Participants
Everyone in the record of this meeting. Board attendance and the spellings of the citizens’-comment speakers come from the district’s approved minutes and its posted agenda; where the recording and the minutes disagree about a name, both are given and neither is silently preferred (flag 8). Voice attributions come from the project’s dialogue file for this recording (334 rows, 9,620 words), which records its own evidence and confidence for each speaker. Roles are as stated in the record. Six Claremont Middle School staff and one substitute teacher spoke in citizens’ comments; every one of them self-identified at the podium.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Heather Whitney | Chair, Claremont School Board; member, Finance Committee | Presided throughout — 93 of 334 segments. Called the meeting to order, read the citizens’-comment policy in full, put every motion, and asked for the consensus that let the middle-school staff speak before their item (0:09:12, flag 16). She asked the two substantive questions of the attorney — what proportion of non-CTE use becomes a problem (0:37:39) and whether a city workforce grant could fund hybrid use (0:38:59) — and framed the board’s budget strategy as building room for pay rises in later years (0:57:46). She moved the return from nonpublic session and seconded two of the night’s eight motions, including the motion to seal the nonpublic minutes for fifty years. Identified in the dialogue file by direct address from Sprague (“anything else to say, candy? No. Heather.”) and by her own third-person references to Crawford and Sprague. |
| Frank Sprague | Vice Chair, Claremont School Board; Chair, Finance Committee; board representative on the maintenance and custodial negotiating team | Moved five of the night’s eight motions, including both procedural motions on the nonpublic session and the budget motion itself (1:05:15). Presented the maintenance and custodial agreement, saying why he was the one presenting it: “I’m speaking because I was the the board rep on that negotiating committee” (0:44:34). Delivered the Finance Committee’s report, told the public the sessions were televised, and abstained on the secretaries’ contract without stating a reason. Named on the recording by the chair — “From the finance subcommittee, from the chair of that committee, Frank Sprague” (1:00:20) — and again by the superintendent. |
| Candace Crawford | Claremont School Board member (appointed 19 July 2023); member, Finance Committee | The only member to state reservations on the record before voting for the budget (flag 19). Twice defined the limit of her vote: “So I am voting in support of moving it to the hearing” and “I’m voting in favor simply to move it forward to the hearing phase. That is, that’s the limit of my acceptance at this point” (1:04:01, 1:05:36). Also the member who stopped the agenda amendment at the top of the meeting to ask whether the paraprofessional negotiation was finished (0:01:45) and who pressed the superintendent on whether the board was ratifying an agreement or a proposal (0:53:30). The minutes record her as the mover of both the maintenance-and-custodial and secretaries’ ratifications. Addressed as “candy” by Sprague and quoted by name from the podium by a public speaker. |
| Jennifer Gallagher | Claremont School Board member; chair, Curriculum and Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors subcommittees | Present from 6:34 PM per the minutes, and the seconder of five of the night’s eight motions — the nonpublic entry, both contract ratifications, the calendar and the budget. She is not audible as a named speaker anywhere on this recording. The one place the transcription catches the clerk reading her name is the roll on returning from nonpublic, rendered Senator Gallagher? Yes. at 0:08:44 — the recognizer’s garble of Jennifer Gallagher. Everything else about her role that night comes from the minutes. |
| Bonnie Miles | Claremont School Board member; chair, Capital Improvement Subcommittee | Recorded present, never named and never separably heard. The minutes place her in the room and record her as one of the four members voting in favour of the secretaries’ contract; the recording contains no utterance that can be attributed to her, and her Capital Improvement report was one of the five items dropped for time (flag 10). This page does not attribute any quotation to her. |
| Whitney Skillen | Claremont School Board member; chair, Policy Subcommittee | Absent per the approved minutes. Her Policy Subcommittee report was dropped for time. She had presented the subcommittee’s policy-audit work to the board a fortnight earlier — see the 6 December page. |
| Arlene Hawkins | Claremont School Board member; Chair of the SAU 6 board | Absent per the approved minutes. Three weeks later, on 11 January 2024, she moved the termination of the superintendent’s contract at the SAU 6 board — a fact from elsewhere in this corpus and not from this record. |
| Noelle Kronberg | Clerk, Claremont School Board (appointed 15 November 2023) | Read all three roll-call votes and produced the minutes, which she signs. Only three of her utterances survive transcription — Not public opening the first roll (0:07:57), Frank? (0:08:33) and Senator Gallagher? Yes. (0:08:44). She is never named on this recording; the identification rests on the office she held and the corpus record that she reads every roll in this district from 15 November 2023 onward. |
| Michael Tempesta | Superintendent of Schools, SAU 6 | Presented the secretaries’ and paraprofessional agreements and asked for the paraprofessional item to be added to the agenda. On the paraprofessionals he was explicit about both the money and its source: “we added two, $2 to every, every step. And for an overall increase of 189,000 in the first” and “We still have money in the esser [ESSER] money to give a bonus, as we have with the other groups” (0:52:12, flag 12). This meeting is three weeks before the SAU 6 board voted to end his employment on 11–12 January 2024. Nothing on this recording touches his evaluation, contract or standing; the only nonpublic session was entered before any of his items and its subject is not in the public record. The six short segments at the top of the meeting that ask for the agenda addition are attributed to him in the dialogue file at medium confidence — on content, because the item is the one he later presents in the first person, not on voice clustering, which puts them with the attorney. This page marks them where they are quoted. |
| Mike Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation and Assessment, SAU 6 | Three segments, all of them the school-calendar amendment: “So we finally got a date from the state on voting day for primary in January. We had initially tabbed January 16th as that date, but it’s going to be the 23rd, so we’d like to make the 23rd the teacher workshop day and have school on the 16th. And it’s just a trade of those two dates” (0:59:26). Recognised by the chair as “Mr. Kosky” — a documented rendering of Koski. |
| Mary Henry | Business Administrator, Claremont School District / SAU 6 | Nine segments and under two minutes of floor time, all inside the contract ratifications. Gave the tax impact of the maintenance and custodial agreement live and corrected herself twice while doing it (0:47:43, flag 11), and gave the secretaries’ settlement structure: “They added $1.40 to the first year and every step, and then 3% and 3% over the next two years” (0:49:51). She said nothing at all about the budget: the Monthly Financial Report, her item, was removed from the agenda by consent (0:59:04), and she does not speak during the Finance Committee report or the budget motion. Identified by direct address: Sprague, “I don’t know if we’re going to talk about the tax impact of it tonight, Mrs. Henry or.” |
| Matthew Upton | Attorney for the Claremont School Board (Drummond Woodsum) | The single largest speaker after the chair — 42 segments and about seventeen minutes of speech, inside an item that ran nineteen. Delivered the meeting’s only prepared presentation: a legal opinion on whether non-CTE programmes may be housed at the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center, based on his own research and “considerable time on the phone with Jeffrey Beard, who is the director of overseeing all the CT [CTE] programs in the state” (0:24:52). He delivered it in open session, which RSA 91-A:2, I(b) did not require (flag 17). Recognised by the chair as “Mr. Upton” and named independently by Sprague inside the contract item. |
| Hope Damon | New Hampshire State Representative, Sullivan District 8; member, House Education Committee — citizens’ comments | The only speaker in the scheduled citizens’-comment period, about three and a half minutes. Gave a legislative preview: the House would “resume full sessions on January 3rd” with “about 20 education related bills” retained, and she highlighted HB 268 (background checks for nonpublic schools and education service providers accepting public funds) and HB 601 (Medicaid direct certification for free and reduced meals). She named three bills she was co-sponsoring — voter-registration instruction, an information- and media-literacy commission, and school ID cards carrying an eating-disorder helpline — and described herself as “a first time rep” and “a retired dietitian”. The minutes record the same five bills. The recognizer renders her surname “Daimon”; the minutes and the rest of this corpus spell it Damon. |
| Alex Hill | Teacher, Claremont Middle School; Ward 3 — citizens’ comments | First of the middle-school speakers. Self-identified, corrected her ward from the floor, and gave the meeting’s only quantified objection to the proposed schedule: moving from five 55-minute classes to seven 45-minute ones is “ten minutes times 45 days, which is 4450 minutes of instruction time lost” over a quarter (0:11:32). She had served on the middle-school scheduling committee “for a number of years”. |
| Sarah Ferland | School counselor, Claremont Middle School; Ward 3 — citizens’ comments | “I have not spoken to one teacher who I have felt is in favor of this proposed schedule” (0:12:56). Spoke to unified-arts class sizes of 23, the loss of the deans, and the prospect of dropping to two counselors, and closed on the asymmetry that carries the whole comment period: “if we feel like it’s not a good place for us or that’s not going to work, we can leave. But the kids, unfortunately, they have to stay.” The minutes describe her as a CMS teacher; she describes herself as the school counselor and a former FCS teacher. |
| Tom Smith | Music teacher (band and chorus) and unified arts team leader, Claremont Middle School — citizens’ comments | Spoke for the assembled staff: “My colleagues and I are here this evening to express our strong disagreement concerning the proposed schedule and staffing changes at Claremont Middle School” (0:15:29). Eighth year in the district. The approved minutes list him as “Tom Smith-Knox” and separately list “Katie Smith-Knox”; on the recording he gives his name as Tom Smith and she gives hers as Katie Smith Knox. See flag 8. |
| Rebecca surname not stated on the recording | Sixth-grade science teacher, Claremont Middle School; Ward 1 — citizens’ comments | The longest citizens’ comment of the night, and the only one that named the cost to the principal. She gave only “Rebecca, Ward one” at the podium. Argued that the process, not just the schedule, had done damage: “it’s just very disappointing when he gets put in a position coming to a meeting. He’s very transparent with us as a staff” (0:16:46), and warned “You will lose. I would say at least half of your teachers right now.” Three documents give three surnames. The approved minutes call her “Rebecca Vendesco, Ward 1”; the project’s dialogue file labels her Rebecca Duska on the strength of Bonnie Miles naming a Ward 1 CMS sixth-grade science teacher by that surname at the 3 January 2024 board meeting; and this recording gives no surname at all. This page names none of them as settled. See flag 8. |
| Russ Fernald “Russ Ferland” in the minutes | Civics teacher, Claremont Middle School — citizens’ comments | Twenty years teaching in Texas before Claremont: “I was teaching last year six classes in high school, 48 minute classes. I can tell you that at the end of the school day, we were whipped” (0:19:40). His comparison was the sharpest in the room: in the compressed schedule “We only talked about curriculum here. We actually talk about kids”, and “there was a culture of skipping down south and that that comes from this, just trying to cram everything into 48 minutes”. He stated no ward. The recording gives “Russ Fernald”; the minutes give “Russ Ferland”, which collides with the surname of another speaker the same evening. Neither is confirmed. See flag 8. |
| Katie Smith Knox | Sixth-grade ELA teacher, Claremont Middle School — citizens’ comments | “I’ve been at CMS for almost a decade. This is my eighth year and I’ve stayed for the kids” (0:21:56). Named staffing consistency as the school’s central problem and predicted the schedule change would make it worse: “That consistency is going to just completely bottom out, fall through.” The recognizer’s confidence on her surname is low (0.78 / 0.71) and whether it is hyphenated is not settled by the recording; the minutes hyphenate it. |
| John Lambert | Property owner, Ward 2; substitute teacher in the district — citizens’ comments | The only speaker not there about the middle-school schedule. He spoke in support of the technical centre’s director: “I’m here to express my support for Doctor Herzog’s as the director of the school. And I understand he’s coming to some, scrutiny. I signed a letter of endorsement from with another teacher” (0:23:29). The chair interrupted him — “We can’t speak to that” (0:23:47) — and he finished with his gratitude instead. The minutes record the exchange and supply the name the recording garbles: “Spoke in support of Alex Herzog”. See flag 15. |
| Unattributed voices | — | 53 rows (16 per cent of the file) carry no named speaker. Most are one- and two-word roll-call answers, the room’s collective “Thank you” after each public speaker, the Pledge of Allegiance recited by everyone, and clipped sentence onsets. Four of them matter to the record and are marked wherever this page uses them: the second on the motion to enter nonpublic (“Thank you. I’ll second.”); the mover and seconder of the maintenance and custodial ratification (“I move to accept it. Second.”); and the member who asked for compensation for paraprofessionals working with higher-needs students (0:55:31). The minutes name the movers and seconders the recording cannot. |
| Frank Romeo | Principal, Claremont Middle School — not present | Named by four of the six middle-school speakers, and not in the room to answer. “The CMS team has worked diligently over the last several years under Frank Romeo’s leadership”; “Just looking at Mr. Romeo and his leadership on this, the commitment is amazing”; and, from the sixth-grade science teacher, that he had been put in the position of telling his staff “this was not something that I chose”. He had presented the schedule proposal to the Finance Committee on 1 December and again on 18 December. |
| Alex Herzog | Director, Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center — not present | The subject of the one citizens’ comment the chair interrupted, and, by implication, of the legal opinion on the building he runs. He does not appear on the recording and is named in it only as the recognizer’s “Doctor Herzog’s”; the minutes give the name. |
| Chris Pratt | Principal, Stevens High School — not present | Author of the packet’s SHS Principal’s Report December 2023, which was posted with the agenda and never taken up — there is no agenda item for it and no mention of it on the recording. He was still the high-school principal; he became interim superintendent on 11 January 2024. |
| Nicole Bouchard and Kylee Plummer | Student board members — not present | Seated 1 November 2023 and named in the masthead of both the agenda and the minutes. The body of both documents instead names “Nicole Bouchard and Alex Barney” under the student-board-member line — a name that appears nowhere else in the district’s records for this year. See flag 8. |
| Ben Nester, Jeff Small, Angela Vivian | SAU 6 central office — on the masthead, not heard | The Director of Special Education, Director of Technology and Human Resource Director are printed on the agenda and minutes mastheads as a standing block. None of them speaks on this recording and the minutes do not place any of them in the room. Nester had announced his resignation six days earlier. |
Agenda
The official agenda, _CSB Agenda 12.20.23.docx (6).pdf, was posted to the district’s public share about 33½ hours before the meeting. Items and wording below are the agenda’s own, in quotation marks; the disposition is from the recording and the approved minutes. The agenda’s own roman numbering skips III, VII and VIII — a template artefact the district carried through 2023, and reproduced faithfully here. The scheduled clock times shown in the second column are the agenda’s; they were overtaken by a nonpublic session that ran two hours and twenty-nine minutes. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell to read the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text and disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:02 | I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance scheduled 6:30 PM | Agenda: “I. 6:30 PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance”. The chair opens on an apology: “Sorry for the delay here, folks.” The pledge is recited by the room and is the only place in the file where a whole-room utterance is transcribed in full. |
