Participants
Every seat on the agenda masthead, marked present or absent, plus the central-office administrators the masthead lists and the board clerk. Attendance is established from the roll call at 0:01:21 and from the three roll-call votes later in the meeting, which between them name every seat; this meeting's own minutes, which would ordinarily settle it, are not in any public share. Name spellings follow the agenda masthead; the automatic transcript's rendering is given where it differs. Counts are from the dialogue transcript (298 rows, 5,157 words, 12 named speakers, 25 rows — 8.4% — left Unidentified). No member of the public was present, so there are no citizens'-comment rows.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Arlene Hawkins | SAU 6 Board Chair (elected 7/13/23, 8–3 over Marjorie Erickson); Claremont School Board member; member, SAU 6 Policy Subcommittee | Present, presiding. 100 rows and 2,030 words 100 rows and 2,030 words — 39.4% of every word saidmdash; 39.4% of every word said — more rows than anyone. Opened by thanking the new clerk and the outgoing minute-taker (0:00:35). Moved the agenda amendment that added the superintendent-evaluation update (0:01:41) and supplied the correction to the November 9 minutes (0:02:25). Read the caucus policy from the chair (0:24:18), called and timed the recess (0:25:04), moved the nonpublic session herself and stopped to find the exemption before restating it (0:26:25, 0:27:07). Reported the caucus result in public (0:30:47) and delivered the policy-subcommittee report in the first person (0:33:55). Voted No on sealing the nonpublic minutes for 99 years (0:30:20). Rendered Arlene Hopkins by the clerk at 0:27:49 and Eileen by the business administrator at 0:19:31. |
| Rocco Ruggeri | SAU 6 Vice Chair (elected 3/30/23); Unity School Board member | Present. 3 rows, 3 words — the single word Yes. in each of the three roll-call votes (0:27:57, 0:29:36, 0:30:23). He is named by the November 9 minutes as one of the two members to whom board budget questions were to be routed, and he moves the approval of these minutes at the next meeting. Rendered Jerry and Rocco. Jerry. in the rolls — a garble documented across this corpus. |
| Marjorie Erickson | Unity School Board Chair; SAU 6 member; SAU 6 chair until 3/30/23 | Present. 2 rows, 2 words. Yes. on the return to public session (0:29:38) and Abstain. on the motion to seal the minutes for 99 years (0:30:26) — the abstention the chair had to add to the minutes by correction a week later. The clerk also reads an abstention from her inside the roll to enter nonpublic (0:27:58). Her name is rendered Or three years. by the clerk at 0:30:25 — which reads as a question about the seal's duration and is not one. |
| Shannon Popescu | Unity School Board member; SAU 6 member | Absent. No answer to the opening roll and no answer in any of the three roll-call votes; no attributed speaking row. She was present on November 9 and again on December 14, so this is a single-meeting absence. |
| Kelly Simpson | Unity School Board member; SAU 6 member; member, SAU 6 Policy Subcommittee (appointed 11/9/23) | Present. 1 row, 2 words — "And second." seconding the chair's first motion to go into nonpublic session (0:26:20), which the chair acknowledges by name. Her Yes. answers in all three rolls are audible inside the clerk's rows rather than in rows of her own. Named by the chair as having attended the November 28 policy-subcommittee meeting (0:33:55). Rendered Billy Simpson and Janice. Kelly Simpson. in the rolls. |
| Atonya Hart | Unity School Board member; SAU 6 member; Chair, Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee (per the November 9 agenda and minutes) | Present — her Yes. is audible inside the clerk's rows in all three rolls (0:27:58, 0:29:40, 0:30:28). No attributed speaking row of her own. She chairs the subcommittee whose update is delivered at 0:37:04 by a voice the dialogue file leaves Unidentified; this page does not name that voice. She seconds the approval of these minutes at the next meeting. Rendered That's on your heart, Tommy and Tanya. Hart. in the three rolls. |
| Frank Sprague | Claremont School Board Vice Chair; SAU 6 member; chair of the Claremont board's Finance Committee | Present. 20 rows, 216 words. Moved the amended agenda (0:02:14), moved the return to public session (0:29:21), seconded the 99-year seal (0:30:10) and seconded the budget motion (0:33:28). Made the night's two hardest interventions: on a reclassified business-office post — "And I had asked what the impact was and somebody said it's negligible. It's about the same pay. That is not the same pay. No. Nope. So I'm just making that point." (0:11:45) — and on the missing ESSER-funded posts (0:22:01), the question that produced the answer that produced the nonpublic session. See flag 9 and flag 4. Rendered Just a spray at 0:39:04 and upon your great Sprague here in the opening roll. |
| Bonnie Miles | Claremont School Board member; SAU 6 Treasurer (elected 8/17/23) | Present — "Bonnie miles east. Present." inside the clerk's opening roll (0:01:31). 1 row, 1 word: Yes. on the return to public session (0:29:47). Her answer on the 99-year seal is not separable — the clerk's row reads "Bonnie. Miles. East. Gillen." and the next voice is Skillen's (0:30:35), so this page does not record a vote for her there. Neither the agenda masthead nor any item on the agenda reflects her treasurer's office, and no treasurer's report appears. Rendered Bonnie miles east, On the morrow and Bonnie. Miles. East. |
| Whitney Skillen | Claremont School Board member; SAU 6 member; member, Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee | Present. 10 rows, 113 words. Moved the night's only substantive motion — "I'd like to make a motion to move the following amount of budget to the public hearing for the budget year of fiscal year 2024, 2025. And that amount is $2,497,924." (0:32:57) — and repeated the figure when the business administrator asked for it again (0:33:19). Put the one line-item question of the evening that came from outside the finance thread, on office-equipment lines that had been budgeted and never spent (0:22:58). Fixed the evaluation subcommittee's start time from the floor (0:38:47) and seconded the adjournment. Rendered On any scaling, East. Gillen. and Whitney across the three rolls; she was the member absent on November 9. |
| Candace Crawford | Claremont School Board member (appointed 7/19/23); SAU 6 member; member, SAU 6 Policy Subcommittee (appointed 11/9/23) | Present. 31 rows, 197 words. Asked for the Claremont caucus — "If there are no other questions, I would like the opportunity for the Claremont board. The caucus. Is that possible?" (0:24:03) — and declined to put it as a motion: "That's why I didn't think it was emotional [a motion]. Because we're. We're just asking. I'm just asking for a caucus." (0:24:49). Pressed the composition of the $133,254 increase (0:12:46) and the SAU's share of health-insurance cost (0:21:33) — the point that came back from the caucus as a request to raise that share from 4% to 5%. Rendered Candy in the meeting's opening word and Candice by the chair. |
| Jennifer Gallagher | Claremont School Board member; SAU 6 member | Present. 2 rows, 3 words — Gallagher. Yes. and Yes. in the second and third rolls (0:29:50, 0:30:41). Her answer to the opening roll is "Jennifer Gallagher present" inside the clerk's row (0:01:31) — she is the one member in this corpus who answers Present where the others say Here, which is how the roll is read here. Rendered Joseph. and And for Gallagher by the clerk. |
| Heather Whitney | Claremont School Board Chair; SAU 6 member | Absent. The clerk reaches her name at the end of the opening roll — "Heather wisdom." (0:01:31) — and gets no answer, and she answers none of the three roll-call votes. No attributed speaking row. She was in Las Vegas the day before, when Sprague presided over both Claremont sessions of December 6. |
| Mary Henry | Business Administrator, SAU 6 (appointed 5/11/23, started early July 2023) | Present. 80 rows, 2,119 words 80 rows, 2,119 words — 41.1% of every word said at this meetingmdash; 41.1% of every word said at this meeting, and the only presenter. Walked the FY25 proposal line by line: the raise assumption cut to 3.75% with the superintendent "just has 3% per his contract" (0:09:23); $48,254 of wage increase inside a $133,000 total (0:09:57); her own department's proposed increase cut from $176,915 to $112,303 (0:17:20) by taking contracted services back to $5,000, the auditors back to $10,000 and an $8,000 copier line out entirely (0:15:47, 0:16:20). Made the request that drove the whole night — a staff accountant, "Someone with a bachelor's degree in accounting and finance" (0:18:32). And produced the sentence that ended the public discussion: "About this. I can't I can't discuss it publicly." (0:22:48). See flag 4. |
| Noelle Kronberg | SAU 6 School Board Clerk — appointed 11/9/23; Claremont School Board clerk from 11/15/23 | Present. 19 rows, 149 words — she reads all four rolls (the opening roll and the three roll-call votes), which is the pattern for this night and not a general rule: the chair reads them herself on December 14 and on two of the four on January 11. Her one substantive contribution is on the October 12 minutes: "That might have been a lag in between because the minutes for October 12th and I did the last meeting and I would have taken the notes that it needed to be changed, but I don't have access to the 12 minutes, so I'll email Chelsea." (0:04:29). See flag 3. The chair thanks her by name in the opening minute. Called Noel on the recording; the agenda spells her Noelle Kronberg. She signs the November 9 and December 14 minutes as clerk — the December 7 minutes she would have signed are the ones missing. |
| Jeff Small | Director of Technology, SAU 6 | Present. 4 rows, 62 words. The only administrator other than the business administrator with an attributed speaking row. Explained the $7,500 staff-training line as three $2,500 components: "So power school since Covid has done also virtual trainings. So it could be a combination that those two kind of go together." (0:20:27), after which the chair restated it as $5,000 and $2,500 and he agreed (0:20:53). |
| Michael C. Tempesta | Superintendent of Schools, SAU 6 (July 2019 – January 2024) | On the agenda masthead. No attributed speaking row, and the agenda carries no superintendent's report. Whether he was in the room is not established by this record: the business administrator turns to someone and asks "How do I say that, Mike?" at 0:22:42, but both the superintendent and the assistant superintendent are Michaels and neither answers audibly. He is named twice in the third person: among those who attended the November 28 policy subcommittee (0:33:55) and in the evaluation-subcommittee update (0:37:04). His contract is handled separately in the budget at 3% while every other SAU employee is modelled at 3.75%. Rendered Mr. Temper before the speaker self-corrects. Fired by this board five weeks later, on January 11–12, 2024. |
| Michael Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Innovation, SAU 6 | On the agenda masthead. No attributed speaking row. Named once, as an attendee of the November 28 policy subcommittee — "Michael Kosky [Koski]" (0:33:55). He is the post the caucus singled out for a 5% raise and a one-time $3,000 payment, though he is never named in that sentence — only "The assistant superintendent" (0:30:47). |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education, SAU 6 | On the agenda masthead. No attributed speaking row and not named on the recording, although $20,000 of special-education administrative change is one of the three components of the increase (0:09:57). His resignation is announced to this board a week later, on December 14. |
| Angela Vivian | Director of Human Resources, SAU 6 | On the agenda masthead. No attributed speaking row. Named once, as an attendee of the November 28 policy subcommittee (0:33:55). |
| Chelsea Weatherford | SAU 6 recording secretary / administrative assistant — not the statutory secretary | Not on the masthead and not heard. Thanked by the chair in the opening minute "for recording and transcribing minutes through all of this time in a timely manner, in addition to all of her other tasks as your administrative assistant" (0:00:35). She is the person the clerk says she will email about the unposted October corrections (0:04:29), and she attended the November 28 policy subcommittee. Producing the minutes is not the RSA 194-C:5, I secretary's office; see flag 2. |
