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. Attendance is the minutes'. "Not separably heard" means the person is on the masthead or in the minutes but has no attributed speech in the dialogue file. One caution governs this whole table. The dialogue file names no Rocco Ruggeri at all, in 460 rows, while the minutes credit him with six acts — moving the agenda amendment, moving the approval of the January minutes, seconding the entry into nonpublic session, moving the return from it, seconding the human-resources contract motion and seconding the policy AC motion. The most economical reading is that his voice sits inside the same diarized cluster as Frank Sprague's, which that cluster's own contents corroborate: it holds both the second on the contract motion and, fifteen seconds later, the abstention on it. Where the minutes name a mover this page follows the minutes and says so.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Arlene Hawkins | Chair, SAU #6 School Board; Claremont School Board member; chair of the SAU 6 policy subcommittee | Presides throughout. 159 of the file's 460 rows — more than a third. She calls the meeting to order, proposes the agenda amendment adding policy DGA, moves the entry into nonpublic session, seconds the seal, presents all six policies in the first person as the policy subcommittee's report, moves the authorisation of the human-resources contract at 0:21:08, and proposes the move to bi-monthly meetings. She also moves and seconds a great deal: on the recording she seconds the agenda amendment, the nursing-mothers adoption and the seal. Her own account of the evening, at 0:29:03: "I've had such a day, I can't even tell you." The ASR renders her name Our lean and Eileen. |
| Frank Sprague | Vice Chair, Claremont School Board; SAU #6 Board member; superintendent-evaluation subcommittee | Present. 61 attributed rows, the largest cluster after the chair's — and see the caution above: the cluster is shared. The rows the minutes independently confirm as his are the student-teacher question at 0:14:00 ("So do we get student teachers. And I've had when I was working in. Guidance, I had several. Student teachers, school student guidance counselors worked with under my supervision."), the motions to adopt policies GBCD and EHB, the motion to move policy KF to a second read and the motion withdrawing it, and the evaluation-instrument point at 0:43:45. He is the only member to abstain on anything — on the human-resources contract, at 0:22:02: "I abstained." No reason is given by him or asked for by anyone, and the minutes record the abstention without one. |
| Christopher Pratt | Interim Superintendent of Schools, SAU #6 — his first meeting of this board in that office | Present. 38 attributed rows, almost all of them the superintendent's report between 0:05:36 and 0:10:49. He introduces the written department report as a standing document — "in your packets, which you should have is Newport that have been sent out and you'll get monthly is the department report" Newport is the ASR; the document is headed SAU6 Monthly Department Board Reports — and reports on human resources, special education, technology, and curriculum and grants in turn. He describes a SWOT exercise run with the administration "on Monday" and says he hopes "at some point" to do it "with with all the school boards". On policy KF he is the one who concedes the point that ends it: "I agree with many buildings." He speaks once more, at the very end of the policy block, and not again for the remaining twenty minutes. |
| Candace Crawford | Claremont School Board member; SAU #6 Board member; SAU #6 policy subcommittee | Present. 38 attributed rows. She asks the two questions on the superintendent's report that draw substantive answers, volunteers for the director-of-student-services search committee at 0:20:47, and moves the seal of the nonpublic minutes for three years at 0:04:41 — a motion the posted minutes attribute to nobody, and which the board on April 11 amended the minutes to credit to her. She is the member who names the reason policy KF fails: "It's not relevant. This policy is not relevant." She then asks that the chair's own work on it be recognised. |
| Kelly Simpson | Unity School Board member; SAU #6 Board member; SAU #6 policy subcommittee | Present. 26 attributed rows, and the sharpest voice in the room. She moves the adoption of policies ACN and DGA. She stops the chair twice inside a minute when the policy order slips — "You just skipped a c, Arlene." and "I took time to put these in order. Eileen." — and she is the one who settles the seconder on policy AC when several people speak at once: "We'll go with Rocco." On the meeting schedule she objects both to fewer meetings and to the week they fall in, at 0:50:43: "Apparently you guys made a decision. This meeting should have been last Thursday, but you made it so it was after Unity's. The two meetings in one week that I could live without. I don't know why you thought you should change that." |
| Whitney Skillen | Claremont School Board member; SAU #6 Board member; superintendent-evaluation subcommittee | Present. 24 attributed rows, almost all of them one sustained report. Asked by the subcommittee chair to speak, she sets out the whole proposed superintendent-evaluation calendar from 0:39:14: "We are we met with the interim superintendent to talk about how this evaluation process is going to work. And we're kind of starting from square one since we have a new superintendent." She also moves the first read of policy AC, per the minutes, and moves the adjournment. The minutes render her surname correctly; the ASR does not trouble it in this file. |