| 0:00:34 | II. General Business — Secretary Roll Call of Attendance scheduled 6:35 PM | Agenda: “Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members (Board Members who arrive after the meeting begins will be noted as ‘present’ at the point in the agenda at which they arrive)”. The roll itself is almost entirely absent from the transcription — the clerk’s reading of the names did not come through at all, leaving “This is.” and four bare “Here.” answers over twenty-one seconds. Disposition, from the minutes: “Present: Heather Whitney, Frank Sprague, Bonnie Miles, Candace Crawford, Jennifer Gallagher (6:34PM) Absent: Whitney Skillen, Arlene Hawkins”. |
| 0:00:55 | II. Consent Agenda, item 2 — Minutes Approval 12.6.23 | Agenda: “Consent Agenda (vote required) … 2. Minutes Approval- 12.6.23”. The chair: “Minutes for approval for December 6th, 2023. Is there any request from the board? Ten minutes or to amend the minutes?” and then “There’s been no request to amend the minutes.” Disposition: no motion, no second and no vote were taken. The minutes record only “No corrections”. The board took the two consent items in the reverse of the agenda’s order. See flag 6. |
| 0:01:07 | II. Consent Agenda, item 1 — Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda vote required | Agenda: “1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda”, under a heading the district itself marks “Consent Agenda (vote required)”. The superintendent asked to add the paraprofessional ratification; Crawford questioned whether the negotiation was finished; the chair put it as an objection test, not a motion: “Is there any objection to adding ratification of the paraprofessional contract to item two of the evening?” and then “Okay. All right. We can add it as an agenda item. Okay. So we have just approved adding a ratification of the Paraprofessional Collective Bargaining agreement to item two.” Disposition: added by absence of objection. No motion, no second, no vote — on an item the agenda marks as requiring one. See flag 6. |
| 0:02:24 | II. Citizens Comments | The chair read the policy in full before calling for speakers: “The floor is open to citizens comments on non-agenda items. Citizens wishing to speak should approach the podium and state their name and ward for the record. Comments will not exceed three minutes per person.” Disposition: one speaker — State Representative Hope Damon, on the coming legislative session. The chair cut her off on time (“I’m sorry we can’t give you more time”) and the board moved straight to the nonpublic session. A second, much larger comment period was opened by consensus after the board returned — the row below. |
| — | II. Student Board Members | Agenda: “Student Board Members-Nicole Bouchard and Alex Barney”. Not reached on the recording and not discussed. The minutes record “Student Board Members-Nicole Bouchard and Alex Barney - not present”, while the masthead of the same document names the two student members as Nicole Bouchard and Kylee Plummer. See flag 8. |
| 0:07:26 | IV.1 Non-Public Meeting Session RSA 91-A:3,II scheduled 6:40 PM | The agenda quotes two exemptions in full: “(a) The dismissal, promotion, or compensation of any public employee or the disciplining of such employee, or the investigation of any charges against him or her…” and “(c) Matters which, if discussed in public, would likely adversely affect the reputation of any person, other than a member of this board…”. On the recording the motion names neither. The chair announced “we are moving into nonpublic session for RSA 91. Dash a colon three comma two” and asked “Do you want me to read this completely out or we would.”; Sprague then moved “that we move into nonpublic under the gist of that.” Disposition, from the minutes: entered 6:39 PM under “RSA 91-A:3,II(a,c)”, returned 9:08 PM, minutes sealed 50 years. See flags 4 and 5. |
| 0:09:12 | Public comment on an agenda item added from the floor by consensus — not on the agenda | The chair asked the board to suspend the “non-agenda items” limit so that the staff who had waited through the nonpublic session could speak before their item: “I’d like to ask the board for a consensus in allowing, comments from the public prior to the agenda item, which I am assuming most of these comments are going to be aligned with… do we have an agreement that we can take public comments so these folks can get back to their families and get some sleep for work tomorrow?” Disposition: agreed by consensus; seven speakers over about fifteen minutes, plus an invitation to stand in support without speaking. The minutes head it “Consensus to take public comment on future agenda item”. See flag 16. |
| 0:24:34 | IV.3 Potential Consequences of Placing Non-CTE Programs at SRVRTC — presentation by Matthew Upton, Esquire taken out of order | Agenda: “3. Potential Consequences of Placing Non- CTE Programs at SRVRTC (Presentation and Discussion) Presentation by Matthew Upton, Esquire Impact on future grants, state and federal funding”. The chair moved it ahead of the contract ratifications: “We’re going to move on to our next item on our agenda. Oh, which is actually CTE. That’s we’re going to move that up.” Disposition: presentation and questions, about nineteen minutes, no motion and no vote. The advice: non-CTE programming is lawful in genuinely vacant space, becomes a problem if it impedes CTE growth, and above roughly 10 per cent of the building risks negative inferences in future grant applications. See flags 16 and 13. |
| 0:44:15 | IV.2 Ratification of CAS & CAMCE Contracts vote — paraprofessional agreement added from the floor | Three separate agreements, taken in sequence. Maintenance and custodial (CAMCE): presented by Sprague as board negotiator; carried on a voice vote — the minutes name Crawford as mover, Gallagher as seconder, “passes unanimously”. Secretaries (CAS): presented by the superintendent with figures from the business administrator; the minutes record it carried with “voting in favor: Heather Whitney, Bonnie Miles, Jennifer Gallagher, Candace Crawford, abstained: Frank Sprague” — and on the recording Sprague’s own answer to the vote is “Aye or abstain.” Paraprofessionals: a one-year reopening; moved by Sprague, seconded by Whitney per the minutes, “unanimously approved”. No tally was announced aloud for any of the three. |
| 0:59:04 | IV.4 Monthly Financial Report — Mary Henry, Business Administrator | Removed from the agenda by consent, without a vote. The chair: “Is there any objection or can I get consent to remove the monthly financial report on the agenda?” Crawford: “Yes. Please do not.” The minutes record it as “Removed for the sake of time”. The board then sent a $36.3 million budget to public hearing without hearing its own monthly financial report. See flag 10. |
| 0:59:24 | IV.5 Claremont School District Calendar Change — Michael Koski, Assistant Superintendent | The change, in Koski’s words: the state had fixed the January presidential primary for the 23rd rather than the 16th, so “we’d like to make the 23rd the teacher workshop day and have school on the 16th. And it’s just a trade of those two dates.” Disposition: carried on a voice vote. Sprague moved “We approve the 2324 school calendar, as amended”; the minutes name Gallagher as seconder and record it “unanimously approved”, describing the item only as “Discussion regarding changing two days for professional development purposes”. See flag 14. |
| 0:59:10 | IV.6 School Board Sub-Committees — (a) Capital Improvement, (c) Policy, (d) Curriculum, (e) SRVRTC Visioning, (f) Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors | Agenda: “Reports by subcommittee chairs if available, consider topics board would like referred to committee for investigation or review”. All five dropped by consent: “And we’re also going to bypass the individual subcommittee reports. This evening, any debate on that?” — with an exception called from the table, “The exception of finance.”, which the chair repeated back: “With the exception of finance.” The minutes record each of the five as “Removed for the sake of time” (and, for the last, “Removed for the sake fo time” the typo is the district’s). Two of the five chairs were absent. See flag 10. |
| 1:00:20 | IV.6(b) Finance Subcommittee — Chair Frank Sprague; Presentation of Finance Subcommittee Recommendations | The only subcommittee report heard, and the reason the meeting mattered. Sprague described the season — “We’ve met I don’t know how many times. A lot.” — and set the terms: “we’re not going to necessarily approve the budget tonight, but we’re going to move the budget forward. And there’s a distinction to that.” Disposition: moved and carried on a voice vote. His motion, verbatim: “I would like to make a motion to move the budget in the amount of $36,313,407.97 to the budget hearing scheduled for January 3rd to 2024.” The minutes record the motion, the mover and the seconder — and not the amount. See flag 1. |
| 1:06:26 | V. Other Business — VI. Future Dates — IX. Adjournment scheduled 8:20, 8:25 and 8:30 PM | The whole of the close is one sentence: “Because I have to do this. No. Is there any objection to adjourning the meeting? No. We don’t even say. All in favor?” Disposition: adjourned by consensus, with no motion — which is what the minutes record: “Consensus to adjourn”. The eight future dates the minutes list — the 3 January budget hearing, 17 January budget ratification, 3 February deliberative session with a 10 February snow date, and five standing report-backs — are not spoken on the recording at all; they come from the agenda template, updated. Two of them are also corrections: the 6 December minutes had given the deliberative session as 2.7.24, and the future-dates list here fixes it to 2.3.24. |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue file. Times are the transcript’s own start seconds, rendered from the same number the link seeks to, so the text and the link cannot disagree. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording (the show is also linked in the appendix). Quotations are reproduced exactly as the speech recognizer rendered them: square brackets mark an insertion or correction and the garbled wording is kept visible wherever the correction changes the sense; repeated stutters are sometimes condensed; nothing else has been smoothed, and no missing word — including a missing “un-” in the last speech of the night — has been supplied. Quotations from the agenda, the minutes or a statute are attributed to that document. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell to read the full text.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:02 | Call to order, on an apology | Whitney: “Sorry for the delay here, folks. I’d like to bring to order. Claremont School Board Meeting December 20th, 2023. All live [rise] for pledge. Allegiance.” The pledge follows, recited by the room. | |
| 0:00:34 | A roll call that is not in the record | Twenty-one seconds of attendance roll, of which the transcription holds five utterances: “This is.”, then “Here.” four times. The clerk’s reading of the names did not come through at all, so the recording alone cannot say who answered. Everything this page states about attendance comes from the approved minutes. | |
| 0:00:55 | The 6 December minutes pass without a motion | Whitney: “Minutes for approval for December 6th, 2023. Is there any request from the board? Ten minutes or to amend the minutes?” Then, twelve seconds later: “There’s been no request to amend the minutes.” That is the whole of it. The document approved is the one in this meeting’s own packet, CSB draft minutes 12.6.23 (1) (2).pdf, which had reached the public share the previous morning — the ninth business day after that meeting. | MEDIUM |
| 0:01:07 | A third contract is added to the agenda, over a member’s doubt | Whitney: “Seeing any additions to the agenda this evening?” The superintendent asks for one: “One addition is the ratification also of the power [para]professional contract.” Crawford objects on the facts: “I don’t think we were ready for the ratification.” Whitney restates it for the room: “Miss Crawford is requesting clarification. She didn’t think that the negotiation was complete or it.” The dialogue file attributes the superintendent’s side of this exchange at medium confidence, on content rather than voice clustering; the alternative candidates are the board’s attorney and the vice chair. | MEDIUM |
| 0:01:58 | “Go to nonpublic. Will give the update” | The answer to Crawford’s doubt, at 0:01:58: “Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be. Go to nonpublic. Will give the update” and “Update that just happened today from what we sent out the other day.” Whitney closes it: “Okay. All right. We can add it as an agenda item. Okay. So we have just approved adding a ratification of the Paraprofessional Collective Bargaining agreement to item two.” “We have just approved” describes no vote that happened. Collective-bargaining strategy is excluded from the definition of a “meeting” altogether by RSA 91-A:2, I(a), so this part of the nonpublic needed no exemption at all. | MEDIUM |
| 0:02:24 | The citizens’-comment policy, read in full | Whitney: “Currently, it’s time for citizens comments. I’m sorry, I’m a little, Bob here, but I’ll read what our, our policy is on a citizens comments at this time. The floor is open to citizens comments on non-agenda items. Citizens wishing to speak should approach the podium and state their name and ward for the record. Comments will not exceed three minutes per person.” And at 0:02:49: “Speakers may not relinquish any allotted time to another speaker. The board will not hear personal personnel complaints regarding personal complaints regarding school personnel, or complaints against any person connected to the school system.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:24 | A state representative previews the 2024 session | Damon: “I’m Hope Daimon [Damon], state representative for Sullivan district eight. I serve on House Education Committee and I am just here to give a quick update on proceedings. The House will resume full sessions on January 3rd. We have a lengthy list of retained bills, including about 20 education related bills to address at that time.” The first of her two highlights, HB 268, “would require nonpublic schools and education service providers if they accept public funds to perform background checks on all employees and designated volunteers.” | |
| 0:04:16 | HB 601 — Medicaid direct certification for free and reduced meals | Damon: “HB 601, which is Medicaid direct certification for free and reduced meals, meaning that if that bill were to pass, children who are already enrolled in Medicaid, that would be communicated from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Education, and then to school districts to automatically enroll those children in free and reduced lunches, thereby increasing our ability to address hunger and food insecurity.” Free-and-reduced-lunch identification was a live budget question for this district: the future-dates list in this meeting’s own minutes carries “Update on FRL application procurement 2.21.24”. | |
| 0:06:39 | The bill she asked the governor to veto | On a school-ID-card bill carrying an eating-disorder helpline: “A very similar bill last year did make it to the governor’s desk, and we actually had to ask him to veto it, which is very not the way you want things to play out, because the organization that we were aligning with for eating disorders, referrals and help collapsed, sort of one of those things you could never predict.” She adds, at 0:07:02, “I, as a retired dietitian who worked with a lot of folks with eating disorders, really hope we can get that little line on their time.” The chair cuts her off on the three-minute rule and apologises for it. | |
| 0:07:26 | Into nonpublic — “under the gist of that” | Whitney: “At this time, we are moving into nonpublic session for RSA 91. Dash a colon three comma two. Do you want me to read this completely out or we would.” Sprague: “I make a motion that we move into nonpublic under the gist of that.” An unidentified member: “Thank you. I’ll second.” Whitney: “Any discussion. We’ll call vote, please.” Neither subparagraph is spoken. The minutes supply what the motion did not: “Frank Sprague made a motion to move to non-public under RSA 91-A:3,II(a,c), Jennifer Gallagher seconded”. | MEDIUM |
| 0:07:57 | The roll, and five yes votes | The clerk opens it — “Not public.” — and five affirmative answers follow over eleven seconds. The names she reads are not in the transcription. The minutes: “roll call vote taken by Noelle Kronberg, all present voting yes”. The recording gives no tally and no announcement of the result. | |
| 0:08:23 | Out of nonpublic — thirty-seven recording-seconds later, two hours and twenty-nine minutes later by the clock | An unidentified member: “I’d like to make a motion to Madam Public” — the recognizer’s rendering of a motion to come out of nonpublic. The clerk reads a name that survives, “Frank?”, and another, rendered “Senator Gallagher? Yes.” — Jennifer Gallagher. On the recording only 37 seconds separate the two motions. The minutes place 6:39 PM and 9:08 PM on them. The audio across the join has no break in it. See flag 9. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:08:50 | Fifty years | Sprague: “I like to make a motion to seal the minutes for 50 years.” Whitney: “Second.” Four audible “Yes” answers follow. No statutory ground for sealing is stated by anyone, and no tally is announced. The minutes record the motion, the mover, the seconder and “all present voting yes” — and no ground either. See flag 5. | MEDIUM |
