Participants
Everyone in the record. Name spellings follow the official minutes and the packet documents; where the automatic transcript renders a name differently, the row says so. Rows marked listed, not heard appear on the agenda's central-office roster but do not speak on the recording.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Frank Sprague | Vice Chair — presiding; chair of the Finance Sub-Committee | 60 segments, more than any other voice. Opened the meeting — "I'd like to bring the Claremont School Board meeting of December 6th, 2023 to order, please" (0:00:04) — and ran every item in the chair's absence. Moved the nonpublic session and the return from it, seconded the seal, and claimed the finance chairmanship on the record: "as I'm the chair of the of that committee, that you look, look this over, and if there are questions, ask me first" (0:12:33). Asked the meeting's one substantive curriculum question, on ninth-grade math placement, from his own experience of the course — "I remember the first year, one year we offered that and 50 one eighth graders signed up for it" (0:07:28). Also asked the sharpest audit question of the night, on policies the auditors said the district must have and does not (0:27:11). Rendered Craig. Sprague. and Frank's Sprague in this corpus. This corpus holds five different accounts of his career at Stevens, all given by him in 2023; this page quotes none of them, because he gives none here. |
| Whitney Skillen | Member; chair of the Policy Sub-Committee | 47 segments, and the meeting's longest single item — a nine-minute policy-audit presentation delivered in the first person from 0:21:06 to 0:26:14. Moved the Program of Studies motion at 0:09:33. Named the reason for the presentation before giving it: "For the sake of transparency, for the sake of understanding of for everyone to know what the policy committee does and is doing" (0:21:06). Opened the committee's audit tracker to the whole board and to the business administrator (0:28:42), and offered it to the disruptive-behaviors committee too (0:33:46). Also pressed the finance committee on process — "it looked like some administrators were shocked at, like, some of the details" (0:13:40). The transcript renders her name Skilling, Scaling and East. Gillen. elsewhere in this corpus; the surname collision with the absent chair's first name is the highest-risk name confusion on this board. |
| Candace Crawford | Member; Finance Sub-Committee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee | 26 segments. Gave the Finance Sub-Committee report and named the committee from the inside: "the finance committee is made up of Heather Whitney, Frank's Sprague and myself" (0:10:40). Hers is the sentence the district's own minutes lead that item with — "They those sessions have been recorded on CCTV. So if you have any questions about what has transpired, just take a look on CCTV" (0:11:06) — see flag 1. Walked the board through the week's budget interviews school by school (0:14:53, 0:15:59), warned the board off the variance column (0:18:50), and gave the plainest statement of why the sessions are televised: "We want people to know the details if they want to know them" (0:16:42). Also moved the six-month seal of the nonpublic minutes (0:03:35) and gave the SRVRTC visioning report (0:29:37). Rendered Candy, Andy and Dennis Crawford in this corpus — the Andy garble occurs on this very recording at 0:20:47 and names nobody. |
| Arlene Hawkins | Member; chair of the SAU 6 board; Policy Sub-Committee | 21 segments. Opened the meeting's business by correcting the previous meeting's minutes from the floor, in the exact terms the corrected document now carries (0:01:05) — see flag 14. Seconded the Croydon motion per both sets of minutes. Asked the question the agenda had promised an answer to and did not deliver: "when it comes to budget implications of schedule changes, there are implications. And I think we would benefit from knowing what those implications are before we vote" (0:18:36), after saying she said of a staffing reduction, "I'd like to know what that's going to look like in the course of that school experience for those teachers and for those students before I'm asked to vote to do that" (0:18:13). Explained the NHSBA priority/recommended/optional framework to the board (0:26:18). As SAU 6 chair she announced her own board's meeting the next evening and its early start (0:34:08). Rendered Marlene. Hawkins. on this recording's roll call and Arlene Hopkins, Barley. Hawkins elsewhere. |
| Jennifer Gallagher | Member; chair of the Curriculum Committee and of the Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors Committee | 7 segments in the dialogue file, all of them her ad hoc disruptive-behaviors report from 0:30:23. Reported three referred issues — students not yet toilet trained, aggressive behaviour, and attendance — and said what was missing in each case: "we don't have, policies in place that are supportive or that exist at all to address that" (0:30:23). Undertook to invite the policy chair to the committee's next meeting. Both sets of minutes name her as the mover of the Croydon motion and the seconder of the Program of Studies motion, and as mover of the adjournment; the recording's speaker labels differ on the first of those — see flag 10. She is the only member who answers roll with Present rather than Here, and the clerk's roll at 0:00:41 preserves it. |
| Bonnie Miles | Member; chair of the Capital Improvement Sub-Committee | One segment in the whole meeting, and it is her committee report: "We have not had a meeting. We haven't had a meeting recently, so nothing new to report" (0:10:26). Present and recorded present in both sets of minutes; answers the roll at 0:00:41, where the clerk's reading and her answer are pooled into one segment. Rendered Ronnie Miles, Only. Miles. and A lot of miles in this corpus. She is also SAU 6 treasurer, elected 8/17/23; nothing at this meeting turns on that. |
| Heather Whitney | Chair, Claremont School Board — Absent | Recorded absent in both sets of minutes. Her name is read first in all four roll calls on this recording and answered by nobody. In three of the four the next voice is the vice chair's own Here or Yes, answering to his own name; in the fourth the clerk's segment runs straight through — "Heather. Whitney. Craig [Frank]. Sprague. Yes." — with no answer between the two names, where every other name in that roll is followed by a Yes. Outside the roll calls her name is spoken three times: by Arlene Hawkins, as the seconder of the November 15 seal that Hawkins corrected into the record here; and twice by Candace Crawford, naming her as one of the three finance members and as one of the three meeting the following week. The minutes add a fourth mention, recording that budget questions are to go to "Frank Sprague or Candance or Heather first". The same-day Finance Sub-Committee recording gives the reason: "Mrs. Whitney is in Las Vegas getting a well-deserved break." No written submission from her appears in this meeting's record. Rendered Heather Whitman and Heather wisdom elsewhere in this corpus. |
| Michael C. Tempesta | Superintendent, SAU 6 | 9 segments. Explained the Croydon proposal and what an anchor district is — "it's not formally defined, but it's it's a a school in which a district can ensure fate [FAPE] all the way up to age 22" (0:03:57) — and that "Croydon has grades up to only fourth grade" (0:04:28). Answered the process question about the budget interviews candidly, including about himself: "I was I was also a little bit surprised that that at some of the things that were presented and in particular with, I think the two things that that came up today, that I'll reiterate where we were looking at potential schedule changes and what might happen" (0:13:48). Promised "another iteration" of the budget and named the difficulty: "particularly schedules are very hard to understand" (0:14:41). Rendered Mr. Contessa, Mr. Dempster, Mr. Thompson and Mister Tuesday across this corpus. He was dismissed by the SAU 6 board on January 11–12, 2024, five weeks after this meeting. |
| Mary Henry | Business Administrator, SAU 6 | 8 segments, all short, all in other people's items. Confirmed that the budget rebuild will take longer than one cycle — "We'll take another year to really get it… Where needs to be" (0:20:40) — and told the policy committee she is holding audit findings it needs: "I have a lot of them written that I need to pass along to the committee" (0:28:34). Her recategorisation of budget lines is what Candace Crawford credits for the variance the board is being warned about: "some of it has been Mary's, cleaning up… Rearranging" (0:19:58). Started in the post in early July 2023. |
| Noelle Kronberg | Clerk, Claremont School Board | 8 segments, every one of them a roll call — the opening roll and the three votes around the nonpublic session. Her third meeting as clerk: she was appointed to this board's clerkship on November 15, 2023, three weeks earlier, and to the SAU 6 board's on November 9. She reads the board's roll in a fixed order — Heather Whitney, Frank Sprague, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen, Jennifer Gallagher, Arlene Hawkins, Candace Crawford — and both sets of minutes name her as the taker of each roll call, which is the reason this meeting's votes can be reconstructed at all. She wrote both sets of minutes and signed them "Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, school board clerk". The transcript renders her Noelle Cronenberg; the minutes she wrote spell it Kronberg and this page follows them. |
| Mimi Rhines | School counsellor, Stevens High School — presenter, Program of Studies | 13 segments, and the only voice on the packet's two largest documents. Introduced herself — "I'm here for program studies this time, which is my actual job at the high school. So I've been school counselors my eighth year at Stevens" (0:05:57) — and explained why there are two of everything: "You have two you have a block format and a period schedule. One, just because there are talks of us changing our scheduling" (0:06:18). Stated the substantive change: "The only new ones in this are the three drama ones" (0:06:34), the rest being updated descriptions. Explained the new prerequisite charts and the middle-school recommendation meeting before the holidays (0:08:34). Received the board's thanks and a unanimous vote, and answered it: "The girl Christmas gift for myself" (0:09:58). Rendered Mimi Ryan by the chair on this recording and Mimi Ryan's, Meeting your eyes elsewhere; the agenda and both sets of minutes spell it Rhines, and this page follows them. |
| Dr. Michael Herrington | Assistant Principal, Stevens High School — billed as a presenter; does not speak | The agenda and both sets of minutes head the item "Dr. Michael Herrington, Assistant Principal & Mimi Rhines, Guidance Counselor Presenting". The vice chair welcomes them both — "We've got Doctor Michael Harrington [Herrington] and Mimi Ryan [Rhines] here tonight. Welcome, guys" (0:05:31) — and after that he has no segment anywhere in the recording. The half of the item he was billed for, the schedule and the preliminary staffing request, is the half that never happens. See flag 4. The 2023–24 Stevens handbook lists him as assistant principal; he is the school's principal by the June 2024 graduation. |
| Aaron McKeon | Chair, Croydon School Board — appeared in the nonpublic session; named in no district record | Not in the agenda, not in either set of minutes, not audible on the recording. His attendance is established by contemporaneous reporting: the Valley News of December 9, 2023 reports that the vote "came after the board held a brief non-public session that included Croydon School Board Chairman Aaron McKeon and Croydon Superintendent Frank Perotti", and quotes him outside the meeting — "It provides stability for the district" and "We just need to work out the details of the contract." RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to name "persons appearing before the public bodies". See flag 3. |
| Frank Perotti | Superintendent, Croydon School District — appeared in the nonpublic session; named in no district record | As above. The recording contains what is almost certainly the moment he and his chair leave: between 0:05:38 and 0:05:45, immediately after the Croydon vote and before the Program of Studies presenters begin, the board says goodbye to somebody — "It was nice to meet all of you. Get home safe." Neither set of minutes records anyone appearing. See flag 3. |
| Michael Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation & Assessment — listed, not heard | On the agenda's central-office roster and on both minutes mastheads. Does not speak on the recording and is not referred to in it. |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education, SAU 6 — listed, not heard | On the agenda's central-office roster and on both minutes mastheads. Does not speak on the recording and is not referred to in it. He read this board's roll calls all year until the clerk's appointment three weeks earlier; his resignation is announced eight days after this meeting. |
| Jeff Small | Director of Technology, SAU 6 — listed, not heard | On the agenda's central-office roster and on both minutes mastheads. Does not speak on the recording and is not referred to in it. |
| Angela Vivian | Human Resource Director, SAU 6 — listed, not heard | On the agenda's central-office roster and on both minutes mastheads. Does not speak on the recording and is not referred to in it. |
| Nicole Bouchard and Kylee Plummer | Student board members, Stevens High School — Absent | On the agenda as a scheduled report. The minutes record the item and one word: absent. On the recording the item passes in a fragment — a member says "Looks like. Not tonight." at 0:02:00 — and the meeting moves on. Both were seated on November 1, 2023 and gave the longest report of the November 15 meeting three weeks earlier. The dialogue CSV and this project's earlier notes render the second name Kylie; the agenda and both sets of minutes spell it Kylee, and this page follows them. |
| Chelsea | SAU 6 recording secretary / executive assistant — named, not present | Named once, by the presiding vice chair, as the person holding the budget binders: "And, Chelsea has these. Yeah. So we actually passed out" (0:12:21). This corpus identifies the SAU 6 recording secretary of this period as Chelsea Weatherford from her signature on three sets of 2022–23 SAU 6 minutes; the recording gives only the first name and this page does not go beyond it. |
