference between the net assessment she has just given and the amount to be raised — which leaves $14,425,032 coming from the state once the locally raised statewide tax is netted off, exactly the 14 million she says. Her summary is accurate to within a rounding: about 50% of your assessment is covered by your amount of money you're getting from adequacy aid. It is 49.1%. This sequence is the statutory formula, which subtracts the education tax warrant from the cost of an adequate education to yield the state grant.	POSITIVE
0:32:04	The rate a taxpayer sees, and the two valuations	Henry moves to the city's rate-setting sheet — it's in the drey portal for me — which adds the municipal, county, local education and state education portions coming you down to 41, 68: a combined rate of $41.68. She explains the two valuation figures the state uses: it's 747 million is the one with utilities and without it's 707, the second being the $707,811,780 the statewide education tax is computed on. "drey" is the transcript's rendering of DRA. A brief exchange with Gallagher about the microphone interrupts, and Henry notes that revaluation is periodic — you have your assessors come in every I think it's five years. They have to by law.
0:32:54	Fifteen years of history — a flat assessment and a falling rate	The part she says she found kind of fascinating. On the assessment: your assessment has been pretty flat since 2017 and 18. From 18 to 23, you guys have only had to raise $111,000 more in your assessment in town, which I find just fascinating because that just is not heard of. And on the rate over the same stretch: your tax rate actually went down by $1.23. On adequacy aid since 2009: about $12 million at the start, then they had changed in the formula. When they changed the formula, they kept the adequacy aid stable, didn't change it for a number of years, spiked it a little bit in 15, but not much. Again stable lawsuit happens, it jumps and it jumps up a lot. But now it comes back down again. On property value: a fall in 2015, a partial recovery, but it's still not at the level that it was in 2013.
0:35:21	"It isn't about the rate"	The point of the whole presentation, stated twice. First: when I talk to people about property taxes and I talk about the rate, the rate isn't what you would be focused on. You be focused on how much you're going to require to to appropriate to fund the school. Then, more plainly: It isn't about the rate. Everybody says, oh my gosh, my rates $41. Well, if you went back in time and this was your values, you'd see it go down this way, which would mean that your property tax rate would be low, but you're still raising the same amount of money. And, from her own town: my tax rate changed this year. And in my town it went it went down substantially because we had a big commercial business coming. So you know, my, my revenue or my assessment went up well. But I'm still raising the same amount of money. Her framing for the board: information, food for thought going into budget season.	POSITIVE
0:38:28	Sprague: the school is not the whole bill	Sprague draws the political inference: people always talk about how high school their property taxes are in. The immediately equate that to the schools. But if you if you look at the municipal and the county tax rates, they're fairly those two numbers combined are fairly substantial. Henry confirms and adds the comparison: Actually you guys have a pretty close amount. Whereas in a lot of towns the school is much higher than the the town is. Sprague then names the misconception he hears from constituents — that a rising assessment leaves the rate unchanged — and Henry corrects it in the other direction. He closes the item with the line that dates his own background: I love this stuff. Which is odd for an English major.
0:40:25	The newspaper article — a payroll that failed	Sprague introduces the item Crawford added, and states the allegations plainly: Regarding unpaid miss payroll and, accounts being turned off. Sure. Our inability to purchase. Henry answers: Okay payroll was not met. We had a glitch in our system where the two programs did not connect, which we did sort out. We did get our file to the federal government in time or the Federal Reserve to get money in everybody's account. By the end of the day. We may have had a few that have credit unions that we could have had issues with. She describes what she did: solutions offered individually, constant contact all day long throughout the day with our employees, calls and e-mails taken. Nobody asked a follow-up question about the payroll.	MEDIUM
0:41:54	The technical centre's unpaid accounts	Sprague prompts the second half — The the accounts, then CTE programing — and Henry gives the district's account of it: we had had some bills that we did not have receipts for that. I under normal circumstances, we do not pay a bill without backup. We were not technically shut off. We could still make purchases. We could be on Cod, but those situations have been taken care of. The one local vendor that I'm aware of. Resolution: By Monday morning, we were all set. And we can purchase. So it was it was a matter of having things match up in our end. Sprague asks whether career and technical programmes can get what they need for students, gets Yep, asks for other questions, gets none, and closes the item. Total elapsed time on both stories: about two minutes. No motion, no written report, no date to come back.	MEDIUM
0:42:57	Capital Improvement — a building walkthrough	Miles: We are going to see Stevens High. School next Wednesday afternoon at 2:30, with the maintenance director — usually he meets us at the front door — and any member is welcome. The visit had slipped a week: We were going to go this week. But witness the way. And she's on the committee, the transcript's rendering of “but Whitney's away”. She expects it to take a while: that's probably going to take like forever because the school is so big compared to the other ones. But it'll be very interesting.
0:43:59	Policy GBE — the first read	With the policy chair absent, Hawkins takes the board through Exhibit A paragraph by paragraph. Provenance first: This is an updating of a policy that has been part of the Claremont School Board policy book since 2004, with revisions shaded grey. Then, unusually carefully, she says where each grey passage came from. Paragraph 1: the opening sentence is existing policy; the rest is new language that has been suggested and recommended by board members to the policy committee. Paragraphs 2 and 3: That's from New Hampshire School Board Association language from their sample policy. Paragraphs 4 and 5 unchanged; paragraph 6 wholly from the association; and the closing sentence should be in gray also. That is new. Her summary: So it aligns with the New Hampshire School Board Association. The board-authored language in paragraph 1 is the substantive change — the policy now states an expectation of physical presence for all contracted days.	OBSERVATION
0:45:42	A motion the board could not quite name	Sprague: So should we vote? We should vote on this at this time. Hawkins: So I'd like to make a motion that we accept the first read of policy g b employee rights and responsibilities. Then Gallagher's question, which is the whole point: I'm sorry. Did you motion to accept it or to move it to second reading? Hawkins offers to restate — Want me to restate it? — and Gallagher declines: No. It's fine. I just wanted to clarify. Sprague puts it: Okay. No discussion. Okay. All those in favor? I opposed. Carried on a voice vote with no count. Two weeks later Hawkins moved to correct these minutes so that the motion "should read that the policy is to move to second read/approval" — and the board approved that correction, and the filed minutes still say "accept the first read."	MEDIUM
0:46:22	Curriculum, and a vacancy nobody names	Gallagher: The curriculum committee hasn't met yet this school year. But keep you updated if we do meet. Koski explains the delay — the office is still getting organized with different initiatives for this for this year — and Sprague acknowledges the cause without naming a person: It's tough losing none losing key people. Koski's reply is one word: Resetting.
0:46:57	The tech centre study, and a roster corrected on the record	Sprague notices the agenda understates the committee: Actually, there are three of us on that one. Crawford reports from a conversation that day with its chair: updates sought a fortnight earlier needed clarification. And those have been resolved and sent back into s rep, and the committee now waits on the Southern Regional Education Board's assessment of the material — right now, the ball is in court to give us a report back. Then Miles asks for the correction to be made in writing: I've noticed that we don't have Candy Crawford in our visioning committee listed. So if we could have Chelsea for that, put that in there. The October 4 agenda lists all three names. s rep is the transcript's rendering of SREB; the committee chair is called only Andy here and Mr. Lafriene in the minutes.
0:47:55	Disruptive behaviours — the first meeting	Gallagher: We had our first meeting a couple of weeks ago. There were a lot of key players, at the table. So we had folks involved in juvenile justice. We had building administrators. She names the restorative-justice lead from Stevens High School, reports that it went well, and that we have some policies that we want to bring forth to the board. The committee met again on October 4 and reported that day on aligning discipline across the high school and middle school and on handling inappropriate conduct by family members toward staff. No minutes of any meeting of this subcommittee exist in any district share.
0:48:36	The NHSBA delegate — nominated and seconded	Sprague explains the correction he opened the meeting with: We erroneously, it isn't an essay appointment. It's a it's a local appointment. Yeah. So I was appointed to do it for the saw, but it really is town. Hawkins moves: Move to nominate you as our Claremont School board representative to the School Board Association delegate assembly in October. Sprague: And I'll second that. Any further discussion? All those in favor? One Aye is captured; carried. He then sets up the October 4 item — the resolutions to go to the minute-taker so we'll go through them one by one and vote as a board so that I have a sense of where we stand as a board when I go as our delegate. That is what happened: twelve resolutions, twelve votes, two of them with the chair opposed.	OBSERVATION
0:49:29	The athletic-fields licence — picking up an item the last meeting lost	This is the item the September 6 agenda scheduled for the superintendent to introduce and that the September 6 recording never reached. Tempesta reports meeting the city manager and the city's new finance director that afternoon. His own reservations are on the record: I had a couple of concerns about the term of the arrangement, and also kind of quantifying some of the things that, in fairness to the city manager on our end. Talked about myself and the transition to Mary with Richard. We didn't do the diligence that we should have. On the money: We were okay with it. In concept, the $30,000 when we talked about it in concept. He could not find the supporting file and the city agreed to withdraw and resend, because, as I know, the board would question me as to exactly what do we get for our 30,000.	MEDIUM
0:51:01	"It didn't exist in the budget line"	The sentence that matters most in the whole item, said in passing: It's it's a no brainer. I say that, but I but the, business manager is not here. It. It didn't exist in the budget line that we imported in from the budget that we're going to have to talk. But you're right. We do have to have a meeting shortly to make sure we have it. He is confident it can be found — it should be in there, but but it wasn't in there, and we were confident we can get that in there — and Koski interjects that the cost is more than that. The licence's term had already begun on September 1 and, per the September 6 packet, the first payment had already been made. A school board may not agree to pay money for a purpose for which no appropriation has been made.	MEDIUM
0:52:18	What does the city actually spend?	Hawkins asks the question the board had no answer to: Do you have in. Your files, do you have a list of what the actual expenses are for the city to maintain those fields? Tempesta: That that's what I couldn't find. On the term: It was a term of six years. I just wanted to make sure I'll go at least two. He floats an alternative in kind — we can even change the language, that it's 30,000 or something in kind with a staff member — recalling that the district once had a staff member in the role. Asked whether the memorandum runs from this year and whether the district is operating in good faith at this point, he says yes to both, and on signature: I'm supposed to sign it. I wanted to put it in front of you because of the elements. That's why I put it in front of you right away. That the term was of concern to me. Why are we rushing in? We hadn't had it articulated before.	MEDIUM
