Claremont School Board Finance Committee — November 30, 2023

MEDIUM The ESSER cliff is ten months away, the superintendent has not costed it, and three portable classrooms have not been put out to bid

The superintendent opened by naming the sunset — "sunsetting the additional staff that we brought in a few years ago, funded by the federal government, the Esser [ESSER] positions intended to mitigate student learning loss from the Covid 19 pandemic" — listing the posts that go ("the academic deans at the middle school, the academic centers at Stevens in the middle school, the elementary and middle school, summer programs in the after school tutoring"), fixing the date ("All of those things expire in September of 24 next September"), and then saying the quiet part: "I didn't estimate the budget impact." The date is right. American Rescue Plan ESSER funds had to be obligated by 30 September 2024 and liquidated by 28 January 2025 under 2 CFR 200.344 — then paragraph (b), and renumbered to paragraph (c) by the 2024 revision of the Uniform Guidance, so a reader following the link today lands on (c) — with a valid obligation required under 34 CFR 76.707. Ten months from this meeting.

Two things ride on that deadline, and the meeting handled them differently. The first is people. The elementary evidence is that at least one ESSER post is doing daily work: Disnard's building-based substitute, "for the last two years under Esser funds," of whom the principal says "She's used daily. What a that is a gift. That is an absolute gift." Whether any of these posts survive into local money is expressly deferred — "we'll talk more about those tomorrow. Not necessarily tonight" — so the committee reviewed an elementary budget without a figure for what happens when the federal money stops.

The second is capital, and it is the sharper point. Three portable classrooms for Disnard and Bluff are to be bought with ESSER money that is not in the budget book the committee is reading — "what I don't see in this that I have is the allocation of funds to that to get portable classrooms." Asked whether the money had already lapsed, the answer was that obligation runs to September 2024, and then, at 1:16:28: "We still have to go out to bid. We have to start everything on that." A competitive procurement for three modular buildings, from a standing start, that must produce a legally valid obligation inside ten months. Federal procurement standards at 2 CFR 200.317–200.327 apply to that purchase — full and open competition, documented cost or price analysis, written procurement records — and they take time. Nobody at the table asked when the bid would go out or who was running it.

Context the meeting did not supply but the board's own record does: the business administrator had told the full board on 15 November 2023 that the district "Didn't get to use about 300,000 of the ESSER II- funds were allocated, but didn't get the hires or programs weren't as big as anticipated." The district had already lost roughly $300,000 of an earlier ESSER tranche to under-execution. That is the risk this flag is about, restated in the district's own words two weeks earlier.

In fairness: the district was ahead of many in having a sunset list at all, the buy-rather-than-lease reasoning is sound on its face — "You can lease, but we can own them right now... And it's a nice, nice one time" — and vendor plans were said to be in hand ("We have plans from centipede. We have plans from Fall Mountain," the first of those two names garbled beyond recovery in the transcript). Nothing here is a violation. It is an unpriced cliff and an unstarted procurement, both stated on the record by the officers responsible.

What would resolve this: the district's ESSER obligation schedule as of December 2023, the procurement file for the portable classrooms, and the FY2025 budget as adopted showing which sunsetting positions were picked up locally and at what cost.

Sources: U.S. Department of Education, ARP ESSER obligation deadline 30 September 2024; liquidation 28 January 2025; 2 CFR 200.318 — general federal procurement standards (with 200.319–200.327: competition, methods, cost and price analysis, records); 20 U.S.C. §1225(b) — GEPA/Tydings, the one-additional-fiscal-year availability rule behind claim it or lose it; Approved Claremont School Board minutes, 15 November 2023 (the unspent ESSER II figure).

MEDIUM A permanent $250,000-a-year curriculum cost, with three non-recurring sources proposed to pay for it and none confirmed

The last ten minutes of this meeting establish something the budget book did not. English language arts was bought as "three programs that formed kind of a suite," on three-year contracts, at "mid 200,000 to 300,000 when you put all pieces together," and it covers K–5 only — grades 6–12 have no programme at all ("Well we don't have a program... We have a curricula"). The workbooks inside it "are consumable, right. Each year," so they must be rebought annually whatever else happens. Mathematics is next, then science, "one per year going forward." Asked by the board chair for "a global number that we're going to have to build into the budget when we max out," the assistant superintendent gave it twice, the second time in terms: "if you kind of ballpark be responsible. Yeah, $250,000 a year each year for curriculum." That is a recurring operating cost, and the chair immediately treated it as one — "if we build in roughly a quarter of a million per year, we can support curriculum every subject case as well."