| Alex | Unidentified — named, present | Named once, in a garbled passage about the nonpublic minutes: "I'm just gonna send this to Alex since he's here" (0:03:04). The meeting is held at the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center and this corpus has an Alex Herzog in SRVRTC administration, but nothing on this recording connects the two and this page does not make the identification. See the method note. |
| Citizens' comment speakers | — | None. Citizens' comments are on the agenda and are reached at 0:01:47, in a two-word segment — "Some comments" — followed by "Seeing none" a few seconds later. Both sets of minutes record the item and one word: None. No member of the public speaks anywhere on this recording, and nobody was turned away. See flag 11. |
Agenda
From the posted agenda, CSB Agenda 12.6.23.docx (1).pdf, created in the district's Drive on December 1 — five days ahead. Dispositions are from the approved minutes, checked against the draft minutes (identical) and the recording; where they differ the cell says so. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text. The agenda's roman numerals run I, II, III, then V, VI, IX — IV, VII and VIII do not exist, and the two sets of minutes reproduce the jump exactly. The minutes also silently reset every scheduled clock time on the agenda: 6:35 becomes 6:32, 7:10 becomes 6:35, 8:20 becomes 7:20, 8:25 becomes 7:20 and 8:30 becomes 7:22.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:04 | I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance | Agenda: "I. 6:30 PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance." The vice chair opens in the chair's absence: "Good evening everyone. I'd like to bring the Claremont School Board meeting of December 6th, 2023 to order, please. Could we all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance?" No clock time is spoken, and neither set of minutes records one for the call to order. |
| 0:00:36 | 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)." The clerk reads it; the answers arrive pooled into her segments. "Heather Whitney" is read first and nothing follows it; the next voice is the vice chair's Here, answering to his own name. Both sets of minutes: "Present: Frank Sprague, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen, Jennifer Gallagher, Arlene Hawkins, Candace Crawford" and "absent: Heather Whitney". The agenda stamps this item 6:35 p.m.; the minutes stamp it 6:32 p.m. |
| 0:00:49 | II. Consent Agenda (vote required) — items 1 and 2, the agenda and the November 15 minutes | Agenda: "1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda 2. Minutes Approval- 11.15.23." The presiding chair takes both together — "We have a consent agenda in front of us, which would be amendments and final approval of board agenda and minutes approval. And I know that we have a correction on the minutes." Arlene Hawkins then supplies the correction from the floor at 0:01:05. Disposition: a voice vote with no mover and no seconder — "So is there any objection to the amendment to the minutes? Okay. So all those in favor." Minutes: "No discussion, unanimously approved." See flag 5 and flag 14. |
| 0:01:47 | II. Citizens Comments | Agenda: "Citizens Comments." Reached in a two-word segment and disposed of five seconds later. Nobody rose; nobody was turned away. Both sets of minutes: "Citizens Comments ● None". See flag 11. |
| 0:02:00 | II. Student Board Member Report — Nicole Bouchard & Kylee Plummer | Agenda: "Student Board Member Report-Nicole Bouchard & Kylee Plummer." Both absent. On the recording the item is four words from a member — "Looks like. Not tonight." — and the presiding chair moves on. Both sets of minutes carry the heading and the single word absent. No apology, explanation or substitute report appears anywhere in the record. |
| 0:02:03 | III.1 Non-Public Session — student or pupil contract | Agenda: "1. Non-Public Session RSA91-A:,II (k) Consideration of a school board of entering into a student or pupil contract authorized by RSA 194 or RSA 195-A." Moved by Frank Sprague, seconded per the minutes by Jennifer Gallagher, roll call by the clerk, all six voting yes; out at 0:03:16 on Sprague's motion seconded by Whitney Skillen; minutes sealed six months on Candace Crawford's motion seconded by Sprague, roll call, all six yes. The citation is written without its section number in every place it appears — see flag 9 — and the exemption relied on carries its own publication duty: see flag 3. The agenda stamps the whole Discussion/Action block 7:10 p.m.; the minutes stamp it 6:35 p.m. |
| 0:03:57 | III.2 Croydon Tuition Agreement (Discussion/Vote) | Agenda: "2. Croydon Tuition Agreement (Discussion/Vote)." The superintendent explains the proposal from 0:03:57. Motion at 0:05:05 — "I'd like to make a motion that we proceed with negotiations for accepting Corden's [Croydon's] proposal to become their anchor district" — seconded by Arlene Hawkins, carried by voice vote at 0:05:25: "Opposed? Passes unanimously." Minutes: "Jennifer Gallagher makes motion… Arlene Hawkins seconded; no further discussion; unanimously approved." No number, term, rate or student count is stated in open session, and no document about Croydon exists in any district share. See flag 3 and flag 10. |
| 0:05:31 | III.3 SHS Program of Studies 2024, Schedule and Preliminary Staffing Request | Agenda: "3. SHS Presentation of Program of Studies 2024, Schedule and Preliminary Staffing Request Dr. Michael Herrington, Assistant Principal & Mimi Rhines, Guidance Counselor Presenting." Mimi Rhines presents both booklets from 0:05:54. Whitney Skillen moves at 0:09:33 "to accept the the two versions of the program of studies presented by Miss Rhines for the Stevens High School period, schedule and block format"; Jennifer Gallagher seconds; carried by voice vote at 0:09:51. Minutes: "both block and period schedules) as written… unanimously approved." Neither the schedule nor the staffing request was presented, and the billed co-presenter never speaks. See flag 4 and flag 7. |
| 0:10:12 | III.4(a) Capital Improvement Sub-Committee — Chair Bonnie Miles | Agenda: "a) Capital Improvement Committee SubCommittee Chair Bonnie Miles." Whole report, verbatim: "We have not had a meeting. We haven't had a meeting recently, so nothing new to report." Minutes: "No meeting to update on." The district's Drive folder for this subcommittee exists and is empty — verified 2026-08-29. |
| 0:10:36 | III.4(b) Finance Sub-Committee — Chair Frank Sprague | Agenda: "b) Finance Sub-Committee Subcommittee Chair Frank Sprague." The longest item after the policy presentation, running to 0:20:47. Candace Crawford reports; the minutes' first bullet under this item is "Sessions have been recorded on CCTV". Five budget sessions are described — the three elementary schools, the middle and high schools and the tech centre, district-wide, special education and maintenance — with a sixth set for the following Wednesday and a presentation to the full board "in two weeks". Binders were distributed. No motion, no vote; the item is a report. See flag 1 and flag 16. |
| 0:20:52 | III.4(c) Policy Sub-Committee — Chair Whitney Skillen, Operational Guide and Delegation of Policy Audits | Agenda: "c) Policy Sub-Committee Subcommittee Chair Whitney Skillen — Presentation by Subcommittee Chair Whitney Skillen Operational Guide and Delegation of Policy Audits." Floor correction by the presenter herself at 0:20:59: "if you're looking at the agenda, it says we're doing a presentation on the operational guide and delegation of policy audits, but we're not quite there yet… probably going to come in January." What follows instead is a nine-minute progress report on the policy-manual audit. Minutes: "Presentation will be in January- not ready yet." No motion, no vote. See flag 15. |
| 0:29:04 | III.4(d) Curriculum Committee — Chair Jennifer Gallagher | Agenda: "d) Curriculum Committee Subcommittee Chair Jennifer Gallagher." Report, in full: "We haven't had a meeting. No. Yeah, we met, but it was before the last one. It was a brief meeting" and "Have a curriculum update and kind of PD plan draft, but that'll probably be after. Great. Finish our budget work. So sometime in January we'll present that." Minutes: "Will have updated draft in January." The district's Drive folder for this subcommittee exists and is empty — verified 2026-08-29. |
| 0:29:31 | III.4(e) SRVRTC Visioning Committee — F. Sprague, B. Miles, C. Crawford | Agenda: "e) SRVRTC Visioning Committee Board Representatives F. Sprague, B. Miles, & C. Crawford." Candace Crawford: "we haven't met as a visiting [visioning] committee. Because we're we s reb [SREB], who is the consulting firm who is doing the analysis of the tech center and its programs. Is has the data that they need, and it's anticipated that the report will come out in March. That which is about three months later than we hoped it would be." Minutes: "Have not met; SREV has data that they need and report will come out in March" — the minutes' SREV is the district's own rendering of the consultant's initials. No motion, no vote. |
| 0:30:20 | III.4(f) Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors Committee — Chair Jennifer Gallagher | Agenda: "f) Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors Committee- Chair Jennifer Gallagher." Met that day. Three referred issues reported: students not yet toilet trained, aggressive behaviour, and attendance — each with the same finding, that policy is missing or weak. The superintendent proposes "one more disruptive behaviors meeting and then generate a document for the board and especially the policy committees review" (0:32:36). Minutes record all three issues and the plan. No motion, no vote. See flag 8. The district's Drive folder for this subcommittee exists and is empty — verified 2026-08-29. |
| 0:34:42 | V. Other Business | Agenda: "V. 8:20 PM Other Business." Presiding chair: "Any other business I know jumping around on the agenda." Nothing raised. Minutes: "V. 7:20 PM Other Business - none." |
| 0:34:03 | VI. Future Dates / Future Agenda Items | Agenda: "VI. 8:25 PM Future Dates/Future Agenda Items", listing ten items beginning with the December 20 board meeting. Taken before Other Business, not after. Arlene Hawkins added the eleventh from the floor at 0:34:08 — the SAU 6 board meeting the following evening and its unusual start time, "We'll focus primarily on budget and we start at 6:00" — and the presiding chair repeated it as a notice: "So notice the special early start tomorrow." Both sets of minutes add it as item (a), ahead of the agenda's own list. Both also keep "Deliberative Session 2.7.24", three weeks after the board voted on November 15 to move that session to Saturday February 3. |
| 0:34:53 | IX. Adjournment | Agenda: "IX. 8:30 PM Adjournment"; the minutes stamp it 7:22 PM. Presiding chair: "Then I'm looking for a motion." Motion at 0:34:56, second from Whitney Skillen, voice vote at 0:35:00. Minutes: "Motion to adjourn made by Jennifer Gallagher, seconded by Whitney Skillen; no further discussion, unanimously approved." The recording's last words, at 0:35:05, are "Good night." |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue transcript. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording. Quotations reproduce the automatic transcript exactly as recorded; square brackets mark this page's insertion or correction, and the garbled wording is left visible wherever the correction changes the sense. Quotations attributed to the agenda, either set of minutes, a packet document, a newspaper or a statute are from those documents and are not speech from the recording.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:04 | The vice chair opens in the chair's absence | "Good evening everyone. I'd like to bring the Claremont School Board meeting of December 6th, 2023 to order, please. Could we all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance?" Frank Sprague presides throughout. He is the board's vice chair; the chair, Heather Whitney, is absent, and the reason is on the record only in the other recording of that day — the Finance Sub-Committee session that afternoon opens "Mrs. Whitney is in Las Vegas getting a well-deserved break. So Mrs. Crawford and I are running the show" (Cablecast show 15452, a separate meeting). | |
| 0:00:36 | The clerk's roll, and a name nobody answers to | Noelle Kronberg reads the roll in the board's fixed order. Her first segment is "Yes. Heather. Whitney." and the next voice, 4.07 seconds later, is Sprague's Here — his own answer, not hers. The rest arrives pooled: "Bonnie, here. Here. Jennifer Gallagher. Present." then Arlene Hawkins's Here. Jennifer Gallagher is the only member on this board who answers Present rather than Here, which is what makes her answer identifiable inside a pooled segment. Both sets of minutes record six present and Heather Whitney absent. | |
| 0:01:05 | A member corrects the previous meeting's minutes, and the correction is a vote to seal | Sprague opens the consent agenda: "We have a consent agenda in front of us, which would be amendments and final approval of board agenda and minutes approval. And I know that we have a correction on the minutes." Arlene Hawkins: "Yes. On, on the minutes from November 15th on page two. Roman numeral two under the non public meeting. There was a motion to seal when we came out of that meeting. So I believe it should read motion to seal for one year. Made by Frank Sprague, seconded by Heather Whitney. And the roll call vote was unanimous." The November 15 draft minutes record that nonpublic session as entered and exited and never sealed. The approved version, uploaded five days after this meeting, carries the bullet Hawkins dictated. See flag 14. | POSITIVE |
| 0:01:37 | Disposed of by voice vote, with nobody's name on the motion | "So is there any objection to the amendment to the minutes? Okay. So all those in favor." Two ayes follow. No mover and no seconder is named for the consent agenda, which carried both the agenda's final approval and the corrected November 15 minutes. Both sets of minutes: "No discussion, unanimously approved." This is the only motion at the meeting with no mover and no seconder in the record — the minutes name both for every other one. RSA 91-A:2, II: "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." | MEDIUM |