0:53:46	Thirty years of handshake, and one law firm	Tempesta on the history: It started out as just a handshake between the schools and the city years and years ago, and it never really was articulated all the way in, and we haven't seen those. An unattributed member notes that the labor of lining the fields and I think even lighting might be included, and Tempesta agrees the city manager wants everything above board and is doing a deeper dive. Then a procedural point worth recording: the school district and the city are represented by the same law firm — They have the same attorney from Drummond Woodson, corrected on the spot by Crawford and by Tempesta himself to Not the same attorney, but the same firm — which required conflict disclosures and contributed to the delay. The firm is Drummond Woodsum; the transcript drops the final syllable.	MEDIUM
0:55:29	Crawford supplies the memory the board lacked	Crawford gives the item its only historical anchor and asks that the absent member be brought up to speed: Miss Skilling isn't here tonight. I think Whitney, when when you bring it back, I would appreciate, a summary of the history so that Whitney can hear that and be fully apprized. I know that it's been in place for at least 30 years, and I know that $30,000 does not even begin to pay for all costs that are involved. On the escalation clause Skillen had queried: I can fully understand why they built in an escalation clause, because if you don't build it in, it doesn't happen. Hawkins adds the relationship point — for the city to understand that we are partners — and Tempesta says he wants to avoid the arrangement being misconstrued that, that it's Viewed as a double Tax thing. Right? Because it's all coming out of the taxpayers.	MEDIUM
0:58:15	The school resource officer, as the precedent	An unattributed board voice makes the comparison: so going down double taxing I mean that's the SRO is an example of that as well. So it's it's not an unprecedented concept that we're paying the city for for police officer. Tempesta agrees the district is very happy with the SRO and turns it into a budget question the board had asked before — whether a truancy officer should be a year-round position — and a policing one: there's no other greater concentration of kids out of people at risk is in the schools. But is that a community? Is that the you know, yeah, but it's a budget. We're paying the city. He also proposes a joint meeting with the city, which I can put on the next agenda when everyone's here.
1:00:07	The minimum-standards listening session — the board is not ready	Sprague hands the item to Hawkins, who had read the flyer on the district's own website and then opened the document behind it. Tempesta supplies the name: The 306 is the minimum / standards in the review. Hawkins: It's the, competencies. Thank you. It's the competencies. It's student learning competencies. And I thought, all right, I'll just give it an overview, get a sense of what it is. Well, it's 139 pages long. Her objection is to the district's own flyer as much as to the timing — it indicates that a lot of this work was done without transparency, without input from the public, from parents and families — and her conclusion is about her own standing to run the session: I just felt that I was not educated enough to be able to host a listening session where we were. This group was coming to us for our feedback. And yet I'm not knowledgeable enough. I don't feel that I've been educated in any part of this.	OBSERVATION
1:01:50	Sprague on 2012, and the same people	The meeting's longest single speech, and its most pointed. back in 2012, probably 10 or 12 years ago, we went to the original competency based. And this is this is Fred Bramante. It's the same, same group. And, this was a directive that came from the state with very, very little, little support and guidance. He names three former colleagues the transcript garbles beyond recovery — this page does not reconstruct them — and describes what the district went through: it was literally hell. And it was because we had no real guidance from the state. The unresolved questions he lists are grading and homework: how do we get kids to do homework if we can only grade their summit of assessments? What's the motivation? And the conclusion: all of those countless hours we spent in this room getting hammered by the public, all of that, this is being brought to you by the same people that brought.	OBSERVATION
1:03:06	The deadline nobody could quite fix	Hawkins on the timetable and on the pressure she feels: these regulations, these updates are not due until the end or until 2024. And yet I get this feeling we're being pushed into something without having any opportunity to be educated. And on the limits of the exercise: Well, we're not going to be. There's nothing we can vote on, right? If it's going to happen, it's going to happen. Tempesta says the superintendents' and principals' associations have been discussing it, that it's it's very dense to to understand it all and never mind the nuances in it, and that spring would be better — time for administrative meetings to build a list and a retreat with the board. Crawford supplies the constraint that turns out to matter: We can't wait until it's very because they're updating at March 2024.	OBSERVATION
1:07:34	How the superintendent came to know the material	Asked whether the superintendents' association has weighed in, Tempesta gives an unusual disclosure of his own footing: when I was deposed for the lawsuit, I had to do crazy crash course on all of this. And I know from different communities who are also in the lawsuit, good cross-section of the state. He is not alarmed by the substance — we're not lacking for a lot within this district. But it is they are the minimum standards — and gives an example about foreign languages and scheduling capacity, adding earlier that a local board can exceed the state minimum and that he had suggested career and technical graduation requirements the year before: This is the minimum doesn't mean you can't exceed it. Elsewhere he notes of the 2012 rollout that I was in another state at that time.
1:08:48	The model Hawkins wanted instead	She had gone looking for how another district did it: I'm aware that a neighboring community had a a panel discussion, and the panelists included their director of curriculum and instruction and different people who were knowledgeable about the actual document. And it was moderated by a superintendent who is the equity chair for the committee from the New Hampshire School superintendents. It was open to the community, the board and the administrative team, and available on Zoom — they were educating their community prior to being asked to provide feedback. Her proposal follows directly: what a wonderful way for us to learn and to hear from people who have the knowledge and who have the understanding because they're immersed in it. So I'm prepared to make a motion to postpone if that's if if I'm not out in left field somewhere.	OBSERVATION
1:10:27	Working backwards from March	The board builds the timetable out loud. Gallagher: To do a panel for the community in November and then November, a listening session in January in order to have our recommendations in for March. Crawford: Well, they have their deadline is March, so we have to have the information in before them for them to write the report, and therefore January, the deadline, the latest you're a listening session, I would think. Tempesta agrees the pressure is real — your point is a good one, Candice, that it's going to come up fast — while noting the collision with budget season and contract negotiations. The board is choosing a date it believes is the last one that still works. On October 4, Hawkins reported she had been told January would be too late.	OBSERVATION
1:11:35	The motion, read from paper	After some confusion about who had actually moved what — Well, I didn't I didn't make it yet — Hawkins reads her written motion: I make a motion that the open listening session for the public regarding public school standards hosted by the Claremont School Board be postponed until such time that the Claremont School Board and the community are educated about the documents, so they provide relevant feedback to decision makers. The suggested timeline would include November for a session to prepare us and for us to become educated with the targeted data in January for the public listening session. Seconded by Crawford per the minutes; the recording carries several overlapping offers to second and is not separable. Written motions are what this board had told itself to do — Hawkins, forty minutes later: we are becoming well trained in writing out our motions to make it easier for anyone taking minutes at the meeting.	OBSERVATION POSITIVE
1:13:39	What the board thought was at stake	Before the vote, three members put the reason for their caution on the record. Sprague: this is, I think, a part of, of a, I don't want to call it the dark state. That's not what it is. But I think there is a move afoot to undermine public education. Gallagher: this is the type of thing which, is an existential, potentially an existential threat to, to teachers and public educators. And I think, I think it is not something that we go into lightly. And I think if we're going to make recommendations, they need to be informed. Hawkins: as a board, we are advocates for public education. Sprague then votes for the postponement he has just argued against on the merits of delay — I'm absolutely going to support the the motion — and puts the question at 1:14:25. Carried on a voice vote with no count.	OBSERVATION
1:14:37	Future dates, briefly	Sprague reads a few and declines the rest: And I'm reading you things that you can read yourself. So, but I don't want to get into too much detail. I'll let Chair Whitney do that when she comes back. Named on the recording: the October 4 meeting with the Program of Studies and a vote on any budget surplus, the NHSBA-facilitated board self-evaluation on 1011 in teal room 5 to 8, and the October 18 meeting. The printed list also carries the budget calendar for the 2024 cycle and a July 2024 review of the cell-phone policy's effect on academic performance.
1:15:35	Other Business — a job advertisement from the table	Gallagher notices the order has slipped — We saved over other business — and uses it well: I just wanted to mention that I noticed that we are still seeking a district clerk, and that is a paid position. The terms: $150 for a regular school board meeting and $200 for the deliberative session, and per Hawkins it's three meetings a month. Sprague: That's an outstanding commercial right there. Hawkins adds the recruiting pitch and, incidentally, the board's own standard: we are becoming well trained in writing out our motions to make it easier for anyone taking minutes at the meeting. Then the qualification: You have to be a registered voter in Claremont.	OBSERVATION
1:16:32	Can the board appoint a clerk? Three answers in ninety seconds	Hawkins asks the right question: Is that true? If it's an issue. We have not elected anyone. So to appoint someone. Does that still apply? Tempesta first refers it — That's a question for Esquire. Upton. — then answers: You you can appoint in the interim. Asked directly whether an appointee must be a resident, he says they they have to be a Claremont resident. Resident ultimately. But what's been happening is Chelsea, who's not a Claremont, has been filling in. Ninety seconds later he says the opposite: It is the board can't appoint. That's they can't. The exchange ends unresolved and referred to counsel — If it's infirm that with Matt because I got to follow up with the contract as well — and Hawkins closes it with That would be great. Thank you, thank you. The statute answers the first half plainly: the school board fills vacancies in district offices for which no other method is provided. Nothing in this record shows the board ever doing so; the seat stayed vacant.	OBSERVATION
1:18:15	The open house at Disnard	Hawkins closes the meeting's business with the one item that is purely good news: I went to Disney Open House yesterday and it was such a fun time, and I want to compliment everyone who was involved in that. A cookout at 5:30 run by the parent-teacher organisation, the principal's husband on the grill, and the open house itself at six — It was packed. Everyone was having a great time. She encourages the board to split up the remaining open houses between them and, with Gallagher, works out which nights are which. The transcript renders Disnard Elementary as "Disney" — one of this corpus's standing garbles for that school.
1:19:56	Adjournment	Sprague: Anything else? For the good of the order. Crawford moves, Hawkins seconds, and it carries on a voice vote at 1:20:02. The recording runs seven more seconds and ends. About 7:50 p.m., some forty minutes ahead of the agenda.