Every funding source floated for it in this meeting is non-recurring. First, the state's extraordinary need grant: the committee chair states that "we got the extraordinary needs grant last year," that it was "One year, just last year," that "there's been no word of a carryover," and — the operative part — "I was under the impression that the, the curriculum, things that were in the elementary budget this year were going to be paid for with that." A recurring cost had been carried on a one-year grant, and no one in the room knew whether the grant repeated. Second, ESSER, which expires in September 2024 (flag 2). Third, fund balance, proposed twice by the superintendent — "There'd be a good use of, allocates some money from a fund balance into that" and "Remember that if we have a, say, a $400,000 fund balance" — with the assistant superintendent's cheerful "Be happy to be the beneficiary of that." Crawford adds a fourth, the school-funding judgments themselves: "Against sets, those lawsuits."

Two of those raise questions the committee did not put. New Hampshire's extraordinary need grant is a formula grant recalculated annually under RSA 198:40-f; it is not a term grant and it is not guaranteed to repeat at the same level, and the statute's own dollar parameters have since been rewritten twice, so nothing about the FY2024 award predicts FY2025. Vintage note: today's text of RSA 198:40-f carries an $11,500 grant floor and a further revision effective 1 July 2026; those figures are not the ones that governed the grant the chair is asking about, and no dollar figure is asserted here. Fund balance is narrower still. Under RSA 198:4-b a district may establish a contingency fund "to meet the cost of unanticipated expenses that may arise during the year," and may retain year-end unassigned general funds only where the legislative body has voted to authorise it and only up to "5 percent of the current fiscal year's net assessment." A curriculum cycle known five years in advance is the definition of an anticipated recurring expense; whether Claremont's voters have authorised retention at all, and what the balance is, went unasked.

In the district's favour, and it matters: the person driving this thread is the board chair, and she is driving it in exactly the right direction. "If I'm building a budget for today, I have to be thinking five years down... So what I don't want to do is think, oh, we have a great budget this year." That is the sustainability question a finance committee exists to ask, asked before the money ran out rather than after — see flag 10. The defect is not that the question was ducked; it is that the answers offered were all one-time money, and nobody said so.

What would resolve this: the district's unassigned fund balance at 30 June 2023 and the warrant article, if any, authorising retention under RSA 198:4-b; Claremont's extraordinary need grant awards for FY2024 and FY2025; and the adopted FY2025 budget's curriculum lines.

Sources: RSA 198:4-b — contingency fund for "unanticipated expenses"; retention of year-end unassigned general funds capped at 5% of the current year's net assessment; RSA 198:40-f — extraordinary need grants, recalculated annually by formula; RSA 32:10 — transfers between appropriations by the governing body; RSA 32:5 — budget preparation, itemisation and the public hearing.

MEDIUM The budget's largest structural change removes every elementary behavioural specialist, and the sum put in its place was withheld from the committee and the public

Three elementary schools currently employ one behavioural support specialist each — "a position that we added several years ago. We added one to each building" — staff with "additional certifications in the behavior" such as "some ABA training," engaged not under the paraprofessional contract but on letters of agreement: "they are those on lows [LOAs]." The FY2025 budget removes them. The business administrator states it without qualification at 1:08:01: "There are no behavioral support specialists or the Haverhill [behavioral] support in any of these budget lines." Crawford puts the summarising question — "In this proposed budget, there are no behavioral specialists for the elementaries. Is that true?" — and gets "Yeah. That's true. Correct."

The intent is not concealment of a cut but a reclassification: "our intention is to have... more paraprofessionals with different to take the behavior interventionists and the other folks and get them into the power [para] contract," which is why the paraprofessional contract is being reopened at all — "so that we can capture the major [behavior] specialist positions in the contract. And I'm at a better rate." That is a defensible, arguably overdue piece of housekeeping: staff doing skilled work on letters of agreement moved inside a collective agreement.

The problem is the number. Asked directly whether money had been built into the paraprofessional lines to absorb these people, the superintendent answered "That's what I can't talk about," then confirmed the fact without the figure — "But yes yes yes" — and then, unprompted, gave a headcount anyway: "So there's 62 powers [paras]. Not that I know anything about it, but there's 62 powers. There's nine. The average salary of all of the," at which point Crawford stopped him. So the committee left the meeting knowing that an unstated sum sits inside the paraprofessional lines for positions that formally do not appear anywhere in the budget, and that the elementary total it had just been given — 0.66 per cent — excludes the settlement that will fund them. Whitney says as much: "we have no idea what the terror [para] negotiation increase how that will be reflected in the budget."