| 0:09:12 | “We apologize for the long pause in the meeting” | Whitney, to a room that had waited two and a half hours: “Thank you for your patience, everyone. We apologize for the long pause in the meeting. In an effort to get you guys home. I’d like to ask the board for a consensus in allowing, comments from the public prior to the agenda item, which I am assuming most of these comments are going to be aligned with… do we have an agreement that we can take public comments so these folks can get back to their families and get some sleep for work tomorrow?” The board’s own policy, read before the nonpublic session, limits citizens’ comments to non-agenda items. It was suspended by consensus. | POSITIVE |
| 0:10:12 | Standing in support, counted but not spoken | Whitney: “If you feel that voicing your support or just indicating that you support what one of the speakers is saying, so we can see that there’s a large number of folks that are, you know, agreeing with whoever is speaking. That would be great, and we will take note of that support.” The minutes record the result seven times, once after each speaker: “General agreement from other staff present”, and at the end, “Several audience members stood in support of what had already been said”. | POSITIVE |
| 0:10:41 | Alex Hill: 4,450 minutes of instruction | “My name is Alex Hill, and I live on Twist Back [Twistback Road]. I’m sorry, I don’t know my ward” — the room supplies it — “I’m in Ward three. I am also a teacher at the middle school… I was on the middle school scheduling committee for a number of years.” Then the arithmetic, at 0:11:32: “if we were to go from a five class to a seven class schedule, that would go from a 55 minute class to a 45 minute class, and over the course of a one quarter, which is where I see most of my classes, that is ten minutes times 45 days, which is 4450 minutes of instruction time lost.” | |
| 0:12:08 | The claim she is answering | Hill: “And I’ve heard an argument before that this would increase the amount of instruction time with students. The students are there all day, but this would decrease the amount of time that I would have with my students for 50 minutes. That’s an entire unit.” The argument she is answering had been made to the Finance Committee a week earlier by the superintendent, in a “CMS schedule change impact document” that was never posted — see the 13 December page. That quoted title is from the 13 December recording, not this one. | |
| 0:12:33 | Sarah Ferland: “the proverbial straw” | “Sarah Ferland, Ward three. I’m currently a school counselor at the Claremont Middle School. I’m formerly an FCS teacher… I believe that this proposed schedule would be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back for a lot of the teachers at CMS.” And at 0:12:56: “I have not spoken to one teacher who I have felt is in favor of this proposed schedule. That leads me to believe that if we do adopt it, a lot of our good teachers will end up leaving.” | |
| 0:13:40 | “we can leave. But the kids … they have to stay” | Ferland: “But the kids, unfortunately, they have to stay. They don’t have that choice. The A’s [UAs] will have, like, 23 kids, which is a very big number.” And on what the schedule removes, at 0:14:03: “There are no deans to deal with some of the behaviors that are going on. One less counselor. And without those positions, I would not. If we go down to two counselors, I would not be able to teach my UA.” She names the open question the board never answers that night: “It’s unclear if the motivation for this schedule, to me, is to operate with less teachers or to save money or a combination.” | |
| 0:15:29 | Tom Smith, for the unified arts team | “My name is Tom Smith. I am the music teacher. I teach music band and chorus at the at Claremont Middle School. I’m also the unified arts team leader. This is my eighth year in the district. My colleagues and I are here this evening to express our strong disagreement concerning the proposed schedule and staffing changes at Claremont Middle School.” And at 0:16:15: “putting more responsibility and more workload on less teachers and expecting the same results will lead to a decrease in staff morale and a decrease in retention.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:16:46 | “this was not something that I chose” | The sixth-grade science teacher, on what the proposal did to the principal’s relationship with his staff: “What I want to reiterate to is the leadership that we have with Frank Romeo. And it’s just very disappointing when he gets put in a position coming to a meeting. He’s very transparent with us as a staff. So when he gets put in a position to have to come back to us to say this was not something that I chose, but there are positions on the line here and not able to explain to us exactly what the reasoning is.” Her remedy is procedural: “there’s a much better way that this could have been done with some real reasoning, with transparency, to say, here’s what we would like to see. How can you make it happen?” | MEDIUM |
| 0:17:46 | A board member quoted back to her from the podium | “I know that you feel like you are thinking of the teachers in our best interest, as well as the students. I respect all of you so much in that, but the timing, I believe. Candy, Miss Crawford said 45 minutes works well for a class. You think that sounds about right? And you’re exactly right. What the problem is, is it takes a little bit of time to even get them settled down just to do.” She goes on to describe what the first minutes of a class are for — attendance, bell ringers, “that’s where we do some of our relationship building” — and adds that this is only her third year of teaching. | |
| 0:18:57 | “You will lose … at least half of your teachers” | “You will lose. I would say at least half of your teachers right now. There are so many that make sacrifices to come here. One teacher that was not able to be here tonight shared that they they could commute an hour away. They’ve been at different schools for a few years here, a few years there, and really felt like they found their home here.” She had already counted the room at 0:18:30: “I am telling you, you have 11 teachers here now. There are more that are watching and there are more that wish that they could be here.” | |
| 0:19:40 | Russ Fernald: six 48-minute classes in Texas | “By [My] name is Russ Fernald. Civics middle school CMS. I’ve taught for 20 years in Texas… I was teaching last year six classes in high school, 48 minute classes. I can tell you that at the end of the school day, we were whipped. I mean, whipped, usually 25 plus kids.” The contrast, at 0:20:16: “We only talked about curriculum here. We actually talk about kids. Right? And you just don’t have that time when you’re whipped.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:21:11 | Test scores, and a culture of skipping | Fernald, answering the case for the change on its own terms: “Those scores are going to be incredibly hard to bring up with all these different levels. That’s just public public schools. So if you’re looking at test scores, it’s not going to help. The other thing I noticed when I came here is everybody comes to school… But there was a culture of skipping down south and that that comes from this, just trying to cram everything into 48 minutes, put more onto the students.” | |
| 0:21:56 | Katie Smith Knox: consistency is the problem already | “Hi, I’m Katie Smith Knox. I teach Ela [ELA] sixth grade at the middle school. I’ve been at CMS for almost a decade. This is my eighth year and I’ve stayed for the kids… the biggest problem that they faced is a lack of consistency in staffing, which directly correlates to, you know, curriculum test scores, all of those things.” And at 0:22:36: “I fear that if this schedule change goes through, we already have a big problem in the district with retaining teachers. That’s nationwide. That consistency is going to just completely bottom out, fall through.” | |
| 0:23:29 | An endorsement, interrupted | Lambert: “A property owner in Ward two, and I’m a substitute teacher at the school. I’m here to express my support for Doctor Herzog’s as the director of the school. And I understand he’s coming to some, scrutiny. I signed a letter of endorsement from with another teacher. Hopefully you received that.” Whitney: “We can’t speak to that.” Lambert: “You can’t… I’m sorry. Well, anyway, I’d like to express my gratitude to the job he’s doing is both, excellent for the teachers, the students and the community. And I hope you agree.” The minutes name the subject the recording garbles: “Spoke in support of Alex Herzog”. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:24:20 | The chair closes the comment period | Whitney: “Thank you so much for coming out and thank you for your patience. It’s greatly appreciated. And thank you for all you do for the students in the district. Truly.” No board member answered any of the seven speakers, and the middle-school schedule was not an item on this agenda and was not discussed again that night. | |
| 0:24:52 | Counsel opens on the CTE question | Upton: “This has been an issue that has kicked around the districts a long time. I think there’s been a lot of confusion about what can and cannot be located here in the CTV [CTE] center. So I took some time to do some extensive research and spent some considerable time on the phone with Jeffrey Beard, who is the director of overseeing all the CT [CTE] programs in the state.” He warns at the outset that “the whole grant process itself has got a lot of ambiguity, and that ambiguity is probably part of, the process by design.” | POSITIVE |
| 0:26:26 | The exclusivity rule, and why it looks absolute | Upton: “There is a statute that talks about once a CTE program is built it shall be used exclusively for CTE programing. There are administrative rules that talk about once the building is built, the district has to provide assurances that the CTE center shall only include programs which are part of the approved qualified project. All these things create the impression that we can’t use the building for anything but CTE programing.” The statute he is describing is RSA 188-E:3, II, which on this date read: “Upon completion, the constructed or renovated facility shall become the property of the school district or public academy, for use by the career and technical education center exclusively.” See flag 13. | POSITIVE |
| 0:27:28 | Vacant space, and the impediment test | Upton: “So if there’s a plan to expand CTE programing you can’t allow non CTE uses interfere with that. If there are current CTE programs you can’t move them out of the building because you want to put in non CTE programs. But you can allow them to exist in what I would call vacant space. So if the district wants to move non CTE programs into this building it can do it.” Whitney: “Into vacant space.” The qualification, at 0:28:29: “if it does create an impediment, then I think it probably is violative of the exclusivity requirement.” | |
| 0:28:48 | The grant risk: an inference that the space is not needed | Upton: “there are the criteria for grant approval in large part focuses on need. And so need becomes, really the concept that that creates what in my mind is the potential if you’ve got a lot of non CTE programing in this building, you run the risk of creating the impression or the inference that there’s not the need for the space.” And at 0:29:24: “if you’re going to come and try to renovate this building and there’s a lot of vacant space in it that’s being occupied by non CTE uses, I think negative inferences can be drawn from that fact.” | |
| 0:30:02 | The identity of the centre | Upton, reporting the state director’s concern: “If this becomes known as the building that houses all the special ed programs for the school district, is it still a CTE program or is it a special ed program?” And at 0:30:30: “you start to change the identity of what this building is. It may eventually result in lower student demand, which is something that he’s very concerned about.” The board was sitting in the building while this was said, and one of the evening’s public speakers had come to defend its director. | |
| 0:32:27 | State rules, not federal — and $6.5 million of Perkins V | Upton: “All the things that talk about exclusive use or use by the CTE program programing are all state requirements. They all exist. Neither state statutes or administrative rules. They’re not part of the Perkins five grant, which is one of the larger grants. As a matter of reference, last year, the state doled out little over $6.5 million of Perkins five money.” “Neither state statutes or administrative rules” is the recognizer’s rendering of what the sense requires to be “in either state statutes or administrative rules”; the wording is left as transcribed. | |
| 0:32:52 | The four-year state plan, and a gap in it | Upton: “All the Perkins five money is is governed by a four year plan that’s put together by the state. That four year plan is in the process of being, reintroduced beginning in 2024. The current plan runs through the end of 2023. What criteria they will put in that plan? I can’t tell you because it’s not it’s not available.” The four-year period is a federal requirement: 20 U.S.C. §2342(a) requires each State plan to be prepared “for a 4-year period”. His characterization checks out. | POSITIVE |
| 0:34:48 | Turning a non-CTE use into a CTE programme | Upton’s constructive answer, after an example about a Georgia district that built a records warehouse and taught archiving in it: “You could very well put together a program here where students could learn about early childhood development and can help prepare them for, you know, going to one of the local schools for, for early childhood development or working in the child care industry.” The conclusion, at 0:36:47: “yes, you can do the programing here. If in the future you do go after federal grant funding or state grant funding, you do run the risk of negative inferences being taken from the non CTE programing.” | |
| 0:37:39 | “anything beyond incidental use” — the chair asks for a number | Whitney: “I always have questions. Do you have a sense of what that percentage of utilization would look like that would be detrimental to? Are we looking at 6040 or 2080?” Upton: “I think anything beyond incidental use.” Pressed, at 0:38:06: “Like if you add 5% to 10% of the use of this facility for non CTE uses, I don’t know that that would draw much attention. I think once you get above 10% and start to move 20, 30, 40% of the facility is being used. I think it would be pretty significant.” | |
| 0:38:59 | “budget neutral, but opportunity positive” | Whitney: “Is there any way there could be hybrid utilization of the tech center without violating the spirit of the RSA? And what I mean by that is, the city of Claremont has received a very large grant, which is for workforce development. And if we could utilize some of that grant money or come into a partnership with the city without attaching the school budget.” She completes it at 0:39:28: “so we could provide a lot of opportunity that would be budget neutral, but opportunity positive to our students and to the community.” Upton doubts the city’s grant would bear on the building’s use at all. | |
| 0:41:00 | A preschool, a lab school and “the workforce behind the workforce” | Upton: “Doing a preschool that could be doing a preschool that’s accessible to the entire community, including those that would be part of workforce housing, is actually a great opportunity to get atypical peers to work with your developmental preschool. Right. It would also provide you with enough children that you could develop a lab school, much like what the Concord Tech did.” And at 0:42:07: “childcare is the workforce behind the workforce… A lot of people working in childcare now are a lot of starting rates are 18 to $20 an hour.” The pre-K relocation he is being asked about had been before the Finance Committee a week earlier, with figures its own author could not reconcile. | |
| 0:43:37 | “we’ve been waiting to hear some kind of guidance” | Whitney: “Thank you. This has been really valuable and we’ve been waiting to hear some kind of guidance.” Upton offers to bring the state director to a future meeting; a voice from the table notes he has already been “at the visioning committee”. No motion was made and nothing was decided. The advice exists in the public record only as this nineteen-minute video segment and a nine-bullet summary in the minutes — no memorandum or opinion letter was posted with the packet. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:44:15 | Back to the contracts | Whitney: “I guess we can backtrack to the ratification of the c, C s and see a CAM. CEME.” — the recognizer trying to spell out CAS and CAMCE, the Claremont Association of Secretaries and the Claremont Association of Maintenance and Custodial Employees. The agenda names both. | |