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 20, 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. Sixteen flags follow, ordered by severity.

HIGH The previous meeting's minutes were postponed here for want of a draft, and no draft was ever produced

The exchange takes fifteen seconds. Sprague, working down the consent agenda: Minutes. Approval postponed. So will we not discussing minutes at nine? Six? Because I didn't see them. Did we get them? Gallagher: I think there's a delay on the minutes. So I think we're postponing them. No motion, no vote — and the agenda had been posted with "(Postponed)" already printed against item II.2, so the district knew before the meeting opened that the draft would not be ready.

It never became ready. The October 4, 2023 consent agenda takes up "2. Minutes Approval- 9.20.23" and nothing else; the September 6 minutes are not on that agenda, or on the October 18 agenda, or on any later one located in the district's shares. The district's own minute numbering runs 13. CSB Meeting Minutes 8.16.23 straight to 14. CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23: September 6 was never assigned a number. This meeting's packet folder is where the September 6 minutes would have been filed under the district's own practice of filing a meeting's minutes with a later meeting's packet, and it holds only the 9.20 and 10.4 drafts. Nearly three years on, no minutes of the September 6, 2023 Claremont School Board meeting exist anywhere in the district's public records.

What is lost is not a formality. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to record the names of the members, the names of persons appearing, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and the final decisions, and "the names of the members who made or seconded each motion" — and to be "promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting," a duty a draft satisfies. Five business days from Wednesday, September 6, 2023 was Wednesday, September 13. On September 20 no draft existed. The September 6 meeting had approved its agenda, approved the August 9 minutes and tabled the August 16 minutes — decisions with movers and seconders. It also had a scheduled nonpublic session, two collective-bargaining volunteer slates, a subcommittee round and a six-year municipal licence on its agenda after the point at which its recording stops, at 0:52:52 of a two-hour agenda. For those items there is now no record of any kind: no minutes and no video.

Which limb, and why. This project grades a missing-minutes finding HIGH where the absence is unmitigated and MEDIUM where the record mitigates it. Both limbs are engaged here and the unmitigated one governs. The mitigating fact exists and is stated plainly above: on September 20 a member said on the record that the minutes were delayed, which is a statement that they were coming. But mitigation of that kind is a statement about the future, and the future settled the question — no draft was produced, no later meeting took the item up, and the district's numbering closed over the gap. Judged at the only vantage a citizen now has, the absence is unmitigated: a public body met, transacted business, and produced no minutes, and nothing on any record explains why. That is a missed statutory deadline.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes: names of members, persons appearing, subject matter, final decisions, and the names of the members who made or seconded each motion; open to public inspection within 5 business days) — the mover-and-seconder clause has been in force since 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019, and so applies; the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements added by 2025, 112:1 are not applied; CSB Agenda 9.20.23, item II.2; draft CSB Meeting Minutes 10.4.23; 2023 Meeting Minutes folder; the companion page Claremont School Board — September 6, 2023, flag 1.

HIGH The student board member's seat, required by law since January 1, 2023, was still empty — and the superintendent said so on the record

The agenda carries the heading Student Representative Report and nobody to give one. Sprague, moving past it: Citizens comments and student rep. Not yet. What follows is the board discovering the statute rather than the vacancy. Hawkins had brought a document to the meeting and reads it into the record: It was an essay that was passed affect of January 1st — the transcript's rendering of "an RSA that was passed effective January 1st" — That said that student board members replaces the student representative or student liaison, or just merely providing a student report. They are elected by the student body, serve a one year term, and exist so the member can give us a picture of the culture, climate and needs of the school, not just provide a report of what's happening around the district.

Her account of the law is accurate. RSA 189:1-c provides that "the school board shall have at least one nonvoting student member from each public high school maintained by the local school board within its district," and RSA 194:23-f provides that a high school "shall select" that member, "chosen by a simple majority vote of the high school student body," to "serve for a term of one year." Both paragraphs were rewritten by 2022, 195:1 and 195:2, effective January 1, 2023 — the effective date Hawkins gives. The duty is stated in the mandatory, it falls on the board and on the high school, and Claremont maintains one public high school.

Gallagher asked the operative question and got the admission. When do those elections take place? Tempesta: We should have that already, but I. I'll follow up with Chris Pratt. Usually they put it out to faculty and in students. I mentioned it to him in the last meeting. On September 20, 2023 the seat had been required for eight months and twenty days. The record shows it was also empty two weeks earlier, at the September 6 meeting, where the agenda carried the same nameless heading and the same vice chair asked the same principal to supply a student — so this was a second request, not a first.

Two things fairly count on the other side, and both are on this record. The board acted the moment it understood the position: Hawkins put the statute in front of everyone, and Gallagher asked for the statutory description to be published so that candidates would know what the office is — did that section that Arlene just read get, get referenced for the position so students know what they're signing on for? That is exactly the right question, because the 2022 amendment changed the office's character and not only its title. And the district followed through on the naming within a fortnight: the October 4, 2023 minutes' masthead reads Student Board Member where this meeting's reads Student Representative. What this record does not show is a student seated.

Sources: RSA 189:1-c, Student Member ("the school board shall have at least one nonvoting student member from each public high school"; source note 1983, 111:2; 2009, 5:1; 2022, 195:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2023); RSA 194:23-f, High School Student as School Board Member (high school "shall select"; "chosen by a simple majority vote of the high school student body"; "shall serve for a term of one year") — vintage caution: this section was further amended by 2024, 69:1, eff. Aug. 13, 2024, after this meeting; the elements quoted here are those the 2022 amendment put in force and are the ones Hawkins described on the record; CSB Agenda 9.20.23 and draft CSB Meeting Minutes 10.4.23 (masthead change).

HIGH The district's annual financial report was nineteen days past its statutory filing date and had not been begun

The budget update ends on the state filing, in the business administrator's own words: But like I said, I'm working on it, for the Doe 25. So hopefully I can really start getting started on that. So that's my goal next week is to be into that. The DOE-25 is the New Hampshire school district annual financial report, filed with the Department of Education and used by the Department of Revenue Administration in setting the tax rate — the same rate-setting cycle Henry walked the board through half an hour later.

The deadline is September 1. RSA 21-J:34, V provides that "School districts shall submit financial reports on or before September 1 of each year," and RSA 198:4-d, in the text in force in 2023, provides that "This report shall be submitted on or before September 1 of each year." The Department of Education's own financial-reporting page states the DOE-25 filing deadline as "by September 1 of each year." This meeting was September 20. The plan stated in public was to begin the work the following week.

Two provisions give the deadline teeth. RSA 21-J:34, III separately requires a report revising all estimated revenues, also "by September 1 of each year" — the MS-24R that Henry described in the tax presentation as the form we turn in right before tax rate setting. And RSA 189:28 authorises the withholding of state and federal aid from a district until complete and accurate information is submitted. Nothing in this record shows an extension being sought or granted, and nothing shows aid being withheld.