| Unidentified voices | — | 25 rows, 260 words (8.4% of rows). Three clusters matter. A member who questioned the lag in posting corrected minutes — "there were several changes that had been suggested for the October 12th minutes. But when I went to look at the October 12th minutes, none of those changes had been made yet." (0:03:46) — also leads the Pledge and is not heard again. The mover of the 99-year seal (0:30:04) is unidentified, and this page does not name a mover for that motion. And the superintendent-evaluation update (0:37:04) is delivered by an unidentified voice; Atonya Hart chairs that subcommittee per the November 9 agenda and minutes, and Skillen and Sprague both speak to its meeting time minutes later, but no name or chair recognition attaches to the reporting voice, so none is asserted here. |
Agenda
Item numbering and wording from the posted agenda (SAU 6 School Board Agenda 12.7.23.docx (1).pdf — the doubled space after SAU 6 and the (1) are the district's), with dispositions from the recording; this meeting's own minutes are in no public share, so unlike the pages either side of this one there is no minute-book account to set against the recording. Scheduled clock times are printed plain; the Taken up column gives the moment in the recording. One floor amendment, moved by the chair before the agenda was adopted, added the superintendent-evaluation subcommittee update. Two items of business appear on no agenda at all — the recess for a Claremont caucus and the nonpublic session that followed it — and both are listed below in the order they were taken.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:00 | I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance agenda: 6:00 PM | "6:00 PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance" (agenda). The chair calls the meeting to order on time — "At 6 p.m., I'd like to call to order the December 7th meeting of the SA six school board." The Pledge is led by a voice the dialogue file leaves Unidentified. |
| 0:00:35 | II. General Business — cell phones; Secretary Roll Call of Attendance agenda: 6:05 PM | "Turn off cell phones and electronic devices. 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)." (agenda). The chair first thanks the clerk and the administrative assistant, then calls for the roll: "So thank you to Chelsea Secretary. Roll call the attendance, please, of the board members." The roll is read at 0:01:21 by the clerk, not by a secretary — there is none. Ten answer; Popescu and Heather Whitney do not. See flag 2. |
| 0:01:41 | II. Agenda – Amendments and Final Approval | "Agenda – Amendments and Final Approval" (agenda). Floor amendment by the chair: "I would like to add an amendment to the agenda to add the superintendent evaluation subcommittee update to Roman numeral three two under subcommittee reports." Sprague moved — "I make a motion to accept the agenda as amended" (0:02:14) — and the chair names the seconder in one word, Kelly, which is Kelly Simpson. Voice vote, no count: "All in favor? ... Opposed? Abstentions. The agenda is approved, as amended." |
| 0:02:25 | II. Minutes Approval — 11.9.23 | "Minutes Approval- 11.9.23" (agenda). The chair supplies one correction, and the primary document confirms it exactly: "I believe the word policy at the end of that sentence was either inadvertently left off, but the vote was to suspend the superintendent evaluation policy." The November 9 draft reads "a discussion pertaining to a vote to suspend the superintendent evaluation" — with no closing word. A member then raises the corrected October 12 minutes, which are still unposted (0:03:46); see flag 3. Adopted on a voice vote with no count and no mover or seconder named at all (0:05:40): "All those in favor? ... Opposed? Abstentions. Can minutes are accepted, as amended." See flag 11. |
| 0:05:40 | II. Citizens Comments | "Citizens Comments" (agenda). Opened and closed in about ten seconds to an empty room: "Now there any citizens comments? I don't see any citizens present, so I'm going to close citizens comments." No member of the public was present at any point in the meeting. See flag 14. |
| 0:06:08 | III.1 SAU FY25 Budget agenda label: (Discussion) agenda: 6:10 PM | "1. SAU FY25 Budget (Discussion)" (agenda). Twenty-seven minutes, and the whole substance of the meeting. The business administrator walks a revised proposal that is not the one in the public packet; the board asks about a reclassified post, a special-education change, two new positions, tech training, health-insurance share and unspent equipment lines; the Claremont members caucus; the board goes into nonpublic session; and the item ends with a motion. Despite the "(Discussion)" label the board took a binding vote, moving $2,497,924 to the December 14 public hearing (0:32:57). See flag 13. |
| 0:24:56 | Not on the agenda — recess for a Claremont School Board caucus | Requested by Candace Crawford, not moved: "I don't know whether I would make it a motion, if that's what you mean." The chair read the authority from the board's own policy — "The policy does say that a caucus of reasonable duration may be called by any one of the member school boards. The board will recess while individual boards are holding a caucus, a caucus. So yes, that is possible." — and recessed the SAU board: "Ten minutes. It is now 625. We will resume at 635." Six of the seven Claremont members were present, a quorum of that board. No notice, no minutes, no nonpublic vote. See flag 7. |
| 0:26:14 | Not on the agenda — Nonpublic session, RSA 91-A:3, II(b) and II(a) | Moved by the chair, seconded first by Kelly Simpson and, after the motion was restated, by Frank Sprague. The chair stopped to find the exemption — "Why? We need the RSA." — and restated it naming both grounds: "All right, so I move that we go into nonpublic session under RSA 91-A colon three two B the hiring of any person as a public employee." and "And I'm going to add 91-A colon three comma two a." Roll-call vote read by the clerk (0:27:49); Erickson abstains; no tally announced. In nonpublic at 0:28:20, out at 0:29:13 — 53 seconds apart in the published file, which does not record how long the session actually lasted (flag 23). Minutes sealed 99 years (0:30:04), the chair voting No. See flag 4 and flag 8. |
| 0:33:55 | III.2.a Policies — Sub-Committee Update agenda label: (Discussion) | "2. Policies: (Discussion) a. Sub-Committee Update" (agenda). The chair reports the November 28 policy subcommittee meeting in the first person: attendance (three members and four staff), "The meeting was called to order at 1:00. There were no public comments.", the NHSBA priority spreadsheet, a policy tracker, Google Docs drafting, and "the meeting adjourned at 150." The subcommittee will bring policy BGAA to December 14 for first read and work through "the 7 or 8 priority policies in need of updating". No notice, agenda or minutes of that November 28 meeting exists in any district share. See flag 6. |
| 0:37:04 | III.2 Added by floor amendment — Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee update | Not on the posted agenda; added by the chair's amendment at 0:01:41. Delivered by an unidentified voice: the subcommittee "is scheduled to meet on December 14th at 530", and "Mr. Temper, has Mr. Tempesta has agreed to get us a spreadsheet outlining his benchmarks and responsibilities with dates and times and a timeline". No report of any meeting already held, and the subcommittee has left no notice, agenda or minutes anywhere in the record. See flag 10. |
| 0:37:44 | IV. Future Dates / Future Agenda Items agenda: 7:40 PM | Agenda: budget public hearing and meeting 12/14/23; Claremont School Board 12/20/2023; Unity School Board 12/12/23; future agenda item "Policy BGAA- Policy Development, Adoption, & Review- First Read". The chair adds a detail the agenda does not carry: "We are going to be having a non meeting with legal counsel beginning at 6:00 I believe." — the December 14 minutes confirm "6:00 PM SAU6 Board Non-Meeting with Legal Counsel" as item I. RSA 91-A:2, I(b) excludes "Consultation with legal counsel" from the definition of a meeting. A short exchange then fixes the evaluation subcommittee's own start time at 5 to 6 (0:38:43). See flag 17. |
| 0:39:04 | V. / VI. Other Business; Closing Activities agenda: 7:45 PM / 8:00 PM | "V. 7:45PM Other Business VI. 8:00PM Closing Activities" (agenda). Taken together in one sentence: "Does anyone else have any other business or future agenda items or future dates? Do I have a motion to adjourn?" Sprague moved, Skillen seconded, and the chair closed: "Second. Second meeting is adjourned. Thank you folks." (0:39:15). The meeting ran 39 minutes against an agenda budgeted for two hours. |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue transcript. Times are the row's own start second, so the displayed time and the link cannot disagree; timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording. Quotations are the transcript verbatim, ASR errors included; square brackets mark an editorial correction, with the garbled wording left visible wherever the correction changes the sense. Quotations from the agenda, the November 9 minutes, the December 14 minutes or a budget document are attributed to that document in the text.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:00 | Call to order; Pledge | "At 6 p.m., I'd like to call to order the December 7th meeting of the SA six school board. And if you please, stand for the present." The Pledge is led by an unidentified voice. | |
| 0:00:35 | Thanks to the clerk and the minute-taker | The chair thanks the new clerk — "I want to thank you, Noel, for your recording and transcribing of last month's meetings. They were very helpful to us, so thank you for taking on that role and for such an easy, smooth transition." — and then the person who had been doing it: "I also want to take a moment to thank Chelsea Weatherford for recording and transcribing minutes through all of this time in a timely manner, in addition to all of her other tasks as your administrative assistant." Neither is the secretary RSA 194-C:5, I requires; the clerk's post is not one of the three statutory offices and the administrative assistant's is a staff role. | HIGH |
| 0:01:21 | Roll call of attendance | Read by the clerk, in the SAU 6 roll order this corpus has confirmed four times. Ten answer. Popescu and Heather Whitney do not — the roll reaches "Heather wisdom." and stops. The chair's call for it is "Roll call the attendance, please, of the board members", after the agenda line "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members". | HIGH |
| 0:01:41 | Agenda amended and adopted | The chair adds the superintendent-evaluation update "to Roman numeral three two under subcommittee reports" and lays out the resulting order herself: "It says saw budget discussion. Then subcommittee reports would be next. Then there would be the policy subcommittee update, super evaluation subcommittee update." Sprague moves, Simpson seconds, adopted by voice with no count. | OBS |
| 0:02:25 | November 9 minutes: the dropped word policy | "I have found one correction under general Business minutes approval. The second bullet. I believe the word policy at the end of that sentence was either inadvertently left off, but the vote was to suspend the superintendent evaluation policy." The primary document confirms her exactly: the November 9 draft minutes read, of Marjorie Erickson's request, "a discussion pertaining to a vote to suspend the superintendent evaluation" — and stop there. The distinction matters: suspending an evaluation and suspending the policy that governs evaluations are different acts, and the second is what the August 17 board did. | POSITIVE |
| 0:03:46 | The corrected October 12 minutes are still not posted | An unidentified member: "For October." / "12th, there were several changes that had been suggested for the October 12th minutes. But when I went to look at the October 12th minutes, none of those changes had been made yet. The ones that are posted online. And so I was just curious as to what the lag time is." The chair first thinks the October minutes are still in draft — "I believe that the October 12th minutes are the draft of the minutes." — then corrects herself: "no, we voted on October 12th and we approved them at the last meeting." Skillen straightens the confusion: "Yeah. Right now we're talking about November." | MEDIUM |