| Mary Henry | Business Administrator, SAU #6 | Present. 15 attributed rows. She presents the year-to-date budget report at 0:16:29; the ASR splits her headline figure across four consecutive rows, "We have one. Hundred and. 22,000. $952 left in our budget." The document in the packet gives the same number as a grand-total budget balance of $122,952.17. Later, when the board debates meeting less often, she volunteers to keep sending the numbers anyway: "I can have a monthly. Anyways. I don't have a problem doing that. Right. The middle of the month. You guys don't have a meeting? I still send you just a quick update and a financial if you want that." |
| Heather Whitney | Chair, Claremont School Board; SAU #6 Board member | Present. 10 attributed rows, and three acts the minutes credit her with that the dialogue file does not. The minutes name her as mover of the motion to go bi-monthly; the dialogue file assigns that row to the chair, but the underlying diarization puts it in Heather Whitney's own cluster and not the chair's, so the minutes and the raw diarization agree against the dialogue file's label. The minutes name her as the member who raised the viewpoint-bias objection to policy KF; on the recording that whole passage is in a cluster the dialogue file leaves Unidentified and which is distinct from her other speech, so the identification here rests on the minutes alone and is flagged as such. And the board's April 11 correction names her as seconder of the three-year seal, where the recording puts the second inside the chair's row. Her own audible contribution is the question that resolves the meeting-frequency debate at 0:53:19: "Just to Atanas and point though could could that be met. Could those needs be met at a district level." Atanas is the ASR's rendering of Atonya's. CAUTION: this board seats both a Heather Whitney and a Whitney Skillen. |
| Bonnie Miles | Claremont School Board member; SAU #6 Board member; SAU #6 treasurer | Present. 6 attributed rows, all in the meeting-frequency debate, and they need a caveat. The dialogue file assigns the whole run beginning at 0:49:39 to her, but the underlying row sits inside the chair's diarized cluster and plainly contains more than one voice, and the minutes split the same passage between two members — Atonya Hart for the fear of losing touch with the new superintendent, Bonnie Miles for the value of the boards meeting as one. This page quotes the words and does not assign the first half to a name. The second half is hers on both readings: "I think we should be here for them and have the monthly meetings." |
| Noelle Kronberg | Clerk, SAU #6 School Board | Present, and the author of the minutes. 6 attributed rows. She reads all three roll calls — the minutes credit her with each, and the recording supports it: her rows carry the names, and the members' answers separate out of them. She is asked at 0:55:25 to read the pending motion back to the board and cannot: "Is and actually said there's motion was just to." The chair supplies it instead. The ASR never gives her a name; she is identified by role, by the chair's cue and by cluster. |
| Rocco Ruggeri | Vice Chair, SAU #6 School Board; Unity School Board member | Present. Not separably heard — no attributed row anywhere in the file, which for the second-most-active member in the minutes is itself the transcript's largest defect. The minutes name him as mover of the agenda amendment, mover of the approval of the January 11 minutes, seconder of the motion into nonpublic session, mover of the motion out of it at 7:30pm, seconder of the human-resources contract motion and seconder of the policy AC motion. Only one of those is corroborated on the recording, and indirectly: at 0:26:39 the chair says there were "multiple seconds" and a member answers "We'll go with Rocco." |
| Jennifer Gallagher | Claremont School Board member; SAU #6 Board member — arrived 6:56 PM | Present from 6:56 PM, which the minutes record and the recording independently supports: on the roll into nonpublic session at 0:03:13 the clerk reads "Jennifer. Gallagher." and no answer follows before the next name. The minutes place her arrival inside the nonpublic session and credit her with seconding the return to public, the withdrawal of policy KF and the adoption of policy DGA. The minutes also attribute to her the one question nobody in the room could answer — "Question from Jennifer Gallagher about the ACA acronym" — which on the recording, at 0:12:56, is an unattributed voice asking "The bullet point for finishing ACA reporting. What's ACA." See flag 14. The voice that says, of policy DGA, "Yes. This policy isn't listed here under the secondary added. Yes we did. I was absent for that." is consistent with a member who arrived after the agenda was amended, but the dialogue file does not attribute it and neither do the minutes, so this page does not either. |
