Participants
Everyone in the record of this meeting. Name spellings follow the agenda masthead and the board's own draft minutes, which are the authoritative source here; where the dialogue transcript renders a name differently the difference is noted in the method footer. Attendance is taken from the minutes and checked against the four roll calls on the recording. "Not separably heard" means the person is on the masthead or in the minutes but has no attributed speech in the dialogue file — at this meeting that is half the board, because their roll answers are absorbed into the reader's own diarized rows. Central-office administrators are on the agenda masthead; none of them is heard on this recording, which begins after the nonpublic session.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Arlene Hawkins | Chair, SAU #6 School Board; Claremont School Board member | Presides throughout. 46 of the file's 78 rows — by far the largest cluster. She reads the first two roll calls herself, hands the third and fourth to the clerk ("The secretary take a roll call. Vote, please." at 0:06:45), presents both policies in the first person as the SAU policy committee's report, moves the termination of the superintendent's contract herself at 0:06:15, re-reads it into a telephone at 0:07:04 so the remote member can vote, checks that the vote was recorded — "Did the secretary record that?" — moves the appointment of the interim superintendent at 0:08:11, declares "The motion passes" twice without a count, and adjourns. She chairs this body in all four already-published SAU 6 pages from November 2023 on. |
| Rocco Ruggeri | Vice Chair, SAU #6 School Board; Unity School Board member | Present. Seven attributed rows, and the busiest member in the room after the chair. He moves the second read and adoption of policy BGAA (0:02:25), moves the first read of policy ACN (0:04:55), seconds both superintendent motions, and moves to adjourn. On the appointment his second arrives after the chair has already called for the roll, and he says so: "I snuck it." The minutes name him as seconder of both superintendent motions, of the return to public session, and as mover of the adjournment. |
| Marjorie Erickson | Chair, Unity School Board; SAU #6 Board member — participating by telephone | Eight attributed rows, all of them the audible half of a conversation the room was having with a telephone. The minutes record her as "Present via phone" and give no reason. At 0:00:21 someone in the room says "You're gonna have to say it loud or she can't hear you"; she answers "I vote yes" on the return to public. At 0:06:58, called on the motion to terminate the superintendent's contract, she says "No idea what's being voted on. I can't hear you." The motion is re-read into a handset and she answers "Okay, I vote no." She votes no again on the appointment. She is the only member to vote against either motion. See flag 1 and flag 2. |
| Shannon Popescu | Unity School Board member; SAU #6 Board member | Present. Not separably heard: her words are audible but land inside the clerk's diarized rows. On the termination roll the clerk's row reads "Shannon, you. I'm abstaining from this." — the second sentence is Popescu's own (0:07:52); on the appointment roll it comes through as "Shannon. Abstain." She abstains on both superintendent motions and the minutes record it. She answers yes on the return to public; on the thirty-year seal her name is called at 0:01:12 and no answer is audible in the file (flag 7). The minutes name her as seconder of the BGAA motion, which the recording independently corroborates — the chair says "Shannon. Shannon. Seconds. Got it." |
| Kelly Simpson | Unity School Board member; SAU #6 Board member | Present. Not separably heard; her answers fall inside the reader's rows in all four roll calls. Recorded voting yes on both superintendent motions. |
| Atonya Hart | Unity School Board member; SAU #6 Board member | Present. One attributed row — a single Yes. in her slot on the appointment roll at 0:09:06, assigned by roll position. Her other answers are absorbed, and the ASR renders the reader reaching her slot as "Tanya. Hurt." and "It's on your heart." The minutes name her as seconder of the agenda amendment, of the ACN first read and of the adjournment. |
| Frank Sprague | Vice Chair, Claremont School Board; SAU #6 Board member; chair of the Claremont Finance Committee | Present. One attributed row, and it is the first act on the recording: "Like, make a motion that we come out of nonpublic." at 0:00:11, which the minutes record as "Frank Sprague Motioned to move out of non-public at 6:48pm". The minutes also name him as seconder of the motion to enter nonpublic session, which is off tape. Recorded voting yes on both superintendent motions. |
| Bonnie Miles | Claremont School Board member; SAU #6 Board member; SAU #6 treasurer | Present. Not separably heard. The minutes credit her with moving the thirty-year seal of the nonpublic minutes; on the recording that motion is inside the chair's row and cannot be attributed to a voice (0:00:57). Recorded voting yes on both superintendent motions. The ASR renders her slot as "Bonnie. Miles." throughout. |
| Whitney Skillen | Claremont School Board member; SAU #6 Board member; chair of the Claremont Policy Sub-Committee | Present. Three attributed rows, and the only member other than the chair and the mover to speak to any item of business. She stops the adoption of policy BGAA to say the printed copy carries no policy title (0:02:43), raises the unresolved option one / option two choice in policy ACN (0:05:08), and asks the time of the deliberative session. The chair credits her expertise directly: "As chair of the Claremont Policy Committee, you're very much in tune with that." See flag 18. Recorded voting yes on both superintendent motions. Her name is the worst in the file for the ASR — "Whitney. Skilling.", "Whitney. Sealing." |
| Candace Crawford | Claremont School Board member; SAU #6 Board member | Present. Not separably heard; the ASR renders her slot as Candice. Crawford. and, splitting across two rows on the seal roll, Candice. then Proper. Recorded voting yes on both superintendent motions. |
| Jennifer Gallagher | Claremont School Board member; SAU #6 Board member | Present. Not separably heard. The minutes name her as seconder of the motion approving the December 14 minutes, which is off tape. Recorded voting yes on both superintendent motions. |
| Heather Whitney | Chair, Claremont School Board; SAU #6 Board member | Present. Not separably heard: she is last in the roll order every time, and on the appointment roll her answer at 0:09:15 is clipped into the chair's next row, so the words "Yes. The motion passes." are one diarized segment holding two speakers. The minutes credit her with moving the agenda amendment, moving the approval of the December 14 minutes, and seconding the thirty-year seal — the last of which the recording corroborates only to the extent that the chair says "Heather." as she accepts the second. Recorded voting yes on both superintendent motions. |
| Noelle Kronberg | Clerk, SAU #6 School Board | Present, and the author of the minutes. Nine attributed rows. She reads the third and fourth roll calls — the two superintendent votes — after the chair's explicit cue, and the members' answers separate out of her rows, which is the signature of a clerk-read roll in this corpus. She does not read the first two; those are inside the chair's rows. The minutes nevertheless credit her with three of the four (flag 5). The ASR gives her no name at all in this file; she is identified by role, cue and cluster. |
| Michael C. Tempesta | Superintendent of Schools, SAU #6 — the subject of the first motion | Not present on the recording and does not speak. He is printed as Superintendent of Schools at the head of the agenda masthead, which was created two days before the meeting. His name occurs twice in the file, both times inside the text of the motion terminating his contract. Nothing in the agenda, the minutes or the recording states a reason for the termination, and nobody spoke to the motion. See flag 11. |
| Christopher Pratt | Appointed interim Superintendent of Schools by this board, effective January 12, 2024 — the subject of the second motion | Not present and does not speak. He is not on this agenda's list of SAU #6 Central Office Administration and holds no office named anywhere in this meeting's records. His name occurs three times in the file, every one inside the motion appointing him. No member asked a question about him, no qualifications were read, and his contract terms were delegated to the chair and legal counsel rather than settled in public. The Claremont School Board's agenda for January 17, 2024 — six days later — prints him as "Christopher Pratt, Interim Superintendent". |
| Michael Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Innovation, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead. Not heard on the recording, which begins after the nonpublic session. The minutes place him inside it: "roll call vote taken by Mike Koski" on the motion to enter nonpublic session — the only one of the four rolls that night not read by the chair or the clerk. |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead. Not heard, not named in the minutes, and not named on the recording. His resignation had been announced to this board four weeks earlier. |
| Mary Henry | Business Administrator, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead. Not heard and not named. The agenda's item IV.1, "Budget Update (Discussion)", was tabled at the chair's request before the nonpublic session and never reached the floor — the FY25 SAU budget having been adopted on December 14. |
| Jeff Small | Director of Technology, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead. Not heard and not named. |
| Angela Vivian | Director of Human Resources, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead. Not heard and not named. |
| Unidentified — the person holding the telephone | In the room; addressed by the chair | At 0:07:04 the chair breaks off the roll call to have the motion read into a telephone handset and thanks the person holding it: "Motion into the phone. Right into the phone. Thank you sir." The form of address is the only thing the record establishes about this person, and this page names nobody on the strength of it. |
| Unidentified voices | In the room | Three rows the dialogue file leaves unattributed, all in the closing seconds: the single Aye. on the motion to adjourn, "This is for abstentions." over the chair's own question, and a valediction at 0:10:51 rendered "Thank you. Our lane. Yes. Thank you. Oh." — Our lane being this corpus's recurring ASR form of Arlene. 3 of 78 rows, 3.8%. |
Agenda
The official agenda, SAU 6 School Board Agenda 1.11.24 .docx.pdf, posted in the packet folder about fifty hours before the meeting. The doubled space in "SAU 6 School Board" and the space before .docx are the district's. Agenda wording is quoted; the disposition that follows each item is from the board's draft minutes and from the recording, and is identified as such. Scheduled clock times are printed as the agenda has them and are not links; the "Taken up" column links into the recording, which begins only at the return from nonpublic session, so the first five items show a dash. Two things about this agenda are findings in their own right: it noticed the nonpublic session under "RSA 92-A:3,II", a chapter of New Hampshire law that does not exist and which the minutes then repeat (flag 3), and the whole of the night's business — the removal of a superintendent and the appointment of his successor — was noticed as the single word "Superintendent".