| 0:04:29 | The clerk cannot fix them | "That might have been a lag in between because the minutes for October 12th and I did the last meeting and I would have taken the notes that it needed to be changed, but I don't have access to the 12 minutes, so I'll email Chelsea." Nothing further is said about it, and no corrected October 12 minutes exist in any district share. | MEDIUM |
| 0:05:40 | Minutes adopted; citizens' comments opened and closed | "Opposed? Abstentions. Can minutes are accepted, as amended." — no mover, no seconder and no count anywhere in the item. Then, in the same breath: "Now there any citizens comments? I don't see any citizens present, so I'm going to close citizens comments." | OBS OBS |
| 0:06:08 | FY25 SAU budget opens — and the document changes | "Okay, so I know I gave you a budget time." The business administrator has revised the proposal since the packet went up: "I went back" after "speaking with Arlene", She. / "Had asked some good questions. And, I obviously changed the amount." / "Of the increased to 3.7." / 5%. She then tells the board which paper to use: "You want the one that." / Is. / "Dated at the top. It'll say 12 1 to 1231." and "That's the updated version. The other one is the previous version." The 12/1–12/31 version is not in the public packet. | MEDIUM |
| 0:07:16 | Rebuilt from the predecessor's numbers | "Sorry, 210,000. So what I did is I went back, first of all, and you'll see this in your packet as well. I went back to Richard Sheets [Seaman]. For fiscal year 23, for the budget. I put in the numbers and then I put in the actual for fiscal year 23. Then I went to the budget for fiscal year 24 numbers." She qualifies what that comparison is worth: "I can't say that they totally match Richard's numbers because this is what was uploaded in, And this is what I have to go with." Richard Seaman retired as business administrator effective 14 April 2023; she started in July. | |
| 0:07:47 | A member asks for the revised pages by email | "If I can interrupt you one second, is everybody got the right page? Can I request that they be emailed when they're corrected? Oh, sure. Thank you. I can email them to you." The dialogue file merges the questioner into the business administrator's row, so the asker is not separately attributable; the request is granted on the spot. No emailed version reached the public packet. | MEDIUM |
| 0:09:23 | The raise assumption, and the superintendent's 3% | "So the original amount was 1.3 million 1.359. And then it went to the actual was 1.316. So we over budgeted in some areas and under budgeted and others. But it washed out that what we have in the budget and what we're actually spending is less money. Then I go over, I put in 3.75% and then the superintendent just has 3% per his contract, and then I've got the total increases." The superintendent is the one SAU employee whose increase is set by contract rather than by the board's assumption — and he is fired five weeks later. | |
| 0:09:57 | The three components of the increase | "For those raises would be $48,254, which would bring us to 1.4 million. The total increase, though, over the actual to the proposed is 133,000, of which 48,000 is the increase, the speed [SpEd] department change and personnel for 20,000 and the business office. Additional person that I'm looking for is hoping you guys will grant me." So: $48,254 wages + $20,000 special-education administration + $65,000 business-office post = $133,254, the figure Crawford quotes back at 0:12:46. | |
| 0:11:12 | Sprague on the reclassified payroll post | "So I'm looking at the accounting and payroll specialist. Yep. And, how how is it that the budget was for 20 of 24 is 49? 630 in the actual 63." The answer: "Because there's a change in personnel. And from what I could tell, looking back on the description of that position, it was not accounting payroll specialist. It was payroll clerk, I believe, which was a different job. I can't tell you I did not hire the person that's in the position right now." Sprague's point, at 0:11:45: "And I had asked what the impact was and somebody said it's negligible. It's about the same pay. That is not the same pay. No. Nope. So I'm just making that point." A budgeted $49,630 against an actual near $63,000 is a roughly $13,000 gap on a change the board was told was negligible. | MEDIUM |
| 0:13:33 | Two new positions confirmed | "The 20,000 and the 65,000 that are listed at the bottom for the special ed department change and the business office additional person. Yeah, those are two new positions that are in the other budget pages" — then a qualification: "I want to say to you that the 20,000 is being added on to another position." So one of the two is an addition to an existing post rather than a new hire. | |
| 0:14:43 | Insurance assumptions changed by hand | "I did make a slight adjustment on insurance. I changed the plan from a family plan down to a two person plan instead of going back. I am going to take a gamble that they're going to be a two person instead of a family. I did the same thing with the dental insurance." Stated as a gamble, on the record, and not challenged. | |
| 0:15:47 | Three cuts the administrator made to her own department | "It was 25,000. I brought it down to 5000 because I'd rather have the person than the services. I did make an adjustment on the auditors. I asked them if they thought that they could do it for the 10,000 that we had budgeted in 23. They said they could. So I brought it back down to 10,000 like it was and took 5000 off of that." Both figures check against the packet document, which proposed $25,000 for Business Office Contracted Services (up 400%) and $15,000 for Business Office Auditors (up 50%). | POSITIVE |
| 0:16:20 | An $8,000 line for a contract that no longer exists | "That was under proposed. I took that out after having a conversation with Jeff about that line. And what it had been. I'm not quite sure why it's budgeted in 24, because there would be no purpose for that, because we don't have that contract anymore." The chair asks what it was — "So this was a contract for printing?" — and gets "Yes. For actually for copiers." and "We no longer have in the SA. So I took that out." The packet document carries Business Office Print Mgmt at $8,000 in both FY24 and the FY25 proposal; the December 12 version shows it at $0. | POSITIVE |
| 0:17:20 | Business office: $176,915 down to $112,303 | "And that is about it. So I brought my total overall budget down from the increase being 176,915 to 112,303. I like I said, I really do want that position." The first figure is exactly the packet document's Business Office increase, $176,915.33. The case for the post is succession: "If someone decides to retire, I need someone to be able to move into that role." and "We really got to get caught up, and I need somebody that can help me do that." The specification, at 0:18:32: "And that's why I'm looking for a staff accountant, because they have more of that ability. Someone with a bachelor's degree in accounting and finance." | |
| 0:19:10 | "Just a placeholder" | "Again, I understand this is just a placeholder. It's not a definite. It is up to the board on what you decide you want to do. As far as the percentage increase. But I wanted to put one end, but I brought it down, and I when I talked to" / "Eileen [Arlene] about that, I tried to match with the teachers for getting as a number." The raise assumption is presented as the board's to set — and the board's answer, an hour of clock time later, is to keep 3.75%. | |
| 0:19:56 | Technology training: $7,500 in three parts | "His staff training. That is for him. And for D as well. So 2500 would be for him. 2500 would be for D and then additional 2500 for power school training. That's where the 7500 comes from." The chair queries the overlap; the Director of Technology answers: "So power school since Covid has done also virtual trainings. So it could be a combination that those two kind of go together. So she could go to power school university or if there's a virtual training that she can do instead." Restated by the chair as "5000 for D and 2500 for you", and agreed. The packet document carries Info Mgt Svcs Staff Training at $7,500, unchanged from FY24 against actual spends of $1,971 and $1,548. | |
| 0:20:56 | A post split 80/20 across two departments | "And and just so you know, D is split between my department and Jeff. So she's a little bit in my department. That's what that food service person is under my on this page the food service person." Asked what share: "It's 2020 is 8020. So she's with me 20%." The employee is identified on the recording only by an initial; this page does not name her. | |
| 0:21:33 | Crawford on the SAU's share of health cost | "Just one question, Mary. In building this budget, the healthcare costs that the. You built in for the saw error [SAU are] at 4%." The administrator first answers with the wrong number — "5.7% is what our increase was." — and Crawford holds the question: "Not the increase. What is the portion that the." Answer: "Oh, I'm sorry. We pay. I think it's 4%. Yep." This exchange is what comes back out of the caucus as a request to raise the SAU's share from 4% to 5%. | |
| 0:22:01 | Sprague asks about the ESSER-funded positions | "So one of the things that that I'm not seeing here are positions that we currently have that current year that are Esser funded. There are several." The answer starts, stops and restarts: "There's one. One in the s a you. That's s are [ESSER] funded. She. Well she's really Claremont employee. Okay. Yes. Yep. So I'm not. There's nobody in the SA. You. Let me rephrase that." Crawford supplies "By town." and "So it wouldn't be in this budget." FY25 is the first SAU 6 budget year with no ESSER money behind it. | MEDIUM |
| 0:22:35 | "I can't I can't discuss it publicly" | "But I've moved. I can't talk about it, I can't discuss." — then, turning to someone in the room, "How do I say that, Mike?" The chair: "I we may need to have a different a different location for a discussion." And the sentence that closes the public part of the budget item: "About this. I can't I can't discuss it publicly." Nothing in the public record says what the subject was. It is the reason the board goes into nonpublic session eight minutes later, and the minutes of that session are sealed for 99 years. | MEDIUM |
| 0:22:58 | Skillen on equipment budgeted and never spent | "Under superintendents, office equipment and business office equipment, the actual spend in 2122 and 2223 was zero. And there was money budgeted for this year. And I wonder, is that money allocated or planned for office equipment this year? And is there plans to buy office equip different office equipment next year?" Answer: "So right now it has been allocated allocated. We have purchased it. In this year's budget that for next year is for anything needed to go along with the system. Because I know we need some scanners and things like that." The packet document bears the premise out: Supt. Office New Equipment and Business Office New Equipment both show $0.00 actual in FY21–22 and FY22–23, with $2,500 and $2,000 budgeted in FY24. | POSITIVE |
| 0:24:03 | Crawford asks for a Claremont caucus | "If there are no other questions, I would like the opportunity for the Claremont board. The caucus. Is that possible?" The chair reads the authority from board policy: "The policy does say that a caucus of reasonable duration may be called by any one of the member school boards. The board will recess while individual boards are holding a caucus, a caucus. So yes, that is possible." A short exchange over whether it needs a motion — Sprague: "Well, it would be just the Claremont board, right? So it's probably just a suggestion." Crawford: "That's why I didn't think it was emotional [a motion]. Because we're. We're just asking. I'm just asking for a caucus." Recess called at 0:25:04: "Ten minutes. It is now 625. We will resume at 635." | MEDIUM OBS |