| Atonya Hart | Unity School Board member; SAU #6 Board member; chair of the superintendent-evaluation subcommittee | Present. Not separably heard. The agenda gives her the evaluation item by name and the minutes record "Atonya Hart asked Whitney Skillen to speak"; on the recording the chair's cue at 0:38:51 comes through as "The time of art is a chair, and we have asked Whitney to speak." The minutes name her as seconder of the agenda amendment and of the approval of the January minutes, and attribute to her the concern that the board "would lose touch with the new Superintendent" — a passage the dialogue file assigns to another member; see the Bonnie Miles row above. |
| Shannon Popescu | Unity School Board member; SAU #6 Board member | Present. Not separably heard. The minutes name her as seconder of the motion adopting policy ACN, where the recording has the second inside the chair's row. |
| Marjorie Erickson | Chair, Unity School Board; SAU #6 Board member | Absent, per the minutes. She is the member who took part by telephone on January 11, twice said on the record that she could not hear, and cast the only vote against terminating one superintendent and appointing another. Her name is read on the roll into nonpublic session because the clerk reads the masthead in order; no answer can be tied to it. She does not appear again in this board's records until the April 11 reorganization, where she is again absent. |
| Michael Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Innovation, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead and named in the packet's department report as one of the two authors of the curriculum and grants section. Not heard and not named on the recording, and not mentioned in the minutes. |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead and the author of the special-education section of the packet's department report, which the superintendent reads from. Not heard and not named on the recording. His resignation had been announced to this board in December 2023; he is still in post here, still on the masthead on April 11, and it is he, not the clerk, who takes the roll calls at that meeting. |
| Jeff Small | Director of Technology, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead and named in the packet's department report with two colleagues. Not heard. The chair names him twice — the ASR renders it Geoff — once for input into the April data-governance policy and once when the superintendent reports on switches, laptops and a ticketing system. Eight weeks later it is his review that forces the revision of policy EHB, adopted at this meeting. |
| Angela Vivian | Director of Human Resources, SAU #6 | On the agenda masthead and the author of the human-resources section of the packet's department report. Not heard. The superintendent names her twice as Angela — on the interview timeline for the director of student services and on building relationships with college education departments. Her post is the subject of the evening's only contract motion, and by the April 11 masthead the line reads "TBD, Director of Human Resources". |
| Terra Geer | Educational consultant — not present; the subject of two questions | Named in the packet's department report as the consultant who ran "a full-day training with Terra Geer, Educational Consultant" for paraprofessionals on January 23. The recording renders her as Tara and Terra; the board asks twice about the session, and whether Unity's paraprofessionals could have attended. This page prints her name from the packet document, not from the recording. |
| Unidentified voices | In the room | 77 of 460 rows, 16.7% — and the number understates the problem, because the roll-call answers are absorbed into the clerk's rows and four seated members have no attributed speech at all. Three passages this page treats as unattributed on the recording and names only from the minutes are the ACA question, the viewpoint-bias objection to policy KF and the motion advancing policy AC. One diarized cluster of ten rows, all in the meeting-frequency debate, carries the institutional history of why the SAU meeting follows Unity's — "So you get all your meetings for the school done in one week, the other three weeks of the month" and "I didn't make it up. I'm just relaying with the conversation" — and neither the minutes nor the recording names it. |
Agenda
The official agenda, _SAU 6 School Board Agenda 2.15.24 .docx (1).pdf, posted in the packet folder about fifty-seven hours before the meeting. The leading underscore, the doubled space in "SAU 6 School Board", the space before .docx and the (1) are all the district's. Agenda wording is quoted from that document; 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. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording. Three things about this agenda are findings in their own right: it notices the nonpublic session under "RSA 92-A:3, I and II", a chapter of New Hampshire law that does not exist, and lays the two exemptions out as though one belonged to paragraph I (flag 2); it labels three policies "(First Read)" and the board adopts all three (flag 4); and a fourth policy, DGA, appears on no version of it. The agenda also numbers two consecutive items 3. under section V; the minutes silently renumber them 3, 4 and 5. And the minutes reproduce the agenda template with two of its clock times altered — section II from 6:35 PM to 6:30 PM and section III from 6:40 PM to 6:35 PM — which is the only place in the record where the actual start of the nonpublic session is given.