| 0:44:34 | Maintenance and custodial: money aimed at the bottom of the scale | Sprague: “you’ve got in front of you the tentative agreement between the Claremont Association of Maintenance and Custodial Employees. I’m speaking because I was the the board rep on that negotiating committee. And if you look at this, those of you have it, you’ll see a lot of italics. And that’s new language.” The design, at 0:45:32: “one of our challenges with custodians and maintenance folks is getting them to start. So we actually focused our many of our resources toward the entry level parts of the, of the salary so we could attract and recruit.” | |
| 0:46:58 | Dental cover doubled | Sprague: “there were things such as increasing the dental from 750 to 1500. I think that’s in line with what the teachers have. And that’s that’s a lot of money in people’s pockets. And some of those guys are not as old as I am, but they’re older.” The superintendent adds the rationale at 0:46:47: “It’s a very skilled crew, but we want to make sure that we’re planning for the future. So I think all both sides made concessions, and I think it’s a good contract.” | |
| 0:47:32 | The tax impact, worked out live at the table | Sprague: “I don’t know if we’re going to talk about the tax impact of it tonight, Mrs. Henry or.” Henry: “We decided that for every 100,000, it was, $0.08 on the tax rate, so. And that was 100,000 in the first year, was it? If I’m correct.” Then, after looking it up: “Sorry, 87,000.” Sprague: “87,000. So it’s $0.08. So it’s going to be.” Henry: “A lot, a little less than that. Yes. I’d have to figure it out.” Sprague then offers a household figure: “So if you’re if you have a $300,000 home it’s about $0.18.” The minutes record a different rate: “Mary Henry spoke to the tax impact: is about 6.5 cents per $100,000”. See flag 11. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:48:23 | How many people the contract covers | Henry: “It’s not it’s not how many employees are in this. 12 maybe. Okay.” Tempesta: “I thought 1413 or 14.” The number of covered employees is left at “12 maybe” or “13 or 14”, and the minutes do not record it at all. Sprague closes the item at 0:48:34: “So it’s minimal impact on the on the taxes… And again this will appear in a separate Warren [warrant] article. It’s not going to be part of the main budget. So people will vote on it separately.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:48:49 | The first ratification carries | An unidentified voice: “You ready for a motion?”, and another, carrying both halves in one segment: “I move to accept it. Second.” Whitney: “Thank you. Is there any further discussion? Seeing. No discussion. All in favor, say aye.” The response and the result arrive in a single unattributed row: “Aye. All opposed? No.” and “Motion passes. Thank you. All of it.” No tally. The minutes name what the recording cannot: “Candace Crawford made a motion to approve the contract, Jennifer Gallagher seconded; passes unanimously”. | POSITIVE |
| 0:49:09 | Secretaries: the same design, and the numbers | Tempesta: “very parallel negotiation where we wanted to make sure we provided that we have a lot of senior, veteran members in the union still approximately about 13, 14 members. We as same concept, we’re looking to make sure that we had stuff at the early, steps as well.” Henry gives the structure at 0:49:51: “They added $1.40 to the first year and every step, and then 3% and 3% over the next two years.” Her spoken totals in the same breath — “100,102 85965 in the first year” and “158,270 359” for three years — are not recoverable as figures from the transcription and are not relied on here. The minutes record no dollar amount for this contract at all. | |
| 0:50:48 | The one split vote of the night | Crawford: “And this is a… three year contract.” Whitney: “Anybody like to make a motion?” Crawford: “I will make that… Motion to accept.” Whitney: “Any further discussion. All in favor say aye.” Sprague, audibly: “Aye or abstain.” Whitney: “Motion passes.” The minutes record the split by name — “voting in favor: Heather Whitney, Bonnie Miles, Jennifer Gallagher, Candace Crawford, abstained: Frank Sprague” — and no reason for the abstention is given anywhere, by anyone. | POSITIVE |
| 0:51:16 | Paraprofessionals: reopening a contract in a non-contract year | Tempesta: “I talked to my colleagues. Superintendents throughout the state, particularly in the southwest on Friday. And we talked about how prevalent it was to open up contracts and the need to open up contracts, even in non-contract years. Which we did, and I think it was I applaud the move by the board.” And at 0:51:44: “They’re represented by the Teamsters we put together. We we couldn’t get to every aspect of negotiations we wanted. But we we struck a one year deal.” | |
| 0:52:12 | $2 a step, $189,000 — and a bonus from ESSER | Tempesta: “So basically we added two, $2 to every, every step. And for an overall increase of 189,000 in the first, so that we are relevant so that people will stay here. And we also gave a substantial. We still have money in the esser [ESSER] money to give a bonus, as we have with the other groups, which we did as well, to make this right around where they were looking for.” The only figure the minutes carry for this contract is “adding $2 per step and a bonus with ESSER funds”; the $189,000 is not in them. Federal ARP ESSER money had to be obligated by 30 September 2024, nine months later. See flag 12. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:53:22 | “This is a proposal” | Crawford, before any motion: “Just a question. This is a proposal.” Tempesta: “No. So we we met. Yeah. This is what we sent to them that we sent out.” Crawford: “So you don’t have a contract to agree to yet because you just sent this out to them?” Tempesta: “No, we sent it out to them. They agreed to it. I met with them today. So they they were they were comfortable with it once. The once you ratify it, they would bring it to membership next week.” The board ratified before the union’s membership voted, which the superintendent describes as the “Similar process as the others.” | |
| 0:54:03 | Sprague on what a second phase would do | “I agree with what the superintendent said about this is phase one. There are a lot of ideas on on creating some tiers within this additional tiers. As I shared last night, I’d like to see us, try to attract retired teachers, perhaps to bridge that gap between retirement and social Security and have good, benefits for people that are certified teachers, as well as young people who have college degrees trying to decide if they wanted to education or not.” “As I shared last night” refers to no meeting in the public record: the Finance Committee’s last televised session was Monday afternoon, 18 December. See flag 2. | HIGH |
| 0:55:31 | A member asks about paraprofessionals working with higher-needs students | An unidentified member: “I think this is also a really good start, and I don’t know if there’s thought, being added to, paraprofessionals that deal with higher needs students or students that have, exceptional needs beyond the scope of other duties. So I just wanted to throw that out there as something that we would compensate adequately for.” Tempesta answers that it came up and did not make the round, and adds the district’s certification goal at 0:55:55: “if every paraprofessional gets the power to sort [Para 2] cert, we can they can go to all the title one schools, things that are really important for our district.” | |
| 0:56:38 | Pay parity between Para 1 and Para 2 is deferred | Crawford: “Does it is there any distinction? A pair versus a pair of two where they start on the salary schedule.” Tempesta: “For this? We’re going to stay with the same language that we have… there is a distinction between parents [paras]. There isn’t for pay, but there is for where they can.” Crawford: “That will be expectation contract.” Tempesta: “It’s not we didn’t get to language. We got to the money and we got to the retention kind of piece. But we didn’t have enough time to do that.” | |
| 0:57:23 | “kind of an emergency situation … a stopgap” | Whitney: “when we were discussing this in assessing for reopening the contract, it was it was an understanding this was kind of an emergency situation and that we’ve been struggling to fill those positions and that it wasn’t going to be a full throated or, you know, completely robust process, but a stopgap to at least get us on par with other districts.” She then ties it to the budget being moved half an hour later, at 0:57:46: “part of what this board is really endeavoring to do with in our budget process is to build space, to start being able to compensate our employees at a level that will allow them to stay in a district that they love and not have to move to a district because their wallet demands it.” | |
| 0:58:14 | The third ratification carries | Whitney: “I guess we can take a vote now. All those in favor of ratifying paraprofessional collective bargaining agreement, say I, I. Is there any opposed?” Then “No opposition.” and “The motion passes.” The minutes: “Frank Sprague made a motion to ratify the bargaining, Heather Whitney seconded… Vote to ratify the bargaining agreement: unanimously approved”. Three collective bargaining agreements were ratified in fourteen minutes, none with an announced tally. | |
| 0:58:35 | “Is there anything we can pass up on this agenda this evening” | Whitney, at four minutes to ten by the minutes’ clock: “Is is there any interest? Is there anything that we can. Is there anything we can pass up on this agenda this evening and move? Or are all things.” The superintendent triages it: “First the financial report? But we gotta we have to do the calendar, okay?” What follows removes five of the evening’s seven remaining public items. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:59:04 | The Monthly Financial Report comes off the agenda | Whitney: “Is there any objection or can I get consent to remove the monthly financial report on the agenda?” Crawford: “Yes. Please do not.” Whitney: “Objection. No. And we’re also going to bypass the individual subcommittee reports. This evening, any debate on that?” A voice from the table: “The exception of finance.” Whitney: “With the exception of finance.” The board removed its own monthly financial report from the agenda seven minutes of recording time before voting to send a $36.3 million budget to public hearing. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:59:26 | The calendar: a workshop day traded for a primary | Koski: “So we finally got a date from the state on voting day for primary in January. We had initially tabbed January 16th as that date, but it’s going to be the 23rd, so we’d like to make the 23rd the teacher workshop day and have school on the 16th. And it’s just a trade of those two dates.” Asked whether there were others: “There are no other changes to the calendar.” Sprague moves it — “We approve the 2324 school calendar, as amended” — and Whitney declares it carried without a count. The minutes describe the item only as “Discussion regarding changing two days for professional development purposes” and name neither date. See flag 14. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:00:20 | The Finance Committee reports — “We’ve met I don’t know how many times. A lot.” | Whitney: “From the finance subcommittee, from the chair of that committee, Frank Sprague.” Sprague: “You’re telling me the tip, telling me to be brief” and then “I’m going to talk briefly and some highlights, and then I’ll my my colleagues can chip in and then the admin. We’ve met I don’t know how many times. A lot.” A voice from the table offers a number: “32.” Five sessions of this committee were televised between 30 November and 18 December 2023; “32” is a single unattributed word and is not treated here as a count of anything. | |
| 1:00:44 | “they’re all televised … grab some popcorn” | Sprague: “A lot of times. And I will say that if anybody wants to see them, they’re all televised. So they’re all on TV. And, if you really don’t have anything to do, dub [grab] some popcorn. Watch the budget committee. But we have. We’ve gone through several iterations. We have come up with with a number. However, I personally would like to have a little bit more time to sort of look it over.” His answer to where the committee’s record lives is the television broadcast. He does not say minutes exist. See flag 2. | HIGH |
| 1:01:14 | “we’re not going to necessarily approve the budget tonight” | Sprague: “So what we’re, we’re going to do is we’re not going to necessarily approve the budget tonight, but we’re going to move the budget forward. And there’s a distinction to that. So it gives us a little more time to look at it I think. I want to investigate some other stuff in it.” And on the process at 1:01:42: “I am a pain. I know when it comes to this stuff, and but it’s good. Once, once we got all the information we needed, it went really quickly.” | HIGH |
| 1:01:56 | “There has been one brief meeting, that occurred this week” | Whitney: “I just want to reiterate that we also encourage the public to, take a look at these televised meetings. So it was a real effort on the part of the finance committee to have this process be utterly transparent. We have been committed to having all of our discussions in public. There has been one brief meeting, that occurred this week, and the minutes of that meeting will be on the website.” No minutes of any Finance Committee meeting of this season exist in any district share, and none has appeared in the two years and eight months since. See flag 2. | HIGH |
| 1:03:06 | What the budget was built for | Whitney: “To allow the taxpayers to be able to take a deep breath and support initiatives that support our staff, professional development and otherwise. So we’ve really slog through it. And the administrative team has slogged through it with us. We’ve had multiple presentations and, we’re looking forward to the public hearing in third.” Sprague adds the frame at 1:03:32: “our task is to, is to create funding for programs for the kids. And at the same time, with the sensitivity to the taxpayer’s ability to pay. So that’s a that’s a very difficult walk to walk.” | |
| 1:04:01 | “I still haven’t seen the the copy that will be going to the, hearing” | Crawford: “I would just like to say thank you to the staff for, for all their hard work. We’ve had several litigations [iterations]. Each time we meet, we get a different version. And I still haven’t seen the the copy that will be going to the, hearing. On January 3rd. So I am voting in support of moving it to the hearing.” And at 1:04:29: “However, I’m really looking forward to looking at it. To having a copy well before the hearing so that I can review what’s actually in there.” | MEDIUM POSITIVE |
| 1:04:43 | “this is probably version five” | Whitney: “It’s actually in your folder. You got the seed? The newest.” Crawford: “So this is probably version five, right. And we’ll see.” Whitney: “The back of your folder.” Crawford: “You’ll see if it actually correlates to any of the former versions. So there’s much work still to be done. And there are still many questions. And I encourage the public to listen to those, budget discussions. And there are still many answered questions.” The last sentence is transcribed without the negation the sense requires. It is reproduced as recorded; no word has been supplied. The document she is being handed was printed at 2:06 that afternoon. See flag 7. | MEDIUM |
| 1:05:15 | The motion: $36,313,407.97 | Sprague: “So that being said, I would like to make a motion to move the budget in the amount of $36,313,407.97 to the budget hearing scheduled for January 3rd to 2024.” This is the only place in the public record where the amount is spoken or attached to the motion. The minutes record the motion as “Frank Sprague made a motion to move the budget forward to the hearing phase, Jennifer Gallagher seconded”. See flag 1. | HIGH |
| 1:05:36 | “that’s the limit of my acceptance at this point” | Crawford: “I would just like to say I’m voting in favor simply to move it forward to the hearing phase. That is, that’s the limit of my acceptance at this point.” Whitney: “And that’s all that this is doing… Is that this is still a work in progress?” Crawford: “Absolutely.” The minutes capture the exchange as “Discussion to make clear that this is just moving forward the budget to the public hearing, not approving the budget”. | POSITIVE |
| 1:05:59 | The vote, and the whole of the close | Whitney: “So is there any further discussion about what what’s actually occurring tonight? Okay. No, I’d like to move the move the question and vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Seeing none opposed. Motion passes.” She thanks the room, then closes at 1:06:26: “Because I have to do this. No. Is there any objection to adjourning the meeting? No. We don’t even say. All in favor?” No tally was announced on the budget motion. The minutes record “Vote on the motion: unanimously approved” and “Consensus to adjourn”. | HIGH |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer’s aid, produced by reading this meeting’s record against the New Hampshire and federal law in force on 20 December 2023. They are not findings of violation and they are not legal advice. Each card names the rule it rests on and, where a provision has been amended since, says which text applied on the day — roughly half the provisions this project relies on have changed since 2023. Where no verified rule supports a concern it is graded OBSERVATION and labelled as such. Severity tracks legal grounding, not importance: this project grades a missing record HIGH where the absence is unmitigated and MEDIUM where the record mitigates it, and each card says which limb it uses.