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| — | I. 5:30 PM | "Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance". Not on the recording, which starts about seventy-eight minutes later. The minutes record no clock time for the call to order, which leaves the agenda's own contradiction — a 6:30 PM heading over a 5:30 PM item I — unresolved by any document (flag 12). |
| — | II. 5:35 PM | "General Business. Turn off cell phones and electronic devices. Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members (Board Members who arrive after the meeting begins will be noted as 'present' at the point in the agenda at which they arrive)." Not on the recording. The minutes list eleven members present by name and add "Present via phone: Marjorie Erickson". The office the agenda line names has been vacant all year (flag 9). |
| — | II (cont.) | "Agenda – Amendments and Final Approval." Minutes: "Arlene Hawkins requested to table the budget update/discussion" and "Heather Whitney moved to approve the agenda as amended, Atonya Hart seconded; unanimously approved". Not on the recording, but the chair refers back to it at 0:01:55: "We had earlier amended the agenda to table the budget update." A voice vote, at a meeting with a member on the telephone (flag 2). |
| — | II (cont.) | "Minutes Approval- 12.14.23." Minutes: "Heather Whitney moved to approve the minutes of 12.14.23 as written, Jennifer Gallagher seconded; unanimously approved". The document approved is the one filed in this meeting's own packet folder, and it is published. Approved "as written" — so the December 14 minutes' own three credits of roll calls to the clerk, and its clock times for a nonpublic session that does not appear in that recording, were adopted without amendment. Another voice vote (flag 2). |
| — | II (cont.) | "Citizens Comment". Minutes: "Citizens Comment- none". Not on the recording. It was scheduled and taken before the sixty-eight-minute nonpublic session and about seventy minutes before the only substantive votes of the night, on an agenda that gave the public no indication that a superintendent would be removed. See flag 13. |
| 0:00:11 | III. 5:40 PM | "Non-Public Session RSA 92-A:3,II", with the texts of exemptions (a) — dismissal, promotion, compensation or discipline of a public employee — and (c) — reputation — printed in full beneath it. The agenda letters them l. (a) and II. (c), using a lower-case L for the first Roman numeral. The chapter cited does not exist: Title VI of the RSAs runs from 91 to 103 and contains no chapter 92-A. The minutes repeat it in a sentence of their own: "Arlene Hawkins motioned to move into non-public under RSA 92-A:3,II, Frank Sprague seconded; roll call vote taken by Mike Koski, all members voting yes". See flag 3. The entry is off tape; the exit is the first business on the recording, at 0:00:11, timed by the minutes at 6:48 PM. Minutes sealed thirty years (flag 4, flag 7). |
| — | IV. 6:45 PM — 1 | "Budget Update (Discussion)." Tabled before the meeting began, at the chair's request, and never reached. Nothing turned on it: the FY25 SAU budget of $2,489,151.03 had been adopted on December 14, inside the deadline RSA 194-C:9, I sets, and this board had no further budget act to perform. |
| 0:01:55 | IV — 2a | "Policies: (Action) a. BGAA- Policy Development, Adoption, and Review (second read/adoption)." Moved by Rocco Ruggeri at 0:02:25 and seconded by Shannon Popescu, as both the recording and the minutes have it. Whitney Skillen objects that the printed copy has no title on it; the chair thanks her and puts the question anyway. Minutes: "Discussion: policy name needs to be printed across the top of the policy document" and "Vote taken: unanimously adopted". A voice vote — "All in favor? Opposed. Abstention. Policy is adopted on January 11th, 2024." See flag 14, flag 18 and flag 2. |
| 0:03:19 | IV — 2b | "b. ACN - Nursing Mothers (first read)." The chair presents the NHSBA sample in the first person for the SAU policy committee, describing three committee revisions: district to be replaced by SAU; references to school buildings, principals, students and school nurses struck; and the optional district-provided hospital-grade pump struck. Moved by Ruggeri at 0:04:55; the minutes name Atonya Hart as seconder. Skillen then raises the choice the sample leaves open and the chair states the committee's recommendation of option two — paid nursing periods. Minutes: "Vote taken: unanimously approved; moves to second read". Another voice vote. See flag 15, flag 19 and flag 8. |
| 0:06:15 | IV — 3 | "Superintendent". That is the whole of the agenda item — one word, no verb, no vote marker, no exhibit. Under it the board terminated the superintendent's contract with six months' severance effective January 12, 2024, and appointed an interim superintendent effective the same day. Both motions were made by the chair and seconded by the vice chair; both carried on a roll call the minutes record as ten in favour, Marjorie Erickson opposed, Shannon Popescu abstaining; no member spoke to either motion and no tally was announced for either (flag 10). New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law requires notice of a meeting's time and place, not an agenda, so the thinness of this line is not a violation — it is what the public was given. See flag 11 and flag 13. |
| 0:09:23 | V. 7:45 PM | "Future Dates/Future Agenda Items:" — the agenda lists three: "a) Claremont Board Meeting 1.17.24 b) SAU#6 Board Meeting 2.8.24 c) Unity Board Meeting 2.13.24". The chair reads a fourth into the record that the agenda omits, and the minutes then carry all four, inserting "b) Budget Deliberative Session 9:00am 2.3.24 (snow date of 2.10.24)". On the recording she explains the change: the deliberative session "is being moved from midweek to Saturday, so that more members of the public may be able to attend and have their voices be heard." See flag 20. "Future Agenda Items:" is blank on the agenda and in the minutes; the chair asks for them at 0:10:23 and gets none. |
| 0:10:40 | VI. 7:50 PM | "Other Business / Adjournment." No other business was offered. Ruggeri moves to adjourn, Erickson seconds on the telephone, and the chair puts it as a voice vote — "All those in favor?… All those opposed." Minutes: "Rocco Ruggeri motioned to adjourn, Atonya Hart seconded; unanimously approved", which is the one place the minutes and the recording name different seconders. The meeting closes at about 6:59 PM by the recording and 6:55 PM by the minutes, against an agenda that ran to 7:50. |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue transcript at Output/Dialogue/15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV (78 rows, 1,338 words), checked line by line against the board's draft minutes, the agenda and the two policy documents in the packet. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording. Transcript speech is quoted verbatim, ASR errors included; anything quoted from the agenda, the minutes, a policy or a statute is attributed to that document. This recording is continuous and its positions are usable as clock times — add about 6 hours 48 minutes — but it covers only the last eleven minutes of a meeting that had already run about seventy-eight.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:07 | The file opens on the way out of nonpublic session | The first words on the recording are the chair's: "Thank you folks for your patience for us to return, Mr. Sprague." There is no cold open, no room noise before it and no entry into nonpublic session anywhere in the file. Everything the agenda scheduled between 5:30 and 6:45 — the call to order, the Pledge, the roll, the agenda amendment, the approval of the December 14 minutes, citizens' comments and the nonpublic session itself — is outside this recording. "For us to return" is the only thing on tape that acknowledges the session that had just ended. | |
| 0:00:11 | The motion to come back into public session | Frank Sprague, in his only attributed row of the evening: "Like, make a motion that we come out of nonpublic." The chair: "Roll call. Vote." The minutes render it "Frank Sprague Motioned to move out of non-public at 6:48pm, Rocco Ruggeri seconded" — the seconder is not audible on the recording, and 6:48 PM is the anchor that fixes this file to the clock. | |
| 0:00:21 | First roll call — and the first sign that a member cannot hear | The chair reads it herself: "To vote to return to public session. Roll call. Vote to return to public. Arlene Hawkins. Yes." The second name comes through as "Afterwards." — this corpus's recurring ASR form for Rocco Ruggeri. At Marjorie Erickson's name the roll stops, and a voice in the room says "You're gonna have to say it loud or she can't hear you." The chair repeats the question down the line: "All right. Marjorie Erickson to come back to session March. Okay." This is a minute into the recording and about seventy-eight minutes into the meeting, and it is the first of two audible failures of the telephone link. | HIGH |
| 0:00:39 | "I vote yes" | Erickson answers from the telephone. The roll then runs the remaining nine names inside the chair's own row — "Marjorie Rhodes. Yes. Thank you. Shannon. Yes. Kelly Simpson. Yes. Tanya. Hurt. Yes. Frank Sprague. Yes. Bonnie. Miles. Yes. Whitney. Candace. Crawford. Yes. Jennifer Gallagher. Yes. Heather. Whitney. Yes." "Marjorie Rhodes" is the ASR repeating Erickson's name as the reader confirms her answer; "Tanya. Hurt." is Atonya Hart. Note that Whitney Skillen's slot draws no audible answer here: the reader says "Whitney." and moves on to "Candace." | |
| 0:00:57 | Thirty years, and one unanswered question about it | "Do I have a motion to seal the minutes?" The motion, the query and the second are all absorbed into the chair's row and cannot be assigned to voices: "I like to make a motion. We feel the minutes for 30 years. For what, 30 years? 30 and second. Second. Heather. Okay." "We feel the minutes" is the ASR's rendering of we seal the minutes, a garble this corpus attests elsewhere. The minutes name Bonnie Miles as mover and Heather Whitney as seconder, and the audible "Heather." supports the second. Someone asks "For what, 30 years?" and gets no answer; on December 14 the same chair asked the same kind of question about a ninety-nine-year seal and also got none. No statutory ground was stated by anyone. | MEDIUM |
| 0:01:12 | The roll on the seal — the one roll the recording cannot resolve | "May we have a roll call? Vote to seal the minutes for 30 years." Again read by the chair. Two slots do not come through cleanly. In Erickson's the file has "Marjorie Erickson. No. No. Yes, it is now. Yes. Yes." — six words of answer where every other member gets one. In Popescu's, the reader says "Shannon." and there is about two seconds of silence before "Kelly Simpson. Yes." The minutes record the motion as carrying with "all members voting yes". This page reports what each source says and settles neither. | MEDIUM |
| 0:01:46 | Back to the agenda, minus the budget | "Moving on to Roman numeral for discussion. Action items we had earlier amended." Then: "We had earlier amended the agenda to table the budget update. And so we will move on to item number two. Policies. There are two policies tonight in your packet. And you did receive them electronically prior to tonight's meeting." Both policy documents are in the public folder as well as the members' inboxes, created two days earlier. | POSITIVE |