| 0:25:49 | Back in session, and straight to nonpublic | "I'd like to call the board meeting back into session. Thank you for the recess." Then: "I understand we should probably go into a nonpublic session at this point to discuss what you said you couldn't discuss in public. Okay. For the whole board. Okay. Does that make sense for us to do at this point?" The chair moves it herself — "We need a motion to go into nonpublic. I'll make that motion." — and Kelly Simpson seconds: "And second." | MEDIUM |
| 0:26:25 | The chair stops to find the exemption | "Why? We need the RSA." Then, thinking aloud from the list in front of her: "Be under hiring or or adversely affect their reputation. Which one? I have to quote the exact right. I've got that." and "I'm looking. Is it the hiring of any person as a public employee, or is it a is it reputation of a person? I think it's hiring." She restates the motion properly at 0:27:07: "All right, so I move that we go into nonpublic session under RSA 91-A colon three two B the hiring of any person as a public employee." then adds the second ground: "And I'm going to add 91-A colon three comma two a." / "The compensation of any public employee. I'll second think that covers. Thank you Frank." This is what RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires and it was done on the record. | POSITIVE |
| 0:27:49 | Roll call into nonpublic; 53 seconds inside | "Roll call. Vote for moving to nonpublic Arlene Hopkins [Hawkins]." The clerk's row records "Marjorie Erickson, abstain." and then Simpson, Hart, Skillen, Crawford and Gallagher all Yes; Ruggeri and Sprague answer in rows of their own. No tally is announced. Into nonpublic at 0:28:20 — "we will return to our public session when nonpublic is over" — and back out at 0:29:13, on Sprague's motion. The published file runs straight through with no break, but the intervening rows are room chatter — "Someone brought." / "For me. Roll call." / "Did you guys leave the door open?" — not a deliberation, so the session itself is not in the file. See flag 23. | MEDIUM OBS |
| 0:29:55 | Sealed for 99 years; the chair votes No | "And I believe we need a motion to seal the minutes or not seal the minutes at this point. Do we need to seal the the minutes?" An unidentified voice: "I'll make a motion to seal the minutes for 99 years." Sprague seconds. The roll at 0:30:14: Hawkins No., Ruggeri Yes, Erickson "Abstain.", Simpson Yes, Hart Yes, Sprague Yes, Skillen Yes, Crawford Yes, Gallagher Yes; Bonnie Miles's answer is not separable. No tally announced, and none of the three RSA 91-A:3, III grounds was stated by anyone. | MEDIUM POSITIVE |
| 0:30:47 | The caucus result, reported in public | "So we're now back in our public meeting. The board met to discuss the proposed budget that you provided for us tonight. And we have. We're coming forward with accepting the 3.75% increase in salaries for those as proposed. The superintendent contractually is at three. Keeping that, we're also. We also would like to see one position. The assistant superintendent receive a 5% pay raise and a one time $3,000 bump." | MEDIUM |
| 0:31:51 | $101,923, and a 4.25% increase | At 0:31:34: "We also would like to see the, say you share of health insurance increase from 4% to 5%." Then: "And we would like to see that new position in place. Thank you. So that would increase the Saw budget total of $101,923, for a 4.25% increase." Against the FY24 SAU budget of $2,396,000 the arithmetic is exact to the dollar — but the motion that follows names $2,497,924, which is $101,924 above the base, a dollar more than the chair's figure. Asked whether anything else came out of the caucus (0:32:25): "I don't think we we discussed anything beyond that. No. Okay. Nothing beyond that." | OBS |
| 0:32:57 | $2,497,924 moved to the public hearing | Skillen: "I'd like to make a motion to move the following amount of budget to the public hearing for the budget year of fiscal year 2024, 2025. And that amount is $2,497,924." The business administrator asks for it again — "Can you give that to me one more time? I'm sorry I wasn't on the page." — and Skillen repeats it: "No problem. $2,497,924." Sprague seconds. Disposed of at 0:33:31 on a voice vote with no count: "Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor? Opposed. Abstentions. Motion passes. Thank you." This is not adoption of the budget — adoption came on December 14, at $2,489,151.03, roughly $8,800 lower. | OBS OBS POSITIVE |
| 0:33:55 | Policy subcommittee reports its November 28 meeting | "The policy subcommittee did meet on November 28th. And those in attendance were policy committee members Arlene Hawkins, Kelly Simpson, Candace Crawford and staff Michael Tempesta, Michael Kosky [Koski], Chelsea Weatherford, and Angela Vivian. The meeting was called to order at 1:00. There were no public comments." The substance: an annual policy audit, the NHSBA sample-policy spreadsheet rated "P for, usually as a result of legislation, are recommended by the New Hampshire School Board Association or all which are optional", and a tracker of current SAU policies with review dates — "Policies identified by New Hampshire School Board Association as priority but missing from our Saw policies were also highlighted." | MEDIUM |
| 0:35:42 | How the policies will be drafted | "And then we would continue to add the relative RSA at the bottom of the policy and any related policies at the top. Most of the work will be done through Google Docs, and then this way specific staff can provide input into the proposed policy that deals with their role." The chair turns to the business administrator on the spot: "For example, Mary, you talked earlier about audits and affecting policy." and "So anything that we would have you involved in the Google doc, so you would have direct access to that." The plan for BGAA, at 0:36:39: "We'll bring this policy to the December 14th meeting for the first reading. And we decided that we would focus on the 7 or 8 priority policies in need of updating and continue to bring those policies forward to the full board starting in January. And the meeting adjourned at 150." | POSITIVE |
| 0:37:04 | Superintendent evaluation subcommittee | "Superintendent Evaluation Committee is scheduled to meet on December 14th at 530. Prior to that, Mr. Temper, has Mr. Tempesta has agreed to get us a spreadsheet outlining his benchmarks and responsibilities with dates and times and a timeline, which will be very helpful in, you know, streamlining our discussions and, you know, you know, saving time around, you know, what's what his goals and objectives are as part of his evaluation". The chair closes it: "Start that process with him. And that's where we're at." Nothing is reported about any meeting already held. | MEDIUM |
| 0:37:44 | Future dates, and a non-meeting with counsel | "We have the school budget, public hearing and meeting on the 14th. We are going to be having a non meeting with legal counsel beginning at 6:00 I believe. Yes. And then we'll start. Then we'll go into the public hearing and then the meeting afterwards." And at 0:38:14: "Then the Claremont School Board is on the 20th of December and the Unity School board is December 12th. Future agenda items include the policy first read of BG a a which is titled Policy Development, Adoption and Review." The December 14 agenda, as printed in that meeting's minutes, confirms the non-meeting as item I at 6:00 PM. | OBS |
| 0:38:43 | Fixing the subcommittee's own start time on the floor | A member asks "So we should show." / "Up at 6:00 next week, correct?" Sprague: "That's all. We had a superintendent evaluation meeting. We did?" Skillen: "Yeah. Our committee does starting at five five." Sprague: "Okay. 5 to 6 and then 6 to 630. And it's 630." Skillen: "Yeah, yeah." The 5:30 announced two minutes earlier becomes 5:00 to 6:00, and the chair's parting instruction is "Bring your dinner." | MEDIUM |
| 0:39:04 | Adjournment | "Does anyone else have any other business or future agenda items or future dates? Do I have a motion to adjourn? Just a spray [Sprague]?" Sprague moves, Skillen seconds, and the chair closes at 0:39:15: "Second. Second meeting is adjourned. Thank you folks." The clerk has the last word on the recording: "Thank you." | |
Items flagged for review
These are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each card says what happened, with timestamps into the recording, and names the rule it rests on with a link to the primary source. Where no verified rule supports a concern it is labelled an Observation. Provisions are cited as they stood on December 7, 2023, which for RSA 91-A:2 means the codification amended by 2023, 188:1 (effective October 3, 2023) and not the 2025 text, and for RSA 194-C:9 means the text running to paragraph III — paragraph IV was added in 2024 and is not applied here. Positives are included: this board did several things at this meeting that the statute does not require and that the rest of this corpus does not always show.
HIGH The minutes of this meeting were written, corrected on the floor and approved a week later — and exist in no public share, in an otherwise unbroken chain
The December 14, 2023 draft minutes of this board record the item in terms: "Approval of Minutes 12.7.23", a correction from the chair that "page 2 under non-public, in the vote on the motion to seal minutes there was an abstention from Marjorie Erickson", and "Rocco Ruggeri moved to approve the minutes as amended, Atonya Hart seconded; unanimously approved" (December 14 draft minutes). So a minute document of at least two pages existed, was circulated, was corrected against the record — the correction is right; Erickson's abstention is audible at 0:30:26 — and was approved. No copy of it, draft or approved, is in any district share.
The search was two-stage and is set out folder by folder in the appendix: this meeting's own packet folder, then every SAU 6 packet folder dated after it — nineteen of them, from 16. SAU6 12.14.23 through 14. SAU6 5.28.26 — then the packets share's root, then the Claremont Meeting Minutes share's 2023 and 2024 year folders, all forty-six files of which are Claremont School Board documents. Verified 2026-08-29.
What makes this specific rather than systemic is that every neighbouring meeting's minutes were filed, on this board's practice of filing a meeting's minutes with a later meeting's packet: 11/9/23 is in the 12/7/23 folder; 12/14/23 is in 1. SAU 1.11.24; 1/11/24 is in 2. SAU 2.15.24; 2/15/24 is in 3. SAU 4.11.24; 4/11/24 and 5/29/24 are in 1. SAU6 9.12.24. December 7, 2023 is the one break in that chain. 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"; nearly three years later they are open to nobody. This is the unmitigated limb of the project's severity rule — a public body met, minutes exist, and nothing anywhere on the record explains their absence from the public shares.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — minutes open to public inspection within 5 business days); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (a school administrative unit is a public body); draft minutes of SAU6 Budget Public Hearing 12.14.23 (the approval item).
HIGH The one officer RSA 194-C:5, I actually names has been vacant all year, the agenda still calls the roll by that office — and the budget on the table creates a wage line for it
RSA 194-C:5, I requires that the SAU board "shall meet between April 1 and June 1 in each year … and shall organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer." SAU 6 has a chair (Hawkins, elected 7/13/23, outside the statutory window) and a treasurer (Miles, elected 8/17/23). It has had no secretary at any point in 2023. The agenda masthead prints "Arlene Hawkins-Chair, Rocco Ruggeri- Vice Chair" and "SAU#6 School Board Clerk- Noelle Kronberg" — two offices the statute does not name and one it does not require, and neither the secretary nor the treasurer it does.
The gap is visible in the room. The agenda line reads "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members"; the chair calls it as "So thank you to Chelsea Secretary. Roll call the attendance, please, of the board members" (0:00:35), and again later, I would / "Like to ask" / "The secretary to take a roll call to go back into public session" (0:29:13). Both times the clerk reads it. Producing minutes is not the statutory office: the person thanked in the first minute "for recording and transcribing minutes through all of this time" is the superintendent's administrative assistant.