HIGH The board sent a $36,313,407.97 budget to public hearing, and its approved minutes do not record the amount
What happened. At 1:05:15 the chair of the Finance Committee moved, in terms: “So that being said, I would like to make a motion to move the budget in the amount of $36,313,407.97 to the budget hearing scheduled for January 3rd to 2024.” It carried on a voice vote with no tally announced. The district’s approved minutes record it as: “Frank Sprague made a motion to move the budget forward to the hearing phase, Jennifer Gallagher seconded” and “Vote on the motion: unanimously approved”. No dollar figure of any kind appears anywhere in the six pages of those minutes.
The rule, in the text in force on the day. RSA 91-A:2, II as amended by 2023, 188:1 (effective 3 October 2023, eleven weeks before this meeting) required minutes to include “the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions,” and separately that “[t]he names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes.” The mover and the seconder are recorded. The final decision is not. A reader of the district’s own record of its own meeting learns that a budget was moved forward and cannot learn which budget, or for how much. The start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements now in the same paragraph were added by 2025, 112:1, effective 22 August 2025, and are not applied here — though this district met them anyway; see flag 18.
Why the amount is the decision. The motion did one thing: it fixed the number that would go to the public hearing of 3 January 2024. Under RSA 32:5, II in its 2023 text, “[a]ll purposes and amounts of appropriations to be included in the budget or special warrant articles shall be disclosed or discussed at the final hearing,” and the governing body may not afterwards insert an amount not disclosed there. The figure moved on 20 December is the starting point of that process. The board’s own members treated it as the operative fact: Crawford voted “simply to move it forward to the hearing phase” and said so twice on the record precisely so that the vote would not be read as approval of the amount.
Where the figure does survive. In exactly two places. First, this recording. Second, the packet’s own Updated Claremont School District Budget 12.20.23, a 55-page account-by-account report headed “CLAREMONT FY25 PROPOSED BUDGET”, whose final row reads Grand Total against, in sequence, actual FY2021–22 $33,205,606.65, actual FY2022–23 $33,688,901.59, budget FY2023–24 $34,880,311.91, proposed FY2024–25 $36,313,407.97, increase $1,433,096.06, 4.11 per cent. The arithmetic closes exactly, and the FY2024 column matches the appropriation the voters approved in March 2023 to within a penny. But nothing in the minutes identifies that document as the one moved, the document itself carries no cover page saying so, and a reader must reach page 55 of an account listing to find the number. The document also was not in the public share when the vote was taken — see flag 7.
The forward arithmetic, and what this meeting is not responsible for. On 17 January 2024 the board adopted a different figure: Crawford moved “The school board approve a budget for fiscal year 25 of $36,117,406.87.” that quotation is from the 17 January 2024 recording, not this one That is $196,001.10 below the figure moved here. None of that reduction originates at this meeting or anywhere in December. It was worked out in January: at the finance session of 5 January 2024 Crawford put the choice to the other two members as “are you are you okay with the 36 million 318. Or do you want to see that reduced to 36188?” — her spoken renderings of the figure then on the table and of a benchmark she had derived a minute earlier from “I multiply the 34,000 times 1.0375. I get 36188. I’m rounding”. The reconciliation work she describes in the same session — “comparing the 1218 budget to the 1220 budget to see where the variations were” — is itself dated to January. all three of those quotations are from the 5 January 2024 recording, not this one Nothing in the available public record traces any part of the $196,001.10 to 20 December 2023, and this page attributes none of it here.
In fairness. The meeting was televised live and the mover spoke the number aloud and precisely, to the cent. The board did not adopt the budget that night and said so repeatedly. The budget document was published, a day late, and can still be read. The defect is confined to the written record the statute requires — but that record is the one a citizen who did not watch a Wednesday-night broadcast in December 2023 has to rely on.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes must record “final decisions”; mover/seconder clause from 2018, 244:1, eff. 1 Jan 2019; 2023, 188:1 text in force on this date); RSA 32:5, II, 2023 codification (all purposes and amounts disclosed at the final hearing); approved minutes, 20 December 2023; Updated Claremont School District Budget 12.20.23.
HIGH Five televised finance sessions in nineteen days produced no minutes anywhere — and these approved minutes told the public that they had
Which limb this rests on. The unmitigated one. A public body met, with a full quorum, five times; no minutes exist in any district share; and the only explanation on the record is a description of the television broadcast. This card is graded HIGH for a second reason as well: the statement the district put into an approved public record is not true.
The statement. Under “b) Finance Subcommittee”, the approved minutes of this meeting record: “Subcommittee meetings and minutes are available online for people to review.” The meetings were: five sessions of the Finance Committee were broadcast on Claremont Community Television between 30 November and 18 December 2023 and remain in the Cablecast gallery — 30 November, 1 December, 6 December, 13 December and 18 December. The minutes were not. No minutes of any 2023 session of this committee exist in the district’s packets share or its Meeting Minutes share; the project’s map records the two-stage search behind that negative for each session, verified 2026-08-28, and nothing has appeared in the two years and eight months since.
What was actually said on the recording, as against what the minutes say. Sprague, at 1:00:44: “if anybody wants to see them, they’re all televised. So they’re all on TV. And, if you really don’t have anything to do, dub [grab] some popcorn. Watch the budget committee.” He does not claim minutes exist. Whitney, at 1:01:56: “There has been one brief meeting, that occurred this week, and the minutes of that meeting will be on the website.” That is a promise about one meeting, in the future tense. The sentence that reached the approved minutes is a statement about all of them, in the present. The district’s own account two weeks earlier was different again: the approved minutes of 6 December 2023 open the Finance Sub-Committee item with “Sessions have been recorded on CCTV.”
A recording is not minutes. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to contain the names of the members, the names of persons appearing before the body, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and the final decisions, and the names of the mover and seconder of each motion — and requires them to be “promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting.” A video carries none of those four contents in a form anyone can inspect, index or search, and it does not start the five-day clock. The duty attaches because a subcommittee of a school board is itself a public body: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) reaches “[a]ny 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” — and it is that trailing clause, unamended since 2008, 354:1, that carries the flag.
And there is at least one meeting in the week of this vote that is not even televised. The 18 December session ends, on tape, with its chair saying “Well I think we need to we need to caucus, I guess” — and the recording stops there. Ten minutes earlier the same session had been arranging another: Sprague, “So 11:00 Wednesday maybe”; the business administrator, “It’s Wednesday, but I think it’s before the meeting, isn’t it?” all three quotations are from the 18 December recording, not this one And on this recording Sprague refers to a discussion that appears in no public record at all: “As I shared last night” (0:54:03) — a Tuesday, when the committee’s last televised session had been Monday afternoon. So the week that produced the district’s FY2025 budget figure contains a caucus of all three members after the cameras stopped, a possible session at 11 a.m. on the day of this meeting, and something shared “last night” — none of it noticed, recorded, or minuted, and the chair’s promise that “the minutes of that meeting will be on the website” was not kept.
Why it bites here and not only at the subcommittee. This is the meeting at which the committee’s work became the board’s decision. The figure moved at 1:05:15 was produced somewhere between the end of the 18 December broadcast and 2:06 p.m. on 20 December, and there is no public record of where. A citizen who wanted to know how the district arrived at $36,313,407.97 has thirteen hours of video of five meetings that do not contain the answer, and no minutes of the one that does.
In fairness. This committee did the opposite of meeting in private for five sessions running: it televised working budget meetings nobody required it to televise, and both its chair and the board chair said on this record why — “a real effort on the part of the finance committee to have this process be utterly transparent. We have been committed to having all of our discussions in public.” The failure is one of written record, not of concealment. But RSA 91-A:2, II asks for a written record, and the sentence the district put in its place was inaccurate.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (notice; minutes contents; 5 business days); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (“or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof”); approved minutes, 20 December 2023; approved minutes, 6 December 2023; MAP.md §§27, 28, 29, 32, 34 — the two-stage search behind each “no minutes” negative.
MEDIUM The minutes became publicly inspectable on the ninth business day; RSA 91-A:2, II allows five
The dates. The meeting was Wednesday 20 December 2023. The approved minutes entered the district’s Meeting Minutes share on Thursday 4 January 2024 at 10:13 a.m. Eastern (Drive createdTime 2024-01-04T15:13:22Z, read for this page on 2026-08-29). Counting business days from 21 December and excluding Christmas Day and New Year’s Day as legal holidays: 21, 22, 26, 27, 28 — the fifth and last day allowed — 29, 2, 3, 4 — the ninth.
The rule. RSA 91-A:2, II: minutes “shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting.” A draft satisfies the deadline; the paragraph does not wait for approval. The same lag applies to the previous meeting: the 6 December draft minutes, filed in this meeting’s packet, reached the share on 19 December — also the ninth business day.
Which limb, and the mitigation. The mitigated one. The minutes exist, they are detailed, and the delay runs through the district’s own winter break: the packet’s school calendar shows “Dec. 25-Jan. 1 Holiday Break- No School”, so six of the nine days fell in a period when the offices were largely closed. A closed office is not a statutory excuse — business days already exclude the two holidays — but it is the practical explanation, and the pattern is a lag rather than a gap.
What this evidence can and cannot show. A Drive createdTime establishes when the document entered the district’s public share. It does not exclude the possibility that a draft was inspectable earlier by some other route — on request at the SAU office, or on a district web page not preserved. This page relies on the best evidence available and states its limit.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (“not more than 5 business days”); approved minutes, 20 December 2023 (Drive metadata); 2023–24 school year calendar (holiday break dates).
MEDIUM The motion to enter a two-and-a-half-hour nonpublic session did not state the exemption on its face
What was said. Whitney, at 0:07:26: “At this time, we are moving into nonpublic session for RSA 91. Dash a colon three comma two. Do you want me to read this completely out or we would.” Sprague, immediately: “I make a motion that we move into nonpublic under the gist of that.” A second followed, then a roll call. Neither subparagraph (a) nor subparagraph (c) is spoken by anyone at any point. RSA 91-A:3, II is the whole list of exemptions, not one of them.
The rule, in the text in force on the day. 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.” The section had been amended eleven weeks earlier by 2023, 189:1, effective 3 October 2023; paragraph I(b) itself is older and unchanged. The roll-call half of the requirement was met.