| 0:01:55 | Policy BGAA, second read | "Policy BGAA which is the policy development adoption and review. This is the second read with a vote, hopefully a vote for adoption." The document in the packet is the SAU's own text, four pages, ending "District Policy History: First reading: 12/14/2023 / Second reading/adopted:" — with the second line left blank. Its paragraph E.5 is the rule the board is following: a policy read once "shall be placed on the agenda for a second (or additional) reading, and action" at the next board meeting. December 14 to January 11 is the next meeting. | POSITIVE |
| 0:02:25 | Moved and seconded | Rocco Ruggeri: "I'll make a motion to a, adopt and as a second read and adopt policy BG a a policy development, adoption and review." The chair: "Shannon. Shannon. Seconds. Got it. Is there any discussion on the motion?" The minutes agree — "Rocco Ruggeri made a motion to move to a second read and adoption of policy BGAA, Shannon Popescu seconded" — which is one of the few motions at this meeting where the recording independently confirms both names. | POSITIVE |
| 0:02:43 | "It needs to have the title of the policy at the top" | Whitney Skillen: "Don't know what the if the if the online version looks like this printed version, but it needs to have the title of the policy at the top. Oh, just has the policy. This is just a school board policy. And the code." She is exactly right about the document: the packet copy is headed "SAU#6 School Board Policy BGAA / Related Policy: BEDH" and nowhere carries the policy's name. Paragraph E.6 of the very policy being adopted says that "Prior to final approval by the Board, each policy will be titled, dated, and coded". | OBSERVATION POSITIVE |
| 0:02:54 | Adopted, untitled, on a voice vote | "Thank you. As chair of the Claremont Policy Committee, you're very much in tune with that. So thank you for that. Catch. Any other discussion? All in favor? Opposed. Abstention. Policy is adopted on January 11th, 2024." The correction is not made a condition of the motion; the minutes record it as discussion and then "Vote taken: unanimously adopted". No count, and no roll call at a meeting where a member was on the telephone. | HIGH OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:19 | Policy ACN, Nursing Mothers — first read | "The second policy before you is a first read the. You will have in front of you the sample policy from the New Hampshire School Board Association with highlights to make it easier for us to follow. The adoption revision notes will not be part of the policy itself. The policy is required as of the federal and state legislatures for 2023." The minutes compress this to "Policy is required by state legislature". The federal half was right on the night; the state half was not yet in force. See flag 15. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:46 | From district to SAU | "The title of the policy is Nursing Mothers accommodation to accommodate anyone who is employed by the Saw and if they are in nursing. Mother." Then the first committee revision: "you'll notice there are some highlights in green around the word district. The purpose of that highlight is to change the word district to read essay. Since this is an essay policy, not a specific district policy." the Saw and essay are both the ASR's renderings of SAU; this corpus attests a dozen more. The distinction is real: SAU 6 and its two member districts are different employers of different staff. | |
| 0:04:14 | The school-nurse references, and the hospital-grade pump | "All other references to schools building principals or students for school nurses has a strike through as you see it." Then the second revision: "the other revision that the policy committee for the essay discuss and felt that we would not include was the a a district provided saw provided hospital grade pump. So that has been you'll see a strike through for that one." Both cuts follow the NHSBA sample's own instructions rather than departing from them: the sample marks its item D.5 "items 5 is optional, delete/modify as desired", and its adoption note tells districts that choose not to cover students to remove "reference to students in section A and to the two references to the school nurse". Neither the federal statute nor the New Hampshire one requires an employer-provided pump. | |
| 0:04:48 | A committee that left no record | "Based on the conversation and recommendation from the policy committee." Three separate committee decisions have now been reported to the public in the first person by its chair — the substitution of SAU for district, the striking of the school-nurse and student references, and the striking of the pump — and a fourth follows at 0:05:20. No notice, agenda or minutes of any meeting of the SAU 6 policy committee exists in either district share. | MEDIUM |
| 0:04:55 | Moved for a first read | Ruggeri: "I'd like to make a motion to accept a c n nursing mothers as a first read second." The word second at the end of his own row is a second speaker clipped into it; the minutes name Atonya Hart. Chair: "Any discussion?" | |
| 0:05:08 | "Option one or option two" | Skillen again: "Bring this to discuss if we want to choose option one or option two. And for under section C, of the. Thank you." The NHSBA sample does put the choice in its section C, in capitals — "[CHOOSE ONE OF TWO OPTIONS]" — and the version in the packet still has both. The motion on the floor was to accept the policy as a first read with that choice unmade. | POSITIVE |
| 0:05:20 | Option two: paid | "Good call. Thank you for pointing that out. The committee reviewed this and is recommending option two, where the mother will be paid during the nursing periods, and they will not be required to make up the time related to the time used for nursing pumping. That was the record. Thank you for catching that. Any other discussion?" That is the more generous of the two options the sample offers, and it goes beyond what either the federal PUMP Act or New Hampshire's own later statute requires. | POSITIVE |
| 0:05:45 | Carried to a second read | "All those in favor of the motion with the recommended changes? All in favor? I posed abstentions. So this policy will move to a second read for our next meeting." "I posed abstentions" is the ASR's rendering of Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. — a garble this corpus attests repeatedly. Minutes: "Vote taken: unanimously approved; moves to second read". A second voice vote in four minutes. | HIGH |
| 0:06:03 | "Discussion item number three" | "I'm moving on to discussion item number three." Nine seconds of silence follow. On the agenda, item number three is the word "Superintendent". Nothing is said to introduce it, no report is given, no recommendation is read, and no member is recognised. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:06:15 | The motion to terminate the superintendent's contract | The chair reads it herself: "I'm going to make a motion that, in accordance with paragraph nine of the contract between the board and Michael Tempesta, that the Saw board terminate his contract by paying six months severance pay and benefits, with the effective date of separation being January 12th, 2024. Do I have a second?" The minutes give the same words with "SAU Board" where the ASR has "the Saw board". No reason is stated, and no member speaks to the motion at any point. Paragraph nine of a contract nobody reads aloud is the whole of the stated authority. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:06:42 | Seconded, and the roll handed to the clerk | Ruggeri: Second. The chair: "The secretary take a roll call. Vote, please." The clerk then reads it — "Roll call. Vote to approve the motion. Arlene. Hopkins. Yes. Rocco. Jerry. Yes. Marjorie. Erickson. Marge." The office the chair names is vacant; the person who answers to it is the clerk. This is the first of the evening's two clerk-read rolls, and the point at which the members' answers begin to separate out of the reader's own rows. | MEDIUM MEDIUM |
| 0:06:58 | "No idea what's being voted on. I can't hear you." | Erickson, called on the motion to remove a superintendent, in full: "No idea what's being voted on. I can't hear you." The chair: "It's to." The clerk: "Say whether you." The roll stops for forty-three seconds. This is the second audible failure of the telephone link in eleven minutes of recording, and it happens at the decisive vote. | HIGH |
| 0:07:04 | The motion is read into a telephone | "Would you like me to repeat the the motion that was. Let's let's make sure she's going to read it. If you bring. Let's get it. Make sure that the. Motion into the phone. Right into the phone. Thank you sir." Then the whole motion again: "I move that in accordance with paragraph nine of the contract between the Saw board and Michael Tempesta, that the Saw board terminate his contract by paying six months severance pay and benefits, with the effective date of separation being January 12th, 2024?" A handset is being held to the microphone, or the microphone to a handset; the record does not say which, and names nobody but sir. | HIGH |
| 0:07:41 | "Okay, I vote no." | Erickson's vote, four words, the only one cast against the termination. The chair immediately checks the record — "Did the secretary record that? Thank you. I'm going to leave this here for the next one. Okay." — and leaves the handset in place for the second motion. Erickson: "You are Lane." Chair: "Oh you're welcome." "You are Lane" is the ASR's rendering of Thank you, Arlene; the reply confirms it. | POSITIVE |
| 0:07:52 | The rest of the roll, and the abstention | "Shannon, you. I'm abstaining from this. Kelly Simpson. Yes. Yes. Frank Sprague. Yes. Bonnie. Miles. Yes. Whitney. Skilling. Yes. Candice. Crawford. Yes. Jennifer Gallagher. Yes. Heather. Whitney. Yes." The doubled "Yes. Yes." after Kelly Simpson is Atonya Hart's answer with her name swallowed. The minutes give the result in full: ten in favour by name, "opposing: Marjorie Erickson; abstaining: Shannon Popescu". | POSITIVE |
| 0:08:11 | "The motion passes" — and the appointment of an interim superintendent | Three words, no count: "The motion passes." Then, without pause: "I would now like to read motion number two. I move that the Saw board appoint Christopher Pratt as interim superintendent of schools effective January 12th, 2024, and authorized the chair of the Saw board and legal counsel to negotiate a contract with him for subsequent approval by the SA board. We need a roll call. Vote, please." That is the entire public treatment of the appointment: no qualifications, no search, no question, no discussion, and the contract terms delegated to two people. | OBSERVATION OBSERVATION |
| 0:08:40 | The second arrives after the vote has been called | Ruggeri: Second. Chair: "Oh. I'm sorry." Clerk: "That's okay." Chair: "I apologize." Ruggeri: "I snuck it." Chair: "In there." The chair had called for the roll before asking for a second; the minutes tidy the sequence to "Rocco Ruggeri seconded the motion." The clerk restarts: "Thank you. Motion to approve." Chair: "To appoint Christopher Pratt." | |
| 0:08:50 | The roll on the appointment | "As a vote to approve the motion to appoint Christopher Pratt. Arlene Hawkins. Yes. Rocco. Ruggieri." — Ruggeri answering for himself this time — then "Marjorie. Erickson." and, from the telephone, No. The clerk repeats it: "No. Shannon. Abstain. Kelly. Simpson. Yes." Hart answers Yes. at 0:09:06, and the remaining six run through in eight seconds. Erickson votes without the motion being re-read this time; nothing on the record says whether she heard it. | HIGH |