| 0:01:47 | Citizens' comments, and two empty student seats | The presiding chair reaches citizens' comments in a two-word segment the transcript renders "Some comments." and disposes of it at 0:01:52 in a segment the transcript renders "Seeing none for six months." — the opening words answer the citizens'-comment call and the trailing three belong to no sentence this page can place. Nobody rose. A member then notes the student representatives' absence — "Looks like. Not tonight." — and the meeting moves on. Both sets of minutes: "Citizens Comments ● None" and, under the student report, absent. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:02:03 | Into nonpublic session, on a citation the recording cannot preserve | Sprague: "Moving right along. And I would like to make a motion to go into nonpublic session under RSA 91 at a only two. A federation of the school board of entering into a student or pupil contract authorized by RSA 194 for our say 195 to have a." He is reading the agenda's own wording, and the agenda's own wording drops the section number: "Non-Public Session RSA91-A:,II (k)". The exemption meant is RSA 91-A:3, II(k). A "Second second" follows from the room; both sets of minutes name Jennifer Gallagher as the seconder. The clerk reads the roll from 0:02:35: "Bonnie. Miles. Yes. Yes. Jennifer Gallagher. Yes. Hawkins. Yes. Crawford. Yes." Six yes votes, which is what RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires. | MEDIUM OBSERVATION |
| 0:02:55 | The nonpublic session, as the published recording has it: twenty-four seconds of unbroken audio | The entry roll ends and the clerk says "And we will be." Two seconds later a member is heard on the mechanics of the minutes — "I'm like, I know we need the time we entered" — and at 0:03:04: "Who made the motion? Who seconded it? Not [What] members were present. Who else was present? So I did all that. But then I sent it to me, and I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna send this to Alex since he's here." That is the content list RSA 91-A:2, II sets for minutes, recited at the table. Then the motion to come out, at 0:03:16. The whole session occupies about twenty-four seconds and the recording never stops — no gap over three seconds exists anywhere in the file. Whatever was discussed with Croydon's chair and superintendent is not on the published recording. See flag 6. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:35 | Sealed for six months, with no reason stated | Candace Crawford: "I'd like to make a motion to seal the minutes for six months of the non public meeting." Sprague: "Okay. I'll second." The clerk calls the roll — "I roll call. Vote to seal the minutes. Heather. Whitney. Craig [Frank]. Sprague. Yes. Yes. Whitney. Yes. Jennifer Gallagher. Yes. Marlene [Arlene]. Hawkins. Yes. Candace. Crawford. Yes." — six yes votes out of six present, clearing the two-thirds RSA 91-A:3, III requires. No member states any of the three circumstances the same paragraph makes the condition of sealing, and neither set of minutes supplies one. Six months from December 6, 2023 is June 6, 2024. See flag 3. | MEDIUM |
| 0:03:57 | Croydon: what an anchor district is, and why a K–4 district needs one | Superintendent Tempesta, in a segment that opens with the chair's recognition absorbed into it: "So next agenda item is a, urgent [a Croydon] tuition agreement. Mr. Tempesta, do you want to explain? Yes. Sure. So? So, the current superintendent, the school board members, business managers. They put forth a proposal. They're looking for an anchor school. And what an anchor school is, even though it's not formally defined, but it's it's a a school in which a district can ensure fate [FAPE] all the way up to age 22." At 0:04:28: "They they have to have those requirements for state and federal special ed placement law… And Croydon has grades up to only fourth grade. So they would be looking to go from to graduation whatever that graduation is." | MEDIUM |
| 0:05:05 | The vote — and no number of any kind in public | "Oh, I'd like to make a motion. I'd like to make a motion that we proceed with negotiations for accepting Corden's [Croydon's] proposal to become their anchor district." Hawkins: "I'll second." Sprague: "The discussion. All those in favor?" One Aye is audible; at 0:05:25: "Opposed? Passes unanimously." Nothing about the terms is said in open session — no tuition rate, no student count, no duration, no cost or revenue to Claremont. The contemporaneous Valley News report supplies what the public meeting did not: Croydon has 53 tuition students, one of them currently in Claremont, and Claremont's 2024–25 tuition is $16,000. Both sets of minutes attribute the motion to Jennifer Gallagher; the dialogue file's speaker labels put it in Whitney Skillen's cluster — see flag 10. | MEDIUM OBSERVATION |
| 0:05:38 | Somebody leaves | Immediately after the Croydon vote and before the Program of Studies presenters begin, the board says goodbye: "It was nice to meet all of you. Get home safe." Nobody is named, and neither set of minutes records anybody appearing before the board. The Valley News reported three days later that the nonpublic session "included Croydon School Board Chairman Aaron McKeon and Croydon Superintendent Frank Perotti". See flag 3. | MEDIUM |
| 0:05:54 | Two Programs of Studies, because the high school does not know what its schedule will be | Mimi Rhines: "I. Yeah, I'm Mimi. I think most of you know who I am. Usually I'm here to talk about something, but I'm here for program studies this time, which is my actual job at the high school. So I've been school counselors my eighth year at Stevens. We haven't really had updated program studies the last couple of years just due to staff turnover and just other stuff that has happened." Then the reason there are two, at 0:06:18: "You have two you have a block format and a period schedule. One, just because there are talks of us changing our scheduling." And the substance, at 0:06:34: "Most of these courses are in there. They're just the updated descriptions in the booklets, but they're not new courses, necessarily. The only new ones in this are the three drama ones." | MEDIUM OBSERVATION |
| 0:07:03 | The one curriculum question of the night: who should be in ninth-grade math | Sprague: "I was looking over some of the ninth grade math courses in this section… That you have, For example, I'll use math skills. And you're very specific about who who should be taking this course." Then, from his own experience of the course, at 0:07:28: "that particular course was always a challenge in that. I remember the first year, one year we offered that and 50 one [51] eighth graders signed up for it… So it's a case where you're very, very specific about who should be taking the course. And I think that's a great idea." Rhines explains the new charts at 0:07:59: "I thought it'd be a good reference for families and students… it's a good just a quick reference for what grade and the pre Rex [prerequisites]." And at 0:08:16: "On the block one of the math starts on 20 on the block format." | |
| 0:08:34 | Tightening the middle-school recommendation process before the holidays | Rhines: "We are meeting with the teachers that require recommendations for ninth graders. We're having a meeting with the eighth grade team leader person. They're called the middle school. Before vacation. Talk about recommendation process for next year and what our teachers are looking for from their teachers. So we can also tighten up that as well, because there have been some bumps the last couple of years with that." Both sets of minutes carry it as a bullet: "Meeting with middle school teachers to discuss recommendation requirements for courses that require that." | POSITIVE |
| 0:09:07 | "There's two drafts like. That's crazy." | Whitney Skillen, in praise: "Yeah. You can tell like it's really thorough. I just love the detail and all of it. And I. And there's two drafts like. That's crazy. So good job. Like, I'd be like, you thought of everything." The board understood that it had two documents; nobody asked which one the school would use, what each would cost, or when the choice would be made. The words staff, staffing and position in that sense do not occur anywhere in this item, and neither booklet contains the word "staffing" at all. See flag 4. | MEDIUM |
| 0:09:33 | One motion, both versions, "as written" | Skillen: "I'd like to make a motion to accept the the two versions of the program of studies presented by Miss Rhines for the Stevens High School period, schedule and block format. Schedule." Sprague: "Second Gen [Jen]. Gallagher. Further discussion. All those in favor?" No aye is captured and no count is announced; Rhines answers the outcome herself at 0:09:58: "I thank you guys. I appreciate that. The girl Christmas gift for myself." Both sets of minutes: "Whitney Skillen motions to accept two versions of program of studies (both block and period schedules) as written, seconded by Jennifer Gallagher; no further discussion, unanimously approved." | MEDIUM OBSERVATION |
| 0:10:17 | Capital improvement: no meeting | Sprague: "We'll work our way through the the list. Capital improvement. Committee. Anything? Bonnie." Bonnie Miles, in the only words she speaks all evening: "We have not had a meeting. We haven't had a meeting recently, so nothing new to report." The district's Drive folder named Capital Improvement was created in October 2022 and holds no files at all — verified 2026-08-29. | |
| 0:10:40 | "Sessions have been recorded on CCTV" — where the finance record lives | Candace Crawford: "So the finance committee is made up of Heather Whitney, Frank's Sprague and myself. And we've been very busy over the past couple of weeks, along with the, administration going over both the budget and for the Claremont budget. There's a lot of detail that the administration has provided." Then, at 0:11:06, the sentence the district's own minutes lead this item with: "They those sessions have been recorded on CCTV. So if you have any questions about what has transpired, just take a look on CCTV. We do have another meeting next week. On Wednesday. To go over. We've raised a lot of questions, so we're looking for further information before it gets presented to the school board." The approved minutes' first bullet under Finance Sub-Committee reads, in full: "Sessions have been recorded on CCTV". See flag 1. | HIGH POSITIVE |
| 0:11:41 | The budget reaches the full board in two weeks | Crawford: "I think I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think it will be presented to the board in two weeks. Is that true?" A voice from the room: "I think didn't we discuss? Yes. You did. Yeah. Yes." Crawford, at 0:11:53: "So that's all in prep. Before it gets presented to you all. And, next week, Frank and Heather and I will be meeting to see what kinds of recommendations and thoughts we can share with the rest of you, having gone over it line by line." Two weeks later, on December 20, 2023, this board moved a budget of $36,313,407.97. | |
| 0:12:21 | The binders | Sprague: "The, Just one. So there's this is is that your binder there? This is what?" Crawford: "This is my binder." Sprague: "Yeah. This is what I received. And, Chelsea has these. Yeah. So we actually passed out." Skillen, later: "And thank you for the binders. These are great" (0:17:11), and "No I just like how it's organized. It's like tabbed." Both sets of minutes: "Budget binder provided- a revised version will be available." No copy of the binder is in the packet folder or in any district share; the public has the CCTV broadcast and nothing else. | HIGH |
| 0:12:33 | "Ask me first" — routing the board's budget questions through the subcommittee | Sprague: "So what I'm going to ask is that, as I'm the chair of the of that committee, that you look, look this over, and if there are questions, ask me first. And then if I say to you, we had the same question. We'll know that that's a topic for our for our next meeting, rather than creating a lot of, traffic with the say you [SAU]." And at 0:13:00: "if you want to look it over and then ask me or candy [Candace], don't email the whole group, but one of us or other." Both sets of minutes record it as policy: "For questions, ask Frank Sprague or Candance or Heather first and if he is not able to answer, questions will be brought forward by the subcommittee." Nobody at the table says the obvious counterpart — that a question routed to a subcommittee chair by telephone leaves no record at all. | HIGH |
| 0:13:18 | "Some administrators were shocked" — a member asks about the process, not the numbers | Whitney Skillen: "I still have a question, but it's not. It's not about specific details. It's more about the process… I saw a little bit of one of. I can't remember if it was Thursday or Friday. With, when there were, like, building administrators present. Were they present at, like, every step? Like, do you have, like, internal meetings?" Then, at 0:13:40: "Like it looked like some administrators were shocked at, like, some of the details. Do you know what I mean?" She is describing what she saw on the broadcast — which is the only way a board member not on the subcommittee could have seen it. | HIGH |
| 0:13:48 | The superintendent agrees, and names the schedule as the thing that surprised him | Tempesta: "Do know what you mean. So we we do have internal meetings. Okay. And I do in reference to we, we have met with them individually. They met with us at Central Office. We've had follow up meetings. Okay. And I was I was also a little bit surprised that that at some of the things that were presented and in particular with, I think the two things that that came up today, that I'll reiterate where we were looking at potential schedule changes and what might happen." At 0:14:21: "We will give you another iteration… we're we're trying to have a more polished version to go to the whole board. And I do think Frank stepped on with possible redundant questions." And at 0:14:41: "And particularly schedules are very hard to understand. And you have to see the historical numbers and the types of things that are presented." Nine minutes after the board adopted two schedules, the superintendent describes the schedule as a live budget question that surprised him that day. | MEDIUM |
| 0:14:53 | Five budget sessions in seven days, school by school — and administrators who cannot see their own budgets | Crawford: "last Thursday night we had a meeting here two hours, and we went over the three elementary schools, and we had presentations by those administrators. It's my understanding that they submit a budget, their budget proposals, but then they don't actually see what gets put into the budget until that point. And so sometimes when we're asking questions, you know, they'll tell us what they thought was in there and it doesn't actually get into the copy." At 0:15:31: "Then we as a board can follow up and say, well, why wasn't that included or if it was included, where is it or why is there variation… Thursday night was the elementary. On Friday we did the, middle school and the high school and the tech center." And at 0:15:59: "on Friday we also did district wide. And today we did special ed and maintenance." Those dates are November 30, December 1 and December 6 — three of the five Finance Sub-Committee recordings this project holds for the period. | HIGH |