The mitigation, and it is real. The posted agenda quotes both exemptions in full, verbatim from the statute, under the item heading — so the specific grounds were public in writing 33 hours before the motion. The approved minutes record the motion as made “under RSA 91-A:3,II(a,c)” and reproduce the same two quotations. What is missing is the one place the statute puts the requirement: the face of the motion, spoken in public session, so that a person watching knows which of a dozen grounds is being invoked before the room empties.
One further point about the subject. The reason the superintendent gave for needing a nonpublic was the paraprofessional negotiation: “it wouldn’t be. Go to nonpublic. Will give the update” (0:01:58). Collective-bargaining strategy and negotiation are excluded from the definition of a “meeting” altogether by RSA 91-A:2, I(a), so that subject needed no exemption and no motion at all. What occupied the remaining two hours and twenty-odd minutes is not disclosed anywhere in the public record, and the minutes of it were sealed for fifty years — see flag 5. This page draws no inference about the subject from the timing.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) and II(a), (c); RSA 91-A:2, I(a) (collective bargaining excluded from “meeting”); agenda, 20 December 2023; approved minutes, 20 December 2023.
MEDIUM Nonpublic minutes sealed for fifty years, with no statutory ground stated and no tally announced — and a ten-year review requirement that had been law for eleven weeks
What happened. At 0:08:50 Sprague moved: “I like to make a motion to seal the minutes for 50 years.” Whitney seconded with a single word. Four affirmative answers are audible. The minutes record “roll call vote taken by Noelle Kronberg, all present voting yes”. Nobody states a reason, and the minutes record none.
What the statute asks for. RSA 91-A:3, III requires nonpublic minutes and decisions to be disclosed within 72 hours “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” and related emergency functions. The seal is not the vote; the seal is the determination. With five members present, four affirmative votes clear two-thirds, so the count is not the problem — the absent finding is. The same paragraph also requires a public list of withheld nonpublic minutes, identifying the body, the date and time of the session, the specific exemption relied upon, the date of the decision to withhold and any later decision to release. This page does not assert that no such list exists — the district’s shares cannot be exhaustively enumerated with the tools available here — but the exemption that would have to appear on it was never stated aloud, and nothing in this meeting’s record refers to such a list.
Fifty years is not fifty years. RSA 91-A:3, IV was added by 2023, 189:1 and took effect on 3 October 2023 — seventy-eight days before this vote. Absent a procedure adopted by the body, paragraph IV(b) requires a review, no more than ten years from the vote to withhold, of whether the circumstances justifying nondisclosure still apply. So the operative date on this seal is December 2033, not 2073, and the board took on a review duty nobody mentioned. Nothing in the record suggests the board had adopted a review procedure.
Context from the same fortnight, for calibration. This board sealed for six months on 6 December, the SAU 6 board for ninety-nine years on 7 December, and this board for fifty years on 20 December. Three durations in fifteen days, none of them accompanied by a stated statutory ground. The pattern is a habit of practice rather than a decision about any particular record.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III (2/3 recorded vote plus a determination; list of withheld minutes) and IV (added 2023, 189:1, eff. 3 Oct 2023; 10-year review); RSA 91-A:3, 2023 codification (confirming both paragraphs were in force on this date); approved minutes, 20 December 2023.
MEDIUM The one item the board’s own agenda marks “(vote required)” got no vote — and the minutes the board approved that night record a consent agenda carried with no mover and no seconder
The agenda’s own words. Under “II. General Business” the posted agenda reads: “Consent Agenda (vote required)”, followed by “1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda” and “2. Minutes Approval- 12.6.23”. Those two items are the whole of the consent agenda.
What happened instead. On the minutes item the chair said “Minutes for approval for December 6th, 2023. Is there any request from the board? Ten minutes or to amend the minutes?” and, twelve seconds later, “There’s been no request to amend the minutes.” On the agenda item she took an amendment from the superintendent, heard Crawford’s doubt about it, and disposed of it by objection test: “Is there any objection to adding ratification of the paraprofessional contract to item two of the evening?” then “Okay. All right. We can add it as an agenda item. Okay. So we have just approved adding a ratification of the Paraprofessional Collective Bargaining agreement to item two.” There is no motion, no second and no vote on either item anywhere on the recording, and the minutes record none — only the substance (“No corrections”; “Superintendent Tempesta requests addition…”). The words “we have just approved” describe something that did not happen as a vote.
And the defect in the document the board adopted that night. The 6 December draft minutes, filed in this meeting’s own packet and approved here without correction, do record a consent-agenda vote — and record it like this: “Correction requested by Arlene Hawkins for Page 2, II, motion to seal for 1 year, made by Frank Sprague, seconded by Heather Whitney, roll call vote; all present voting yes” and then, as the disposition of the consent agenda itself, “No discussion, unanimously approved”. No mover and no seconder are named for that approval, while every other motion in the same four-page document names both — the Croydon motion, the Program of Studies motion and the adjournment all do.
The rule, and why it applies. RSA 91-A:2, II: “The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes.” That clause entered the statute by 2018, 244:1, effective 1 January 2019 — five years before this meeting. It is not one of the requirements added in 2025. This project re-verified the point three times against the 2017 and 2019 codifications, because an earlier note in its own working papers wrongly treated the clause as new and would have excused exactly this kind of omission. It is a real defect, not a gap that pre-dates the requirement.
In fairness. Nothing in the consent agenda was contested, everything in it was transacted in open session, and this board’s practice on the evening’s eight actual motions was better than the statute requires (flag 18). The concern is narrow and specific: the district’s own agenda identifies these items as needing a vote, and the record of two consecutive meetings shows the vote either not taken or not attributed.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (mover/seconder clause; source note showing 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019); agenda, 20 December 2023 (“Consent Agenda (vote required)”); CSB draft minutes 12.6.23, in this meeting’s packet.
MEDIUM The only packet document the board voted on was the only one not published before the meeting — and it was printed four and a half hours before the meeting opened
The timestamps. Four of the five documents in the Drive folder 28. CSB 12.20.23 were created in the district’s public share on Tuesday 19 December 2023 between 9:04 and 9:09 a.m. Eastern: the agenda, the 6 December draft minutes, the school-year calendar and the Stevens High School principal’s report. The fifth, Updated Claremont School District Budget 12.20.23, was created on Thursday 21 December at 10:43 a.m. — about thirteen hours after the meeting adjourned. Its own footer reads Printed: 12/20/2023 2:06:15 PM, four hours and twenty-four minutes before the 6:30 p.m. call to order. All four timestamps are Drive createdTime values, read for this page on 2026-08-29 and converted from UTC to Eastern.
What the members said about it, at the table. Crawford, at 1:04:01: “We’ve had several litigations [iterations]. Each time we meet, we get a different version. And I still haven’t seen the the copy that will be going to the, hearing. On January 3rd.” The chair pointed her to it mid-debate — “It’s actually in your folder. You got the seed? The newest” and “The back of your folder” — and Crawford answered “So this is probably version five, right. And we’ll see… You’ll see if it actually correlates to any of the former versions.” She then voted for it, having said what her vote meant.
What rule this does and does not engage. RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of a meeting twenty-four hours in advance; it does not require a packet, and nothing in the Right-to-Know Law obliged the district to publish this document before the vote. So no notice requirement was breached, and this card is graded on the process-gap limb rather than as a probable violation. What gives it weight is where the document was going. Under RSA 32:5, II in its 2023 text, “[a]ll purposes and amounts of appropriations to be included in the budget or special warrant articles shall be disclosed or discussed at the final hearing,” and the governing body may not afterwards insert an amount not disclosed there. The hearing was fourteen days away; the document defining those amounts reached the public the day after the board sent it there, and the member who would have to defend it at the hearing said on the record that she had not seen it.
In fairness. The board did not adopt this budget, and the two members who spoke said clearly and repeatedly that moving it forward was not approval (flag 19). The district did publish the document, and it is complete, internally consistent and still readable. And four fifths of the packet went up 33½ hours ahead — better than the statutory notice period (flag 18).
Sources: RSA 32:5, I–II, 2023 codification (hearing not later than 25 days before the annual meeting; all purposes and amounts disclosed at the final hearing); RSA 91-A:2, II (24-hour notice; no advance-packet duty); Drive packet folder 28. CSB 12.20.23 (file creation metadata).
MEDIUM The minutes misname the people who appeared before the board, and name a student board member who appears in no other district record
The rule. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to include “the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions.” Seven members of the public appeared and spoke at this meeting. The minutes get four of the seven names right.
The four problems, in order of seriousness.
1. Two speakers, one surname. The minutes list “Tom Smith-Knox, CMS teacher” and, three speakers later, “Katie Smith-Knox, CMS teacher”. On the recording the first says “My name is Tom Smith. I am the music teacher. I teach music band and chorus at the at Claremont Middle School. I’m also the unified arts team leader”; the second, separately and eight minutes later, says “Hi, I’m Katie Smith Knox. I teach Ela [ELA] sixth grade at the middle school.” The likeliest reading is that one speaker’s surname was carried onto the other. This page follows the recording for the first speaker and the recording and the minutes together for the second.
2. A surname with three candidates and no confirmation. The minutes call the fourth speaker “Rebecca Vendesco, Ward 1”. The recording gives only “Rebecca, Ward one”. The project’s dialogue file labels her Rebecca Duska, on the strength of Bonnie Miles naming a Ward 1 Claremont Middle School sixth-grade science teacher by that surname at the 3 January 2024 board meeting. No document reconciles the two, and this page adopts neither — she appears here as “Rebecca”, with the ward, the school and the subject she teaches, all of which she gave herself.
3. A surname that collides with another speaker’s. The minutes give “Russ Ferland, CMS teacher”; the recording gives “By [My] name is Russ Fernald.” Ferland is also the surname of Sarah Ferland, a different speaker earlier the same evening, which makes the minutes’ version the harder one to rely on. Neither is confirmed by a second document.
4. A student board member who exists nowhere else. The masthead of both the agenda and the minutes reads “Student Board Members- Nicole Bouchard and Kylee Plummer”. Two pages later the same documents read “Student Board Members-Nicole Bouchard and Alex Barney - not present”. Bouchard and Plummer were seated on 1 November 2023 and are named together in the 6 December minutes as well. “Alex Barney” appears in no other Claremont record for this school year, and because the error is in the posted agenda it propagated into the minutes rather than originating there.
In fairness, and against the other side of the ledger. Names given once at a podium and taken down live are among the hardest things in minutes to get right, and this clerk had held the office for five weeks. She also did something the recording could not: where the speech recognizer heard only “Doctor Herzog’s”, the minutes supply “Spoke in support of Alex Herzog” — the director of the technical centre — and that is the only place in this meeting’s public record where he is named correctly. On the substance of what each speaker said, the minutes are accurate throughout.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes must name persons appearing before the body); approved minutes, 20 December 2023; agenda, 20 December 2023; dialogue file for this recording, which records its own evidence for each attribution.
OBSERVATION The published recording is a splice: two hours and twenty-nine minutes vanish without a break in the audio, and the minutes’ own clock will not reconcile with what is left
The measurement. Across all 334 rows of the dialogue file the largest interval between the end of one segment and the start of the next is 3.84 seconds, at 1:02:24. Across the nonpublic session there is no interval at all worth the name: the motion to enter is at 0:07:46 and the motion to leave at 0:08:23 — thirty-seven recording-seconds. The minutes put 6:39 PM on the first and 9:08 PM on the second. The published broadcast therefore has two and a half hours removed from it and no audible seam.
What follows from that, for anyone using this recording. First, after 0:08:23 the recording’s elapsed time is no longer the meeting’s clock, and any inference from a timestamp to a time of day is wrong. Second, the length of the nonpublic session is unrecoverable from the tape; only the minutes give it. Third, and most usefully, continuous audio is evidence of an edit, not of a continuous meeting — the opposite of the inference it invites.
The arithmetic does not close. From the return to public business at 0:09:12 to the last row of the file at 1:06:36 is 57 minutes 24 seconds of continuous recording. The minutes place that entire stretch between a 9:08 PM return and a 9:52 PM adjournment — 44 minutes. About thirteen and a half minutes are unaccounted for. Either the board returned to public session earlier than 9:08, or it adjourned after 10 p.m., or one of the two times is an estimate. Nothing in the record settles which.
Why this is an observation and not a defect. No provision requires a public body to broadcast its meetings, to broadcast them unedited, or to publish a recording at all — and a nonpublic session must not be broadcast, so removing it is correct. The observation concerns what a viewer can safely infer. It is worth stating because the district’s own answer to where its subcommittee record lives is the broadcast (flag 2), and a broadcast that silently omits three-quarters of a meeting’s elapsed time is a poor substitute for minutes. The same splice pattern appears on the 7 December 2023 SAU 6 recording, where ten missing wall-clock minutes pass in forty-five seconds of unbroken audio.
One irony worth recording. The clock times that make this inconsistency findable were not required of minutes until 2025, 112:1, effective 22 August 2025. This district printed them in December 2023 anyway (flag 18). A district that recorded less would have left nothing to check.
Sources: dialogue file for this recording (segment start and end seconds); approved minutes, 20 December 2023 (6:39 PM, 9:08 PM, 9:52 PM); RSA 91-A:2, II (start/end times added 2025, 112:1, eff. 22 Aug. 2025).