| 0:09:15 | "Yes. The motion passes." | Heather Whitney's answer and the chair's declaration share a single diarized segment; the dialogue file assigns both to the chair, and this page does not split them. Again no count is announced, and the minutes again record all twelve votes by name. From the first word of motion one to the declaration on motion two: just over three minutes. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:09:23 | Future dates — and the deliberative session moves to a Saturday | "I'd like to move to item number five. Future dates and future agenda items. You'll see on this the Claremont board meeting for next week, which will be the approval of the budget by. Correct. Then Claremont will have the deliberative meeting. It is being moved from midweek to Saturday, so that more members of the public may be able to attend and have their voices be heard." The date is not on this agenda; the minutes add it as "Budget Deliberative Session 9:00am 2.3.24 (snow date of 2.10.24)". | POSITIVE |
| 0:09:50 | The snow date, and the next SAU meeting | "There is a snow date of February 10th at 9 a.m.. I believe it's at the high school. My. Yes. Thank you. The next is a. You board meeting is February 8th. Yes." Skillen: "What time is the deliberative session?" Chair: "I believe." then "It's 9 a.m.." Erickson, from the telephone: "So both the snow date and the." Chair: Yes. Erickson: "Okay. Thank you." Both dates fall inside the window RSA 40:13, III fixes. | POSITIVE |
| 0:10:12 | Unity, February 13 | "And the last board meeting that is listed under future dates is the Unity Board meeting of February 13th, 2024." The Unity School Board is the other half of this joint board; its own meetings are outside this project's coverage and outside CCTV Channel 8's. | |
| 0:10:23 | Nothing offered for a future agenda | "Do we have any future agenda items or any other future dates from anyone present this evening? Any board member or the administration?" Three seconds of silence, then: "No future agenda items. Do I have a motion to adjourn?" On the night a superintendent was removed and a successor named, no member asked for anything to be put on the next agenda. | |
| 0:10:40 | Adjournment | Ruggeri: "Like to make a motion to adjourn?" Erickson, from the telephone: Second. Chair: "All those in favor?" One voice: Aye. Chair: "All those opposed?" and again "All those opposed." A voice: "This is for abstentions." Chair: "Thank you. Meeting is by adjourned. Thank you." The minutes name Atonya Hart as the seconder, not Erickson. The last voice vote of five. | HIGH |
| 0:10:57 | After the gavel | Four seconds after the gavel the recording is still running. A voice says "Thank you. Our lane. Yes. Thank you. Oh." and the chair replies to the telephone: "Well, I'm glad you're able to be a part of the meeting." It is the last sentence in the file, and it is addressed to the member who had told the board twice that she could not hear it. | HIGH |
Items flagged for review
These are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each card names the rule it rests on and links to the primary source; where no verified rule supports a concern it is labelled an observation or reported as a speaker's characterization. Provisions are cited in the version in force on January 11, 2024, which matters here: RSA 91-A:2 and RSA 91-A:3 had both been amended fourteen weeks earlier, effective October 3, 2023; paragraph IV of RSA 194-C:9 did not yet exist; and the New Hampshire nursing-mothers statute the board was told required its new policy would not take effect for another eighteen months. Positive findings are included: a page that only accuses is not a record. Cards run HIGH, then MEDIUM, then OBSERVATION, then POSITIVE.
HIGH A member took part by telephone and twice said on the record that she could not hear — once at the vote removing a superintendent — and the minutes state no reason for her attending remotely
RSA 91-A:2, III lets a public body allow electronic participation, "subject to the provisions of this paragraph". Two of those provisions were not met here.
Subparagraph (a): the reason must be in the minutes. "A member of the public body may participate in a meeting other than by attendance in person at the location of the meeting only when such attendance is not reasonably practical," and "Any reason that such attendance is not reasonably practical shall be stated in the minutes of the meeting." The minutes of this meeting say, in full: "Present via phone: Marjorie Erickson". No reason is given, and none is offered on the recording. The requirement is not a formality — it is the only mechanism by which the public learns that remote attendance was permissible at all.
Subparagraph (c): the member must be able to hear. "Each member participating electronically or otherwise must be able to simultaneously hear each other and speak to each other during the meeting." The recording contains two audible failures in eleven minutes. At 0:00:21, on the roll to return to public session, a voice in the room says "You're gonna have to say it loud or she can't hear you." At 0:06:58, called to vote on the motion terminating the superintendent's contract, the member says "No idea what's being voted on. I can't hear you." The roll then stops for forty-three seconds while the motion is read into a handset. Whatever she could or could not hear during the sixty-eight minutes of nonpublic session that preceded this is not recoverable from any public source.
Two things cut the other way and are recorded here as such. Subparagraph (b) was satisfied — "Except in an emergency, a quorum of the public body shall be physically present at the location specified in the meeting notice as the location of the meeting" — because eleven of twelve members were in the room. And the chair's own handling was careful: she stopped the roll, had the motion re-read, asked "Did the secretary record that?", left the handset in place for the second motion, and closed the meeting by telling the member "Well, I'm glad you're able to be a part of the meeting." The defect is in the arrangement and in the record of it, not in anyone's attention to the member.
The consequence is narrow but real. The only member who voted against removing the superintendent is the member who had just said she did not know what was being voted on, and the only public record of why she was on a telephone at all is that she was.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, III(a), (b), (c) (2023 codification — the text in force on this date); RSA 91-A:2 (current text and source note; paragraph III applies to public bodies generally, paragraph IV only to state-government bodies); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 ("Present via phone: Marjorie Erickson"); dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV.
HIGH Five of the evening's ten motions were decided by voice vote, at a meeting where the statute required every vote to be a roll call
RSA 91-A:2, III(e) is one sentence: "All votes taken during such a meeting shall be by roll call vote." "Such a meeting" is a meeting at which the body has allowed a member to participate electronically — which this was, from before the recording begins until after it ends. The rule admits no exception for routine or unanimous business.
The minutes record ten motions. Five were roll calls and are labelled as such: entering nonpublic session ("roll call vote taken by Mike Koski"), returning to public, sealing the minutes, terminating the superintendent's contract, and appointing the interim superintendent. The other five were not. Approval of the amended agenda and approval of the December 14 minutes are recorded as "unanimously approved" with no roll mentioned; the adoption of policy BGAA and the first read of policy ACN as "Vote taken: unanimously adopted" and "Vote taken: unanimously approved"; and the adjournment as "unanimously approved".
Three of those five are on the recording and are audibly voice votes. Policy BGAA at 0:02:54: "All in favor? Opposed. Abstention. Policy is adopted on January 11th, 2024." Policy ACN at 0:05:45: "All those in favor of the motion with the recommended changes? All in favor? I posed abstentions." Adjournment at 0:10:40: "All those in favor?" answered by a single audible Aye. The other two are off tape, but the minutes' own drafting separates them from the five they expressly call roll calls.
The point is not that anyone would have voted differently. It is that on a night when a member could demonstrably not always hear the room (flag 1), the statutory device designed to capture each member's vote individually was used for half the business and not the other half — and one of the motions carried on a voice vote adopted a district policy.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, III(e) (2023 codification — "All votes taken during such a meeting shall be by roll call vote"); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (ten motions, five labelled roll calls); dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV.
MEDIUM The nonpublic session was noticed and minuted under "RSA 92-A:3,II" — a chapter of New Hampshire law that does not exist. In December only the agenda carried the error; here the minutes carry it too
Item III of the posted agenda reads "5:40 PM Non-Public Session RSA 92-A:3,II", with the texts of exemptions (a) and (c) printed beneath it. There is no RSA chapter 92-A. Title VI of the Revised Statutes Annotated runs from chapter 91 to chapter 103; chapter 91-A is "Access to Governmental Records and Meetings" and chapter 92 is "Tenure and Oath of Office in Certain Cases". The chapter that governs nonpublic sessions is 91-A, and this page does not repair the district's citation on its behalf.
What is new here is where else it appears. The December 14 agenda carried the same bad citation and the December 14 minutes carried the correct one. The January 11 minutes carry the bad one, in a sentence the clerk composed rather than inherited from the agenda template: "Arlene Hawkins motioned to move into non-public under RSA 92-A:3,II, Frank Sprague seconded; roll call vote taken by Mike Koski, all members voting yes."
That matters because of what RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires: "Any motion to enter nonpublic session shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II which is relied upon as foundation for the nonpublic session." The only record of the motion's face is that sentence, and the statute it names does not exist. The mitigation, and it is a real one, is that the agenda printed the full text of exemptions (a) and (c) directly beneath the heading, so a reader of the public notice could identify the grounds actually relied on even though the citation was wrong. The motion is not on the recording, which begins after the session had ended, so nothing can be added from the tape.
Sources: RSA Title VI chapter list (there is no chapter 92-A); RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (the motion must state the specific exemption on its face); SAU 6 School Board Agenda 1.11.24, item III; draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24; the December 14 page, flag 3.
MEDIUM The record of why a superintendent was removed was sealed for thirty years, with none of the three statutory grounds stated and the one question asked about the term left unanswered
RSA 91-A:3, III permits a seal only where, "by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session, it is determined that divulgence of the information likely would affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself, or render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism". The vote here was recorded, was taken in public and was by roll call. The determination is missing. On the recording the whole of the motion, at 0:00:57, is "I like to make a motion. We feel the minutes for 30 years." Someone asks "For what, 30 years?" and no answer follows. The minutes record it as "Bonnie Miles made a motion to seal the minutes for 30 years, Heather Whitney seconded" and say nothing about grounds.