The mitigation is real and belongs in the same breath as the finding. Mary Henry was appointed business administrator at the SAU 6 board meeting of May 11, 2023 and started in early July; this was her third month. The office she inherited had been without a permanent head since her predecessor read his retirement letter to the SAU 6 board on March 30, 2023, effective April 14, and was covered in the interim by an outside municipal-services firm. Her own account of FY23 that evening is of books still being reconciled line by line with a colleague — Going back, reconciling stuff and making sure that our, our balance is match up — with items still to be moved to grants, charges possibly belonging to the prior fiscal year, and tuition receipts outstanding. A financial report cannot honestly be filed on books that are not closed, and filing an inaccurate one would engage RSA 189:28 in its own right. None of that changes the date.

It is also not the year's first missed state filing by this board. The MS-22 certifying the appropriations voted at the March 2023 annual meeting was signed on August 16, 2023, 135 days after the twenty-day deadline in RSA 21-J:34, II. Sprague invited questions on the budget update and there were none; no member asked when the DOE-25 would be filed, and no date was set.

Sources: RSA 21-J:34, V ("School districts shall submit financial reports on or before September 1 of each year") and III (revised estimated revenues "filed by September 1 of each year") — source note ends 2007, 182:2, eff. April 1, 2007; stable for this meeting; RSA 198:4-d, 2023 codification ("This report shall be submitted on or before September 1 of each year"; source note ends 2021, 44:5) — the section was further amended by 2025, 141:401, after this meeting; the 2023 text is the one applied; NHDOE, Financial Reporting Requirements (DOE-25 due "by September 1 of each year"); RSA 189:28 (state and federal aid withheld until complete and accurate information is submitted); the companion page Claremont School Board — August 16, 2023 on the MS-22 filing.

MEDIUM The nonpublic session was entered on a citation that names the wrong title and the wrong paragraph, and the exemption relied on is hard to square with the little the public record shows

The agenda prints it, the minutes reproduce it, and Sprague reads it aloud: Non-Public Meeting Session- Title IV Section 91-A-3 I (j), followed by the text of the exemption. Both coordinates are wrong. The Right-to-Know Law is RSA chapter 91-A in Title VI, not Title IV. And the exemptions live in paragraph II, not paragraph I: subparagraph (j) of paragraph II is "Consideration of confidential, commercial, or financial information that is exempt from public disclosure under RSA 91-A:5, IV in an adjudicative proceeding pursuant to RSA 541 or RSA 541-A." Paragraph I is the procedural paragraph — the one that requires "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 vote be by roll call.

The quoted text is accurate, which is what matters most: a citizen reading the agenda or the minutes learns which exemption the board invoked. The defect is that the address is wrong in the posted notice, in the motion as spoken, and in the minutes, and it has now propagated through three district documents unchallenged.

The harder question is fit. Subparagraph II(j) is narrow: it covers confidential commercial or financial information, exempt from disclosure under RSA 91-A:5, IV, in an adjudicative proceeding pursuant to RSA 541 or RSA 541-A — that is, an administrative appeal or contested case. The public record offers exactly one clue about what was discussed, and it points elsewhere. Twelve minutes after the board returned, in the middle of a pre-kindergarten staffing answer, Nester interrupts: I didn't know how much of this was going to be covered in nonpublic. Tempesta replies the just the student student issue was and the report moves on.

This page asserts nothing about what was discussed in nonpublic session — it cannot, the minutes are sealed, and a passing half-sentence is not evidence of a subject. What can be said is that the exemption chosen is a commercial-and-financial-information exemption tied to a formal adjudicative proceeding, that no such proceeding is named anywhere in the public record of this meeting, and that RSA 91-A:3, II contains other subparagraphs — including (c), on matters likely to affect adversely the reputation of a person other than a board member, which this same board had used three weeks earlier on August 16 — that would more obviously reach a matter concerning an individual student. Whether the exemption fit is a question a reader should put to the board, not one this page answers.

One further gap. The recording elapses about eleven seconds between the roll call to enter and the return to public session, because recording was interrupted — an off-microphone voice says I'm just recording the timer. Coming back in session. Neither the recording nor the minutes shows how long the board was in nonpublic session. That is not a violation on this date: the requirement that minutes record the start and end time of a meeting was added to RSA 91-A:2, II by 2025, 112:1 and does not apply to 2023. It is noted because it removes the one check a citizen would otherwise have.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) ("Any motion to enter nonpublic session shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II which is relied upon… The vote on any such motion shall be by roll call, and shall require the affirmative vote of the majority of members present") and II(j) (confidential, commercial or financial information exempt under RSA 91-A:5, IV "in an adjudicative proceeding pursuant to RSA 541 or RSA 541-A"); RSA 91-A:2, II; CSB Agenda 9.20.23; CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23. Not applied, for vintage: the start-time and end-time requirements added to RSA 91-A:2, II by 2025, 112:1.

MEDIUM The nonpublic minutes were sealed for ten years with no statutory finding stated and no individual votes recorded

Crawford prompts it, Sprague moves it: Yeah. I'm going to make a motion that we seal the minutes for ten years. The board is briefly unsure whether the vote needs a roll call — Hawkins: I think I think we did that before. I think we think we've done. We're doing okay. Let's do it anyway. — and Gallagher settles it: When in doubt, roll call. The roll is taken. The minutes record: "Frank Sprague makes a motion to seal the meeting minutes for 10 years; seconded by Jennifer Gallagher; roll call vote; Motion passes with all saying yes."

RSA 91-A:3, III makes the disclosure of nonpublic minutes the default and the seal the exception, and the exception has two elements. First, "Minutes of such sessions shall record all actions in such a manner that the vote of each member is ascertained and recorded." Second, minutes and decisions "shall be publicly disclosed within 72 hours of the meeting, unless, by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session, it is determined that divulgence of the information likely would affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself, or render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism."

Two things are missing and one is present. Present: the vote was taken in public session by roll call, and five of five members present voting yes clears two-thirds comfortably. Missing: no determination is stated. Neither the motion as spoken nor the minutes as filed names which of the three statutory circumstances the seal rests on — reputation, ineffectiveness or terrorism — and the statute makes that determination the operative act, not the seal itself. Also missing: how each member voted. The minutes say "roll call vote… with all saying yes," which is a summary rather than a record, and the transcript's roll is pooled into a small number of segments. This is the same defect the same board's August 16, 2023 minutes carry on the same kind of motion, and it is therefore a pattern rather than an oversight.

A dating point that matters, in both directions. The ten-year term is not a statutory number on this date. RSA 91-A:3 contains no seal term at all; it seals "until, in the opinion of a majority of members, the aforesaid circumstances no longer apply." The familiar ten-year figure comes from RSA 91-A:3, IV, which requires a public body to review sealed minutes and vote on whether the circumstances still apply "no more than 10 years from the last time the public body voted to prevent the minutes from being subject to public disclosure." That paragraph was added by 2023, 189:1, effective October 3, 2023 — thirteen days after this meeting, and did not exist in the 2022 codification. It cannot be applied to this vote. What it does mean going forward is that a review of these minutes fell due no later than September 2033, and that a citizen asking about them today has a statutory hook the board did not have that night.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III (nonpublic minutes disclosed within 72 hours unless sealed by a recorded 2/3 vote in public session on one of three stated determinations; "the vote of each member is ascertained and recorded"); RSA 91-A:3, 2022 codification (no paragraph IV); CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23. Expressly not applied, for vintage: RSA 91-A:3, IV (added 2023, 189:1, eff. October 3, 2023).

MEDIUM The board voted a correction to these minutes on October 4 and the correction was never made — all three filed copies still carry the uncorrected wording

The defect was spotted live. Hawkins moved that we accept the first read of policy g b employee rights and responsibilities, and Gallagher immediately asked the right question: I'm sorry. Did you motion to accept it or to move it to second reading? Hawkins offered to restate it — Want me to restate it? — and Gallagher, satisfied that everyone understood, said No. It's fine. I just wanted to clarify. The vote was taken on the motion as originally worded.

Two weeks later the board fixed it formally. The October 4, 2023 minutes record, under the consent agenda: "Arlene Hawkins- corrections to the minutes on page 4 Item C under school board sub committees the motion for policy GBE should read that the policy is to move to second read/approval," followed by "No other objections to the consent agenda. All items approved." That is a board decision to amend these minutes, taken in public, recorded, and carried.

It was never applied. This project retrieved and compared all three copies of the September 20 minutes in the district's public shares — the draft in this meeting's packet folder, the draft circulated with the October 4 packet, and 14. CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23.docx.pdf in the district's 2023 Meeting Minutes folder, which is the numbered, post-approval filing. All three are word-for-word identical, and all three read: "Arlene Hawkins makes a motion to accept the first read of policy GBE 'Employee Rights and Responsibilities'; seconded by Bonnie Miles; All in favor via voice vote. Motion passes." The wording the board voted to change is the wording the district still publishes.