OBSERVATION A nonpublic session consumed three-quarters of the meeting, and six public items were dropped for time — including the monthly financial report, on the night the budget went to hearing
What was dropped. At 0:58:35 the chair asked “Is there anything we can pass up on this agenda this evening and move?” In the ninety seconds that followed the board removed, by consent and without a vote: the Monthly Financial Report, and the reports of the Capital Improvement, Policy, Curriculum, SRVRTC Visioning and Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors subcommittees. Only the Finance Committee report survived, on an exception called from the table. The minutes record each of the six as “Removed for the sake of time” — and the last, in the district’s own text, as “Removed for the sake fo time” the typo is the district’s.
Why the time was short. The meeting was scheduled to adjourn at 8:30 PM. The nonpublic session ran from 6:39 to 9:08. Of the meeting’s three hours and twenty-two minutes, about 74 per cent was nonpublic, and the public record of that portion is a fifty-year seal with no stated ground (flag 5).
What was lost, specifically. The Monthly Financial Report is the board’s only standing item for current-year financial reporting, and it came off the agenda seven minutes of recording time before the board voted to send a $36.3 million budget to public hearing; the business administrator said nothing about the budget at any point in the evening. The Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors subcommittee had reported to the board a fortnight earlier that the district had no policy covering three separate student-conduct problems and that it was “[l]ooking to hold one more meeting and then bring recommendations to the board” quotation from the 6 December minutes; that report did not come back on 20 December either.
Why this is an observation. Nothing in law requires any of these six items, and two of the five subcommittee chairs — Skillen and Hawkins — were absent, so two of the reports could not have been given in any event. Agenda triage late in a long meeting is ordinary practice. The point worth recording is the shape of the evening: the public business that made way was the routine financial reporting and every standing committee report but one, on the meeting where the year’s largest financial decision was taken.
Sources: approved minutes, 20 December 2023; agenda, 20 December 2023 (items IV.4 and IV.6(a)–(f); scheduled 8:30 PM adjournment); CSB draft minutes 12.6.23 (ad hoc subcommittee report).
OBSERVATION The tax impact of a ratified contract is stated two different ways in the two public records of the same two minutes
On the recording. Asked for the tax impact of the maintenance and custodial agreement, the business administrator answered at 0:47:43: “We decided that for every 100,000, it was, $0.08 on the tax rate, so. And that was 100,000 in the first year, was it? If I’m correct.” She then corrected the base — “Sorry, 87,000” — and, asked to confirm, said “A lot, a little less than that. Yes. I’d have to figure it out.” The committee chair converted it for a household: “So if you’re if you have a $300,000 home it’s about $0.18.”
In the minutes. “Mary Henry spoke to the tax impact: is about 6.5 cents per $100,000; will be separate warrant article”.
The two do not reconcile, and the internal arithmetic does not either. Eight cents per $100,000 of assessed value implies about twenty-four cents on a $300,000 home, not eighteen; eighteen cents implies a rate near six. So the household figure spoken at the table is consistent with the rate the minutes record and inconsistent with the rate spoken thirty seconds before it. The number of employees the contract covers was left equally open: “It’s not it’s not how many employees are in this. 12 maybe” against the superintendent’s “I thought 1413 or 14”; the minutes record no headcount at all.
Why it matters here rather than as a rounding quibble. This agreement was going to the voters on its own: “this will appear in a separate Warren [warrant] article. It’s not going to be part of the main budget. So people will vote on it separately” (0:48:34). Cost per household is exactly the number a voter uses on a separate warrant article, and the district’s two accounts of it differ by roughly a quarter.
Why this is an observation. No provision fixes how a tax impact must be stated during a ratification vote, and the authoritative figure is the one that appears on the warrant article itself, which is not in this packet. The board was doing this arithmetic live, out loud, in front of the camera, and said openly that it needed checking — which is better practice than presenting a polished number nobody can trace.
Sources: approved minutes, 20 December 2023 (“about 6.5 cents per $100,000”); dialogue file for this recording, rows at 0:47:43–0:48:34.
OBSERVATION A wage settlement part-funded by a retention bonus from federal pandemic relief, nine months before the obligation deadline
What was said. The superintendent, at 0:52:12: “So basically we added two, $2 to every, every step. And for an overall increase of 189,000 in the first, so that we are relevant so that people will stay here. And we also gave a substantial. We still have money in the esser [ESSER] money to give a bonus, as we have with the other groups, which we did as well.” The minutes: “came up with a one year agreement adding $2 per step and a bonus with ESSER funds”.
The structure, and the cliff. The two components behave differently. The $2 on every step is a permanent change to the wage scale, carried thereafter by local appropriation — and it enters the budget this board moved to public hearing at the end of the same meeting. The retention bonus is one-time and paid from money with an end date. Federal ARP ESSER funds had to be obligated by 30 September 2024, nine months and ten days after this vote, with liquidation to follow; the New Hampshire Department of Education’s own guidance for districts sets out the same deadline and the late-liquidation process that followed it.
The board understood it that way. The chair described the reopening as “kind of an emergency situation” and “a stopgap to at least get us on par with other districts” (0:57:23), and the superintendent said the parties would be “at the table with them again shortly… we’ll start that process in the spring.” A one-year agreement was chosen precisely because the position was not sustainable.
Why this is an observation and not a defect. Using ESSER for one-time retention payments was a permitted use, the district said openly on live television where the money came from, and nothing here suggests the recurring element was charged to federal funds. The observation is the exposure it creates for the budget the board sent to hearing: FY2025 was the district’s first budget year in which ESSER could not carry any of it, and the permanent half of this settlement arrives in it while the one-time half does not recur. The wider ESSER-cliff findings for this budget season are on the 30 November and 13 December finance pages.
Sources: U.S. Department of Education, ARP ESSER obligation deadlines and extensions (30 September 2024 obligation deadline); NHDOE, Reference Guide for Late Liquidation of ARP ESSER III Funds; approved minutes, 20 December 2023.
OBSERVATION The district’s legal position on what may be housed in its technical centre exists in public only as a video segment — and the statute it rests on has since changed
What exists. Nineteen minutes of oral advice, delivered from the room, with questions from the chair. No memorandum, opinion letter, slide or handout accompanies it in the packet, and none has appeared since. The written public record of the district’s legal position is nine bullet points in the minutes, of which the operative one reads: “As long as non-CTE programs do not hinder or interfere with CTE programs, it is allowed (described as ‘vacant space’” the unclosed parenthesis is the district’s.
The advice was accurate to the law of the day, on both points that can be checked. Counsel said “There is a statute that talks about once a CTE program is built it shall be used exclusively for CTE programing.” On 20 December 2023 RSA 188-E:3, II read: “Upon completion, the constructed or renovated facility shall become the property of the school district or public academy, for use by the career and technical education center exclusively” — source note ending 2021, 210:2, effective 9 October 2021. He also said “All the Perkins five money is is governed by a four year plan that’s put together by the state”; 20 U.S.C. §2342(a) requires each eligible agency to submit a State plan “for a 4-year period”.
The vintage trap for anyone re-reading this later. The text of RSA 188-E:3, II served today is not the text in force in December 2023: it now carries a repurposing exception that did not exist then. A reader who checks counsel’s statement against the current statute will conclude he overstated the exclusivity rule. He did not; the statute changed. This page cites the 2023 codification for that reason.
What cannot be checked from the record. The “administrative rules that talk about… assurances that the CTE center shall only include programs which are part of the approved qualified project” are not identified by number, and are not quoted in the minutes. The “2011 Regional Model Agreement” he relies on is not in the packet. The figure “little over $6.5 million of Perkins five money” and the thresholds “5% to 10%… I don’t know that that would draw much attention. I think once you get above 10%” are his professional judgement, offered as such, and are recorded here as his characterization rather than as rules.
Why this is an observation. Nothing required the advice to be written down, and a board is entitled to take counsel orally. The observation is about durability: the item was on the agenda because the question had “kicked around the districts a long time”, it would return, and what the district now has to return to is a video with no index and a nine-bullet summary. See also flag 17, which credits the choice to hear it in public at all.
Sources: RSA 188-E:3, II, 2023 codification (“for use by the career and technical education center exclusively”; source note ends 2021, 210:2); 20 U.S.C. §2342(a) (Perkins V State plan, 4-year period); approved minutes, 20 December 2023.
OBSERVATION The calendar amendment is not described in the minutes, and the calendar in the packet already shows the amended date
What the board did. The assistant superintendent explained that the State had fixed the January presidential primary for the 23rd rather than the 16th, and asked to swap the two days: “we’d like to make the 23rd the teacher workshop day and have school on the 16th. And it’s just a trade of those two dates.” Asked whether anything else moved, he said “There are no other changes to the calendar.” The motion was “We approve the 2324 school calendar, as amended”.
What the minutes say. “Discussion regarding changing two days for professional development purposes”, then the motion, seconder and “unanimously approved”. Neither date is named. A reader of the minutes alone cannot tell which two days changed or why.
What the packet shows. The packet’s calendar, filed as Updated 11.20.23---23-24 School Year Calendar (1).pdf and posted on 19 December, already prints the amended arrangement: its January grid marks the 23rd “TW” and shows the 16th as an ordinary school day, and its dates list reads “January 23 Teacher Workshop/Data Day-Voting Day- No School” with no entry for 16 January. So the only calendar in the public record is the post-amendment one, filed under a name dated a month earlier, and the version the board amended is nowhere. Either the file name’s date is wrong or the district posted the revised document under the old name; the record does not say which.
Why this is an observation. RSA 91-A:2, II asks for “a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions”, and a one-line description of a two-day swap is defensibly brief. No rule requires the superseded version of a document to be retained in a packet. The point is only that the district’s three records of this decision — motion, minutes and document — between them do not let a reader see what changed.
A number noted, not flagged. The calendar’s own footer gives “177 Student Days/185 Teacher Days”. New Hampshire’s minimum standards express the school-year requirement as 180 days of instruction or the equivalent hours, so a 177-day calendar is not on its face short. This page does not cite a rule section number for the point, because the Ed 306 rules were renumbered in the readoption effective 13 December 2024 and the pre-readoption numbering could not be verified from the sources available here.
Sources: 2023–24 school year calendar, as posted in this packet; approved minutes, 20 December 2023; N.H. Code Admin. R. Ed 306 (minimum standards; renumbered eff. 13 Dec. 2024).
OBSERVATION A citizens’-comment speaker was interrupted while praising a district employee, under a policy that on its face bars complaints
The policy, as the chair read it earlier that evening, before the nonpublic session. “The board will not hear personal personnel complaints regarding personal complaints regarding school personnel, or complaints against any person connected to the school system. Complaints regarding individual employees must and will be directed to the Superintendent of Schools.”
What happened. At 0:23:29 John Lambert said: “I’m here to express my support for Doctor Herzog’s as the director of the school. And I understand he’s coming to some, scrutiny. I signed a letter of endorsement from with another teacher. Hopefully you received that.” The chair: “We can’t speak to that.” Lambert: “You can’t… I’m sorry.” He then finished: “Well, anyway, I’d like to express my gratitude to the job he’s doing is both, excellent for the teachers, the students and the community. And I hope you agree.”
Two readings, and this page prefers neither. The narrow reading of “We can’t speak to that” is that the board could not respond — which is consistent with the very exemptions it had invoked earlier that evening, RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and (c), and with a board’s ordinary reluctance to discuss a named employee in open session. The broader reading is that the speaker was stopped, and that the policy he was stopped under reaches complaints rather than endorsements. He was not removed from the podium and completed his remarks. No violation is asserted.
The public-comment statute, for completeness. RSA 189:74 requires a school board to “provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters at a meeting of the school board held under RSA 91-A:2” and provides that “[t]he public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes.” Whether that is a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time is not settled by the text. This board’s two comment periods together ran about nineteen minutes, and the chair twice asked whether anyone else wished to speak — “Is there anyone else that would like to speak or stand in a show of support for what folks have said?” Nobody was turned away, and this page asserts no violation of RSA 189:74.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (school board public comment period; 2022, 333:1, eff. 6 Sept. 2022); RSA 91-A:3, II(a), (c); approved minutes, 20 December 2023 (“Spoke in support of Alex Herzog”).
POSITIVE The board suspended its own comment rule so that staff who had waited out a two-and-a-half-hour nonpublic session could be heard before their item — and counted silent support
What it gave up. The policy the chair had read aloud limits citizens’ comments to non-agenda items. The middle-school schedule was inside the budget the board was about to move. On the strict application of its own rule the board could have declined to hear a word of it.
What it did instead. At 0:09:12: “Thank you for your patience, everyone. We apologize for the long pause in the meeting. In an effort to get you guys home. I’d like to ask the board for a consensus in allowing, comments from the public prior to the agenda item, which I am assuming most of these comments are going to be aligned with… do we have an agreement that we can take public comments so these folks can get back to their families and get some sleep for work tomorrow?” The board agreed by consensus; the minutes head the section “Consensus to take public comment on future agenda item”. Seven people spoke over about fifteen minutes, and the chair asked twice more whether anyone else wished to.
And it made a way for people who did not want to speak to be counted. At 0:10:12: “If you feel that voicing your support or just indicating that you support what one of the speakers is saying, so we can see that there’s a large number of folks that are, you know, agreeing with whoever is speaking. That would be great, and we will take note of that support.” The minutes did take note, seven times — “General agreement from other staff present” after each speaker, and at the end “Several audience members stood in support of what had already been said”. One speaker had told the board “you have 11 teachers here now”; the record reflects a room, not just a queue.
Why this counts as more than courtesy. Two weeks earlier this same board opened and closed citizens’ comments in about five seconds to an empty room, and the SAU 6 board did the same in about ten seconds the following night. When the room was full and the subject was one the board had reason to find uncomfortable, it took the comments anyway, ahead of its own business, and let them run.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (opportunity to comment on school district matters); approved minutes, 20 December 2023; 6 December 2023 board page; 7 December 2023 SAU 6 page.