| Agenda item | Scheduled | Taken up | What happened |
|---|
| I. "Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance" | 6:30 PM | 0:00:02 | On time. The chair's opening words are rendered by the ASR as "630. I'd like to call the school board meeting to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance." She then leads the Pledge herself. The minutes record neither a call-to-order time nor the Pledge. |
| II. "General Business" — cell phones; "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members" | 6:35 PM | 0:00:31 | "Just as a reminder, please turn off cell phones and electronic devices. About clerk. Let's do a roll call of attendance of board members." The reading of the names is not in the transcript at all — only about ten answers of Here and Present across thirteen seconds. The agenda line asks for a secretary to take the roll; the board has no secretary, and the clerk takes it. See flag 11. |
| II. "Agenda – Amendments and Final Approval" | — | 0:01:03 | The chair adds a sixth policy: "I would like to add to item number three policies letter F. That's an additional policy I would like to add policy DGA as a first read. It should have been in your packet." Asked its name, she answers "Authorized authorized signatures." The minutes record the amendment, name Rocco Ruggeri as mover and Atonya Hart as seconder, and record it as unanimously approved. The dialogue file assigns the audible motion to the Frank Sprague cluster — see the caution on the participants table. DGA is then adopted the same night (flag 4). |
| II. "Minutes Approval- 1.11.24" | — | 0:02:25 | "Any corrections to the minutes from January 11th, 2024?" None offered. Moved "as presented" and carried. Those are the minutes of the meeting that removed one superintendent and appointed another; they were posted in this meeting's own packet folder two days earlier, and they contain the same non-existent chapter this agenda does. No member raised it. See the January 11 page. |
| II. "Citizens Comments" | — | 0:02:37 | "Any citizens comments? See, I since I see no citizens present, I will close citizens comments for this evening." The minutes record it as "Citizens Comments- none". Nobody was turned away and nobody asked to speak; the period lasted a few seconds. See flag 12. |
| III. "Non-Public Meeting Session RSA 92-A:3, I and II", with the texts of the employee-dismissal and reputation exemptions printed beneath | 6:40 PM | 0:02:37 | Moved by the chair in the same breath as closing citizens' comments, and cited aloud as "under RSA 92-3. No. 92-A colon 328 and see". Roll call by the clerk; entered at 0:03:36; out, per the minutes, at 7:30pm. Fifty-six minutes, of which sixteen seconds are published. The minutes were sealed for three years. See flags 1, 2, 8 and 9. |
| IV. "Superintendent Report" | 7:00 PM | 0:05:24 | About eleven minutes of report and six of questions. Backed for the first time by a written document in the packet, Department Monthly Reports (2).pdf, which the superintendent says the board "will get monthly". The minutes summarise it in eleven bullets and record five members' questions by name. |
| V.1. "Budget Update: Mary Henry, Business Administrator (Discussion) — a. YTD Expenditures" | 7:20 PM | 0:16:29 | Eight minutes. The business administrator gives the grand-total balance and identifies health insurance as the largest overage; the chair asks for a June accounting of transfers and encumbrances. The largest single overrun on the report in front of them — the Superintendent's Office salary line — is not mentioned by anyone. See flag 7. |
| V.2. "Personnel Update" — a. Director of Student Services posting, SAU Board Representative, Timeline/Job Description; b. "Business Office position"; c. Other | — | 0:19:46 | Candace Crawford volunteers as board representative on the director-of-student-services search; interviews are to start "next week". "Business office position" draws "I think we don't have anything to report on that this time." Under Other, and with no document in the packet, the chair moves the authorisation of a contract with the human-resources director (flag 5). Nothing under this heading, or any other, concerns the interim superintendent's own contract (flag 3). |
| V.3.a. "ACN- Nursing Mothers Accommodation (Second Read/Adoption)" | — | 0:22:46 | Adopted — the one policy of the six taken at the reading the agenda noticed. Moved by Kelly Simpson "as written"; the minutes name Shannon Popescu as seconder, the recording has the second inside the chair's row. The chair declares it adopted "as of February 15th, 2024". See flag 18 and flag 15. |
| V.3.b. "AC- Non-Discrimination Equal Opportunity Employment and Anti-Discrimination Plan (First Read)" | — | 0:24:23 | Moved to second read as amended — the agenda's own procedure, correctly followed. The amendment strikes "and Anti-Discrimination Plan" from the title on the chair's account that the plan is a district duty, not an SAU one. Adopted at second read on April 11. See flag 13. |