The consequence is small in substance and precise in kind. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to record "final decisions." The final decision the board reached on October 4 was that these minutes should say something different from what they say, and the public record of the September 20 meeting does not reflect it. A reader who wants to know what the board actually did with policy GBE on September 20 — accepted a first reading, or advanced the policy to second reading and approval — is left with the version the board itself disowned. The two readings are not equivalent: the second is a decision to advance, the first is not.

For completeness, the substantive outcome is not in doubt. Policy GBE was read a second time and adopted on October 4, on a motion by Whitney seconded by Skillen, carried on a voice vote. It is the record of the September 20 step that is wrong.

Sources: 14. CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23.docx.pdf (the numbered filing); draft CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23.docx.pdf (this packet); draft CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23.docx (2) (1).pdf (the 10.4 packet); draft CSB Meeting Minutes 10.4.23 (the correction, and the second reading); RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes record final decisions).

MEDIUM A failed payroll and unpaid technical-centre bills, reported in the newspaper, were answered orally in two minutes and closed with no motion, no document and no date to report back

The item was not on the posted agenda. Crawford put it there, asking for clarification and response. From the administration on an Eagle Times article of September 16th 17th, and Sprague framed it for the room as unpaid miss payroll and, accounts being turned off and Our inability to purchase.

The administration's account, in full. On payroll: Okay payroll was not met. We had a glitch in our system where the two programs did not connect, which we did sort out. We did get our file to the federal government in time or the Federal Reserve to get money in everybody's account. By the end of the day. We may have had a few that have credit unions that we could have had issues with. Henry described what she did about it — solutions offered case by case, constant contact all day long throughout the day with our employees. On the vendor accounts: we had had some bills that we did not have receipts for that. I under normal circumstances, we do not pay a bill without backup. We were not technically shut off. We could still make purchases. We could be on Cod, but those situations have been taken care of. Resolution by Monday morning. The minutes summarise both accurately and add that "no vendors have stopped providing products to SRVRTC."

What the board did with it was nothing. Sprague asked whether career and technical programmes could get what they needed, received one word, asked for further questions, received none, and moved to the subcommittee round. Total elapsed time on both stories, from the item opening to its closing, is about two minutes. No member asked what the two systems were or why they failed; no member asked how many employees were paid late or how late; no member asked how a bill reached the payment stage without an invoice; no written report was requested; no date was set to come back; and no motion of any kind was made.

Two provisions frame why this is a board matter rather than an office matter. Under RSA 197:23-a the district treasurer holds the district's money and "shall pay out the same only upon orders of the school board" — disbursement is an exercise of the board's own authority, delegated, and control failures in it belong to the board. And RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to record final decisions; the board reached none, so its own record of an operational failure serious enough to reach the newspaper consists of two paragraphs of administrative narrative that no member tested.

What is deliberately not cited here. New Hampshire's wage-payment statute sets an eight-day rule for the payment of wages, but RSA 275:42, I defines "employer" in terms of individuals, partnerships, associations, joint stock companies, trusts and corporations and does not name the state or its political subdivisions. This page therefore asserts no wage-payment deadline against the district and grades the matter as a control weakness, not a statutory breach. Nor is any federal single-audit or internal-control provision cited: nothing in this record establishes that federal awards were involved in either the payroll run or the technical centre's accounts.

Context a reader should weigh in the district's favour and against it at once: the business office had turned over twice in five months, and the district's independent audits were themselves chronically late in this period — the FY2022 audit was not issued until 2025, as reported by the Valley News. An operational failure in a business office in its third month under new leadership is unsurprising. A board that spends two minutes on it, sets no follow-up, and records no decision is the part that is reviewable.

Sources: RSA 197:23-a (treasurer has custody of district money and "shall pay out the same only upon orders of the school board"); RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes record final decisions); RSA 275:42, I (definition of "employer" — political subdivisions not named; cited to explain why no wage-payment deadline is asserted); CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23, item 3A; Valley News, "Financial audits reveal Claremont schools' long-term struggles" (2026-01-02) reporting, not law. The Eagle Times article itself was not retrieved; it is described here only as the board and the administration described it.

MEDIUM A municipal licence already in force, and already paid, had no line in the budget the district had loaded — and the superintendent expected to sign it himself

This is the item the September 6 agenda gave the superintendent to introduce and that the September 6 recording, which stops at 0:52:52, never reached. Crawford put it back on the agenda here. The licence is the City of Claremont / SAU 6 non-exclusive licence over Monadnock, Barnes and Veteran's Parks, two sets of tennis courts and the community-centre pool: $30,000 a year with a consumer-price escalator floored at 2% and capped at 6%, running September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2029, and — per the fee clause in the September 6 packet copy — with the first payment already provided to the city.

What the board learned on September 20, from the superintendent who met the city manager and the city's new finance director that afternoon:

The appropriation. It's it's a no brainer. I say that, but I but the, business manager is not here. It. It didn't exist in the budget line that we imported in from the budget that we're going to have to talk. But you're right. We do have to have a meeting shortly to make sure we have it. He believed it could be found — it should be in there, but but it wasn't in there — and Koski interjected that the true cost is more than that.
The diligence. Talked about myself and the transition to Mary with Richard. We didn't do the diligence that we should have.
The cost basis. Hawkins asked for a list of what the actual expenses are for the city to maintain those fields; the answer was That that's what I couldn't find. The city agreed to withdraw and resend the document because, as I know, the board would question me as to exactly what do we get for our 30,000.
The term. It was a term of six years. I just wanted to make sure I'll go at least two.
The signature. Asked whether execution rests with the administration or the board: I'm supposed to sign it. I wanted to put it in front of you because of the elements.

The provision this engages is short. RSA 32:8 provides that no school board "shall pay or agree to pay any money… for any purpose in excess of the amount appropriated by the legislative body for that purpose, or for any purpose for which no appropriation has been made, except as provided in RSA 32:9-11." On the superintendent's own account the purpose had no line in the budget as loaded. RSA 197:23-a reinforces it from the disbursement side: district money is paid out "only upon orders of the school board." No board vote authorising this licence, its term or its first payment appears in any minutes located for 2023, and the item was again taken as discussion only — no motion, no vote, on September 20 either. This meeting's own agenda anticipated, among the October 18 items, a "Presentation and potential vote on License Agreement between the city and school district for maintenance of athletic facilities" — which is where a reader should look next.

Fairness cuts in the administration's direction on several points and the record should say so. The superintendent brought the document to the board rather than signing it — That's why I put it in front of you right away — flagged the six-year term as his own concern, refused to defend a number he could not evidence, and disclosed that both bodies use the same law firm, which required conflict waivers: Not the same attorney, but the same firm. But you have to you have to do a disclosure. Crawford supplied the history nobody else had — the arrangement is at least thirty years old, began as just a handshake between the schools and the city, and $30,000 does not even begin to pay for all costs that are involved — and defended the escalation clause the absent member had objected to. Hawkins pressed the partnership framing. This is a board doing the work; what it had not done is appropriate the money before the obligation began.

Sources: RSA 32:8 (no school board shall pay or agree to pay money "for any purpose for which no appropriation has been made"; 1993, 332:1, eff. Aug. 28, 1993); RSA 32:1 (chapter applies to towns, school districts and village districts; school administrative units are not named — the licensee is styled SAU #6 and the payer is the district); RSA 197:23-a; RSA 194-C:9 (SAU budget apportioned among member districts; an SAU holds no annual meeting of its own); Exhibit H- SAU License for Athletic Fields .pdf in the 9.6.23 packet; the trailing space is the district's; the companion page Claremont School Board — September 6, 2023, flag 5.

OBSERVATION The board postponed the only public session it had scheduled on the state's minimum-standards rewrite, choosing what it believed was the last workable date — and two weeks later was told the date was already too late

A listening session on the Department of Education's review of the Ed 306 minimum standards was set for the evening after this meeting, in the Stevens High School auditorium, hosted by the board. Fourteen minutes of debate ended in a written motion by Hawkins, seconded by Crawford, carried on a voice vote: the session be postponed until such time that the Claremont School Board and the community are educated about the documents, so they provide relevant feedback to decision makers, on a suggested timeline of November for a session to prepare us and January for the public listening session.

The board's reasons were substantive, stated, and mostly good. Hawkins had actually opened the 139-page document and concluded she could not host feedback on material she had not been taught: I don't feel that I've been educated in any part of this. Crawford had said the same at the top of the meeting — I don't have enough information about what I'm supposed to be listening to or asking about — and could point to a session the administration had led in Plainfield the night before that people found very helpful in preparation. Hawkins had found a model in a neighbouring district: a panel of the curriculum director and others who knew the document, moderated by a superintendent, open to the community and on Zoom, so that they were educating their community prior to being asked to provide feedback. Tempesta preferred spring, wanting administrative meetings and a board retreat first. Nobody proposed cancelling; the board set a date it thought worked.

And the board did the arithmetic. Gallagher: a panel in November, a listening session in January, in order to have our recommendations in for March. Crawford: they have their deadline is March, so we have to have the information in before them for them to write the report, therefore January, the deadline, the latest you're a listening session, I would think. Tempesta agreed the pressure was real. This was a considered judgement, not a drift.