POSITIVE The board took its legal advice in open session when the Right-to-Know Law offered it two separate ways not to
The two routes it did not take. RSA 91-A:2, I(b) excludes “consultation with legal counsel” from the definition of a “meeting” altogether, so a board may take advice from its attorney with no notice, no minutes and no public record of any kind. And RSA 91-A:3, II(l) separately allows a nonpublic session for “legal advice provided by legal counsel, either in writing or orally, to one or more members of the public body.” The board had already used a nonpublic session that evening and could simply have kept counsel in the room.
What it did. Put the item on the posted agenda by name — “Potential Consequences of Placing Non- CTE Programs at SRVRTC (Presentation and Discussion) Presentation by Matthew Upton, Esquire” — and took nineteen minutes of it on live television, including the parts unfavourable to the direction the district was moving: that non-CTE use above roughly ten per cent of the building “would be pretty significant”, and that housing special-education programmes there risks the building becoming “known as the building that houses all the special ed programs for the school district”, with the state director’s concern that this “may eventually result in lower student demand”. The chair pressed for a number rather than accepting a qualitative answer.
And the advice holds up. On both statements that can be checked against a primary source it is accurate for its date: RSA 188-E:3, II as it then read did require a completed CTE facility to be “for use by the career and technical education center exclusively”, and 20 U.S.C. §2342(a) does require the Perkins V State plan to run “for a 4-year period”. Counsel also volunteered the limits of what he could say — “Can I say absolutely. Putting non CTE programing here will result in you being denied future funding. I can’t” — rather than giving the board a cleaner answer than the law supports.
The qualification. None of it was written down for the public; see flag 13. Hearing it in open session and leaving no document are separate choices, and only the first is to the board’s credit.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I(b) (consultation with legal counsel is not a “meeting”); RSA 91-A:3, II(l) (nonpublic session for legal advice); RSA 188-E:3, II, 2023 codification; 20 U.S.C. §2342(a).
POSITIVE Minutes that carried clock times, a named author and a mover and seconder for every motion — twenty months before two of the three were required
Movers and seconders, on every motion but one. The approved minutes name both for the entry into nonpublic, the return from it, the fifty-year seal, all three contract ratifications, the calendar and the budget — eight motions, sixteen names. RSA 91-A:2, II has required this since 2018, 244:1, effective 1 January 2019, and this board met it wherever a motion was made. (The consent agenda, where no motion was made at all, is flag 6.)
A split vote recorded by name, where the recording carries almost nothing. On the secretaries’ agreement the tape holds only the vice chair saying “Aye or abstain” and the chair saying “Motion passes.” The minutes record it properly: “voting in favor: Heather Whitney, Bonnie Miles, Jennifer Gallagher, Candace Crawford, abstained: Frank Sprague”. Without the minutes there would be no public record that this vote was not unanimous.
Three things the law did not yet ask for. The minutes carry a clock time against every agenda section, including the exact times the board entered and left nonpublic session; they end “Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, school board clerk”; and they name the clerk as the person who took each roll call. RSA 91-A:2, II did not require the start time, the end time or the name of the person who produced the minutes until 2025, 112:1, effective 22 August 2025 — twenty months after this meeting. This district was already doing it. It is also what makes the timing problem in flag 9 findable at all.
And the packet went up early. Four of the five documents entered the public share about 33½ hours before the meeting — more than the 24 hours RSA 91-A:2, II requires for notice — and one of them was the previous meeting’s draft minutes, so a member of the public could read the document the board was about to approve before it approved it. The fifth, the budget, is flag 7.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II and its source note (2018, 244:1, eff. 1 Jan. 2019; 2023, 188:1, eff. 3 Oct. 2023; 2025, 112:1, eff. 22 Aug. 2025); approved minutes, 20 December 2023; Drive packet folder 28. CSB 12.20.23 (file creation metadata).
POSITIVE Two of the three finance-committee members put their reservations on the record before voting, and said on camera exactly what their vote did and did not mean
The committee chair, moving his own recommendation. “We have come up with with a number. However, I personally would like to have a little bit more time to sort of look it over”, and then the distinction he insisted on: “we’re not going to necessarily approve the budget tonight, but we’re going to move the budget forward. And there’s a distinction to that… I want to investigate some other stuff in it” (1:01:14). He repeated it after the report: “I’m going to continue to look at it a little bit even in the future, some more.”
The member who had not seen the document. Crawford, twice, on the record and before the vote: “I still haven’t seen the the copy that will be going to the, hearing. On January 3rd. So I am voting in support of moving it to the hearing” (1:04:01), and after the motion, “I’m voting in favor simply to move it forward to the hearing phase. That is, that’s the limit of my acceptance at this point” (1:05:36). She also told the public to go and check the work: “So there’s much work still to be done. And there are still many questions. And I encourage the public to listen to those, budget discussions.”
The chair confirmed the limit rather than smoothing it over. “And that’s all that this is doing… Is that this is still a work in progress?” — Crawford: “Absolutely.” And the minutes preserved the distinction instead of recording a bare unanimous vote: “Discussion to make clear that this is just moving forward the budget to the public hearing, not approving the budget”.
Why it counts. A unanimous voice vote is the least informative thing a board can produce. This one would have read as a five-member endorsement of a $36.3 million budget; because two members insisted on the record that it was not, a reader three years later can tell the difference between a board that approved a number and a board that sent one to a hearing. That is the whole of what a minute is for.
Sources: dialogue file for this recording, rows at 1:01:14–1:05:59; approved minutes, 20 December 2023.
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast show 15483, “Claremont School Board 12/20/23” — title reproduced exactly as the Cablecast API returns it.
eventDate 2023-12-20T00:00:00-05:00, totalRunTime 4,027 seconds; the show record was created in the system on 18 December 2023 and last modified 21 December 2023. Metadata read 2026-08-29. The published show omits the nonpublic session without any audible break; see flag 9.
- Drive packet folder 28. CSB 12.20.23 — five documents, in the district’s Packets — Posted to website share:
- _CSB Agenda 12.20.23.docx (6).pdf the leading underscore, the “.docx” inside a PDF name and the “(6)” are the district’s — posted 19 December 2023, 9:04 a.m. Eastern.
- Updated Claremont School District Budget 12.20.23.pdf — 55 pages, headed “CLAREMONT FY25 PROPOSED BUDGET”, footer
Printed: 12/20/2023 2:06:15 PM; page 55 carries the Grand Total $36,313,407.97. Posted 21 December 2023, 10:43 a.m. Eastern — the morning after the vote (flag 7).
- SHS Principal’s Report December 2023.pdf — by Chris Pratt, Stevens High School. Posted 19 December, and never taken up: there is no agenda item for it and no mention of it on the recording. It reports a PowerSchool tardiness add-on live since 1 November, the St Paul’s ASP invitations, a district professional-development day on 7 November whose Stevens session is listed as “SHS-PLC 8 Period Day Schedule & Budget work”, a River Valley Community College LNA survey of 57 students, and IXL usage figures. The behaviour consultant it describes at length is named Polly Bath; this corpus’s working notes carry her as “Polly Bathurst”, which this document corrects.
- Updated 11.20.23---23-24 School Year Calendar (1).pdf — posted 19 December; already shows the amendment the board made on 20 December (flag 14). Totals “177 Student Days/185 Teacher Days”.
- CSB draft minutes 12.6.23 (1) (2).pdf — the document this board approved with no corrections. Posted 19 December, the ninth business day after that meeting. Its consent agenda is recorded “No discussion, unanimously approved” with no mover and no seconder (flag 6), and its Finance Sub-Committee item opens “Sessions have been recorded on CCTV” (flag 2).
- 21. approved CSB meeting minutes 12.20.23.pdf — six pages, in the district’s Meeting Minutes share. Created 4 January 2024, 10:13 a.m. Eastern and unmodified since (flag 3).
- 20. Approved CSB minutes 12.6.23.pdf — the approved version of the minutes adopted at this meeting, cited here for the district’s statement “Sessions have been recorded on CCTV”.
- Explicit negatives. No minutes of any 2023 session of the Claremont School Board Finance Committee exist in either district share. The project’s map records a two-stage search for each of the five sessions of this budget season — the packets share and its 2023 Meeting Documents archive, both candidate year folders of the Meeting Minutes share, the next board meeting’s packet folder, and Drive keyword searches on “finance” and the dotted dates — verified 2026-08-28, with nothing found. Negatives derived from the Drive search API alone are treated as unsafe in this project, because that API under-reports on these shared folders; the negatives relied on here rest on folder-by-folder enumeration recorded in MAP.md. No notice, agenda, minutes or recording exists for the members’ caucus that followed the 18 December session, for any 11 a.m. session on 20 December, or for whatever the vice chair refers to as “last night” (flag 2). No memorandum or written opinion accompanies the attorney’s CTE presentation in the packet (flag 13).
Project files
Relative links; they work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/.
- ../Dialogue/15483 SchoolBoard122023.mp4.CSV — the attributed dialogue, the attributed dialogue, 334 rows and 9,620 words covering the whole 1:06:36 of the broadcast. Its Role column records the evidence and confidence for every attribution, including the two this page flags as unsettled.
- ../../Input/Videos/15483 SchoolBoard122023.mp4 — the local copy of the recording.
- ../../Input/Transcripts/15483 SchoolBoard122023.mp4.json — the diarized transcript the dialogue was built from.
- ../../Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md — §35 is this meeting; §§27–34 are the rest of December 2023 and carry the searches behind the “no minutes” negatives.
- Related pages in this collection: Finance Committee, 30 November 2023 · Finance Committee, 1 December 2023 · Finance Committee, 6 December 2023 · Board, 6 December 2023 · SAU 6 Board, 7 December 2023 · Finance Committee, 13 December 2023 · Finance Committee, 18 December 2023.
- Dialogue files for the meetings this page quotes from, all of which are separate recordings and are marked as such wherever quoted: ../Dialogue/15451 SchoolBoardFinance121823.mp4.CSV (18 December 2023, 1,466 rows) · ../Dialogue/15510 SchoolBoardFinance010524.mp4.CSV (5 January 2024, 1,131 rows) · ../Dialogue/15531 SchoolBoard011724.mp4.CSV (17 January 2024, 787 rows).
Laws and rules cited on this page
Cited in the text in force on 20 December 2023. Where the text served today differs, both are identified and the difference is stated, because roughly half the provisions this project relies on have been amended since 2023.
- New Hampshire — Right-to-Know Law. RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) — “public body” includes “any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto”; unamended since 2008, 354:1.
- RSA 91-A:2, I — definition of “meeting” and its four exclusions: (a) strategy or negotiations with respect to collective bargaining; (b) consultation with legal counsel; (c) a caucus of elected members of the same political party; (d) circulation of draft documents to formalise a prior decision.
- RSA 91-A:2, II — 24-hour notice; minutes to include “the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions”; “[t]he names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes”; “promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting”. Vintage: the mover/seconder clause is 2018, 244:1, eff. 1 January 2019 and binds this meeting; the paragraph in force on this date is the one amended by 2023, 188:1, eff. 3 October 2023; the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements are 2025, 112:1, eff. 22 August 2025 and are not applied here.
- RSA 91-A:3, I(b) — a motion to enter nonpublic session “shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II”; roll-call vote; majority of members present.
- RSA 91-A:3, II(a), (c), (l) — the two exemptions the agenda quotes, and the legal-advice exemption the board did not use. (k), not (l), is the student/tuition-contract exemption — a recurring misattribution in this corpus.
- RSA 91-A:3, III — disclosure within 72 hours unless a recorded 2/3 vote in public session determines that disclosure would adversely affect a non-member’s reputation, render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism; and the public list of withheld nonpublic minutes identifying the body, the date and time, the specific exemption, and the dates of withholding and any release. 2023 codification confirms both were in force on this date.
- RSA 91-A:3, IV — added by 2023, 189:1, eff. 3 October 2023, seventy-eight days before this meeting: absent an adopted procedure, sealed nonpublic minutes must be reviewed no more than ten years from the vote to withhold.
- New Hampshire — municipal budgets. RSA 32:5, I–II, 2023 codification — at least one public hearing on the budget “not later than 25 days before each annual or special meeting”, with 7 days’ notice; “[a]ll purposes and amounts of appropriations to be included in the budget or special warrant articles shall be disclosed or discussed at the final hearing”. Vintage: the 2023 source note ends 2021, 134:3–4; the section was later amended by 2025, 144:1, eff. 30 August 2025, so the current text must not be read back onto this meeting.
- New Hampshire — school board public comment. RSA 189:74 — opportunity to comment on school district matters, “for no less than 30 minutes”; 2022, 333:1, eff. 6 September 2022. No violation is asserted on this page.
- New Hampshire — career and technical education. RSA 188-E:3, II, 2023 codification — “Upon completion, the constructed or renovated facility shall become the property of the school district or public academy, for use by the career and technical education center exclusively”; source note ends 2021, 210:2, eff. 9 October 2021. Vintage: the current text carries a repurposing exception that did not exist on this date.
- New Hampshire — administrative rules. N.H. Code Admin. R. Ed 306 — minimum standards for school approval, cited at part level only. The part was renumbered in the readoption effective 13 December 2024, so this page cites no 2023 section number it could not verify.
- Federal. 20 U.S.C. §2342(a) (Perkins V) — each eligible agency shall submit a State plan “for a 4-year period”.
- U.S. Department of Education, ARP ESSER and EANS obligation deadlines and extensions (12 June 2024) and NHDOE, Reference Guide for Late Liquidation of ARP ESSER III Funds — the 30 September 2024 obligation deadline behind flag 12.