This is the third consecutive nonpublic session of this board sealed without a stated ground — ninety-nine years on December 7, ninety-nine on December 14, thirty here — and on each occasion the only thing said about the number was a question about how large it was.
Vintage matters. RSA 91-A:3, IV was added by 2023, 189:1, effective October 3, 2023, one hundred days before this meeting. Absent an adopted review procedure, a public body must review a seal and vote on whether the paragraph III circumstances still apply "no more than 10 years from the last time the public body voted to prevent the minutes from being subject to public disclosure". A thirty-year seal is not unlawful, but under the paragraph then newly in force it cannot in fact run thirty years unreviewed: the review on these minutes falls due in January 2034. Nothing in this record indicates the board knew that, and no such review procedure appears in policy BGAA, the governance policy it adopted the same evening.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III and IV (2/3 recorded vote plus a determination on one of three grounds; ten-year review, added 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023 — source note ends there, so this is the text in force); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (the seal motion); the December 7 page, flag 8; the December 14 page, flag 6.
MEDIUM The minutes credit the clerk with three roll calls; the recording has the chair reading two of them and the clerk reading two — and this file contains both shapes side by side
The minutes say "roll call vote taken by Noelle Kronberg" three times: on the return to public session, on the thirty-year seal, and on the two superintendent motions. The recording supports it for the superintendent motions and contradicts it for the first two.
The distinction is visible rather than inferred, because both patterns occur in the same eleven minutes. On the first two rolls, at 0:00:21 and 0:01:12, the reader says her own name first and answers it — "Arlene Hawkins. Yes." — and every member's answer is absorbed into her diarized rows, which is what a chair-read roll looks like in this corpus. On the third and fourth, the chair first cues it aloud at 0:06:45: "The secretary take a roll call. Vote, please." A different voice takes over — "Roll call. Vote to approve the motion. Arlene. Hopkins. Yes." — and from that moment the members' answers separate out into rows of their own, which is what a clerk-read roll looks like. The December 14 page predicted exactly this file as the demonstration case.
No statute requires the clerk rather than the chair to call a roll, so this is not a violation of a rule about roll calls. It is an accuracy problem in the only official record of a meeting whose central act was the removal of a superintendent. Where the minutes and the recording disagree this project prefers the minutes on names, spellings and tallies; on who was speaking at a given second, the recording is the better evidence.
Sources: draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (three roll calls credited to the clerk); dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV; the December 14 page, flag 5; RSA 91-A:2, II (what minutes must contain).
MEDIUM The minutes of the meeting that removed a superintendent reached the public share on February 13, 2024 — twenty-five days past the deadline, and thirty-three days after the meeting
RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to be "promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". January 11, 2024 was a Thursday. Counting business days — Friday the 12th, then Tuesday the 16th because Monday the 15th was Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Day, a legal holiday under RSA 288:1, then the 17th, 18th and 19th — the fifth business day was Friday, January 19, 2024. The Drive record for draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (1).pdf gives a creation time of February 13, 2024 at about 8:59 a.m., in the packet folder 2. SAU 2.15.24 — twenty-five days past the deadline and two days before the meeting whose packet carried them.
The qualification is the same one this project applies elsewhere and is stated plainly: the statute speaks of minutes being open to public inspection, not of a file appearing in a Google Drive folder. The document may have been available at the SAU office earlier and nothing in this record says either way. What the Drive timestamp does establish is when the district's own public share got it.
The structural cause is this board's filing practice — a meeting's minutes go up with the next meeting's packet — which makes the five-business-day rule impossible to meet whenever the gap between meetings exceeds a week. The gap here was five weeks, because the SAU board's next meeting was February 15. The same practice put the December 14 minutes into the public share nineteen days late and lost the December 7 minutes entirely.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — 5 business days); RSA 288:1 (legal holidays; the third Monday in January is Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Day — source note ends 1999, 106:2); Drive file metadata for draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (1).pdf (created 2024-02-13, folder 2. SAU 2.15.24); the December 14 page, flag 4.
MEDIUM The minutes record the thirty-year seal as carrying with "all members voting yes"; on the recording one member's slot draws "No. No. Yes, it is now." and another's draws silence
The seal roll at 0:01:12 runs cleanly for ten of the twelve names, one word each. Two do not. Where the reader calls Marjorie Erickson — the member on the telephone — the file has "Marjorie Erickson. No. No. Yes, it is now. Yes. Yes." before moving on. Where she calls Shannon Popescu, the file has "Shannon." followed by about two seconds of silence and then "Kelly Simpson. Yes."
This page does not resolve it and does not assert that the minutes are wrong. Several readings of that fragment are available — a No heard and queried, a correction, a member being told it was now her turn — and the recording is not good enough to choose between them. What can be said is that the recording does not independently confirm the minutes' "all members voting yes" for these two members, in circumstances where one of them told the board twice that she could not hear it (flag 1) and the other went on to abstain on both substantive motions of the evening.
It matters because of what the vote decided: whether the only record of the deliberation that removed a superintendent would be public. A two-thirds recorded vote is the statutory threshold (flag 4), and twelve members present means eight votes. Even on the least favourable reading of the recording, the threshold was cleared. The uncertainty is about the completeness of the official record, not about the outcome.
Sources: draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 ("roll call vote taken by Noelle Kronberg, all members voting yes"); dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV and the diarized transcript's word-level timings; RSA 91-A:3, III (recorded vote of 2/3 of members present).
MEDIUM The SAU policy committee reviewed both policies, recommended a substantive choice and struck a provision — and left no notice, agenda or minutes anywhere
Four separate acts of the SAU 6 policy committee were reported to the public at this meeting, all in the first person by its chair and none of them documented anywhere: the substitution of SAU for district throughout policy ACN (0:03:46); the striking of the school-nurse and student references (0:04:14); the decision not to include an employer-provided hospital-grade pump, "Based on the conversation and recommendation from the policy committee" (0:04:48); and the recommendation of option two — paid nursing periods — over option one (0:05:20). That last recommendation is a decision about employee pay, taken by a subcommittee and adopted by the board on the same night it was announced.
RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) reaches the committee in terms: "public body" covers a school administrative unit "or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto". A public body owes notice under RSA 91-A:2, II and minutes open to inspection within five business days. The district's own Drive share carries a folder named Claremont Policy Sub Committee and it is empty, as are the three other subcommittee folders in that share — all four checked and found to hold zero files on 2026-08-29.
This is graded on the mitigated limb of the project's severity rule, consistently with the same finding on the December 14 and December 7 pages: the committee reported to the full board in public, its recommendations went into the minutes, and the board voted on them in open session. What is missing is everything else — when it met, who attended, and what was said before it settled on option two.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (subcommittees are public bodies); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice; minutes within 5 business days); dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV; the December 14 page, flag 7; the December 7 page, flag 6.
MEDIUM The chair asked "the secretary" to take the roll on the superintendent's termination; the office RSA 194-C:5, I requires had been vacant for the whole statutory year, and the person who answered holds a different one
RSA 194-C:5, I requires that the SAU board "shall meet between April 1 and June 1 in each year … and shall organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer." SAU 6 in January 2024 had a chair (Hawkins, elected July 13, 2023, outside the statutory window), a treasurer (Miles, elected August 17, 2023) and no secretary at any point. The agenda masthead prints "Arlene Hawkins-Chair, Rocco Ruggeri- Vice Chair" and "SAU#6 School Board Clerk- Noelle Kronberg" — two offices the statute does not name, and neither of the two it does name beyond the chair.
What this meeting adds is the office being invoked out loud at the decisive moment. The agenda line still reads "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members"; at 0:06:45 the chair says "The secretary take a roll call. Vote, please." and the clerk takes it; at 0:07:44, having secured the remote member's vote, the chair asks "Did the secretary record that?" The roll that removed a superintendent was called by a person holding an office the SAU statute does not create, at the request of a chair addressing an office nobody held.
Graded MEDIUM here rather than HIGH, and the reason is stated so the grading can be checked: the December 14 page carries this as an unmitigated HIGH because the board that night voted the money for a School Board Secretary line while leaving the office empty. This meeting adds no new act — it records the same vacancy in operation. The November 9 and December 7 pages carry the same finding.
Sources: RSA 194-C:5, I (organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer; source note 1996, 298:3 — never amended); SAU 6 School Board Agenda 1.11.24 (masthead and the "Secretary Roll Call" line); the December 14 page, flag 2.
OBSERVATION Neither decisive vote had a tally announced — "The motion passes", twice, on a board where the two districts' voting strength is unequal by statute
The chair's entire declaration of the result, on both motions, is three words. At 0:08:11: "The motion passes." At 0:09:15: "Yes. The motion passes." No number is said aloud at any point in the meeting, on any of the five roll calls or any of the five voice votes. Anyone watching the broadcast learned that a superintendent had been removed and did not learn by how many votes.
No statute requires a public body to announce a count, so this is an observation and not a rule. It is worth recording for two reasons. The first is that the minutes fix it completely — they name every vote on both motions (flag 16) — but only for a reader who finds them, thirty-three days later, in the next meeting's packet folder (flag 6). The second is RSA 194-C:8, which makes voting strength on this board a live question: "In all votes regarding school administrative unit affairs, including the organization of such unit's school board and selection of officers, each district shall be entitled to one vote for each 16 pupils residing in that district and enrolled in schools under the administrative unit," with weighted votes used "only upon the demand of a majority of the members of any board present and voting". No such demand was made, so a per-member roll call was proper; but on a board of seven Claremont members and five Unity members, a result stated only as passes leaves the district split invisible. The minutes show it: the two members who did not vote in favour of either motion — Marjorie Erickson, dissenting, and Shannon Popescu, abstaining — are both Unity members, and the other three Unity members voted with all seven from Claremont.