It was wrong. At the very next meeting, on October 4, the minutes record: "Arlene Hawkins brings up the Listening Session with Fred Bramante that was canceled. She was told January would be too late for any input for the 306 Minimum Standards and wondered about moving the date to a time sooner than January." Nothing in the district's shares shows a Claremont listening session ever taking place. The rules were readopted with amendments effective December 13, 2024.

Why this is an observation and not a finding. No rule required this board to host a listening session, to host it on any particular date, or to submit comment at all. The state board's authority to make these rules rests on RSA 186:8, II — "Minimum standards for public school approval for all grades of the public schools" — and pre-proposal outreach of this kind is not the formal comment stage of a rulemaking. What is recorded here is a cost, not a breach: the one scheduled opportunity for Claremont's public to speak into a rewrite of the standards that govern its schools was moved past the window in which speaking would have counted, by a board that was trying to speak better and had been given nothing to prepare with. Two members said plainly what they thought was at stake — Sprague, there is a move afoot to undermine public education; Gallagher, an existential, potentially an existential threat to, to teachers and public educators — which makes the lost session the more consequential.

Sources: N.H. Admin. Code Ed 306, Minimum Standards for Public School Approval — cite the part page: the rules were renumbered and readopted with amendments effective 12-13-2024, after this meeting; RSA 186:8, II (state board rulemaking: minimum standards for public school approval); CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23, item 7; draft CSB Meeting Minutes 10.4.23, Other Business.

OBSERVATION The tax-rate presentation attributes the statewide education tax rate to the Commissioner of Education; the statute assigns it to the Commissioner of Revenue Administration

The packet slide reads: "The SWEPT rate is determined by the Commissioner of Education." Henry says the same from the table: This rate is calculated on an annual basis. And it is set by the Commissioner of Education for 2023. The rate was 1.37783 or $1.38 rounded.

RSA 76:3 provides that "the commissioner of the department of revenue administration shall set the education tax rate at a level sufficient to generate revenue of $363,000,000" — and RSA 76:8 makes the same commissioner responsible for determining each municipality's education tax base and issuing the warrant to the local assessors. The Department of Education's role in the sequence is different and real: it computes the cost of an adequate education under RSA 198:40-a and determines each municipality's total education grant under RSA 198:41 by subtracting the RSA 76:8 warrant amount. The slide's second source link is in fact to a Department of Education adequacy summary, which is probably how the two offices were run together.

The rate quoted, 1.37783, is correct, and every dollar figure computed from it in the deck is correct (flag 15). This is recorded as an observation and not a finding because no rule requires a business administrator's slide deck to be right about which commissioner does what, and because the error does not propagate into any number. It is recorded at all because the item's stated purpose on the agenda is "Presentation, Board and Public Education" — the deck is a teaching document about how the tax is set, aimed at the board and the public, and it is on the district's website. A resident who wants to know who sets the rate that appears on their bill is told the wrong office.

Sources: RSA 76:3 ("the commissioner of the department of revenue administration shall set the education tax rate"; source note ends 2008, 173:15, eff. July 1, 2009); RSA 76:8 (commissioner of revenue administration determines the education tax base and issues the warrant to each municipality by December 15); RSA 198:41, I (department of education determines the total education grant, subtracting the RSA 76:8 warrant amount); School Tax Rate (packet presentation).

OBSERVATION The presiding officer abstained on the amendment that added his own nomination, then seconded the nomination itself

Sprague opened the agenda amendments with his own item: the New Hampshire School Boards Association delegate seat, which the SAU 6 board had given him and which he correctly identified as belonging to the district — that's actually not a district. It's not an essay, you representative. It's a district representative — and said openly what he intended, probably nominate myself to be the Claremont representative. When the amendment was put he stepped back from it: All those in favor posed. And I think I'm going to abstain on that one. That is careful practice, and the minutes record it.

Forty-five minutes later, when Hawkins moved to nominate you as our Claremont School board representative to the School Board Association delegate assembly in October, the presiding officer supplied the second himself: And I'll second that. Any further discussion? All those in favor? The minutes record it plainly — "seconded by Frank Sprague" — which is to the minute-taker's credit.

No rule is broken. Nothing in RSA chapter 91-A, in RSA chapter 189 or in the district's own policies prohibits a member from seconding a motion in which he is the nominee; a second is not a vote, and parliamentary practice bars a member only from seconding his own motion. The observation is about consistency rather than legality: the same officer treated his interest as disqualifying at the agenda stage and not at the nomination stage, twice on the same subject, forty-five minutes apart, presiding both times. With five members in the room and no count taken on the voice vote, the public record does not show who else supported it.

Two mitigating facts. The office is unpaid and largely administrative — Sprague undertook to bring the association's resolutions back for the board to vote on one by one… so that I have a sense of where we stand as a board when I go as our delegate, and that is precisely what the October 4 meeting did, taking twelve separate votes. And the seat had to be filled before the October delegate assembly, with two of seven members absent.

Sources: CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23, items 1 and 5; draft CSB Meeting Minutes 10.4.23, item V.4 (the twelve resolution votes); RSA 91-A:2, II (movers and seconders recorded — the requirement that makes this visible at all). No rule is cited as breached; this is recorded as an observation.

OBSERVATION The district clerk's seat had been vacant all year, and the board could not establish on the record whether it had the power to fill it

Gallagher used Other Business to advertise the post: we are still seeking a district clerk, and that is a paid position — $150 for a regular school board meeting and $200 for the deliberative session, and, per Hawkins, it's three meetings a month, covering both the Claremont board and the SAU 6 board. The qualification, as Gallagher gave it: You have to be a registered voter in Claremont.

Hawkins then asked the question the board had never resolved: Is that true? If it's an issue. We have not elected anyone. So to appoint someone. Does that still apply? The answers came in three incompatible versions within ninety seconds. First a referral: That's a question for Esquire. Upton. Then a yes: You you can appoint in the interim. Then, on residency, both at once: they they have to be a Claremont resident. Resident ultimately. But what's been happening is Chelsea, who's not a Claremont, has been filling in. Then a flat no: It is the board can't appoint. That's they can't. The exchange ended referred to counsel — If it's infirm that with Matt because I got to follow up with the contract as well — and nothing in the record shows an answer coming back.

The first half of the question has a plain statutory answer. RSA 671:33, II provides that the school board fills vacancies in school board positions and "in all other district offices for which no other method of filling a vacancy is provided," with the appointee serving until the next district election, when the voters elect a replacement for the unexpired term. The district clerk is such an office and no candidate had filed in March 2023. The residency question the superintendent could not settle is a genuinely separate one and this page does not answer it either — but the power to appoint was not in doubt.

The practical consequence runs through this whole corpus. With no clerk, the roll was called by the Director of Special Education and the minutes were produced by the superintendent's assistant, who is not a Claremont voter and was, on the superintendent's own account, stretched. Two of the three flags on this page that concern the written record — the minutes that were never corrected, and the seal recorded without a determination — are defects in documents produced under that arrangement. The board's own answer to the problem, on this record, was a recruitment pitch from the table and a promise to check with counsel.

To the board's credit, Hawkins volunteered the standard it had adopted to make the job easier: we are becoming well trained in writing out our motions to make it easier for anyone taking minutes at the meeting — and the meeting's two most consequential motions were in fact read from written text.

Sources: RSA 671:33, II (the school board fills vacancies in school board positions and "in all other district offices for which no other method of filling a vacancy is provided"; appointee serves until the next district election); CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23, Other Business; RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes duties, which fall on the body however it staffs them).

OBSERVATION The one board-authored passage in policy GBE states an attendance expectation, in a policy that preserves collective bargaining agreements only "if appropriate"

Hawkins was unusually careful about provenance, and that is what makes this visible. Of the six numbered paragraphs in Exhibit A, she attributed the grey-shaded additions in paragraphs 2, 3 and 6 and the closing sentence to the New Hampshire School Boards Association's sample policy — That's from New Hampshire School Board Association language from their sample policy — and paragraphs 4 and 5 she described as unchanged. Only paragraph 1's addition came from the board itself: the first sentence is existing policy, and the rest is new language that has been suggested and recommended by board members to the policy committee.

That passage reads, in the packet document: "The work of schools is most effective when direct interpersonal connections take place. It is the expectation of the Claremont School Board that employees must be physically present at work for all their contracted days in order to effectively carry out their responsibilities."

Three features are worth a reviewer's attention. First, it is an expectation about attendance stated in the mandatory — "must be physically present… for all their contracted days" — in a policy whose title is Employee Rights and Responsibilities. Second, the policy's own savings clause is hedged: "The Claremont School Board will respect all employee rights established by law, School Board policy, and collective bargaining agreements, if appropriate." The two qualifying words do work that a plain savings clause would not. Third, the timing: this board had two negotiating teams forming that autumn, for the maintenance and custodial unit and for the secretaries — item IV.4 of the September 6 agenda, an item whose disposition no record preserves. Attendance, leave and the conditions under which contracted days are worked are ordinary subjects of a collective bargaining agreement.