| 0:16:29 | Why the sessions are televised, said out loud | Skillen: "And I appreciate the transparency. And just like, as a board member, but also as a community member. I, I think other people in the community like having the meetings televised and so that they can feel like their voices get heard." Crawford, at 0:16:42: "We want people to know the details if they want to know them. Yeah. And, and and I can't speak for Frank, but I want to make sure I understand the budget before I can vote to support it. And if I vote to support it, and then people in the public ask me questions, I better know those answers." Neither set of minutes records either sentence. | POSITIVE |
| 0:17:27 | A staffing reduction at one school that nobody has explained | Hawkins: "I have a comment and a question… thank you for the time that you all have put into this process. I mean, the hours, the Thursday night, the Friday today… I've tried to watch and as I was watching, I was thinking, I wish I had the binder because I could follow as it was done." Then the question, at 0:17:49: "My question has to do with one of the levels, one of the school levels, where it was a discussion about a reduction in staff." And at 0:18:13: "I don't know what the plan is or was, but for me, I I'd like to know what that's going to look like in the course of that school experience for those teachers and for those students before I'm asked to vote to do that." Crawford: "We asked for the same thing. Today." | HIGH MEDIUM |
| 0:18:36 | "Before we vote" | Hawkins: "Because when it comes to budget implications of schedule changes, there are implications. And I think we would benefit from knowing what those implications are before we vote." Tempesta: "Absolutely." That is the request the agenda had already promised to satisfy that evening — item III.3 was noticed as "Program of Studies 2024, Schedule and Preliminary Staffing Request" — and it is made about sixty seconds of tape after the board voted to accept both schedules. Both sets of minutes carry it as a bullet under the finance item, not the curriculum one: "Request to know the implication of budget and schedule changes on the schools." See flag 4. | MEDIUM |
| 0:18:50 | A variance column the board is told not to trust | Crawford: "as you're looking through it, you'll see that the final column to the right, shows a variance. A percent variance from the year before. And just as a caveat, those that's don't be focused on that percentage because we've learned in the process that, look, last year's figures, there were a lot of anomalies in the way the budget was put together last year." At 0:19:28: "when you see this year's numbers reference to last year's, they're going to be some big variations. And we need to go look beyond those." Sprague attributes them to "anomalies"; Crawford, at 0:20:05: "Rearranging. Some of the categories, items were in one category that shouldn't have been. And so they've gotten rearranged." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:20:21 | The same anomalies in the SAU budget, and a year still to run | Hawkins, as SAU 6 chair: "And we'll see that with the s a [SAU] budget as well, because I've already met with Mary and talked about that and seeing the same anomalies. Right. From last year to this year, and I appreciate all the work you've been putting into organizing and creating this to be accurate. Your accuracy is is wonderful." Mary Henry: "We'll take another year to really get it… Where needs to be. But getting." Sprague closes the item at 0:20:47: "Any other questions for Andy [Candy] or myself or the administration?" The transcript's Andy here is the ASR's rendering of Candy; no person named Andy is present. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:20:59 | The policy chair corrects her own agenda item from the floor | Skillen: "it says we're doing a presentation on the operational guide and delegation of policy audits, but we're not quite there yet." And: "Is probably going to come in January. So this presentation is an update on our activities and what the what the school board policy. The Claremont School Board Policy Committee has been up to what we're doing and where we're going. For the sake of transparency, for the sake of understanding of for everyone to know what the policy committee does and is doing." Both sets of minutes carry the correction: "Presentation will be in January- not ready yet." | POSITIVE |
| 0:21:26 | The policy audit: finding out which required policies the board does not have | Skillen: "our current activities are can be put into two buckets. The first one is an audit of the Claremont School Board Policy Manual. In this process we have drafted a policy Audit tracker spreadsheet that is part of a shared Google Drive for the Claremont School Board Policy Committee." Access, at 0:21:47: "All of the all of the committee members are included on it, and all of the administration members are included on that shared drive. And anyone else on the school board who wants to be part of that shared drive can be added to it." Method, at 0:22:29: "What we did in the spreadsheet is we looked at the sample policies and identified the optional, recommended and required policies and looked at our manual. And for the first past we only assessed required policies or priority policies." | POSITIVE |
| 0:22:50 | Phase one is done, and it found gaps | Skillen: "So we've gone through the entire Claremont School Board Policy Manual and made a distinction as to where we are missing required policies. So that was that's phase one." The remedy, at 0:23:07: "as the first step, after identifying what priority policies are missing, is to work down our spreadsheet in alphabetical order and get those policies adopted… Address the priority policy deficiencies. That just involves preparing those sample policies to for first read for the whole school board, and then just shepherding those through reading, adoption and publishing on the website." No number of missing required policies is given, at this meeting or in either set of minutes. | POSITIVE |
| 0:24:26 | Why a committee writes down how it works | Skillen: "the reason why we need all of this is that our school board policies are only prescriptive on what needs to be done and not how you do it. And so these guys are going to basically be our our memory so that this committee, future committees, this board and future boards have some documentation on how to do this process and can just pick it up and run with it." The prioritisation mechanism, at 0:25:08: a Google survey to every board member on how soon each missing recommended policy should be adopted, "And this will save us a lot of time for discussing during meetings" (0:25:35). | POSITIVE OBSERVATION |
| 0:26:18 | Where "priority", "recommended" and "optional" come from | Hawkins: "The priority and the recommended and the optional are suggested by the New Hampshire School Board Association. So we're following their format. And the priority policies are those that we must, under legal requirements, put into place. They have been as a result of legislation. So the New Hampshire School Board Association has developed their sample policies based on legislation, and we have to have those in place." This page treats that as an accurate description of what the NHSBA's categories mean; it is not itself a statement of law, and the legal requirement behind any particular policy is the statute, not the association's label. | |
| 0:27:11 | The auditors said the district must have policies it does not have — and nobody had joined that up | Sprague: "when we receive our audits from the from the auditors, there was one we received I think it was from. Was it 2020? What was the last one we got." Mary Henry: "2021 I think or 2020 you got." Sprague, at 0:27:28: "There were there were a number of references in there to policies that we are required to have that we don't have in the audit. So I'm wondering what the interface is as far as that knowledge coming to the administration and policy committee." Skillen: "That is a good question. We should probably have a roundup on that in the next committee meeting." The board is discussing, in December 2023, the findings of an audit it received for fiscal 2020 or 2021. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:28:34 | The business administrator is holding the findings, and gets the file the same day | Mary Henry: "that's where we would need that for that. We're on that audit. Yeah, I have a lot of them written that I need to pass along to the committee." Skillen: "And I just added Miss Henry to the the audit file today. I don't think she had seen it before. So she's going to have the opportunity to look through that file and identify where I've already seen missing policies, missing required policies. And if there's any we need to add, then she can help me with that." Both sets of minutes record it: "Mary Henry has policies from the previous audit to send to policy committee." | POSITIVE |
| 0:29:10 | Curriculum: nothing until the budget is finished | The curriculum report comes from the diarizer's unidentified cluster; the agenda and both sets of minutes make Jennifer Gallagher the committee's chair. "We haven't had a meeting. No. Yeah, we met, but it was before the last one. It was a brief meeting", then at 0:29:19: "Have a curriculum update and kind of PD plan draft, but that'll probably be after. Great. Finish our budget work. So sometime in January we'll present that." Minutes: "Will have updated draft in January." | |
| 0:29:37 | The tech-centre study slips three months | Crawford: "we haven't met as a visiting [visioning] committee. Because we're we s reb [SREB], who is the consulting firm who is doing the analysis of the tech center and its programs. Is has the data that they need, and it's anticipated that the report will come out in March. That which is about three months later than we hoped it would be." And: "But the process has been slower than we had hoped." Both sets of minutes: "Have not met; SREV has data that they need and report will come out in March." | |
| 0:30:23 | Disruptive behaviours: three problems, and no policy for any of them | Jennifer Gallagher: "We met today and, we talked about a few, items that were kind of identified as things that, got kind of referred to disruptive behaviors. One of those items is a toilet issue of students that are not yet toilet trained. But we don't have, policies in place that are supportive or that exist at all to address that." At 0:30:54: "then there were also concerns about, aggressive behavior in students. We do have a few policies that we want the policy committee to look at. So I'll be inviting the committee chair to the next disruptive behavior meeting, because we'd like to come up with an action plan." And at 0:31:32: "there was one other thing tendency attendance policy. We'd also like to look at those policies, because attendance is an issue in our schools." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:31:51 | Competency-based learning broke the attendance policy | Sprague: "One of the things that complicated attendance was, competency based learning, where, because we had to completely revamp our attendance policies because there used to be, grade penalties associated with poor attendance and with competency based, it isn't about if you're in class or not. It's about can you meet the competencies or not. So that's going to be an interesting one to watch." Gallagher adds who else belongs at the table, at 0:32:24: "there's other people that have to get invited to those types of discussions as well. Folks from the courts." Tempesta, at 0:32:36: "what we wanted to do is hold one more one more disruptive behaviors meeting and then generate a document for the board and especially the policy committees review." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:33:03 | The board's own research, and who may see the tracker | Gallagher: "we did review some policies that already currently exist. We refer we looked at our policies. I do have on my list of looking for recommendations that already exist. And other folks in the committee said that they would also kind of like research best practices, especially in regards to our current needs, because the current needs of Claremont students are not unique to Claremont. They're things that other districts are experiencing nationwide and even worldwide." Skillen offers the tracker and states the access rule at 0:33:46: "I'll add you to it. I'm going to add you as a content manager, which means you have full access. But anyone who's not part of the school board that wants to see it, I'm only going to give them view permission. So just let me know who you want that to be and I'll add them." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:34:03 | Future dates, and an SAU meeting starting an hour early | Sprague: "So future dates. We have an Siu [SAU] meeting tomorrow." Hawkins, who chairs that board: "I was just going to ask to have that added. Tomorrow night's this a [SAU] meeting. We'll focus primarily on budget and we start at 6:00." Sprague turns it into a notice: "6:00. So notice the special early start tomorrow." A voice adds: "Do we have a meeting tomorrow and on the 14th for six. Oh, okay. Busy month." Sprague: "Our regular next regular, board meeting will be regular board meeting will be in two weeks." Both sets of minutes add the December 7 SAU meeting and its 6:00 start as item (a) of the future-dates list, ahead of the agenda's own items. That meeting has its own page on this project. | POSITIVE |
| 0:34:53 | Adjournment at thirty-five minutes | Sprague: "For the budget process mainly. And another events. Any other business I know jumping around on the agenda." Nothing is raised. "Then I'm looking for a motion." A voice: "I'll make a motion to adjourn." Whitney Skillen seconds it in one word. Voice vote at 0:35:00. Both sets of minutes: "Motion to adjourn made by Jennifer Gallagher, seconded by Whitney Skillen; no further discussion, unanimously approved", and stamp it 7:22 PM. The last words on the recording, at 0:35:05, are "Good night." See flag 6. | OBSERVATION |
Items flagged for review
These are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each card names the rule it rests on and links to the primary source, and each is stated as that rule stood on December 6, 2023 — several of the provisions here read differently today, and the footer says which. Where the record cuts against the concern, the card says so. Positive findings are included; a page that only accuses is not a useful record.