Two observations sharpen this rather than excusing it. First, nothing in New Hampshire law required the reticence. RSA 91-A:3, II lists the purposes for which a public body may go into nonpublic session, and collective-bargaining strategy is not among them; the committee did not consider a nonpublic session and did not need one to hear a budget figure, because a budgeted amount is not a bargaining position. Second, and more pointedly, two of the three members of this committee were the board's own negotiators. The approved board minutes of 15 November 2023 record, under "Board Representative for Paraprofessional Contract Negotiation": "Candace Crawford and Frank Sprague offered, board accepts." Crawford refers to it herself on this tape — "a question since I'm on the parent [para] negotiating." The information was withheld from a table two-thirds of which already sat inside the negotiation. What it was withheld from was the camera.

The forward-looking duty is clear enough. RSA 32:5, II provides that "All purposes and amounts of appropriations to be included in the budget or special warrant articles shall be disclosed or discussed at the final hearing." A preliminary subcommittee session is not that hearing, so no duty was breached here — but the amount concealed on 30 November had to be disclosed at the budget public hearing that the board had already scheduled for 3 January 2024. The committee also closed without ever seeing the district-wide section of the budget where these lines live: "We haven't seen it yet because we haven't seen the district wide portion yet."

What would resolve this: the FY2025 paraprofessional salary lines as presented at the 3 January 2024 public hearing, the ratified paraprofessional agreement, and the letters of agreement under which the behavioural specialists were employed.

Sources: RSA 32:5, II — all purposes and amounts of appropriations shall be disclosed or discussed at the final hearing; RSA 91-A:3, II — the exhaustive list of nonpublic-session purposes (collective bargaining is not among them); RSA 273-A:3 — obligation to bargain in good faith; Approved Claremont School Board minutes, 15 November 2023 (Crawford and Sprague named as the board's paraprofessional negotiators).

MEDIUM Three prior-year budgeting errors surface in one eighty-four-minute sitting, in a budget the voters had already approved

Within forty minutes the committee found three separate line-item errors in the current year's adopted budget, each discovered only because someone asked what a variance meant.

One. A $15,000 increase in Disnard's school-secretary line that the principal could not explain — "It is not increased hours... We have not increased the position." Sprague supplied the answer: "It was incorrectly entered last year." Crawford, checking she had heard it: "$67,000 budgeted last year was incorrect?" Whitney: Yes. Sprague read out the corrected figure: "It was five budget. 24 budget is 19,000." Two. A $71,000 fall in Disnard's special-education salary line, which Crawford reasonably assumed reflected a change in student population — "Is that related to some IEPs a change in population from Disney [Disnard] to another school?" The superintendent: "No. We think it was a budgeting error from last year." Crawford's response is the whole point of the flag: "Great. That pays for the social worker." Three. The same explanation for Bluff's special-education teacher salaries at 0:42:50 — "we believe it's a was a budgeting error. For bluff" — with the business administrator adding "I talked to him again last night to make sure."

These are appropriations the district's voters adopted at the March 2023 ballot. RSA 32:5 requires the governing body to prepare the budget and to disclose all purposes and amounts at the public hearing; RSA 32:10 governs how a governing body may move money between appropriations once the year is under way. Neither is breached by an entry error found and corrected. What the pattern shows is a control weakness: three erroneous lines in a single budget, all found by conversation rather than by reconciliation, and — the part that matters for FY2025 — a correction in one line being used as the funding source for a new position in another. The district's own board treated this as a live issue: the approved board minutes of 6 December 2023 record, under the Finance Sub-Committee item, "Discussion of anomalies that occurred last year."

In mitigation, the errors were found, they were acknowledged immediately and without defensiveness, the business administrator had independently re-checked one of them the night before, and the corrections all ran in the direction of releasing money rather than requiring more. This is a subcommittee doing its job. The concern is that the job is being done by three people reading a book aloud, in a district whose FY2022 audit was still unissued at this date, and that no reconciliation process caught any of the three first.

What would resolve this: the FY2024 budget as adopted alongside the FY2024 detail actually loaded into the accounting system, and the district's independent audit for the year in question.

Sources: RSA 32:5 — preparation of the budget; disclosure of all purposes and amounts at the public hearing; RSA 32:10 — transfers between appropriations during the year; RSA 21-J:34 — school district financial reporting to the Department of Revenue Administration; RSA 21-J:19 — audits by independent public accountants; Approved Claremont School Board minutes, 6 December 2023 ("Discussion of anomalies that occurred last year").