No rule is cited as breached and none is asserted. A school board may adopt policy; RSA chapter 273-A governs the negotiation of terms and conditions of employment for public employees and does not stop a board from writing down an expectation. Whether a unilaterally adopted attendance expectation touches a mandatory subject of negotiation, and what "if appropriate" means where a contract says something else, are questions for the parties and, if it came to it, for the Public Employee Labor Relations Board — not for this page. It is recorded because the board's own account of the document distinguishes association boilerplate from language its members wrote, and the language its members wrote is the operative change.

Where the policy stands, precisely: first read passed here on September 20, 2023, on Hawkins's motion seconded by Miles, on a voice vote with no count. Second read and adoption followed on October 4, 2023, on Whitney's motion seconded by Skillen, again on a voice vote. The adoption history block in the packet draft is blank on both lines. The agenda and both sets of minutes render the title "Employee Right and Responsibilities"; the policy itself is headed "EMPLOYEE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES".

Sources: Exhibit A- Draft Claremont GBE Employee Rights and Responsibilities; Exhibit B- Draft Claremont Policy GBE … Second Read in the 10.4.23 packet; RSA ch. 273-A (public employee labor relations; terms and conditions of employment) — cited at chapter level, as the project's verified catalog directs; no section is asserted; draft CSB Meeting Minutes 10.4.23, item V.5(c).

OBSERVATION The citizens' comment period lasted about four seconds, with no speakers present

The whole of it: Citizens comments. / Seeing none closed. No member of the public spoke, and none is recorded as attending. Nobody was turned away, no time limit was announced or enforced, and no one asked to be heard later in the meeting.

RSA 189:74 requires a school board to "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 provides that "The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes." The section was added by 2022, 333:1, effective September 6, 2022, and was therefore in force, in that form, on this date.

What the statute requires here is genuinely unsettled and this page does not resolve it. The text can be read as a floor on the opportunity — the period must be open for at least thirty minutes to anyone who wishes to use it — or as a floor on elapsed time, which would oblige a board to sit in silence for half an hour when a room is empty. The first reading is the more natural and the more workable; the second would produce an absurd result on facts like these. No New Hampshire decision construing the sentence was located. Because nobody sought to speak and nobody was refused, no violation is asserted.

It is recorded for two reasons. First, so that the pattern is visible across this corpus rather than only in the meetings where someone complains: the September 6 meeting, two weeks earlier, ran a citizens' period of about four minutes with one speaker. Second, because a board that opens and closes the period in a single breath forecloses the possibility that a member of the public arriving a minute later could use it — and this board's own agenda schedules the period at a fixed point rather than holding it open.

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; CSB Agenda 9.20.23; the companion page Claremont School Board — September 6, 2023, flag 9.

POSITIVE The tax-rate walkthrough is arithmetically and statutorily accurate, and it was given to the public rather than to the board alone

The agenda item is headed "School Tax Rate (Presentation, Board and Public Education) … How the state and local government sets the school portion of the tax rate." Nothing required it. No vote turned on it, no filing depended on it, and the business administrator delivered it in her third month on a night she had to leave early. It is, on the record of this corpus, the clearest public explanation of Claremont school finance anyone gave in 2023 — and this page checked it.

The figures, and the checks.

Total voted appropriations, FY2022–23: $38,139,852. Stated on tape and on the slide, which derives it as "Warrant Articles + General Budget."
Unassigned fund balance, FY22: $1,712,100; retained by board vote: $426,494; applied to reduce taxes: $1,285,606. The third figure is garbled in the transcript; it is recoverable because $1,712,100 less $426,494 is exactly $1,285,606. The retention is 1.36% of the year's net assessment, well inside the 5% ceiling in RSA 198:4-b, II.
Net assessment: $31,392,419. Appropriations less revenues and credits, as she describes the sequence.
Statewide education property tax rate: $1.37783. Applied to Claremont's equalised valuation without utilities, $707,811,780: ($707,811,780 ÷ 1,000) × 1.37783 = $975,244. That is the slide's figure to the dollar, and it is the arithmetic she describes aloud — they take your amount for your assessment, they divide it by 1000 and then times it by the rate to get to your dollar amount.
Total adequacy: $15,400,276, of which $975,244 is raised locally as the statewide tax, leaving $14,425,032 as the state grant — her 14 million from the state. The transcript garbles the total as "15,000,400"; it is recoverable because it is exactly the difference between the net assessment and the amount to be raised.
Amount Claremont must raise locally: $15,992,143. $31,392,419 less $15,400,276. Her summary — about 50% of your assessment is covered by your amount of money you're getting from adequacy aid — is 49.1%.

The sequence is the statute. RSA 198:41, I determines a municipality's total education grant by taking the cost of an adequate education under RSA 198:40-a and subtracting "the amount of the education tax warrant to be issued by the commissioner of revenue administration for such municipality reported pursuant to RSA 76:8." That is precisely the subtraction she performs: total adequacy less locally raised statewide tax equals the state grant. And the per-pupil amounts underlying the adequacy figure — $4,100 base, plus $2,300 for a pupil eligible for a free or reduced-price meal, $2,100 for a pupil receiving special education services and $800 for an English learner — are the amounts enacted by 2023, 79:150, effective July 1, 2023, and so are the correct text for a September 2023 meeting, though she does not quote them.

She was also right about the one-year discount, which is the kind of detail a presentation usually gets wrong. This year it's gone back up again because this is a one year deal they gave us, and later, swept again, dropped way down here, but it's gone way back up in 24. So you're going to see a huge spike here. RSA 76:3 sets the statewide education tax at a level sufficient to generate $363,000,000; the amount was reduced by $100 million, to $263 million, for state fiscal year 2023 only. Claremont's unusually low $975,244 that year, and the rebound she warned of, both follow from that.

And the framing is the part that serves the public. Twice she told the board to stop watching the wrong number: the rate isn't what you would be focused on. You be focused on how much you're going to require to to appropriate to fund the school, and It isn't about the rate. Everybody says, oh my gosh, my rates $41. Well, if you went back in time and this was your values, you'd see it go down this way, which would mean that your property tax rate would be low, but you're still raising the same amount of money. She gave fifteen years of history to prove it — a school assessment that rose by $111,000 in five years while the rate fell $1.23 — and offered it as information, food for thought going into budget season. Sprague drew the corollary that the municipal and county rates are fairly substantial in their own right. One office is misnamed in the deck (flag 10); nothing else in it is.

Sources: School Tax Rate (packet presentation, 20 September 2023); RSA 198:41, I (total education grant = adequacy cost less the RSA 76:8 education tax warrant); RSA 198:40-a, II ($4,100 / $2,300 / $2,100 / $800; source note ends 2023, 79:150, eff. July 1, 2023 — the current statutory text is the right one for this meeting); RSA 76:3 ($363,000,000 target); RSA 76:8; RSA 198:4-b, II (year-end unassigned fund balance retention capped at 5% of the net assessment, with a prior public hearing required before expenditure); NH Fiscal Policy Institute, "Statewide Education Property Tax Change Provides Less Targeted Relief" analysis, not law — cited for the one-year $363M to $263M reduction for SFY2023.

POSITIVE Every motion at this meeting is recorded with both a mover and a seconder, and the two that mattered were written down before they were moved

RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to record "the names of the members who made or seconded each motion." It is a low bar and it is missed often enough in this corpus to be worth noting when it is cleared. The September 20 minutes clear it on every motion: the agenda amendment (Sprague, seconded by Hawkins); entry into nonpublic session (Sprague, seconded by Hawkins); the return (Gallagher, seconded by Miles); the ten-year seal (Sprague, seconded by Gallagher); the GBE first read (Hawkins, seconded by Miles); the NHSBA nomination (Hawkins, seconded by Sprague); the listening-session postponement (Hawkins, seconded by Crawford); and adjournment (Crawford, seconded by Hawkins). The minutes also record an abstention that a less careful record would have swallowed, and a second from a nominee that a less honest one might have.

The clause has been in force since 2018, 244:1, effective January 1, 2019, so this is compliance rather than voluntary good practice — but it is compliance a reader can rely on, and it is what makes several of the observations on this page possible at all.

Two practices behind it deserve their own mention. Hawkins stated the board's own standard out loud, in the middle of a recruiting pitch for the vacant clerk's post: we are becoming well trained in writing out our motions to make it easier for anyone taking minutes at the meeting. And she did it: the postponement motion was read from a written text she had prepared during the debate, complete with its timeline, which is why the minutes' version of it is a faithful paraphrase rather than a reconstruction. Miles's correction of the visioning-committee roster, made on the record and directed at the person who maintains the paperwork, is the same instinct.

What the minutes do not record is how any individual voted on the two roll calls, or any count on the six voice votes. Those gaps are noted in flag 5; they do not detract from the mover-and-seconder record, which is complete.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II ("the names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes"; in force from 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019); CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23.