HIGH Five Finance Sub-Committee meetings in nineteen days produced no minutes anywhere, and the board's own account of where that record lives is the television broadcast
The Finance Sub-Committee's report at 0:10:40 is the district's own description of its records practice. Candace Crawford, reporting for the committee: "They those sessions have been recorded on CCTV. So if you have any questions about what has transpired, just take a look on CCTV" (0:11:06). The approved minutes reduce it to a single bullet, which is the first thing they say about the committee: "Sessions have been recorded on CCTV". Nobody says minutes exist. Nobody says minutes are coming.
The meetings are real, and the recording dates them. Crawford walks the board through them at 0:14:53 and 0:15:59: "last Thursday night we had a meeting here two hours, and we went over the three elementary schools"; "Thursday night was the elementary. On Friday we did the, middle school and the high school and the tech center"; "on Friday we also did district wide. And today we did special ed and maintenance"; and "We do have another meeting next week. On Wednesday." Those are November 30, December 1, December 6, December 13, and this project also holds a recording of December 18 — five sessions in nineteen days, each with a Cablecast show of its own (15443, 15444, 15452, 15471, 15451). The one Crawford calls "today" ran an hour and a half that afternoon and has its own page here.
A subcommittee of a school board is a public body, and the duty is the same one the parent board has. RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) defines "public body" as "Any legislative body, governing body, board, commission, committee, agency, or authority of any county, town, municipal corporation, school district, school administrative unit, chartered public school, or other political subdivision, or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto." RSA 91-A:2, II then requires that minutes "shall include the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions", and that they be "promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting."
No minutes of any of the five have been located. This project's map records a search on 2026-08-28 covering the district's 2023 Meeting Documents archive, both candidate year folders in the Meeting Minutes share, the next board meeting's packet folder, and Drive keyword searches. That was re-run for this page on 2026-08-29 with Drive title searches on Finance, Sub Committee, Subcommittee and Sub-Committee. The district does maintain a Drive folder called Claremont Finance Sub Committee, owned by sau6webmaster@sau6.org and created on 27 October 2022 — and no file inside it, or anywhere else in the district's shares, surfaced for any 2023 date. The only Finance Sub-Committee minutes Drive holds at all are for a 2026 meeting and are the work of this project's own maintainer, not the district's.
A broadcast is not minutes, and the meeting itself shows why it matters. Whitney Skillen, who is not on the committee, could only describe what she had seen on television — "I saw a little bit of one of. I can't remember if it was Thursday or Friday" (0:13:18). Arlene Hawkins says the same thing about her own preparation: "I've tried to watch and as I was watching, I was thinking, I wish I had the binder because I could follow as it was done" (0:17:27). A ninety-minute video with no index, no list of decisions and no named participants is not what RSA 91-A:2, II asks a public body to produce, and the two board members who tried to use it as one both said it was not enough.
Which limb of the severity rule this is, and why. This project grades a missing-minutes finding HIGH where the absence is unmitigated and MEDIUM where the record mitigates it — someone on tape saying minutes exist elsewhere or are coming, a body without a quorum that transacted nothing, or a meeting that was noticed and packeted with only the minutes missing. None of those applies. What the record contains instead is an affirmative statement that the broadcast is the account. The committee was quorate (all three members took part), it transacted the district's whole FY25 budget review, and no notice, agenda or packet for any of the five sessions exists either. This is the unmitigated limb.
What cuts the other way, stated fairly. Televising a budget subcommittee is not required by anything, and Claremont did it five times in three weeks; see flag 16. The committee's work is described in real detail in this meeting's minutes — six bullets, more than any other item gets. And the practice was defended in principle, not as an excuse: "We want people to know the details if they want to know them" (0:16:42). The defect is not indifference; it is that the statute asks for a written record, and one was never made.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (a committee or subcommittee of a school district is a public body; last amended 2008, so its text on this date is the current text); RSA 91-A:2, II (24-hour notice; minutes recording members, persons appearing, subject matter and final decisions; open to public inspection within 5 business days); 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23; MAP.md §§ 27, 28, 29, 32, 34 (the five Finance Sub-Committee recordings and the negative search, verified 2026-08-28); Claremont Finance Sub Committee Drive folder (re-checked 2026-08-29); and the same finding made from inside one of the five sessions — the meeting of that very afternoon, whose own page reaches it independently.
MEDIUM These minutes reached the public on the ninth business day, and they were filed with the next meeting's packet rather than this one's
RSA 91-A:2, II requires that minutes be "promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting." A draft satisfies it. Counting business days from Wednesday December 6, 2023, the fifth was Wednesday December 13.
The draft was uploaded to the district's Drive on Tuesday December 19, 2023 — the ninth business day, four business days late — and not into this meeting's packet folder but into the folder for the December 20 meeting, as CSB draft minutes 12.6.23 (1) (2).pdf. The board-approved version followed on January 2, 2024, twenty-seven days after the meeting. A member of the public looking in the obvious place — this meeting's own packet folder, 27. CSB 12.6.23 — would not have found minutes of this meeting on any date, then or now; the folder holds the agenda, two Programs of Studies and the previous meeting's draft minutes, and nothing has been added to it since December 1, 2023.
The comparison that makes the timing look like slippage rather than practice. The same clerk filed the November 15 draft on the fourth business day, inside the deadline, and the November 1 draft was in the November 15 packet a week before that meeting. Both are in this project's records. Nothing in this meeting's record explains the change; the recording contains no discussion of minutes production at all beyond the exchange at 0:02:55.
What cuts the other way, stated fairly. The Drive upload date is the best evidence available of when the public could read these minutes; it is not proof that no copy was available for inspection at the SAU office earlier, and RSA 91-A:2, II speaks of public inspection, not of website posting. This page relies on the upload dates because they are the only dates the record supplies, and applies the same method here that it applies to the meetings on either side. The document that eventually appeared is complete and detailed — item by item, with movers, seconders and outcomes — and the board approved it without changing a word. The defect is the delay, not the content.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting; as amended 2023, 188:1, eff. October 3, 2023 — the codification in force on this date); CSB draft minutes 12.6.23 (1) (2).pdf (created in Drive December 19, 2023); 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23.pdf (created January 2, 2024); the November 15, 2023 meeting, whose draft was filed on the fourth business day.
MEDIUM The nonpublic session with Croydon was sealed for six months under the one exemption that carries its own publication duty; the two outside officials who took part are named in no district record, and nothing has been released since the seal expired in June 2024
The exemption. The agenda and both sets of minutes invoke the school-board tuition-contract exemption — RSA 91-A:3, II(k). It is unlike the others in the list, because it comes with an express publication requirement attached: "A contract negotiated by a school board shall be made public prior to its consideration for approval by a school district, together with minutes of all meetings held in nonpublic session, any proposals or records related to the contract, and any proposal or records involving a school district that did not become a party to the contract, shall be made public. Approval of a contract by a school district shall occur only at a meeting open to the public at which, or after which, the public has had an opportunity to participate." The paragraph also expressly contemplates "any meeting between the school boards, or committees thereof, involved in the negotiations" — which is exactly what this was.
The seal. Candace Crawford moved it at 0:03:35: "I'd like to make a motion to seal the minutes for six months of the non public meeting." Sprague seconded; the clerk called the roll; six of six present voted yes, which clears the two-thirds RSA 91-A:3, III requires. The word-level timing of that segment carries exactly six Yes tokens and no answer after the chair's name — the recording's own corroboration of the minutes' "all present voting yes". But the vote is only the vehicle. The same paragraph makes disclosure within 72 hours the default and permits a seal only where "it is determined that" divulgence would likely affect adversely the reputation of a person other than a member of the body, or render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism. No member states any of the three, and neither set of minutes supplies one. Six months from December 6, 2023 expired on June 6, 2024.
Nothing has surfaced — not the minutes, not the contract, not the list. The district maintains an Unsealed Minutes folder in its public Drive for exactly this purpose. Checked on 2026-08-29, it contains three subfolders — 2025 Non-Public, 2026 Non-Public and 2027 Non-Public — and nothing for 2023 or 2024. A Drive-wide search on Croydon, by title and by full text, returns no district-share document of any kind: no tuition contract, no draft, no proposal, no correspondence. And the second duty in RSA 91-A:3, III has produced nothing at all: "For all meetings held in nonpublic session, where the minutes or decisions were determined to not be subject to full public disclosure, a list of such minutes or decisions shall be kept and this list shall be made available as soon as practicable for public disclosure." No such list exists in any Claremont share this project can reach.
Two officials of another school district took part, and no district record names them. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to include "persons appearing before the public bodies". Neither set of minutes names anybody outside the board; the agenda names nobody; the recording carries only a farewell at 0:05:38 — "It was nice to meet all of you. Get home safe." The Valley News, three days later, reported that the vote "came after the board held a brief non-public session that included Croydon School Board Chairman Aaron McKeon and Croydon Superintendent Frank Perotti", and that the session was "posted on the agenda as 'consideration of a school board entering into a student or pupil contract'". The names of the people who negotiated with Claremont's board are recoverable from a newspaper and not from the district's own record.
What cuts the other way, stated fairly. The exemption fits its subject on the face of the record: a tuition arrangement with a neighbouring district is precisely what II(k) is for, and the negotiating posture it protects is real. The motion, the second, the roll call and the seal were all taken in public, and the roll calls are in both sets of minutes with the clerk named as their taker. No contract was approved — the board voted only to proceed with negotiations (0:05:05) — so II(k)'s publication trigger, which attaches to a negotiated contract before it is considered for approval, has not yet been pulled by anything on this record. The superintendent explained the substance in open session before the vote. And the six-month seal is the shortest this board used in 2023: the same board sealed for one year on November 15 and for fifty years on November 1. The concern is that the seal ran out more than two years ago, that nothing followed it, and that the statute's standing list of withheld minutes — which would tell a citizen that this sealed record exists at all — has never been kept.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (motion states the specific exemption on its face; roll call; majority of members present), II(k) (school-board student or pupil tuition contract, with its own publication duty), III (72-hour disclosure; seal only by recorded 2/3 vote on a stated determination; required list of withheld minutes) and IV (review no more than 10 years after the vote; added 2023, 189:1, eff. October 3, 2023); RSA 91-A:2, II (persons appearing before the public body); RSA 194:22 (a district may contract with another school for school privileges; if the state board approves it, that school "shall be deemed a high school maintained by the district"); Claremont "Unsealed Minutes" folder (verified 2026-08-29); Valley News, December 9, 2023, "Claremont in talks to guarantee spots for Croydon tuition students" (reporting, not law); the same pattern at November 15, 2023 and November 1, 2023.
MEDIUM The board adopted two different Programs of Studies for the same school year in one motion, "as written" — and the preliminary staffing request its own agenda promised was never presented
What the agenda promised. Item III.3 was noticed as "SHS Presentation of Program of Studies 2024, Schedule and Preliminary Staffing Request Dr. Michael Herrington, Assistant Principal & Mimi Rhines, Guidance Counselor Presenting". Three things and two presenters. One thing and one presenter arrived. Mimi Rhines walked the board through the course booklets; Dr. Herrington has no segment anywhere in the recording; and neither the schedule decision nor any staffing figure was presented. The words staff, staffing and FTE do not appear in either of the two 150-page booklets — checked against the text of both PDFs — and no staffing number is spoken anywhere in the item.