The new evidence at this meeting is in the budget. The FY25 proposal creates a School Board function (2310) from nothing — $0.00 actual in FY21–22 and FY22–23, $0.00 budgeted in FY23–24 — and its first line is "Wages School Board Secretary $3,600.00". The November 30 version carries matching Medicare and FICA lines ($52.20 and $223.20, function total $15,875.40); the December 12 version keeps the $3,600 wage and drops both payroll-tax lines (function total $15,600.00). Neither version was discussed on the record at this meeting, and the record does not say whether the line funds the statutory office or a minute-taker. Under RSA 194-C:9-a the secretary of a school administrative unit carries real duties — receiving and retaining district ballots, certifying results to the Department of Revenue Administration, receiving recount petitions — though whether SAU 6's districts have adopted that alternative procedure is not established here.
Sources: RSA 194-C:5, I (organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer; source note 1996, 298:3 — never amended); RSA 194-C:9-a (duties assigned to the secretary of a school administrative unit); SAU6 FY25 Proposed Budget (1).PDF, function 2310; the November 9 page and the August 17 page, where the same vacancy is traced from the board's only officer election of the year.
MEDIUM A member reported that the corrected October 12 minutes had never been posted, and the meeting ended with the problem unresolved
At 0:03:46 a member states the problem precisely: "there were several changes that had been suggested for the October 12th minutes. But when I went to look at the October 12th minutes, none of those changes had been made yet. The ones that are posted online. And so I was just curious as to what the lag time is." The board had voted those corrections on November 9, twenty-eight days earlier. The chair does not know the answer — "That's up to what is the policy on that?" and "Chelsea usually takes care of that so I'm not sure" — and the clerk explains why she cannot fix it: "I don't have access to the 12 minutes, so I'll email Chelsea" (0:04:29). Nothing further is said.
The consequence is that the version of the October 12 minutes open to public inspection was not the version the board had approved. RSA 91-A:2, II makes minutes "open to public inspection", and the point of an approval vote is that the approved text is the record. No corrected copy of the October 12, 2023 minutes exists in any district share today — the only copy anywhere is the unamended draft filed in the November 9 packet folder. This is graded on the mitigated limb: the defect was raised in public by a member, acknowledged by the chair, and assigned to a named person on the record.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — minutes promptly recorded and open to public inspection); _SAU 6 unapproved School Board Agenda minutes 10.12.23.docx (3).pdf, the only copy in either share.
MEDIUM A budget question about ESSER-funded positions was answered "I can't I can't discuss it publicly", and the answer went into a nonpublic session sealed for 99 years
The sequence is short and is the hinge of the meeting. Sprague asks a straightforward budget question at 0:22:01: "So one of the things that that I'm not seeing here are positions that we currently have that current year that are Esser funded. There are several." The business administrator's answer breaks down — "There's one. One in the s a you. That's s are [ESSER] funded. She. Well she's really Claremont employee." then "But I've moved. I can't talk about it, I can't discuss." and "How do I say that, Mike?" (0:22:35). The chair offers the exit — "I we may need to have a different a different location for a discussion" — and the answer closes: "About this. I can't I can't discuss it publicly." (0:22:48).
Eight minutes later the board enters nonpublic session on the chair's own motion "to discuss what you said you couldn't discuss in public" (0:25:59), under RSA 91-A:3, II(b) and II(a), and seals the minutes for 99 years. The exemptions fit what was said — the exchange is about a specific employee's post and funding — and this page does not suggest otherwise. What it records is the effect: a question about how many positions in a budget the public is being asked to fund are paid for by money that ends this year was never answered in public, and the only account of the answer is sealed. FY25 is the first SAU 6 budget year with no ESSER money behind it, which is what makes the question a budget question rather than a personnel one.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, II(b) (hiring of any person as a public employee) and II(a) (dismissal, promotion or compensation of a public employee); RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (motion must state the specific exemption on its face; roll-call vote).
MEDIUM The budget in the public packet is not the budget the board worked from, and the figure it voted appears in no posted document
The packet posted for this meeting contains SAU6 FY25 Proposed Budget (1).PDF — six pages footed "Printed: 11/30/2023 9:27:09 AM", headed "From Date: 11/1/2023 To Date: 11/30/2023", grand total $2,590,674.91 against an FY23–24 budget of $2,396,000.00, +$194,674.91, +8.12%. It is 20,902 bytes, byte-for-byte identical to Proposed SAU6 FY25 Budget Summary.PDF filed for the November 9 meeting. Both were in the folder before the meeting.
The board did not work from it. In her first minute the business administrator directs members to a different sheet: "You want the one that." / Is. / "Dated at the top. It'll say 12 1 to 1231." and "That's the updated version. The other one is the previous version." (0:06:42). A member has to ask for the corrected pages by email — "Can I request that they be emailed when they're corrected?" (0:07:47) — and another says of a single page "It's probably not in the packet." The numbers discussed all evening are from the unposted version: the business office increase of "176,915 to 112,303" (0:17:20), the $133,254 total, the $48,254 of raises. And $2,497,924, the amount the board actually voted to send to the public hearing (0:32:57), appears in no document in any share — the next posted version, printed December 12, shows $2,489,151.03.
No statute requires a packet at all, and RSA 91-A:2, II's notice duty is satisfied by notice of the meeting. So this is not a violation; it is a gap between what the public could read and what the board was deciding, on the one item that was the entire meeting. A citizen watching Channel 8 with the posted packet in hand could not have followed the discussion.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — notice of meetings; no packet requirement); SAU6 FY25 Proposed Budget (1).PDF (the posted, superseded version); SAU#6 Budget Report 12-12-23 Board V1 (1).PDF (the next posted version).
MEDIUM The policy subcommittee held a fifty-minute meeting on November 28 with no notice, agenda or minutes anywhere in the district's shares
The subcommittee was created on November 9 with three members — Hawkins, Simpson and Crawford — so all three attending is the whole body. The chair's report at 0:33:55 establishes that it met: "The policy subcommittee did meet on November 28th. And those in attendance were policy committee members Arlene Hawkins, Kelly Simpson, Candace Crawford and staff Michael Tempesta, Michael Kosky [Koski], Chelsea Weatherford, and Angela Vivian. The meeting was called to order at 1:00. There were no public comments." It adjourned at 150 (0:36:39). Seven people, fifty minutes, and a work plan that determines which of the SAU's policies get rewritten and in what order.
RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) reaches it expressly: the definition of "public body" covers a school administrative unit "or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto". A public body owes notice under RSA 91-A:2, II and minutes open to inspection within five business days. Nothing for November 28 exists in either district share — no notice, no agenda, no minutes. This is graded on the mitigated limb rather than the unmitigated one because the report read into the SAU board's own record is unusually complete: it names every attendee, the call to order and adjournment times, the absence of public comment, and the substance and the next steps. That is more than many minutes in this corpus contain. It is still not a record open to public inspection, and it survives only because this meeting happens to have been recorded.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (public body includes any committee or subcommittee of a school administrative unit); RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — 24-hour notice; minutes within 5 business days).
MEDIUM A quorum of the Claremont School Board left the room for ten minutes and came back with a negotiating position — and the Right-to-Know Law's caucus exemption reaches only a same-party caucus
Six of the seven Claremont members were present (Sprague, Miles, Skillen, Hawkins, Crawford, Gallagher; only Heather Whitney was absent) — comfortably a quorum of that board. Crawford asked for the recess at 0:24:03 and declined to put it as a motion. The chair read the authority from the board's own policy: "The policy does say that a caucus of reasonable duration may be called by any one of the member school boards. The board will recess while individual boards are holding a caucus, a caucus." She recessed the SAU board — "Ten minutes. It is now 625. We will resume at 635" (0:25:04) — and the Claremont members went elsewhere in the building: "Is there a place to open?" What came back was a four-part position on the SAU budget, reported by the chair at 0:30:47.
RSA 91-A:2, I defines a meeting as the convening of a quorum of a public body for the purpose of discussing or acting upon a matter over which it has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power, and lists four things a meeting "shall not include". The caucus exemption, RSA 91-A:2, I(c), is limited on its face to "A caucus consisting of elected members of a public body of the same political party who were elected on a partisan basis". Claremont school board members are not elected on a partisan basis, so that subparagraph does not reach this caucus; nor do I(a) collective-bargaining strategy, I(b) consultation with legal counsel, or I(d) circulation of draft documents. The Claremont board's share of the SAU assessment is plainly a matter within its jurisdiction.
The mitigation is substantial and belongs in the same breath. The caucus was requested in open session, authorised by a written policy the chair read aloud, timed on the record, the SAU board recessed rather than continued, and the entire product of the caucus was reported in public and then voted in public. Nothing was decided behind the door that was not announced when it opened. A reader who concludes that the ten minutes were a meeting of the Claremont School Board would grade this higher than MEDIUM; a reader who concludes that members of one board conferring during a recess of another board is not a convening of the first board would grade it lower. The page records the facts and the text of the exemption and leaves that question where the statute leaves it.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I(a)–(d) (what meeting does not include; I(c) is the same-political-party caucus); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (school district and school administrative unit boards are public bodies); RSA 91-A:2 (2023 codification — the text in force on this date).
MEDIUM Nonpublic minutes were sealed for 99 years with none of the three statutory grounds stated and no tally announced — nine weeks after a new paragraph capped seal reviews at ten years
The motion, from an unidentified voice at 0:30:04, was simply "I'll make a motion to seal the minutes for 99 years." Sprague seconded. The roll at 0:30:14 ran Hawkins No., Ruggeri Yes, Erickson "Abstain.", Simpson Yes, Hart Yes, Sprague Yes, Skillen Yes, Crawford Yes, Gallagher Yes, with Bonnie Miles's answer not separable in the transcript. That is at least seven yes votes of ten members present, which clears two-thirds — but no tally was announced, and the chair said nothing at all after the roll.
RSA 91-A:3, III permits a seal only where, "by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session, it is determined that divulgence of the information likely would affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself, or render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism". None of those three grounds was stated by anyone. The vote was recorded and it was taken in public session; the determination the paragraph requires is missing from the record. A second point of vintage: RSA 91-A:3, IV took effect on October 3, 2023 — sixty-five days before this meeting — and requires that a body without its own review procedure review a seal and vote on whether the paragraph III circumstances still apply "no more than 10 years from the last time the public body voted to prevent the minutes from being subject to public disclosure". A 99-year seal is not unlawful, but under the paragraph that had just come into force it cannot in fact run 99 years unreviewed. The same board sealed a second set for 99 years a week later, on December 14, that time 8–3.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III (72-hour disclosure; 2/3 recorded vote plus one of three determinations); RSA 91-A:3, IV (added by 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023 — seal review within 10 years); draft minutes of 12.14.23 (the second 99-year seal, 8 in favour and 3 against).