Sources: dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV; draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (both votes recorded name by name); RSA 194-C:8 (weighted voting on demand of a majority).
OBSERVATION No public record anywhere says why the superintendent's contract was terminated, and the only deliberation is sealed until 2054
The complete public account of the reason is: nothing. The agenda says "Superintendent". The motion invokes "paragraph nine of the contract between the board and Michael Tempesta" without reading it, describing it, or saying what paragraph nine provides. No member spoke to the motion — not one word of debate appears between the motion at 0:06:15 and the declaration at 0:08:11 other than the roll and the interruption for the telephone. The minutes reproduce the motion and the votes and add nothing. The word RSA is never spoken; nor are reputation, personnel or litigation. And the deliberation that produced the motion is inside a nonpublic session sealed for thirty years (flag 4).
None of that is unlawful. A school administrative unit board may terminate a superintendent's contract according to that contract's own terms, may discuss it in nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a), and is under no statutory duty to state reasons in public. The observation is about the record, not the decision: the public record of the largest personnel action this body can take consists of one word of notice, two motions, twenty-four roll-call answers, and a seal.
One statutory detail is worth naming because the record cannot answer it. RSA 91-A:3, II(a) makes the exemption for "the dismissal, promotion, or compensation of any public employee, or the investigation of any charges against him or her" conditional: it applies "unless the employee affected (1) has the right to a public meeting, and (2) requests that the meeting be open, in which case the request shall be granted." Nothing in the agenda, the minutes or the recording shows whether the affected employee was told of that right or made such a request; the sealed minutes may or may not. This page does not infer that the condition was unmet — only that no public document addresses it.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, II(a) (the dismissal exemption and its condition); SAU 6 School Board Agenda 1.11.24, item IV.3; draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24; dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV.
OBSERVATION The one public document that names a start time names two of them, an hour apart
The agenda's heading block reads "January 11, 2024 6:30PM Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center". Item I of the same page reads "5:30 PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance", followed by general business at 5:35, the nonpublic session at 5:40, discussion and action items at 6:45, future dates at 7:45 and adjournment at 7:50. The two cannot both be right, and nothing in the packet or the minutes reconciles them.
The arithmetic favours 5:30. The agenda gave the nonpublic session sixty-five minutes, and the minutes record the board leaving it at 6:48 PM — three minutes past the schedule if the meeting opened at 5:30, and only eighteen minutes after the gavel if it opened at 6:30, which would leave no room at all for the hour and five minutes of nonpublic session the same agenda scheduled. The minutes record no clock time for the call to order, which is the one entry that would settle it; they carry times only from the exit from nonpublic session onward.
RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of a meeting's "time and place" posted at least 24 hours in advance. What was posted in those two places is not in evidence — only the packet agenda is — so no conclusion is drawn about the notice itself. What can be said is that a member of the public relying on the district's own posted agenda, and reading its heading rather than its first line, would have arrived an hour late, in the middle of a nonpublic session, having missed the citizens' comment period.
Sources: SAU 6 School Board Agenda 1.11.24 (heading block and item I); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (exit from nonpublic at 6:48 PM); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice of time and place, 24 hours).
OBSERVATION The public's chance to speak came about seventy-five minutes before the vote, and long before anything on the agenda suggested a superintendent would be removed
The agenda puts "Citizens Comment" at the end of item II, general business, scheduled for 5:35 PM — before the nonpublic session at 5:40 and before discussion and action items at 6:45. The minutes record the result: "Citizens Comment- none". By the time the board reached the item that removed a superintendent, the comment period had been closed for over an hour and the room had heard nothing to indicate that such a motion existed. A citizen who wished to speak to it had no opportunity to do so and no way to know one was needed.
Two limits on this observation are stated so it is not read as more than it is. First, New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law requires notice of time and place, not an agenda, and imposes no requirement that a public comment period follow rather than precede the business it might address. Second, RSA 189:74 — "School boards shall 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. The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes." — carries two open questions this project has consistently declined to resolve: whether it reaches an SAU board at all, as distinct from a school board, and whether the thirty minutes is a floor on the elapsed time or on the opportunity. Nobody was turned away and nobody appeared, so no violation is asserted on either reading.
Sources: SAU 6 School Board Agenda 1.11.24, item II; draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24; RSA 189:74 (School Board Public Comment Period; 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022).
OBSERVATION The governance policy the board adopted requires every policy to be titled and dated before final approval; the copy the board adopted carries no title and a blank adoption date
Policy BGAA, Policy Development, Adoption, and Review, was adopted at second read at 0:02:54. Its own paragraph E.6 reads: "Prior to final approval by the Board, each policy will be titled, dated, and coded consistent with the classification system used by the New Hampshire School Boards Association. Board action regarding the adoption, revision or repeal of policies will be included in the minutes of the meeting at which the official action is taken."
The copy in the packet folder is headed "SAU#6 School Board Policy BGAA" and "Related Policy: BEDH", and nowhere carries the policy's name. Its last lines read "District Policy History: First reading: 12/14/2023" and "Second reading/adopted:" — with the second entry blank. Whitney Skillen said so from the floor before the vote (0:02:43): "it needs to have the title of the policy at the top". The chair thanked her, put the question anyway, and the minutes recorded the point as discussion: "policy name needs to be printed across the top of the policy document".
This is a housekeeping defect, not a legal one, and it is recorded because of what it implies about the district's policy manual rather than about this meeting: the version of BGAA that reached the public share is not in the form BGAA itself prescribes, and no corrected version was filed with this packet. The district maintains a live policy index in Drive, which is the authoritative answer to what text is in force; this page reports the packet copy as it stands. One item later the equivalent problem was caught before it could bind: policy ACN went forward to a second read with the option-two choice settled on the record rather than left open inside the text (flag 18).
Sources: 2nd Read: SAU BGAA, Policy Development, Adoption, and Review (packet copy, paragraphs E.5 and E.6 and the District Policy History block); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24; dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV.
OBSERVATION The board was told the nursing-mothers policy was "required as of the federal and state legislatures for 2023". The federal law was in force; the New Hampshire statute would not take effect for another eighteen months
Introducing policy ACN at 0:03:19 the chair said: "The policy is required as of the federal and state legislatures for 2023." The minutes compress it to "Policy is required by state legislature". The NHSBA sample in the packet is more careful than either: its adoption note says that "Effective for 2023, both the state and federal legislatures (respectively, HB 358 and the Pump for Nursing Mothers ('PUMP') Act) passed laws mandating … accommodations in the workplace for employees who are nursing" — passed, not in force.
The federal half was right. The PUMP Act is codified at 29 U.S.C. §218d, added by Pub. L. 117–328, div. KK, §102(a)(2), December 29, 2022. It requires an employer to provide "a reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for such employee's nursing child for 1 year after the child's birth" and "a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public". That was law on January 11, 2024. The NHSBA sample's own legal-reference table cites it as "42 U.S.C. 218d"; the PUMP Act's Fair Labor Standards Act section is at 29 U.S.C. §218d. That is the sample's error, reproduced in the district's public packet.
The state half was not yet. New Hampshire's nursing-mothers subdivision — RSA 275:78 to 275:83, from HB 358, 2023 N.H. Laws ch. 191, signed in August 2023 — took effect July 1, 2025, with the penalty section a year after that. RSA 275:79, the section that actually mandates a policy, reads "Every employer shall adopt a policy to address the provision of sufficient space and reasonable break periods for nursing employees that need to express milk during working hours." The General Court's own source note on that section, and on the definitions and break-period sections beside it, reads "2023, 191:20, eff. July 1, 2025."
So the characterisation was imprecise, and in the direction that flatters the board rather than the reverse: it adopted the state-mandated policy about eighteen months before the mandate began, and it did so in a form that already satisfied the federal requirement that was binding. Worth adding for a later reader: when the state statute did arrive, it reached this employer. RSA 275:78, II defines "employer" as "a person, partnership, association, corporation, or legal representative of a person, partnership, association, or corporation, or the state or any of its political subdivisions, which has 6 or more employees working in the state" — unlike the "employer" definition in RSA 275:42, I, which governs a different subdivision of the same chapter and does not reach political subdivisions.
Sources: 29 U.S.C. §218d (PUMP Act; added Pub. L. 117-328, div. KK, §102(a)(2), Dec. 29, 2022); RSA 275:79 (Notification of Policies; source note 2023, 191:20, eff. July 1, 2025); RSA 275:78 (Definitions, including "employer"); NH HB 358 (2023), chaptered as 2023 N.H. Laws ch. 191; NHSBA Sample Priority Policy ACN, Nursing Mothers Accommodation (packet copy; adoption note and legal-reference table).
POSITIVE The decisions were made in open session on a recorded roll call, and the minutes name a mover and a seconder for all ten motions and every vote on both superintendent motions
The deliberation was nonpublic; the decision was not. Both superintendent motions were read aloud in full, in public, on a televised broadcast, and both were decided by roll call rather than by a show of hands or a voice vote. RSA 91-A:3 permits a body to discuss a dismissal in nonpublic session; nothing compelled this board to bring the motions back into the open and put them on the record, and it did.
The minutes go further than RSA 91-A:2, II requires. The statute asks for "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion" — a requirement in force since 2018, 244:1, effective January 1, 2019, and therefore binding here. These minutes supply it for every one of the ten motions of the evening, and then record both superintendent votes individually: "voting in favor of the motion: Arlene Hawkins, Rocco Ruggeri, Kelly Simpson, Atonya Hart, Frank Sprague, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen, Candace Crawford, Jennifer Gallagher, Heather Whitney; opposing: Marjorie Erickson; abstaining: Shannon Popescu". Nothing required that. It is the only reason the tally announced nowhere on the recording (flag 10) is recoverable at all.