What the two documents actually differ on. They are not two formats of one plan; they are two different high schools. Counted from the course-description sections of each PDF: the period booklet has 74 year-long courses, 45 semester courses and 21 quarter courses, and 17 courses carrying a quarter credit (0.25). The block booklet has 29 year-long courses, 70 semester and 40 quarter, and no course at 0.25 credit at all. Forty-five courses that run all year in one document do not in the other. Some carry different credit for the same name: the period index reads "MAT131 Math Skills I 0.5 9-12 Semester" where the block index reads "MAT131 Math Skills I 1 9-12 Semester"; "ENG140 English I 1 9 Year" becomes "ENG140 English I 1 9 Semester"; Sculpture II and Pottery falls from a full-year credit to a half credit in a quarter.
And they disagree about which courses exist. Fall Production, Senior Play and Comedic Acting — three theatre courses, and on Rhines's own account the only new courses in the book, "The only new ones in this are the three drama ones" (0:06:34) — appear in the period booklet's index and description sections and are absent from the block booklet entirely. Running the comparison the other way, Algebra I CP (MAT141) has a course-listing entry and a full description in the block booklet and neither in the period one, although both name it in the recommended ninth-grade planning grid and both use it as a prerequisite for Honors Geometry. A student reading the adopted period booklet cannot find the course the adopted period booklet tells him he needs.
Nobody asked which one. The board's discussion was appreciative and specific about the format — Skillen: "there's two drafts like. That's crazy. So good job" (0:09:07) — and the motion, at 0:09:33, accepted both. Nobody asked which schedule the school would run, what either would cost in teaching positions, or when the decision would be made.
Eight minutes later, the same board asked the question the agenda had promised to answer. Arlene Hawkins, on the finance item at 0:17:49: "My question has to do with one of the levels, one of the school levels, where it was a discussion about a reduction in staff." And at 0:18:36: "when it comes to budget implications of schedule changes, there are implications. And I think we would benefit from knowing what those implications are before we vote." The superintendent had already told the board, at 0:13:48, that the schedule was one of "the two things that that came up today" that surprised him in the budget interviews, and at 0:14:41 that "particularly schedules are very hard to understand." Two weeks later, on December 20, 2023, this board moved a budget of $36,313,407.97.
What happened next, from the district's own later documents. Stevens went to the period schedule. The packet for the December 18, 2024 board meeting contains "Exhibit A- Program of Studies 2025_2026- PERIOD FORMAT" — one format, not two — and, beside it, "Exhibit B- 2024-2025 SHS Schedule Review", a study of seventeen teachers in eight departments interviewed on 13 November 2024. Its first finding: "14 of 17 teachers note significant stressors with the change over to the current period schedule, this includes general fatigue, increased workload and an impact on personal life." Twelve of seventeen also gave the period schedule positive marks, and seven articulated objections to going back — "For this next year: Please don't go to 80 minutes again. I cannot do the block schedule again." The cost of the choice the board made without cost information turned out to be a workload question about teachers, which is a staffing question, which is a budget question — the one the agenda of December 6, 2023 had said would be answered that night.
What cuts the other way, stated fairly. Adopting both versions was arguably the only sensible motion available: the school genuinely did not know its schedule, course descriptions had not been updated in years — "We haven't really had updated program studies the last couple of years just due to staff turnover" (0:05:57) — and students needed a book to choose from either way. Rhines had built the whole thing in a shared document precisely so it could be revised, and had scheduled a meeting with the middle school before the holidays to fix the recommendation process. No rule requires a school board to adopt only one program of studies, and this page does not say one was broken. The concern is a control weakness: a governing body accepted, as final and "as written", two documents that contradict each other about which courses exist and what they are worth, without the cost information its own notice had promised, a fortnight before it voted a $36.3 million budget.
Sources: CSB Agenda 12.6.23 (item III.3); SHS Program of Studies 24-25 Period and SHS Program of Studies 24-25 Block; Exhibit B- 2024-2025 SHS Schedule Review and Exhibit A- Program of Studies 2025_2026- PERIOD FORMAT, both from the December 18, 2024 packet (Drive folder 10. CSB 12.18.24); RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes record the subject matter discussed and final decisions). RSA 193-E:2-a, the substantive content of an adequate education, is the framework a program of studies has to satisfy, but it was amended with effect from September 10, 2024 and this page does not apply or quote its current enumeration to a 2023 meeting.
MEDIUM The one motion at this meeting with no mover and no seconder in the record is the one that corrected a vote to seal minutes
RSA 91-A:2, II provides that "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." That clause has been in force since 2018, 244:1, effective January 1, 2019, so it applies to this meeting in full.
The minutes discharge it everywhere but once. They name a mover and a seconder for the entry into nonpublic session, the exit, the seal, the Croydon motion, the Program of Studies motion and the adjournment — six motions, twelve names. The consent agenda has neither. On the recording, the presiding chair disposes of it at 0:01:37: "So is there any objection to the amendment to the minutes? Okay. So all those in favor." Two ayes follow. Both sets of minutes record only "No discussion, unanimously approved."
What the consent agenda carried matters. Two things: final approval of the board's own agenda, and approval of the November 15 minutes as corrected on the floor by Arlene Hawkins — a correction whose entire content was a vote to seal nonpublic minutes for a year (see flag 14). So the one decision at this meeting whose mover and seconder cannot be recovered is the decision that fixed the district's record of a decision to withhold a record. The minutes name Hawkins as the requester of the correction, which is more than nothing, but a request is not a motion and the statute asks for the motion.
What cuts the other way, stated fairly. One unattributed motion out of seven is a good ratio by this corpus's standards — the same board on November 15 took five decisions with no motion, no seconder or no recorded vote, four of them on an item its agenda marked "vote required". The consent agenda here was disposed of by absence of objection and then a voice vote, in public, with the substance stated aloud first. Nobody's vote is in doubt. The defect is documentary.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II ("The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes"; the clause dates from 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019 — the 2017 codification lacks it and the 2019 codification carries it); 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23; the same board three weeks earlier.
OBSERVATION The published recording contains no nonpublic session, and the minutes' own clock times imply about fourteen minutes the recording does not hold
There is no gap. The dialogue transcript's 232 rows contain no interval longer than three seconds anywhere in the file. Between the end of the entry roll and the motion to come out of nonpublic — 0:02:53 to 0:03:16 — the audio runs continuously and carries a member talking about how the minutes of the session should be written: "Who made the motion? Who seconded it? Not [What] members were present. Who else was present?" About twenty-four seconds, filled with housekeeping.
But the clock says otherwise. Both sets of minutes stamp Discussion/Action Items at 6:35 p.m. — an item the recording reaches at 0:02:03, implying a call to order at about 6:33 — and stamp adjournment at 7:22 p.m., which the recording reaches at 0:34:53, implying a call to order at about 6:47. The two implied start times differ by fourteen minutes, and the whole of that difference falls between those two points. A continuous thirty-five-minute recording of a meeting that began at 6:30 or 6:33 ends at about 7:05 or 7:08, not 7:22.
The most economical reading is that the broadcast was stopped for the nonpublic session and restarted afterwards, and that the archived file is a splice whose timestamps run straight through. That would be an entirely proper thing to do — a nonpublic session is not broadcast — and it fits everything else: the Valley News describes a "brief non-public session" with two Croydon officials in it, and two visitors do not travel to Claremont for twenty-four seconds. The alternative reading, that the meeting really was thirty-five minutes and the minutes' clock times are simply wrong, cannot be ruled out; this board's minutes reset the agenda's scheduled times throughout, and its November 15 minutes carried clock times this project could not reconcile either.
Why it matters either way. A citizen watching the archived recording sees the board vote to enter nonpublic session, hears twenty-four seconds of small talk, and sees it vote to come out — and would reasonably conclude that nothing happened. Something did. The record that would say what does not exist: the minutes were sealed (flag 3), the seal expired in June 2024, and nothing has been released. This is the third consecutive Claremont board meeting at which the published recording shows a nonpublic session as an unbroken few seconds of audio — forty-eight seconds on November 1, thirteen on November 15, twenty-four here.
Sources: the dialogue transcript (232 rows, no gap over three seconds); 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23 (clock stamps); Valley News, December 9, 2023 (reporting, not law); the same problem on November 15, 2023 and on November 1, 2023.
OBSERVATION The two booklets the board accepted "as written" contain nine unfilled page references, thirty-odd unassigned course numbers, and three courses whose description is the words "Course description TBD"
Both documents are headed DRAFT on their title pages — "Stevens High School Program of Studies PERIOD SCHEDULE DRAFT 2024-2025" and "Stevens High School Program of Studies BLOCK FORMAT DRAFT 2024-2025" — and the minutes record the motion as accepting them "as written".
What "as written" included. Each booklet's graduation-requirements table carries nine instances of the literal placeholder *FILL IN HERE* where a page number should be, in the rows for Arts Education, Computer Education and Physical Education across all three diploma columns — so the table that tells a student where to find the courses required for a diploma does not tell them. Each booklet also carries about thirty course numbers rendered as ?? — "ENG?? RVCC Public Speaking", "PART?? Comedic Acting", "CTC?? Entrepreneurship I & II", "MAT?? Statistics" — including cases where the index assigns a number and the description does not: Fall Production is PART112 in the period index and (PART??) in its own description four pages later. Two different courses share the number PART110 in both booklets (Introduction to Acting and Technical Theater), and PART116 is listed twice under two spellings (Dance & Choreography under Physical Education and Health, Dance and Choreography under Fine and Performing Arts).
And the three new courses have no descriptions. The period booklet's entries for Fall Production, Senior Play and Comedic Acting each read, in full: "Length: Quarter Credits: 0.25 Open to Grades: 9- 12 Course description TBD". Those are the three courses the presenter identified as the only new ones in the book. The phrase "Course description TBD" occurs three times in the period booklet and nowhere in the block one, because the block one does not have the courses.
How this page counted. The figures are read from the text layer of the two PDFs in the district's own packet folder, and any reader can check them by opening the documents and searching for the strings quoted. No rule requires a program of studies to be finished before a board accepts it; this is a note for a reader about what the phrase "as written" was attached to, not an allegation.
Sources: SHS Program of Studies 24-25 Period; SHS Program of Studies 24-25 Block; 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23.
OBSERVATION The ad hoc committee reported three student-conduct problems and found the district has no policy for any of them
Jennifer Gallagher's report at 0:30:23 is the only item at this meeting about students. It names three referred issues and reaches the same conclusion about each. On toileting: "One of those items is a toilet issue of students that are not yet toilet trained. But we don't have, policies in place that are supportive or that exist at all to address that." On behaviour: "there were also concerns about, aggressive behavior in students. We do have a few policies that we want the policy committee to look at… because we'd like to come up with an action plan." On attendance: "We'd also like to look at those policies, because attendance is an issue in our schools."
The attendance problem has a stated cause. Frank Sprague, at 0:31:51: "One of the things that complicated attendance was, competency based learning, where, because we had to completely revamp our attendance policies because there used to be, grade penalties associated with poor attendance and with competency based, it isn't about if you're in class or not. It's about can you meet the competencies or not." Gallagher adds who else belongs in the conversation: "there's other people that have to get invited to those types of discussions as well. Folks from the courts."
Why a reviewer should keep this in view rather than treat it as a finding. Toileting and behaviour support for young children reach quickly into disability law — a child who is not toilet trained may be a child with a disability, and the obligation then is not a matter of local policy preference. This page names no student, no school and no number, because none is on the record and none should be. What is on the record is a school board being told, in open session, that its policy manual is silent on a category of student need, at the same meeting at which its policy subcommittee reported an audit that had found required policies missing (flag 15). Those are the same problem seen from two directions. The board's response — one more committee meeting and then a document for the policy committee — is a reasonable one, and the recommendations it produced are outside this meeting's record.
Sources: 34 CFR 300.101 — FAPE "must be available to all children residing in the State between the ages of 3 and 21, inclusive", including children suspended or expelled; 34 CFR 104.7(a)–(b) — a recipient employing fifteen or more persons must designate a §504 coordinator and "adopt grievance procedures that incorporate appropriate due process standards"; RSA 193:13 (suspension and expulsion), cited as the framework for a conduct policy and not as a finding; Claremont SB Policies (for Web), the district's live policy index, which is where an adopted text would be found.