MEDIUM A reclassified business-office post is running about $13,000 above its budget, and the board had been told the change was "negligible"
Sprague put the question at 0:11:12: "So I'm looking at the accounting and payroll specialist. Yep. And, how how is it that the budget was for 20 of 24 is 49? 630 in the actual 63." The answer was that the post had been redefined: "from what I could tell, looking back on the description of that position, it was not accounting payroll specialist. It was payroll clerk, I believe, which was a different job. I can't tell you I did not hire the person that's in the position right now." Sprague's point, at 0:11:45, is about what the board was told at the time: "I asked, actually asked about this position specifically because it was a switch within personnel" — "And I had asked what the impact was and somebody said it's negligible. It's about the same pay. That is not the same pay. No. Nope. So I'm just making that point."
Nobody disputed him and nobody identified who had told the board it was negligible. The business administrator was not in post when the change was made and said so twice. RSA 194-C:5, III places the fixing of salaries for all SAU personnel with this board, and RSA 194-C:5, II(c) requires the assent of districts representing 60 percent of pupils before a new administrative position is established — so a reclassification carried out between meetings, at a cost the board was told was negligible and which is roughly $13,000, is a control question for this board rather than an administrative one. No job description, personnel action or board vote for the reclassification appears in any packet in either share.
Sources: RSA 194-C:5, III (the SAU board fixes the salaries of all SAU personnel and apportions them) and II(c) (other administrative positions established only on district assent); SAU6 FY25 Proposed Budget (1).PDF, function 2520 Business Office.
MEDIUM The Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee scheduled another meeting, changed its time twice in three minutes on the floor, and has still left no notice, agenda or minutes anywhere
The update at 0:37:04 announces "Superintendent Evaluation Committee is scheduled to meet on December 14th at 530", and that "Mr. Temper, has Mr. Tempesta has agreed to get us a spreadsheet outlining his benchmarks and responsibilities with dates and times and a timeline". Three minutes later the time moves: Skillen says "Yeah. Our committee does starting at five five", and Sprague works it out aloud — "Okay. 5 to 6 and then 6 to 630. And it's 630" (0:38:43). A member had asked "Up at 6:00 next week, correct?" and been told otherwise. The published time for a meeting of a public body was therefore settled in a corridor exchange at the end of an unrelated meeting.
This subcommittee is a public body under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) and owes 24-hour notice and minutes within five business days under RSA 91-A:2, II. It has met the superintendent repeatedly across 2023 — immediately after the November 9 meeting, off camera, among others — and no notice, agenda or minutes of any of its meetings exists in either district share, verified 2026-08-29. The update given here reports no meeting held and no product beyond a promised spreadsheet. Graded on the mitigated limb only because the board keeps a standing agenda slot for it and the chair announces its meetings in public; nothing in the record says minutes exist elsewhere.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (subcommittees are public bodies); RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — notice and minutes); the November 9 page, which traces the same subcommittee's record.
OBSERVATION Five dispositions, not one counted — including the only substantive vote of the meeting — and two of them with no mover or seconder named
The agenda was adopted (0:02:25), the minutes were adopted (0:05:40), $2,497,924 was moved to the public hearing (0:33:31), and the meeting was adjourned — all four on voice votes put as "All in favor? ... Opposed? Abstentions." with no count announced for any of them. The three roll-call votes around the nonpublic session were taken name by name, and no tally was announced for those either. On the minutes item no mover and no seconder is named at all; on the adjournment the chair says "Second. Second" without identifying either voice, though Sprague and Skillen are audible.
No provision requires a public body to count a voice vote. RSA 91-A:2, II does require that "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes" — a clause in force since 2018, 244:1, effective January 1, 2019, and therefore binding on every meeting in this corpus. Whether the minutes of this meeting satisfied it cannot be checked, because those minutes are in no public share (flag 1). RSA 194-C:8 also makes weighted voting available in SAU affairs — one vote per sixteen resident pupils — but only "upon the demand of a majority of the members of any board present and voting". No demand was made, so the uncounted voice votes are not irregular on that account, and the two districts' unequal voting strength never came into play on a budget both must raise.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — names of mover and seconder recorded in the minutes); RSA 194-C:8 (weighted voting on demand of a majority).
OBSERVATION The chair reported an increase of $101,923; the motion the board passed implies $101,924
Reporting the caucus at 0:31:51 the chair said: "So that would increase the Saw budget total of $101,923, for a 4.25% increase." Four minutes later Skillen moved "$2,497,924" and repeated it when asked (0:33:19). The FY23–24 SAU budget is $2,396,000.00 on the face of both budget documents. $2,497,924 − $2,396,000 = $101,924, and $101,924 ÷ $2,396,000 = 4.2539%, which rounds to the 4.25% the chair announced. So the two figures differ by one dollar, and the motion is the one that is internally consistent.
This is arithmetic, not a finding: a dollar of rounding in a spoken summary is trivial in itself. It is recorded because the reconciliation is what proves the rest — the FY24 base, the 4.25%, and the $2,497,924 all close against each other — and because this corpus has a documented history of one-dollar discrepancies between what a board says and what its records carry. The December 14 hearing then moved off both numbers: the adopted figure was $2,489,151.03, described in that meeting's minutes as "roughly $8,000 less than voted on last week" (the exact difference is $8,772.97) and as a "Total increase $93,151.03 (3.89%)".
Sources: SAU#6 Budget Report 12-12-23 Board V1 (1).PDF (Budget FY24 $2,396,000.00; Proposed FY25 $2,489,151.03); draft minutes of 12.14.23.
OBSERVATION The public documents describe this meeting in two ways that the meeting did not follow: a "Regular Meeting" that was called as a special one, and a budget item marked "(Discussion)" that produced a binding vote
The November 9 minutes create this date under Future Dates as "c) SAU#6 Special Meeting: 12/7/2023 (added)", added from the floor after the business administrator asked for a working session "due to the need to have the public hearing for the budget on December 14th" and the chair asked that it start at 6 p.m. rather than 6:30 "to allow for more time". The agenda posted for it heads it "SAU# 6 SCHOOL BOARD MEETING Regular Meeting". Nothing turns on the label under RSA 91-A — notice and minutes duties are the same either way — but a reader reconciling the two documents cannot tell which the meeting was.
The second is sharper. Agenda item III.1 reads "SAU FY25 Budget (Discussion)" and item III.2 "Policies: (Discussion)", under a heading "Discussion/Action Items". The board took a binding vote on III.1, sending $2,497,924 to the public hearing (0:32:57), and also voted to enter and leave nonpublic session and to seal minutes for 99 years — none of which appears on the agenda in any form. No provision requires a public body to post an agenda, still less to label items accurately: RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of the time and place of the meeting, and the project has previously verified that notice covers the meeting rather than a final agenda. A citizen deciding from the posted agenda whether to attend would have read "Discussion" twice and seen no vote coming.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — notice of time and place; no agenda requirement); SAU 6 School Board Agenda 12.7.23.docx (1).pdf; draft SAU6 Meeting Minutes 11.9.23 (2).pdf (Future Dates).
OBSERVATION Citizens' comments opened and closed in about ten seconds, to a room with no member of the public in it
"Now there any citizens comments? I don't see any citizens present, so I'm going to close citizens comments" (0:05:40). No member of the public spoke at any point, and none is visible in the record of the meeting. The same thing happened at the budget public hearing a week later: "No citizens were present for public hearing, hearing closed" (December 14 minutes). It is worth recording that a budget of nearly $2.5 million, apportioned between two towns and raised at their district meetings, drew no member of the public to either the working session or the hearing.
RSA 189:74 requires a school board to "provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters at a meeting of the school board held under RSA 91-A:2" and says "The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes." Two questions about it are unsettled and this page settles neither. First, whether the section reaches an SAU board at all: it speaks of "a school board" and "school district matters", and RSA ch. 194-C, not RSA ch. 189, is where the SAU board's authority lives. Second, whether the 30 minutes is a floor on the elapsed period or on the opportunity offered — the text does not say, and nobody here was turned away or cut short. No violation is asserted.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (School Board Public Comment Period; 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022); RSA 194-C:5 (the SAU board's own authority).
OBSERVATION RSA 194-C:9 requires the budget to be apportioned between the two districts and certified to each board chair before January 15, and no apportionment appears anywhere in this record
RSA 194-C:9, I does two things. It sets the deadline this meeting exists to meet — "At a meeting held before January 1, the school administrative unit board shall adopt a budget" — and it prescribes how the cost is divided: "the apportionment shall be based 1/2 on the average membership in attendance for the previous school year and 1/2 on the most recently available equalized valuation". It then requires a second, separate act: "Prior to January 15 in each year, the board shall certify to the chairperson of the school board of each constituent school district the amount so apportioned."
The board discussed the SAU's total all evening and voted a total. Neither budget document in either share carries an apportionment schedule — both are object-code detail totalling to a single grand total, with no Claremont and Unity columns, no average-membership figures and no equalized valuations. No apportionment was mentioned on the recording, and the December 14 minutes that record the budget's adoption do not mention one either. RSA 194-C:5, III separately requires the board to "apportion the expense of the salaries and benefits among the several districts, and shall certify the apportionment to their respective treasurers and to the state board of education". This is an observation, not a finding. Certification is an administrative act with a January 15 deadline that falls well after this meeting; it may have been done, and the absence of a document in a packet share is not evidence that it was not. What the record shows is that the two districts approved a total without a public statement of how it splits between them.
Sources: RSA 194-C:9 (2023 codification, paragraphs I–III only — adoption before January 1, 1/2 average membership and 1/2 equalized valuation, certification prior to January 15); RSA 194-C:5, III (apportion and certify to district treasurers and the state board).
POSITIVE The whole packet was public six days before the meeting — six times the statutory notice period, and a marked change from the month before
All three documents in 15. SAU6 12.7.23 were created in Drive on December 1, 2023 at about 11:21 a.m., within seconds of each other and six days before the gavel. RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of a meeting "at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings", and requires no packet at all. The contrast with the meeting before is the point: the November 9 packet folder, agenda included, was created at 8:27 a.m. on the morning of that meeting, about ten hours ahead, with one document landing two hours before the gavel. A board that posts its material a clear week out has given the public a real chance to read it — which is why the substitution of a newer budget at the table (flag 5) costs more here than it would have on November 9.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — 24-hour notice, excluding Sundays and legal holidays); Drive creation timestamps for the three packet documents, listed in the appendix.