The chair's own conduct at the roll belongs here too. Having had the motion re-read into a telephone for the one member who could not hear it, she stopped to check the record — "Did the secretary record that? Thank you. I'm going to leave this here for the next one." — and left the handset in place so the second motion would not have to be repeated. The dissent that resulted is the only vote against either motion, and it is in the minutes by name.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification; mover/seconder clause from 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019); RSA 91-A:3 (nonpublic sessions); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24.
POSITIVE The whole packet, agenda included, was public about fifty hours before the meeting — twice the notice the statute requires — and the members had it electronically as well
All four documents in 1. SAU 1.11.24 carry a Drive creation time of January 9, 2024 at about 2:27 p.m., within one second of each other: the agenda, the second-read text of policy BGAA, the NHSBA sample of policy ACN, and the December 14 draft minutes. RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of a meeting's time and place "at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings". It requires nothing at all about packets. Fifty hours ahead, with the two documents the board would actually vote on among them, is well beyond the floor.
The chair confirms the parallel distribution on the record at 0:01:55: "There are two policies tonight in your packet. And you did receive them electronically prior to tonight's meeting." Both statements check out against the folder. This is the same practice the December 7 and December 14 pages credited, now three meetings in a row.
Sources: Drive file metadata for all four items in 1. SAU 1.11.24 (created 2024-01-09); RSA 91-A:2, II (24 hours' notice).
POSITIVE Both policies were read twice as the board's own draft procedure requires, and one member's questions from the floor changed what was adopted and what will be
Policy BGAA had its first reading on December 14 and its second and adoption here, which is precisely what paragraph E.5 of BGAA itself prescribes: "At the next Board meeting (or a later meeting if so agreed by the Board), the policy shall be placed on the agenda for a second (or additional) reading, and action." The board followed a procedure it had not yet formally adopted, in the act of adopting it. Policy ACN was taken as a first read only and pushed to a second, as E.2 and E.5 together contemplate.
Whitney Skillen, chair of the Claremont board's policy sub-committee, is the only member other than the chair and the movers to speak to either item, and she intervened on both. On BGAA at 0:02:43 she caught that the printed copy carried no policy title, which the minutes recorded as a correction to be made for the manual (flag 14). On ACN at 0:05:08 she caught something with more consequence: "Bring this to discuss if we want to choose option one or option two. And for under section C, of the." The NHSBA sample does leave a bracketed "[CHOOSE ONE OF TWO OPTIONS]" in its section C, and the copy in the packet still contains both. The motion on the floor would have carried the policy to a second read with the choice unmade. The chair's answer — "Good call. Thank you for pointing that out." — put the committee's recommendation of option two on the record, and the minutes carry it into the version that goes forward.
Sources: 2nd Read: SAU BGAA (paragraphs E.2 and E.5); NHSBA Sample Policy ACN (section C, "[CHOOSE ONE OF TWO OPTIONS]"); _CSB Agenda 1.17.24 (which lists "Policy Sub-Committee Subcommittee Chair Whitney Skillen"); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24; dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV.
POSITIVE Of the two options its sample policy offered, the board took the one that pays employees during nursing breaks — more than either the federal statute or the state's then-future one requires
The NHSBA sample's section C sets out the choice. Option 1: an hourly nursing mother "will not be paid during nursing periods unless either (a) the nursing period falls during a regular paid break (e.g., a paid lunch), or she is not completely relieved of duties during the nursing break." Option 2: she "will be paid during nursing periods", and "Nursing mothers shall not be required to 'make up' time relating to the use of unpaid nursing periods."
At 0:05:20 the chair reported the committee's recommendation: "The committee reviewed this and is recommending option two, where the mother will be paid during the nursing periods, and they will not be required to make up the time related to the time used for nursing pumping." The minutes carry it: "committee recommends option 2- mothers will be paid and not have to make up the time."
Option 1 is the statutory floor restated. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act as amended by the PUMP Act, break time to express milk need not be compensated unless the employee is not completely relieved of duty or the break coincides with an otherwise paid break; New Hampshire's RSA 275:81, when it took effect in July 2025, addressed only the employer's inability to require that unpaid break time be made up. Option 2 goes past both. The board chose it on a recommendation nobody in the room questioned, at a meeting whose other business was the removal of its superintendent.
Sources: NHSBA Sample Policy ACN, section C (options 1 and 2) and endnote iv; 29 U.S.C. §218d; RSA 275:81 (Reasonable Break Period; eff. July 1, 2025); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24.
POSITIVE The budget deliberative session was moved from a weeknight to a Saturday so that more people could attend — and both it and its snow date fall inside the window RSA 40:13, III allows
At 0:09:23 the chair reported the change and its purpose in one sentence: the deliberative meeting "is being moved from midweek to Saturday, so that more members of the public may be able to attend and have their voices be heard." The date is not on this agenda; the minutes add it, as "Budget Deliberative Session 9:00am 2.3.24 (snow date of 2.10.24)", and the Claremont School Board's own agenda six days later prints "Deliberative Session 2.3.24 (Snow date 2.10.24)".
The scheduling is the Claremont school district's rather than this board's, and it was announced here. For a district that has adopted the official ballot referendum form, RSA 40:13, III fixes when the first session of the annual meeting may be held: "between the first and second Saturdays following the last Monday in January, inclusive of those Saturdays", or the equivalent windows in February or March. The last Monday in January 2024 was the 29th; the first Saturday following was February 3 and the second was February 10. The session and its snow date are the two ends of that window, so a postponement for weather would not have carried the meeting outside it. RSA 40:13's source note ends "2019, 192:2, eff. July 10, 2019", so its current text is the text that governed.
The comparison with the previous year is the point. The 2023 deliberative session was held on Wednesday, February 8; this one moved to 9 a.m. on a Saturday, for a stated reason, and the reason given was public attendance.
Sources: RSA 40:13, III (first session between the first and second Saturdays following the last Monday in January, inclusive; source note 2019, 192:2); draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (future dates); _CSB Agenda 1.17.24 (future dates); dialogue transcript 15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV.
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
- Remote video: Cablecast show 15523, broadcast on CCTV Channel 8 as the agenda's own heading states. Every timestamp on this page links into this recording with &seekto= plus the second. The show's own title reads "SAU 6 Board Meeting 1/11/23" — a year wrong — while the same record's event date field reads 2024-01-11. The title is Cablecast's; MAP.md reproduces it verbatim and is not in error. The local copy runs 11:40 and the dialogue transcript's last row ends at 0:11:00. Unlike the December 14 and December 20 recordings, this file is not an edit: it starts on the return from nonpublic session and runs continuously through the gavel — the last speech in the transcript is four seconds after it, and the published file continues about another forty seconds with nothing transcribed — and its positions reconcile with the minutes' clock times to within about four minutes across the whole file. Recording positions are therefore usable as clock times with an offset of about 6 hours 48 minutes. What the file does not contain is the first seventy-eight minutes of the meeting, including the entire nonpublic session.
- Packet folder: 1. SAU 1.11.24 — 4 items, in the SAU 6 Schoolboard Packets share, not the Claremont School Board packet share. The item count is MAP.md's, taken from a browser enumeration of the folder rather than from the Drive search API. Drive creation timestamps are given below because they are evidence in flag 17, and are shown in Eastern Standard Time.
- Agenda: SAU 6 School Board Agenda 1.11.24 .docx.pdf the doubled space and the space before
.docx are the district's — created January 9, 2024 at about 2:27 p.m.; 80,189 bytes. Twelve board members on the masthead with two officers and a clerk; six central-office administrators headed by "Michael C. Tempesta, Superintendent of Schools"; sections I through VI with clock times from 5:30 PM to 7:50 PM under a heading block reading 6:30PM; the line "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members"; item III citing "RSA 92-A:3,II" with the texts of exemptions (a) and (c) beneath it; item IV.3 reading, in its entirety, "Superintendent". See flag 3, flag 9, flag 11, flag 12 and flag 13.
- Minutes of this meeting: draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (1).pdf the
(1) and the doubled space are the district's — four pages, 108,588 bytes, signed "Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, school board clerk", built on the agenda template with bullets inserted under each item. Filed in the next meeting's packet folder, 2. SAU 2.15.24, and created there on February 13, 2024 at about 8:59 a.m. They are the source on this page for attendance, all ten movers and seconders, the named rolls on both superintendent motions, the clock times, and the identity of the roll-callers. See flag 3, flag 5, flag 6, flag 7 and flag 16.
- Policy adopted at this meeting: 2nd Read_ SAU BGAA_ Policy Development_ Adoption_ and Review .docx.pdf — created January 9, 2024 at about 2:27 p.m.; 79,550 bytes. The SAU's own text, headed "SAU#6 School Board Policy BGAA" with no policy title, sections A through H, "Legal Reference: RSA 91-A", and a District Policy History block giving "First reading: 12/14/2023" and a blank second-reading line. Paragraphs E.5, E.6 and G are quoted on this page. See flag 14 and flag 18.
- Policy taken to first read: NHSBA Sample Priority Policy ACN_ Nursing Mothers Accommodation.docx - Google Docs (1).pdf — created January 9, 2024 at about 2:27 p.m.; 85,425 bytes. An NHSBA sample marked "Status: ADOPTED", "Original Adopted Date: 09/18/2023", "Category: Priority (Required by Law)", carrying the association's September 2023 adoption and revision notes, a legal-reference table, and its own copyright notice restricting reproduction to policy development by subscribing districts. It is quoted on this page only in the short passages the board discussed. See flag 15, flag 18 and flag 19.
- The fourth document in the folder, this meeting's business only in the sense that the board approved it: draft minutes of SAU6 Budget Public Hearing 12.14.23.pdf — approved "as written" at this meeting, and the subject of the December 14 page.