OBSERVATION The nonpublic exemption is miscited in every place it appears, and the correct citation is nowhere in the district's record of this meeting
The exemption relied on is RSA 91-A:3, II(k). The agenda prints it as "Non-Public Session RSA91-A:,II (k)" — with a colon and a comma where the section number should be. Both sets of minutes print the motion as being "to go to non-public under RSA91-A:II(k)", and reprint the agenda heading with the same defect. The presiding chair reads it aloud at 0:02:03 and the transcript renders it "under RSA 91 at a only two", which is unrecoverable as a citation from the audio alone.
Why it is not merely typographical. RSA 91-A:II(k) does not exist. RSA 91-A:2 has no subparagraph (k); the exemptions live in RSA 91-A:3, II. RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires that "Any motion to enter nonpublic session shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II which is relied upon as foundation for the nonpublic session." The motion did state the exemption's substance — it read out the words of II(k) almost in full, "consideration of a school board of entering into a student or pupil contract authorized by RSA 194 or RSA 195-A" — so the requirement is satisfied on its face by the content even though the number is wrong. A citizen checking the district's written record against the statute book, however, is sent to a provision that is not there.
This board makes the opposite error too. Its November 15 minutes cite "RSA91-A:3, II(c)" and "RSA91-A:3; II(a)" correctly, with the section number present, three weeks before this. The defect is inconsistency in the drafting of the agenda, which the minutes then reproduce.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) and II(k); CSB Agenda 12.6.23; 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23; the same class of defect at November 1, 2023.
OBSERVATION The minutes and the transcript disagree about who moved the Croydon motion, and this page follows the minutes
Both sets of minutes read: "Jennifer Gallagher makes motion to proceed with negotiations to accept becoming Croydon's anchor school, Arlene Hawkins seconded". The dialogue file puts the motion at 0:05:05 in Whitney Skillen's speaker cluster: "Oh, I'd like to make a motion. I'd like to make a motion that we proceed with negotiations for accepting Corden's proposal to become their anchor district." The second is Hawkins's in both accounts.
This page follows the minutes, for three reasons. The minutes were written by the clerk who was in the room and taking the roll; they were approved by the board without amendment; and the diarizer's grounds for the assignment are weak here — the segment opens mid-overlap ("Oh, I'd like to make a motion"), immediately after the presiding chair says "For a motion. I can make the motion", and Jennifer Gallagher's cluster in this file holds only seven segments, all of them from a single later item. A speaker who says almost nothing all evening is exactly the speaker a diarizer will fold into a neighbour.
What keeps it an observation rather than a correction to the minutes. Four minutes later the same speaker cluster moves the Program of Studies motion — "I'd like to make a motion to accept the the two versions" — and there the minutes agree that it is Whitney Skillen. So the cluster is Skillen's at least once, and the transcript's account of the Croydon motion is not obviously an artefact. Nothing in the record resolves it, and this page does not pretend that it does.
Sources: 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23; CSB draft minutes 12.6.23 (identical); the dialogue transcript, whose Role column sets out the grounds for each speaker attribution; RSA 91-A:2, II.
OBSERVATION Citizens' comments opened and closed in about five seconds, and how this page treats that
RSA 189:74 requires a school board to "provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters" at a meeting held under RSA 91-A:2, and provides that "The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes." The item is on this agenda; the presiding chair reaches it at 0:01:47 and disposes of it at 0:01:52. Both sets of minutes: "Citizens Comments ● None."
This page does not treat that as a violation. The statute's text does not settle whether the thirty minutes is a floor on the opportunity the board must offer or on elapsed time it must sit through, and no member of the public was turned away, cut off or limited — nobody was in the room to speak. Recording it as an observation rather than a finding is the consistent treatment across this project's pages.
What is worth a reader's attention is the emptiness. Nobody came to a meeting held eight days into a five-session public review of a $36 million budget, at which the high school's course catalogue for the following year was adopted in two incompatible versions and the board agreed to take on another district's students. The two student board members did not come either. The only members of the public who took part that evening were two officials of the Croydon School District, and they took part in the part that was closed.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (School Board Public Comment Period; 2022, 333:1, eff. September 6, 2022); 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23.
OBSERVATION The board is told not to trust its own variance column, and the most recent audit it can discuss is for fiscal 2020 or 2021
The variance column. Candace Crawford, introducing the budget binders at 0:18:50: "you'll see that the final column to the right, shows a variance. A percent variance from the year before. And just as a caveat, those that's don't be focused on that percentage because we've learned in the process that, look, last year's figures, there were a lot of anomalies in the way the budget was put together last year." The cause given is recategorisation: "Some of the categories, items were in one category that shouldn't have been. And so they've gotten rearranged" (0:20:05). Arlene Hawkins reports the same thing on the SAU side, and the business administrator says the clean-up is not finished: "We'll take another year to really get it… Where needs to be."
The audit. Frank Sprague at 0:27:11: "when we receive our audits from the from the auditors, there was one we received I think it was from. Was it 2020? What was the last one we got." Mary Henry: "2021 I think or 2020 you got." Sprague: "There were there were a number of references in there to policies that we are required to have that we don't have in the audit." In December 2023, neither the vice chair nor the business administrator could say with confidence which year's audit was the district's most recent, and the candidates were two and three years old.
What this is, and what it is not. RSA 21-J:19 provides for audits of school districts by independent public accountants and is permissive as to timing: it speaks of hiring an auditor to conduct an audit within one year after the close of the fiscal year, rather than commanding one by a fixed date. A late audit is therefore a control weakness rather than automatically a missed statutory deadline, and this card grades it accordingly. The two facts belong together because they describe the same condition: a board doing its budget work on prior-year figures it has been warned are unreliable, while the independent check that would test those figures is years behind. This project's records show the district's FY2022 audit was not issued until 2025.
Sources: RSA 21-J:19 (audits by independent public accountants; permissive as to timing); RSA 21-J:34 (annual financial report to DRA by September 1); 2 CFR 200.303 (internal control over federal awards), cited as the framework a recategorisation exercise sits inside and not as a finding.
OBSERVATION A subcommittee's working record lives in a Google Drive whose access the chair grants person by person — and it is a governmental record either way
The Policy Sub-Committee's audit tracker is described at 0:21:26: "we have drafted a policy Audit tracker spreadsheet that is part of a shared Google Drive for the Claremont School Board Policy Committee." Access is generous and is offered repeatedly — all committee members and all administrators are on it, "anyone else on the school board who wants to be part of that shared drive can be added to it", and at 0:33:46 the chair extends it to another committee: "I'll add you to it. I'm going to add you as a content manager, which means you have full access. But anyone who's not part of the school board that wants to see it, I'm only going to give them view permission. So just let me know who you want that to be and I'll add them."
Nobody is refused anything here. The chair volunteers that non-members may see the file. The observation is about the mechanism, not the intention: RSA 91-A:1-a, III defines "governmental records" as "any information created, accepted, or obtained by, or on behalf of, any public body", and RSA 91-A:4, I gives every citizen the right to inspect all governmental records. A subcommittee is a public body (RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d)). So the tracker is a public record whose disclosure is a legal entitlement, not a permission in the chair's gift — and a citizen who does not know the file exists cannot ask to be added to it. The same point applies with more force to the Finance Sub-Committee's budget binders, which are not in any share at all (flag 1).
Why it is an observation and not a concern. Everything on this record points the other way from concealment: the committee's whole reason for presenting was, in the chair's words, "For the sake of transparency, for the sake of understanding of for everyone to know what the policy committee does and is doing." The finished product of the work — adopted policy — goes onto the district's public website by design, and the district maintains a live public policy index that lists every board policy with its adoption date. This card exists so that a reader knows the working file is theirs to ask for.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, III (definition of "governmental records") and VI(d) (subcommittee is a public body); RSA 91-A:4, I (every citizen "has the right to inspect all governmental records") — the codification in force on this date is the 2019 one; the 2024, 49:1,2 amendment post-dates this meeting and is not applied; Claremont SB Policies (for Web), the district's live policy index.
POSITIVE A member corrected the previous meeting's minutes from the floor to put back a vote to seal — and the corrected document exists and can be read today
This is the meeting at which a documented defect in the November 15 minutes was found and fixed, on the record, by name.
What was wrong. The November 15 draft minutes, filed on November 21, recorded that meeting's first nonpublic session as entered and exited and never sealed. On its face, a reader of the district's own minutes during the twenty days that draft stood alone would have concluded the minutes of that session were overdue for release under RSA 91-A:3, III's 72-hour rule. They were not released, because the board had in fact sealed them.
What Arlene Hawkins did. At 0:01:05, unprompted, she gave the missing bullet from her own notes: "On, on the minutes from November 15th on page two. Roman numeral two under the non public meeting. There was a motion to seal when we came out of that meeting. So I believe it should read motion to seal for one year. Made by Frank Sprague, seconded by Heather Whitney. And the roll call vote was unanimous." Mover, seconder, duration and vote — the four things RSA 91-A:2, II and RSA 91-A:3, III between them require.
What followed. The board adopted the correction on the consent agenda, and the board-approved November 15 minutes were uploaded to the district's Drive on December 11, 2023, five days after this meeting, carrying the bullet: "Frank motioned to seal the minutes of the non-public session for one year; Heather Whitney seconded; roll call vote taken by Ben Nester, all board members present voting yes." The two November 15 documents now differ in exactly that one place, and because both are public, a citizen can see the board catch its own error. That is what an approval process is for, and it is not the general practice in this corpus — the November 1 minutes have no approved version at all.
One qualification. This meeting's own packet folder still holds the uncorrected November 15 draft, uploaded December 1 and never replaced, so a reader who starts from the December 6 packet reaches the wrong document. And the correcting motion itself has no mover or seconder in the record (flag 5).
Sources: draft CSB Meeting Minutes 11.15.23.docx (1) (2).pdf, in this meeting's packet, without the seal; Approved CSB Meeting Minutes 11.15.23 (1).pdf, uploaded December 11, 2023, with it; RSA 91-A:2, II; RSA 91-A:3, III; the November 15 page's account of the two versions, which this meeting completes.
POSITIVE The Policy Sub-Committee audited the board's entire policy manual against the state association's model, found the gaps, and put the method in writing so the next board can repeat it
The nine minutes from 0:21:06 are the most substantial governance work at this meeting, and nothing required any of it.
The audit. "we looked at the sample policies and identified the optional, recommended and required policies and looked at our manual. And for the first past we only assessed required policies or priority policies" (0:22:29). "So we've gone through the entire Claremont School Board Policy Manual and made a distinction as to where we are missing required policies. So that was that's phase one" (0:22:50). The remedy is stated as a process, not an aspiration: work the list alphabetically, prepare each missing model policy for a first read, and shepherd it "through reading, adoption and publishing on the website."
The institutional memory. "the reason why we need all of this is that our school board policies are only prescriptive on what needs to be done and not how you do it. And so these guys are going to basically be our our memory so that this committee, future committees, this board and future boards have some documentation on how to do this process and can just pick it up and run with it" (0:24:26). A board that writes down how it does its own work is a board whose successors can be held to the same standard.
The cross-check nobody asked for. When the vice chair raised the auditors' finding that the district lacks policies it is required to have, the answer was to join the two exercises up — "We should probably have a roundup on that in the next committee meeting to make sure that what's reflected the work we did… are also in line with what we know about our financial policies" — and the chair had already acted on it that day: "I just added Miss Henry to the the audit file today. I don't think she had seen it before" (0:28:42). The business administrator confirmed she was holding findings the committee needed. Both sets of minutes record it.
And the chair corrected her own agenda item rather than pretending. At 0:20:59: the agenda "says we're doing a presentation on the operational guide and delegation of policy audits, but we're not quite there yet", and it "Is probably going to come in January." The minutes carry it. The one figure a reader would want — how many required policies the audit found missing — is not given at this meeting and is not in either set of minutes.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (the subcommittee doing this work is itself a public body); Claremont SB Policies (for Web), the district's live policy index, which is where the products of this audit appear; 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23.
POSITIVE Five budget sessions were televised in nineteen days, and the board said on the record why it does that
Nothing in New Hampshire law requires a school board subcommittee to broadcast its meetings. Claremont's Finance Sub-Committee broadcast five in nineteen days — the three elementary schools, the middle and high schools and the tech centre, district-wide, special education and maintenance, and one more the following week — every one of them a line-by-line budget interview with the administrators who wrote the requests.