POSITIVE The chair stopped a motion she had already made, found the exemption, and put both grounds on the record — and announced the following week's non-meeting with counsel in public
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", and that the vote "shall be by roll call". The chair moved the session at 0:26:14 without one, Simpson seconded — and then she caught it herself: "Oh, wait, I have what?" / "Why? We need the RSA." She reasoned it out aloud from the list in front of her, rejecting the reputation ground for the hiring one (0:26:51), restated the motion citing "RSA 91-A colon three two B the hiring of any person as a public employee", added "91-A colon three comma two a" for compensation, and called for the roll: "And believe we need a roll call. Vote." Every step of that is what the paragraph asks for, done in public, on tape, by a chair correcting her own error rather than proceeding on the first motion.
The same care shows in the announcement of the following week: "We are going to be having a non meeting with legal counsel beginning at 6:00 I believe" (0:37:44). RSA 91-A:2, I(b) excludes "Consultation with legal counsel" from the definition of a meeting, so no notice was owed for it at all — and the December 14 agenda nonetheless printed it as item I, "6:00 PM SAU6 Board Non-Meeting with Legal Counsel". Announcing an exempt gathering a week ahead and printing it on the agenda is more than the statute asks.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (motion must state the specific exemption; roll-call vote); RSA 91-A:2, I(b) (consultation with legal counsel is not a meeting); draft minutes of 12.14.23 (the printed agenda, item I).
POSITIVE The FY25 budget was sent to a public hearing the statute does not require, and adopted a week later — eighteen days inside the January 1 deadline
RSA 194-C:9, I requires only that "At a meeting held before January 1, the school administrative unit board shall adopt a budget". It requires no public hearing on an SAU budget at any point. This board held one anyway. The motion at this meeting was expressly to "move the following amount of budget to the public hearing" (0:32:57), the hearing was held on December 14 as item III of that agenda, and the budget was adopted the same night: "Frank Sprague motioned to approve the proposed budget at the amount of $2,489,151.03, Kelly Simpson seconded … Vote taken, unanimously approved" (December 14 draft minutes). December 14 is eighteen days before the statutory deadline.
The calendar behind it was set deliberately. The business administrator asked for this meeting on November 9 "due to the need to have the public hearing for the budget on December 14th" (November 9 minutes), and the chair moved its start time up half an hour "to allow for more time". Whatever else this page records about the packet and the caucus, the statutory calendar was met with room to spare and with a step in it the statute does not ask for.
Sources: RSA 194-C:9, I (2023 codification — adoption at a meeting held before January 1; no hearing required); draft minutes of 12.14.23 (public hearing and adoption); draft SAU6 Meeting Minutes 11.9.23 (2).pdf (the reason for the December 7 date).
POSITIVE The chair read a one-word correction into the previous minutes, and the primary document confirms her exactly
At 0:02:25: "I have found one correction under general Business minutes approval. The second bullet. I believe the word policy at the end of that sentence was either inadvertently left off, but the vote was to suspend the superintendent evaluation policy." The November 9 draft minutes bear her out to the word. Under "Minutes Approval- 10.12.23" the second bullet reads that Marjorie Erickson "wishes for the minutes to include a note under section IV (School Board Work Session) that there was a discussion pertaining to a vote to suspend the superintendent evaluation" — and ends there.
The distinction is not pedantic. Suspending an evaluation and suspending the policy that governs evaluations are different acts with different consequences, and it was the second that the August 17 board did — the October 12 minutes amended the August 17 minutes to record the suspension of policy CBE. Getting that word back into the record of a board that is at that moment evaluating a superintendent it will dismiss five weeks later is a small piece of careful minute-keeping, done by the chair, unprompted, on a document nobody else had queried.
Sources: draft SAU6 Meeting Minutes 11.9.23 (2).pdf (the uncorrected bullet); the August 17 page, where the policy suspension itself is traced.
POSITIVE The business administrator cut her own department's proposed increase by more than a third before the board asked her to, and removed a line budgeted for a contract the SAU no longer has
The posted packet proposed a Business Office increase of $176,915.33 — 28.23%, the largest of any function — including contracted services up 400% to $25,000 and auditors up 50% to $15,000. By the time she reached the table she had taken it apart: "It was 25,000. I brought it down to 5000 because I'd rather have the person than the services. I did make an adjustment on the auditors. I asked them if they thought that they could do it for the 10,000 that we had budgeted in 23. They said they could. So I brought it back down to 10,000 like it was and took 5000 off of that." (0:15:47). And an $8,000 print-management line went entirely: "there would be no purpose for that, because we don't have that contract anymore" — copiers the SAU no longer leases (0:16:20). Net: "So I brought my total overall budget down from the increase being 176,915 to 112,303" (0:17:20).
Every one of those figures checks against the posted document, and the December 12 version carries the cuts through: contracted services $5,000, auditors $10,000, print management $0.00, function total increase $111,171.50. She also flagged the assumption she was least sure of rather than burying it — "I am going to take a gamble that they're going to be a two person instead of a family" (0:14:43) — and told the board the raise percentage was theirs, not hers: "Again, I understand this is just a placeholder. It's not a definite. It is up to the board on what you decide you want to do." (0:19:10). She held the one increase she wanted and said so plainly.
Sources: SAU6 FY25 Proposed Budget (1).PDF (function 2520, +$176,915.33); SAU#6 Budget Report 12-12-23 Board V1 (1).PDF (function 2520, +$111,171.50).
POSITIVE The chair voted against sealing her own board's nonpublic minutes for 99 years, on a recorded roll call
The seal motion came from the floor, not from the chair, and Sprague seconded it. When the clerk reached the top of the roll — "Vote to seal the minutes for 99 years, Arlene Hawkins." — the answer was No. (0:30:20). She was the only No; Marjorie Erickson abstained. The motion carried anyway and the chair said nothing further about it, moving straight to the caucus report.
A presiding officer voting against the sealing of her own body's records, on the record, by name, is worth noting in a corpus where seal votes routinely pass without a stated ground, without a tally and without a dissent. Erickson's abstention has a second life: it is the one thing the chair went back to correct in these minutes a week later — "in the vote on the motion to seal minutes there was an abstention from Marjorie Erickson" (December 14 draft minutes) — which is how we know the minutes existed at all (flag 1).
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III (recorded 2/3 vote in public session); draft minutes of 12.14.23 (the correction recording Erickson's abstention).
POSITIVE Two members asked line-item questions the documents bear out, and the board started a systematic policy audit against the NHSBA priority list
Skillen went to lines nobody else had opened: "Under superintendents, office equipment and business office equipment, the actual spend in 2122 and 2223 was zero. And there was money budgeted for this year." (0:22:58). The packet document bears the premise out exactly — Supt. Office New Equipment and Business Office New Equipment both show $0.00 actual in FY21–22 and FY22–23 against $2,500 and $2,000 budgeted for FY24 — and she got a specific answer about scanners and a printer. Crawford separated an increase from a share — "Not the increase. What is the portion that the." (0:21:33) — and that distinction is what came back out of the caucus as a request to move the SAU's health-insurance share from 4% to 5%.
The policy work has the same character. The subcommittee mapped every current SAU policy against the NHSBA sample list and its priority ratings, "Policies identified by New Hampshire School Board Association as priority but missing from our Saw policies were also highlighted" (0:34:59), and set a drafting convention worth having: "we would continue to add the relative RSA at the bottom of the policy and any related policies at the top" (0:35:42). Policy BGAA went to first read on December 14 as promised. A board that writes the governing RSA into the foot of each policy is building a record a citizen can audit — the opposite failing from the one this page's other flags describe.
Sources: SAU6 FY25 Proposed Budget (1).PDF (equipment lines, functions 2321 and 2520); NHSBA Sample BGAA: Policy Development, Adoption, and Review (Draft Revisions 2023.11.15).pdf, filed in the December 14 packet; draft minutes of 12.14.23 (BGAA first read).
OBSERVATION The published recording has no break anywhere in it, and yet about ten minutes of the meeting are missing from it — the recess and the nonpublic session are edited out
The chair recessed the board at 0:25:04 with an explicit clock: "Ten minutes. It is now 625. We will resume at 635." She called it back to order at 0:25:49 — forty-five seconds later in the recording. The same shape surrounds the nonpublic session: "We are going to go into nonpublic session at this time" at 0:28:20, and the return motion at 0:29:13, 53 recording-seconds apart, with the intervening rows plainly the room reassembling rather than a deliberation — "Someone brought." / "An end." / "For me. Roll call." / "Did you guys leave the door open?" / "Oh, no. There's no room."
The transcript shows no silence at either point: rows run shoulder to shoulder, and the largest gap between any two consecutive rows in the whole 298-row file is 1.1 seconds. Continuous audio plus a missing ten minutes of wall time is the signature of a spliced broadcast, not of a very short recess. Neither cut is improper. RSA 91-A:3 makes a nonpublic session nonpublic; broadcasting it would defeat the exemption the board had just voted, and nothing in RSA 91-A requires a public body to record a meeting at all, still less to publish an unedited file — the record the statute requires is the minutes.
What it costs is precision. Recording positions on this page are reliable pointers into the published file, and every timestamp here links to the moment it names; they are not wall-clock times after 0:25:04. "It is now 625" is the last clock anchor in the recording, so adjournment at recording position 0:39:15 was in fact nearer 6:48 p.m. if the recess ran its stated ten minutes, and the true length of the nonpublic session is not recoverable from any public source. The document that would carry the times is the one that does not exist (flag 1), and the sealed minutes of the nonpublic session are sealed for 99 years (flag 8).
Sources: RSA 91-A:3 (nonpublic sessions; nothing requires one to be broadcast); RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — minutes, not a recording, are the required record).
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
- Remote video: SAU 6 Board Meeting 12/7/23 (Cablecast show 15455), broadcast on CCTV Channel 8 as the agenda's own heading states. Every timestamp on this page links into this recording with &seekto= plus the second. The local copy runs 39:48 and the dialogue transcript spans 0:00:00 to 0:39:21; the published file contains no break — the largest gap between consecutive transcript rows is 1.1 seconds — but it is nonetheless an edit: about ten minutes of wall time across the caucus recess and the nonpublic session are absent from it, so recording positions are pointers into the published file and not clock times after 0:25:04. See flag 23.
- Packet folder: 15. SAU6 12.7.23 — 3 items, in the 2023 Meeting Packets archive within the SAU 6 Schoolboard Packets share — not the Claremont School Board packet share. Drive creation timestamps are given because they are evidence in flag 16. Two of the three file names carry a doubled space, which MAP.md renders as a single space; the names below are the district's exactly.
- Agenda: SAU 6 School Board Agenda 12.7.23.docx (1).pdf the doubled space and the
(1) are the district's — created December 1, 2023 at 11:21 a.m. Twelve board members on the masthead with two officers and a clerk; six central-office administrators; sections I through VI with clock times from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM; the line "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members"; items III.1 "SAU FY25 Budget (Discussion)" and III.2 "Policies: (Discussion) a. Sub-Committee Update". Heads the meeting "Regular Meeting". See flag 2 and flag 13.