- Corroboration from the neighbouring district board, used on this page for one fact only: _CSB Agenda 1.17.24.docx.pdf, in the Claremont packet folder 2. CSB 1.17.24 — its masthead prints "SAU #6 Central Office Administration / Christopher Pratt, Interim Superintendent", six days after this meeting, and Michael Tempesta's name no longer appears on it. It also prints "Deliberative Session 2.3.24 (Snow date 2.10.24)".
- Explicit negatives. No notice, agenda or minutes of any meeting of the SAU 6 policy committee was found in either district share, although four of its decisions were reported to the public at this meeting. That negative rests on the two-stage, folder-by-folder enumeration itemised in the December 7 page's appendix — every SAU 6 packet folder plus the Claremont Meeting Minutes share — and on a direct check of the four subcommittee folders; the district's own Claremont Policy Sub Committee Drive folder is empty, as are its three sibling subcommittee folders (flag 8). No document in this packet, and nothing in the minutes or on the recording, states a reason for the termination of the superintendent's contract, describes paragraph nine of that contract, or gives any information about the person appointed to succeed him (flag 11). No reason for one member's remote participation appears in the minutes, which is what RSA 91-A:2, III(a) asks for (flag 1). No statement of the grounds for the thirty-year seal appears anywhere in the public record of this meeting (flag 4). No clock time for the call to order appears in the minutes, which is what would settle the agenda's own two start times (flag 12). Folder contents here were read from the shares directly and by file id; the Drive API's own search index returns only a subset of these files and its negatives are not reliable for this corpus.
Project files
Relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/.
- Dialogue transcript: ../Dialogue/15523 SAU6011124.mp4.CSV — 78 rows, 1,338 words, 7 named speakers, 3 rows (3.8%) Unidentified.
- Video: ../../Input/Videos/15523 SAU6011124.mp4 — 11:40.
- Diarized transcript: ../../Input/Transcripts/15523 SAU6011124.mp4.json — 79 segments with word-level timings and confidences, used on this page only to characterise the two unresolved slots in the seal roll (flag 7).
- Document map: ../../Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 38. Its document table, folder link, minutes link and Cablecast link are all correct as of this run, including its note that these minutes are filed in the next meeting's folder.
- Neighbouring pages: SAU 6 — December 14, 2023, the last meeting of this board, which adopted the FY25 SAU budget and whose minutes were approved here; SAU 6 — December 7, 2023; and SAU 6 — November 9, 2023, which appointed the clerk who took two of this meeting's rolls. Forward: SAU 6 — April 11, 2024, the annual reorganization, over which the man appointed here presided. On the Claremont district side, December 20 and the FY25 budget hearing of January 3, 2024, eight days before this meeting.
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:2 (2023 codification — the text in force on January 11, 2024) — II: notice of time and place "posted in 2 appropriate places … at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings"; minutes "shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting"; "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." III: "A public body may, but is not required to, allow one or more members of the body to participate in a meeting by electronic or other means of communication for the benefit of the public and the governing body, subject to the provisions of this paragraph" — (a) participation other than in person "only when such attendance is not reasonably practical", and "Any reason that such attendance is not reasonably practical shall be stated in the minutes of the meeting"; (b) "Except in an emergency, a quorum of the public body shall be physically present at the location specified in the meeting notice as the location of the meeting"; (c) "Each part of a meeting required to be open to the public shall be audible or otherwise discernable to the public at the location specified in the meeting notice as the location of the meeting", and "Each member participating electronically or otherwise must be able to simultaneously hear each other and speak to each other during the meeting"; (e) "All votes taken during such a meeting shall be by roll call vote." Vintage: the source line runs to "2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019. 2023, 188:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023. 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025" — so the 2023 codification and not the 2019 one governs here, and the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements added by 2025, 112:1 are not applied. Paragraph III applies to public bodies generally; paragraph IV, which relaxes the physical-quorum rule, applies "only to boards, committees, councils, advisory committees and like bodies of state government" and is not available to this board. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 12, 16, 17.
- RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) — "public body" includes "Any legislative body, governing body, board, commission, committee, agency, or authority of any county, town, municipal corporation, school district, school administrative unit, chartered public school, or other political subdivision, or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto." The trailing clause is what reaches the policy committee. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 8.
- 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." II(a): "The dismissal, promotion, or compensation of any public employee, or the investigation of any charges against him or her, unless the employee affected (1) has the right to a public meeting, and (2) requests that the meeting be open, in which case the request shall be granted." II(c): matters which, if discussed in public, would likely affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself. III: minutes of a nonpublic session are publicly disclosed within 72 hours unless, "by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session", it is determined that divulgence would "affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself", "render the proposed action ineffective", or "pertain to terrorism". IV: absent an adopted procedure, a review "shall occur no more than 10 years from the last time the public body voted to prevent the minutes from being subject to public disclosure". Vintage: the source line ends "2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023", which added paragraph IV — one hundred days before this meeting, so IV applies. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 3, 4, 7, 11, 16.
- RSA Title VI, chapter list — a negative anchor. Title VI ("Public Officers and Employees") contains chapters 91, 91-A, 91-B, 91-C, 92, 93, 93-A, 93-B and 94 through 103. There is no chapter 92-A. Chapter 91-A is "Access to Governmental Records and Meetings"; chapter 92 is "Tenure and Oath of Office in Certain Cases". Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 3.
- RSA 194-C:5, I — the SAU board "shall meet between April 1 and June 1 in each year, at a time and place fixed by the chairpersons of the several boards, and shall organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer." Source note "1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996"; never amended, so the current text governed. Vice chair and clerk are not among the three offices. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 9.
- RSA 194-C:8 — "In all votes regarding school administrative unit affairs, including the organization of such unit's school board and selection of officers, each district shall be entitled to one vote for each 16 pupils residing in that district and enrolled in schools under the administrative unit," and weighted votes "shall only be used upon the demand of a majority of the members of any board present and voting". No such demand was made at this meeting, so the per-member roll calls were proper; the section is cited only to show why the district split behind an unannounced result is worth recording. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 10.
- RSA 194-C:9, I (2023 codification) — "At a meeting held before January 1, the school administrative unit board shall adopt a budget." Cited on this page only as background: the FY25 SAU budget had been adopted on December 14, so the "Budget Update" item tabled here carried no statutory consequence. Vintage: the 2023 edition runs to paragraph III; paragraph IV, permitting alternative apportionment, was added by 2024, 329:1, eff. Oct. 1, 2024, did not exist on this date and is not cited.
- RSA 189:74 — School Board Public Comment Period: "School boards shall 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. The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes." Source 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022. Cited with both of its open questions stated and neither resolved: whether it reaches an SAU board, and whether the thirty minutes is a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time. No violation is asserted. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 13.
- RSA 40:13, III — for a local political subdivision that has adopted the official ballot referendum form, "The first session of the annual meeting, which shall be for the transaction of all business other than voting by official ballot, shall be held between the first and second Saturdays following the last Monday in January, inclusive of those Saturdays", or in the equivalent February or March windows. Source note ends "2019, 192:2, eff. July 10, 2019", so the current text governs every meeting in this corpus. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 20.
- RSA 288:1 — legal holidays, including the third Monday in January, "Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Day". Source note ends "1999, 105:2, eff. Aug. 6, 1999; 106:2, eff. Aug. 6, 1999"; unamended since, so the current text governed. Used only for the business-day arithmetic. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 6.
- 29 U.S.C. §218d — the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act: an employer shall provide "a reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for such employee's nursing child for 1 year after the child's birth each time such employee has need to express the milk" and "a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public". Credit line: "June 25, 1938, ch. 676, §18D, as added Pub. L. 117-328, div. KK, §102(a)(2), Dec. 29, 2022, 136 Stat. 6093" — in force on the meeting's date. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 15, 19.
- RSA 275:79 and RSA 275:78 — New Hampshire's nursing-mothers subdivision, from HB 358, 2023 N.H. Laws ch. 191, signed August 2023. RSA 275:79: "Every employer shall adopt a policy to address the provision of sufficient space and reasonable break periods for nursing employees that need to express milk during working hours." RSA 275:78, II defines "employer" to include "the state or any of its political subdivisions, which has 6 or more employees working in the state". Vintage — this is the point: the source note on these sections and on RSA 275:81 reads "2023, 191:20, eff. July 1, 2025", with the penalty section a year later still. The statute was not in force on January 11, 2024, so it is cited here as the future obligation the board legislated ahead of, never as a rule it breached. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 15, 19.
- District and association policy, cited as the board's own rules rather than as law: SAU 6 policy BGAA, Policy Development, Adoption, and Review, paragraphs E.2, E.5, E.6 and G, from the second-read copy in this meeting's packet; and NHSBA sample policy ACN, Nursing Mothers Accommodation, sections A through G and its adoption/revision notes, from the copy in the same folder. Flags 14, 18, 19.
- Not cited, and why. No provision was found requiring an SAU board to announce a vote count, to post an agenda or a packet in advance, to state reasons for terminating a superintendent's contract, to have its clerk rather than its chair read a roll, or to publish an unedited recording. Where this page notes those things it does so as an observation, not as a rule. RSA 275:42, I is named once, only to distinguish it: its definition of "employer" governs a different subdivision of chapter 275 and does not reach political subdivisions, which is why the definition in RSA 275:78, II had to be checked separately. RSA 186-C:18, III and RSA 198:40-a are not cited: no state aid figure was discussed at this meeting, and both carry vintage traps for a January 2024 date. RSA 32:5 is not cited: the municipal budget law applies by its own terms to towns, school districts and village districts and does not name school administrative units, and in any event no budget item was reached here. A search for legislation enacted since these anchors' verification that touches the Right-to-Know Law or SAU governance found 2025, 112:1 (RSA 91-A:2, eff. Aug. 22, 2025) and 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 153 (HB 564) (SAU budget adoption, eff. Aug. 18, 2026), both long after this meeting and applied nowhere on this page.