Two members said why, in terms a reader can hold the board to. Whitney Skillen, at 0:16:29: "I appreciate the transparency. And just like, as a board member, but also as a community member. I, I think other people in the community like having the meetings televised and so that they can feel like their voices get heard." Candace Crawford, immediately after: "We want people to know the details if they want to know them… I want to make sure I understand the budget before I can vote to support it. And if I vote to support it, and then people in the public ask me questions, I better know those answers."
And the interviews were substantive, not ceremonial. Crawford's account at 0:14:53 describes the subcommittee discovering that building administrators "submit a budget, their budget proposals, but then they don't actually see what gets put into the budget until that point", so that "they'll tell us what they thought was in there and it doesn't actually get into the copy" — a control gap found by asking people questions in public. Both sets of minutes carry the finding.
The qualification is the whole of flag 1. A broadcast is not minutes, and this board treated it as though it were. The right conclusion is not that Claremont should stop televising; it is that the televising was the easy half and the written record was never made.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (what the law does require); MAP.md §§ 27, 28, 29, 32, 34 (the five Cablecast recordings); 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23.
POSITIVE Every roll call was read by the clerk and named in the minutes, six of seven motions carry a mover and a seconder, and a changed meeting time was noticed from the floor
The rolls. Noelle Kronberg reads all four — the opening attendance roll and the three votes around the nonpublic session — and both sets of minutes record, for each, that the "roll call vote [was] taken by Noelle Kronberg, all present voting yes". Three weeks earlier this board had no clerk at all and the special-education director read the rolls; a year earlier the seat had drawn no candidate at the district election. The difference is visible in the record: this meeting's votes can all be reconstructed, and its predecessors' frequently cannot.
The motions. Six of the seven motions carry both a mover and a seconder in the minutes, as RSA 91-A:2, II requires — the entry into nonpublic session, the exit, the seal, the Croydon motion, the Program of Studies motion and the adjournment. Only the consent agenda lacks them (flag 5). By the standard of the meetings on either side of it, that is a good ratio.
The notice from the floor. The SAU 6 board was meeting the next evening at six o'clock rather than its usual time. It was not on the printed agenda. Arlene Hawkins, who chairs that board, added it at 0:34:08: "I was just going to ask to have that added. Tomorrow night's this a [SAU] meeting. We'll focus primarily on budget and we start at 6:00." The presiding chair turned it into a public notice — "So notice the special early start tomorrow" — and both sets of minutes carry it as the first item of the future-dates list, ahead of the agenda's own. A citizen who watched or read this meeting knew when to turn up to the next one, which is the practical content of RSA 91-A:2, II's notice requirement.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (24-hour notice; names of movers and seconders; minutes within 5 business days); RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (roll-call vote on entry to nonpublic session); RSA 197:20 (duties of the district clerk); 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23; the clerk's appointment three weeks earlier.
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
- Remote video: School Board Meeting 12/6/23 (Cablecast show 15453) — the project's archived copy runs 35 minutes 43 seconds and covers the meeting end to end, opening on the call to order and closing after the motion to adjourn. It contains no nonpublic session and no gap; see flag 6.
- Packet folder: 27. CSB 12.6.23 — 4 documents. The folder was created in the district's Drive on December 1, 2023 at 16:22 UTC and all four files were uploaded within the following four minutes. Nothing has been added to it since — neither set of this meeting's minutes is in it.
- Minutes, draft: CSB draft minutes 12.6.23 (1) (2).pdf, created December 19, 2023 — in the December 20 meeting's packet folder, 28. CSB 12.20.23, not in this meeting's. See flag 2.
- Minutes, approved: 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23.pdf, created January 2, 2024, in the 2023 Meeting Minutes folder. The draft and the approved version are word for word identical; the only difference is the running header, "12.6.23 CSB DRAFT meeting minutes" against "12.6.23 CSB approved meeting minutes". The board approved them without changing anything.
- Not located: any minutes of the nonpublic session held at this meeting. Verified 2026-08-29 in three stages: the district's Unsealed Minutes share, which contains only 2025 Non-Public, 2026 Non-Public and 2027 Non-Public subfolders and nothing for 2023 or 2024; Drive-wide title searches on Non-Public, Nonpublic and Unsealed, which return those folders and nothing else; and Drive title and full-text searches on Croydon, which return no district-share document of any kind. Nor does the list of withheld minutes required by RSA 91-A:3, III appear anywhere in the district's shares. The six-month seal expired June 6, 2024. See flag 3.
- Not located: any Croydon tuition contract, proposal or correspondence in either district share (verified 2026-08-29, by Drive title and full-text search on Croydon, tuition and anchor). What is known of the terms comes from a newspaper. See flag 3.
- Not located: minutes, agenda, notice or packet for any of the five Finance Sub-Committee sessions of November 30, December 1, December 6, December 13 and December 18, 2023. This project's map records the two-stage search (verified 2026-08-28) across the 2023 Meeting Documents archive, both candidate year folders in the Meeting Minutes share and the next board meeting's packet folder; it was re-run on 2026-08-29 with title searches on Finance, Sub Committee, Subcommittee and Sub-Committee. The district's own Claremont Finance Sub Committee folder (owner sau6webmaster@sau6.org, created 27 October 2022) yielded no 2023 file. A folder-scoped enumeration of that folder returned nothing, but the same query also returns nothing for folders known to hold files, so this page does not assert the folder is empty — only that no 2023 Finance Sub-Committee document was found by any search available to it. See flag 1.
- Not located: the budget binder the subcommittee distributed to every member at this meeting, or any revised version of it, in any district share (verified 2026-08-29). See flag 1.
- The district's live policy index, Claremont SB Policies (for Web) (owner sau6webmaster@sau6.org), which lists every board policy with its adoption date and links the current text — the authoritative answer to what this board has actually adopted, and the place the Policy Sub-Committee's work at flag 15 surfaces.
- Later district documents relied on for what became of the schedule: Exhibit B- 2024-2025 SHS Schedule Review.pdf and Exhibit A- Program of Studies 2025_2026- PERIOD FORMAT .pdf, both in the December 18, 2024 packet (10. CSB 12.18.24, MAP.md § 66). See flag 4.
- Contemporaneous reporting, cited as reporting and not as law: Valley News, December 9, 2023, "Claremont in talks to guarantee spots for Croydon tuition students" (Patrick O'Grady) — the only public account of who was in the nonpublic session, and the source of the tuition and enrolment figures nobody stated in open session.
- Adjacent meetings on this project: Claremont School Board — November 15, 2023, the meeting directly upstream, whose minutes this one corrected (its flag 2) and whose clerk appointment made these roll calls possible (its flag 16); and Claremont School Board — November 1, 2023, which sealed nonpublic minutes for fifty years with no statutory finding (its flag 4), miscited the exemption in every place it appeared (its flag 10), and showed the same under-a-minute nonpublic session on the published recording (its flag 6). Also on this project: Claremont School Board Finance Committee — December 6, 2023, the session held the afternoon of this same day (Cablecast show 15452, MAP.md § 29), which reaches the same conclusion about the missing subcommittee record from inside one of the five meetings (its flag 1); and SAU 6 Board — December 7, 2023, the meeting Arlene Hawkins announces from the floor here. The Finance Sub-Committee sessions of November 30 and December 1, 2023 are Cablecast shows 15443 and 15444 and also have pages on this project.
Packet documents
Names are reproduced exactly as they appear in the district's Drive folder, including the doubled extension .docx (1).pdf, the stacked (1) (2) suffixes and the trailing space in "24-25 Period ". The oddities are the district's, not this page's.
- CSB Agenda 12.6.23.docx (1).pdf — location, the 6:30 p.m. start, the seven-member board roster with the clerk and both student members, the six-name central-office roster, the core values statement, the item structure used above, and ten future dates. Its roman numerals jump from III to V and from VI to IX. Created in Drive December 1, 2023.
- draft CSB Meeting Minutes 11.15.23.docx (1) (2).pdf — the previous meeting's minutes, approved here on the consent agenda as corrected from the floor. This copy is the uncorrected draft and was never replaced. See flag 14.
- SHS Program of Studies 24-25 Period .pdf — 7.4 MB. Title page: "Stevens High School Program of Studies PERIOD SCHEDULE DRAFT 2024-2025". Graduation requirements for the three diplomas (27, 23 and 20 credits), counselling and community-service information, a recommended course-planning grid, prerequisite charts, a course-listing index and full course descriptions. Carries the three new theatre courses, nine
*FILL IN HERE* placeholders and three descriptions reading "Course description TBD". See flag 4 and flag 7.
- SHS Program of Studies 24-25 Block.pdf — 7.4 MB. Title page: "Stevens High School Program of Studies BLOCK FORMAT DRAFT 2024-2025". The same book rebuilt on a block architecture: 29 year-long courses instead of 74, no quarter-credit courses at all, and a set of courses whose credit value changes for the same title. Carries Algebra I CP, which the period booklet does not list or describe, and omits the three theatre courses the period booklet adds. See flag 4 and flag 7.
Project files (relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/)
Laws and rules cited on this page
- Right-to-Know — meetings and minutes: RSA 91-A:1-a, III (definition of "governmental records": "any information created, accepted, or obtained by, or on behalf of, any public body") and RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (public bodies include a school district "or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto"; last amended 2008, so its text on this date is today's); RSA 91-A:2, II (24-hour notice; minutes recording members, persons appearing before the body, subject matter and final decisions; "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes"; open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting)
- Right-to-Know — nonpublic session: RSA 91-A:3 — I(b) (the motion states the specific exemption on its face; roll-call vote; affirmative vote of the majority of members present); II(k) (school-board student or pupil tuition contract, with its own duty to make the contract and the nonpublic minutes public before the contract is considered for approval, and to approve only at a public meeting at which or after which the public may participate); III (72-hour disclosure unless sealed by recorded 2/3 vote of the members present on a stated determination; the required standing list of withheld minutes); IV (review of sealed minutes no more than 10 years after the vote — added 2023, 189:1, eff. October 3, 2023, nine weeks before this meeting)
- Right-to-Know — records: RSA 91-A:4, I (every citizen "has the right to inspect all governmental records"). The codification in force on this date is the 2019 one (2019, 163:2, eff. January 1, 2020); the 2024, 49:1, 2 amendment post-dates this meeting and is not applied.
- Tuition contracts and district officers: RSA 194:22 (a district may contract with an academy, high school or other literary institution and appropriate money for it; "If the contract is approved by the state board the school with which it is made shall be deemed a high school maintained by the district" — unamended since the 1942 revision); RSA 197:20 (duties of the district clerk)
- Public comment: RSA 189:74 (school board public comment period, no less than 30 minutes; 2022, 333:1, eff. September 6, 2022) — cited for how this page treats a meeting at which nobody asked to speak, not as the basis of any finding
- Audits and financial reporting: RSA 21-J:19 (audits by independent public accountants; permissive as to timing, so a late audit is treated here as a control weakness and not as a missed deadline); RSA 21-J:34 (annual financial report to DRA by September 1); 2 CFR 200.303 (internal control over federal awards)
- Students with disabilities, cited as framework: 34 CFR 300.101 (FAPE available to "all children residing in the State between the ages of 3 and 21, inclusive", including children suspended or expelled); 34 CFR 104.7(a)–(b) (§504 coordinator and grievance procedures); RSA 193:13 (suspension and expulsion)
- Expressly NOT applied, for vintage: the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements added to RSA 91-A:2, II by 2025, 112:1, eff. August 22, 2025 — the minutes' clock stamps are therefore examined for internal consistency, not treated as a required element; the 2024, 49:1, 2 amendment to RSA 91-A:4; RSA 193-E:2-a, whose enumeration of the substantive content of an adequate education was amended with effect from September 10, 2024 and is neither quoted nor applied here; the 80%-of-entitlement floor on catastrophic special-education aid added to RSA 186-C:18, III by 2025 N.H. HB 2 §137; the 2024 Title IX rule; the December 13, 2024 readoption and renumbering of Ed 306; and the 2026 special-education aid formula, which is prospective to 2028.