- Budget: SAU6 FY25 Proposed Budget (1).PDF the doubled space and the
(1) are the district's — created December 1, 2023 at 11:21 a.m.; 20,902 bytes, footed "Printed: 11/30/2023 9:27:09 AM", headed "From Date: 11/1/2023 To Date: 11/30/2023". Six pages of object-code detail across seven functions (2225 Information Management, the new 2310 School Board, 2321 School Administrative Unit, 2490 Special Education Administration, 2520 Business Office, 2521 Human Resources, 2600 Maintenance). Grand total $2,590,674.91 against an FY23–24 budget of $2,396,000.00, +$194,674.91, +8.12%. Byte-for-byte identical to Proposed SAU6 FY25 Budget Summary.PDF in the November 9 folder, created November 30. This is the superseded version; see flag 5, flag 2 and flag 20.
- Previous meeting's minutes: draft SAU6 Meeting Minutes 11.9.23 (2).pdf — created December 1, 2023 at 11:21 a.m. The document corrected at 0:02:25; signed "Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, SAU#6 School Board Clerk". Records the December 7 meeting's creation as "SAU#6 Special Meeting: 12/7/2023 (added)" and the reason for it. See flag 19, flag 13 and flag 18.
- Documents from the meeting that follows, used on this page because this meeting's own minutes do not exist: draft minutes of SAU6 Budget Public Hearing 12.14.23.pdf, filed in 1. SAU 1.11.24 — the source for the approval of these minutes, for the adopted FY25 figure of $2,489,151.03, for the December 14 non-meeting with counsel, and for the second 99-year seal. And SAU#6 Budget Report 12-12-23 Board V1 (1).PDF in 16. SAU6 12.14.23 — printed December 12, headed "From Date: 12/1/2023 To Date: 12/31/2023", grand total $2,489,151.03, +$93,151.03, +3.89%. It is the closest surviving document to the version the board actually worked from, but it is not that version: it post-dates the meeting by five days and already carries the caucus's requests.
- Explicit negative — the minutes, and the two-stage search behind it (verified 2026-08-29). No minutes of December 7, 2023, draft or approved, exist in any district share, although the December 14 minutes prove a document existed and was approved. Stage one: this meeting's own folder 15. SAU6 12.7.23 (3 items, all listed above). Stage two, every SAU 6 packet folder dated later than this meeting, by filename date, opened and enumerated one by one — 16. SAU6 12.14.23 (3); 1. SAU 1.11.24 (4, holds the 12.14.23 draft); 2. SAU 2.15.24 (10, holds the 1.11.24 draft); 3. SAU 4.11.24 (9, holds the 2.15.24 draft); 4. SAU Retreat 5.29.24 (1); 1. SAU6 9.12.24 (13, holds the 4.11.24 and 5.29.24 drafts); 2. SAU6 11.14.24 (10, holds the 9.12.24 draft); 3. SAU6 11.21.24 Strategic Plan Presentation (2); 4. SAU6 12.3.24 (4); 5. SAU6 12.12.24 (8, holds the 11.14.24 and 11.21.24 drafts); 6. SAU6 6.12.25 (3, holds the 4.10.25 draft); 7. SAU6 8.21.25 (1); 8. SAU6 8.26.25 (1); 9. SAU6 9.4.25 (2); 10. SAU6 9.11.25 (7, holds four 2025 drafts); 11. SAU6 10.6.25 (1); 12. SAU6 11.13.25 (4, holds three 2025 drafts); 13. SAU6 4.9.26 (3); 14. SAU6 5.28.26 (2) — nineteen folders. Stage three: the packets share's own root, which holds seventeen items, all of them folders and no loose files; and the Claremont Meeting Minutes share, whose 2023 Meeting Minutes folder holds 21 files and 2024 Meeting Minutes 25, every one of the 46 a Claremont School Board document — that share has never held an SAU 6 file of any kind. Folder listings were read from the shares directly; the Drive API's own search index returns only a subset of these files and folders and its negatives are not reliable here. See flag 1.
- Other explicit negatives, verified 2026-08-29. No notice, agenda or minutes of the SAU 6 Policy Subcommittee's November 28, 2023 meeting exists in either share — the chair's spoken report is the only account (flag 6). No notice, agenda or minutes of the Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee, for any of its meetings, exists in either share (flag 10). No corrected version of the October 12, 2023 minutes exists anywhere; the only copy in any share is the unamended draft filed in the November 9 folder (flag 3). No apportionment schedule dividing the FY25 SAU budget between Claremont and Unity, and no certification to either board chair, appears in any packet in either share (flag 15). No job description, personnel action or board vote for the reclassification of the payroll post appears in any packet (flag 9). The version of the budget the board worked from at this meeting — the one "Dated at the top … 12 1 to 1231" that the business administrator handed out — is in neither share in the form that existed on December 7.
Project files
Relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/.
- Dialogue transcript: ../Dialogue/15455 SAU6120723.mp4.CSV — 298 rows, 5,157 words, 12 named speakers, 25 rows (8.4%) Unidentified.
- Video: ../../Input/Videos/15455 SAU6120723.mp4 — 39:48.
- Diarized transcript: ../../Input/Transcripts/15455 SAU6120723.mp4.json.
- Document map: ../../Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 31. That section records the minutes as "No minutes located, but the search was not exhaustive — treat this as unresolved, not as an absence." The search is now exhaustive and is itemised above; and the December 14 minutes establish that the document existed and was approved. Section 31 should be updated on both points.
- Neighbouring pages: SAU 6 — November 9, 2023, which appointed the clerk, created the policy subcommittee and opened this budget cycle, and SAU 6 — August 17, 2023, which carries the secretary and treasurer threads this page continues. The Claremont district meetings either side are November 15 and the Finance Committee sessions of November 30 and December 1.
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:2 (2023 codification — the text in force on December 7, 2023) — I: meeting means the convening of a quorum of a public body for the purpose of discussing or acting upon a matter over which it has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power; it "shall not include" (a) strategy or negotiations on collective bargaining, (b) "Consultation with legal counsel", (c) "A caucus consisting of elected members of a public body of the same political party who were elected on a partisan basis", or (d) circulation of draft documents. II: notice of time and place "posted in 2 appropriate places … at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings"; minutes "shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting"; "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." Vintage: the mover/seconder clause dates from 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019; the section was amended by 2023, 188:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023, nine weeks before this meeting, so this codification and not the 2019 one governs; the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements were added later by 2025, 112:1 and are not applied. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17.
- RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) — "public body" includes "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." The trailing clause is what reaches the Policy Subcommittee and the Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 1, 6, 7, 10.
- RSA 91-A:3 — I(b): "Any motion to enter nonpublic session shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II which is relied upon as foundation for the nonpublic session. The vote on any such motion shall be by roll call, and shall require the affirmative vote of the majority of members present." II(a): "The dismissal, promotion, or compensation of any public employee or the disciplining of such employee …" II(b): "The hiring of any person as a public employee." III: minutes and decisions "shall be publicly disclosed within 72 hours of the meeting, unless, by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session, it is determined that divulgence of the information likely would affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself, or render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism". IV: review of a seal "shall occur no more than 10 years from the last time the public body voted to prevent the minutes from being subject to public disclosure". Vintage: the source note ends "2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023", which added paragraph IV — sixty-five days before this meeting, so IV applies. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 4, 8, 17, 21.
- RSA 194-C:5 — I: the SAU board "shall meet between April 1 and June 1 in each year … and shall organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer." II(c): "Other administrative positions may be established, but only after 50 percent or more of the school districts in the school administrative unit representing 60 percent of the total pupils in the school administrative unit has voted favorably upon the establishment of the position." III: the board "shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel, shall apportion the expense of the salaries and benefits among the several districts, and shall certify the apportionment to their respective treasurers and to the state board of education." Source note "1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996"; never amended, so the current text governed here. Vice chair and clerk are not among the three offices. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 2, 9, 14, 15.
- RSA 194-C:9 (2023 codification — the text in force on December 7, 2023) — "At a meeting held before January 1, the school administrative unit board shall adopt a budget required for the expenses of the school administrative unit for the next fiscal year"; "the apportionment shall be based 1/2 on the average membership in attendance for the previous school year and 1/2 on the most recently available equalized valuation"; "Prior to January 15 in each year, the board shall certify to the chairperson of the school board of each constituent school district the amount so apportioned." It requires no public hearing. Vintage: the 2023 edition runs to paragraph III with a source note ending "1996, 298:3. 2003, 279:1, eff. Sept. 16, 2003"; a paragraph IV permitting alternative apportionment methods was added by 2024, 329:1, eff. Oct. 1, 2024, did not exist on this date, and is not cited. Verified 2026-08-29 against both the 2023 Justia edition and the current gc.nh.gov text and source note. Flags 15, 18.
- RSA 194-C:9-a — the alternative SAU budget-adoption procedure, which assigns "the secretary of the school administrative unit" the receipt and 60-day retention of district ballots, certification of the result to the Department of Revenue Administration, and receipt of recount petitions. Cited to show that the vacant office carries statutory duties; the record does not establish whether SAU 6's districts have adopted the alternative procedure, so this is background rather than an applied requirement. Repealed prospectively by 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 153 (HB 564), eff. Aug. 18, 2026 — long after this meeting, and noted only so the link is read with its date. Flag 2.
- RSA 194-C:8 — weighted voting in SAU affairs, one vote per sixteen resident pupils, expressly including "the organization of such unit's school board and selection of officers", available only "upon the demand of a majority of the members of any board present and voting". Not demanded at this meeting, so the uncounted voice votes are not irregular on that account. Flag 11.
- RSA 189:74 — School Board Public Comment Period, "no less than 30 minutes"; 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022. Cited with both of its open questions stated and neither resolved: whether it reaches an SAU board, and whether the 30 minutes is a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time. No violation is asserted. Flag 14.
- District policy, cited as the board's own rule rather than as law: the SAU 6 caucus policy the chair read aloud at 0:24:18 — "a caucus of reasonable duration may be called by any one of the member school boards. The board will recess while individual boards are holding a caucus". The policy itself is in neither district share, so it is quoted only as the chair read it. And policy BGAA, Policy Development, Adoption and Review, taken to first read on December 14 from the NHSBA sample filed in that meeting's packet.
- Not cited, and why. No provision was found requiring an SAU board to count a voice vote, to post an agenda or a packet in advance, to label an agenda item accurately, to hold a public hearing on its budget, or to publish a caucus's deliberations. Where the page notes those things it does so as an observation, not as a rule. RSA 91-A:3, II(c) — matters likely to affect a person's reputation — is named only because the chair considered and rejected it on the record; the session was entered under II(b) and II(a). No new legislation touching SAU budget adoption or the Right-to-Know Law was found between the anchors' verification date and this run beyond 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 153, which post-dates this meeting by more than two years.