Appendix — source files

Official and public sources

Remote video: Claremont School Board Meeting 9/20/23 (Cablecast show 15311) — the project's archived copy runs 1:20:38 and covers the meeting from the call to order to the vote on adjournment. Recording was interrupted during the nonpublic session, so about eleven seconds of stream elapse between entering and returning (flag 4).
Packet folder: 21. CSB 9.20.23 — 5 documents, listed below.
Minutes: 14. CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23.docx.pdf, in the district's 2023 Meeting Minutes folder. Approved at the October 4, 2023 meeting subject to a correction to the policy GBE motion; the correction was never applied and all three published copies remain identical (flag 6). Signed Respectfully submitted by Chelsea Weatherford.
Explicit negative — the previous meeting's minutes. No minutes of the September 6, 2023 Claremont School Board meeting exist in any of the district's public shares, verified 2026-08-29 by a two-stage search: first this meeting's own packet folder 21. CSB 9.20.23, which under the district's filing practice is where they would sit and which holds only the 9.20 and 10.4 drafts; then the 2023 Meeting Minutes folder, which runs 13. CSB Meeting Minutes 8.16.23 straight to 14. CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23 with no entry and no number between, and the following packet folder 22. CSB 10.4.23, which carries the 9.20 and 10.4 drafts only. Quoted-date searches across the district's shares return nothing. See flag 1.
Explicit negative — subcommittees. Six board subcommittees reported to this meeting: Capital Improvement, Budget, Policy, Curriculum, the SRVRTC Visioning Committee and the Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors Committee. No minutes of any meeting of any of them exist in the district's shares. A subcommittee of a school board is itself a public body under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d), whose list ends "…or other political subdivision, or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto."
Adjacent meetings on this project: the previous meeting, Claremont School Board — September 6, 2023 — the documentary hole whose minutes were postponed here and never produced, and whose recording stops at 0:52:52 of a two-hour agenda; and Claremont School Board — August 16, 2023, at which the MS-22 certifying the March 2023 appropriations was signed 135 days after its statutory deadline. The next meeting, Claremont School Board — October 4, 2023 (Cablecast show 15336), now has its own page on this project; its draft minutes are in this packet and are relied on throughout this page for the correction to these minutes, the second reading of policy GBE, the twelve NHSBA resolution votes and the report that January would be too late for minimum-standards input.

Packet documents

Names are reproduced exactly as they appear in the district's Drive folder, including the duplicated parentheticals and the doubled file extensions. The oddities are the district's, not this page's.

CSB Agenda 9.20.23 — gives the location, the 6:30 p.m. start, the board and central-office rosters, a Student Representative heading with no name, the six subcommittees with their chairs, and the item structure used in the agenda table above. It prints "(Postponed)" against the 9.6.23 minutes before the meeting was held; misdates the listening-session reminder 9/21/20203; cites the nonpublic exemption as "Title IV Section 91-A-3 I (j)"; and runs its roman numerals I–VI then jumps to IX for adjournment.
School Tax Rate — Mary Henry's presentation of 20 September 2023. Sets out the MS-22-R appropriations ($38,139,852 for FY22–23), the MS-24-R revenue revision, the net assessment, the FY23 statewide education tax rate of $1.37783 with Claremont's calculation "($707,811,780 / 1000) x $1.37783 = $975,244", and the three-section structure of the state's tax-assessment worksheet, followed by charts of tax assessment, adequacy aid, property valuation and rates for fiscal years 2009–2023. It states that "The SWEPT rate is determined by the Commissioner of Education" (flag 10). The chart values are images and are not recoverable from the document's text; the figures used on this page come from the recording and from the slides' own text. Its two source links are to the Department of Revenue Administration's 2022 tax-rate table and to a Department of Education FY23 adequacy summary.
Exhibit A- Draft Claremont GBE Employee Rights and Responsibilities — six numbered responsibilities, a paragraph on staff conduct and dress, and the sentence "The Claremont School Board will respect all employee rights established by law, School Board policy, and collective bargaining agreements, if appropriate." Its adoption history block — "First reading: ____ Second reading/adopted: ____ Revision History: Adoption: ____" — is blank on every line. See flag 13.
draft CSB meeting minutes 9.20.23.docx.pdf — this meeting's own draft, word-for-word identical to the numbered filing and to the copy circulated with the October 4 packet.
draft CSB Meeting Minutes 10.4.23.docx.pdf — filed in this packet folder although it post-dates the meeting; the district files a meeting's minutes with a later meeting's packet and this folder holds both. It carries the correction to these minutes, the second reading and adoption of policy GBE, a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(k) sealed for 20 years, twelve NHSBA resolution votes, the Capital Improvement subcommittee's report on the Stevens walkthrough, the budget subcommittee's membership (Whitney, Sprague, Crawford), and Hawkins's report that January would be too late for minimum-standards input. Its masthead reads Student Board Member. A reader following the nonpublic thread should note that RSA 91-A:3, II(k), the student- and tuition-contract exemption used on October 4, carries its own publication duty for the contract and the related records — a different provision from the II(j) relied on here.

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

Dialogue transcript: Output/Dialogue/15311 SchoolBoard092023.mp4.CSV (512 rows; last row ends 1:20:09.02)
Diarized transcript: Input/Transcripts/15311 SchoolBoard092023.mp4.json
Video file: Input/Videos/15311 SchoolBoard092023.mp4 (1:20:38)
Meeting/document map: Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md (§ 21)

Laws and rules cited on this page

Right-to-Know: 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"); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice; minutes recording members, persons appearing, subject matter, final decisions, and the names of the members who made or seconded each motion, open to public inspection within 5 business days); RSA 91-A:3 (I(b), motion stating the specific paragraph II exemption on its face and a roll-call vote; II(j), confidential commercial or financial information exempt under RSA 91-A:5, IV in an adjudicative proceeding pursuant to RSA 541 or RSA 541-A; III, nonpublic minutes disclosed within 72 hours unless sealed by a recorded 2/3 vote in public session on one of three stated determinations, with the vote of each member ascertained and recorded)
Student board members: RSA 189:1-c (the school board "shall have at least one nonvoting student member from each public high school"; 2022, 195:1, eff. January 1, 2023); RSA 194:23-f (the high school "shall select"; chosen by a simple majority vote of the student body; one-year term; 2022, 195:2, eff. January 1, 2023 — further amended 2024, 69:1, after this meeting)
School money, filings and officers: RSA 21-J:34 (III, revised estimated revenues by September 1; V, school district financial reports "on or before September 1 of each year"; II, appropriations report within 20 days of the close of the meeting); RSA 198:4-d (2023 codification) (annual financial report submitted on or before September 1); RSA 189:28 (state and federal aid withheld until complete and accurate information is submitted); RSA 197:23-a (treasurer pays out district money only upon orders of the school board); RSA 32:8 (no school board shall pay or agree to pay money for a purpose for which no appropriation has been made); RSA 32:1 (chapter applies to towns, school districts and village districts; school administrative units are not named); RSA 194-C:9 (SAU budget apportioned among member districts); RSA 671:33, II (the school board fills vacancies in school board positions and in all other district offices for which no other method is provided)
Tax rate and adequacy: RSA 76:3 (the commissioner of the department of revenue administration sets the education tax rate, at a level sufficient to generate $363,000,000); RSA 76:8 (the same commissioner determines each municipality's education tax base and issues the warrant by December 15); RSA 198:41, I (total education grant = the RSA 198:40-a adequacy cost less the RSA 76:8 warrant amount); RSA 198:40-a, II ($4,100 base; $2,300 free-or-reduced-price meal; $2,100 special education; $800 English learner — enacted by 2023, 79:150, effective July 1, 2023 for the biennium beginning that day, so the current statutory text is the right one for a September 2023 meeting and is not the right text for a meeting earlier in 2023); RSA 198:4-b, II (year-end unassigned fund balance retained up to 5% of the net assessment; prior public hearing before expenditure)
Public comment, employment and standards: RSA 189:74 (school board public comment period, no less than 30 minutes; 2022, 333:1, eff. September 6, 2022); RSA 275:42, I (definition of "employer" — cited to explain why no wage-payment deadline is asserted against the district); RSA ch. 273-A (public employee labor relations — cited at chapter level; no section is asserted); RSA 186:8, II (state board rulemaking: minimum standards for public school approval); N.H. Admin. Code Ed 306 (minimum standards for public school approval — cite the part page; the rules were renumbered and readopted with amendments effective 12-13-2024, after this meeting)
Secondary sources (reporting and analysis, not law): NH Fiscal Policy Institute, "Statewide Education Property Tax Change Provides Less Targeted Relief" (the one-year reduction of the statewide education property tax target from $363 million to $263 million for state fiscal year 2023); NHDOE, iFinance and Financial Reporting Requirements (the DOE-25 due by September 1); Valley News, "Financial audits reveal Claremont schools' long-term struggles" (2026-01-02)
Expressly NOT applied, for vintage: RSA 91-A:3, IV (periodic review of sealed nonpublic minutes; added by 2023, 189:1, effective October 3, 2023 — thirteen days after this meeting, and absent from the 2022 codification); the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements added to RSA 91-A:2, II by 2025, 112:1; the 2024, 69:1 amendment to RSA 194:23-f; the 2025, 141:401 amendment to RSA 198:4-d; and the December 13, 2024 readoption of Ed 306.