| V.3.c. "GBCD- Background Investigation and Criminal History Records Check- (First Read)" | — | 0:26:47 | Adopted at the first read. The chair began to declare it moved to a second reading and was corrected mid-sentence: "Moving this to second reading. In the next." — "We adopt the document. Oh, we adopted it. So it's not moving. Adopted?" See flag 4. |
| V.3.d. "EHB- Data Records Retention (First Read)" | — | 0:29:28 | Adopted at the first read, in ninety seconds, with no question asked. Eight weeks later, on April 11, the same policy comes back as a revision because the technology director "found some discrepancies in the policy as written and the way things are actually done". See flag 4 and flag 16. |
| V.3.e. "KF- Use of School Buildings and Facilities (First Read)" | — | 0:30:19 | Motion to advance it withdrawn; the policy referred to the two district boards. Fourteen minutes, the longest single item of the evening and the only real deliberation in the policy block. A member objects on viewpoint-bias grounds; the board then realises the SAU owns no buildings. See flag 19 and flag 10. |
| V.3.f. "DGA- Authorized Signatures Status (First Read)" — added from the floor; on no posted agenda | — | 0:37:43 | Adopted at the first read, ninety seconds after it was introduced. The chair: "This is an easy policy. It's a new one. It's to give structure as to who should be signing documents on behalf of the essay." A member notes it was not on the printed agenda and that they had been absent when it was added. See flag 4. |
| V.3. [second item so numbered] "Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee: Atonya Hart, Chair (Discussion)" | — | 0:38:51 | Nine minutes. The subcommittee chair hands the report to Whitney Skillen, who sets out a condensed evaluation for the interim superintendent's part-year and a July-to-June cycle thereafter, to be written into policy. No motion; discussion only, as the agenda said. |
| V.4. "SAU Meeting Dates - Feb through July 2024 (Discussion/Action)" | — | 0:48:35 | Eight and a half minutes, and the most contested item of the night. Carried on a voice vote: the board will meet bi-monthly — February, April, June. Three members spoke against. The March 14 meeting the same agenda lists two inches lower under Future Dates is thereby cancelled. See flag 11. |
| VI. "Future Dates/Future Agenda Items" | 8:00 PM | 0:56:40 | The chair reads the March 12 voting day for both districts and urges residents to register and vote, names April 11 as the next SAU meeting, asks for a date and location for a board retreat, and previews the April policies — the Title IX sexual-harassment policy and grievance process, data governance and security, and transfer of appropriations. All three duly appear on the April 11 agenda. The agenda's own Future Dates list says "SAU#6 Board Meeting- March 14, 2024"; the minutes' copy of the same list is unchanged, though the board had just voted the March meeting away. |
| VII. "Other Business" | 8:20PM | 0:57:41 | The chair reports the New Hampshire School Boards Association's webinar programme, "the right to know law, which is extremely important", new-member orientation after March, collective bargaining, special education law and the Department of Education's data platform. The board proposes to watch together: "But we're going to do a watch party. So we'll invite everybody." |
| VIII. "Adjournment" | 8:30PM | 0:59:11 | Moved by Whitney Skillen, seconded by Heather Whitney per the minutes, carried on a voice vote. "Meeting adjourned. Thank you folks." The minutes time it at 8:24pm, six minutes ahead of the agenda. |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue transcript at Output/Dialogue/15580 SAU6021524.mp4.CSV (460 rows, 8,464 words), checked line by line against the board's draft minutes, the agenda and the eight other 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. Recording positions are not a single clock offset on this page: add 6 hours 30 minutes up to 0:03:36, and 7 hours 26 minutes from 0:03:52 on, because about fifty-six minutes were cut out between them.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:02 | Call to order, and an untranscribed roll | "630. I'd like to call the school board meeting to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance." The chair recites the Pledge herself. Then: "Just as a reminder, please turn off cell phones and electronic devices. About clerk. Let's do a roll call of attendance of board members." The names are not in the transcript. Between 0:00:48 and 0:01:03 the file carries only about ten answers of Here and Present, none of which can be tied to a member. The minutes supply what the recording cannot: eleven present, Marjorie Erickson absent, Jennifer Gallagher arriving at 6:56pm. | |
| 0:01:03 | A sixth policy is added to the agenda from the floor | "There are any amendments to the agenda for tonight? Do have one. I would like to add to item number three policies letter F. That's an additional policy I would like to add policy DGA as a first read. It should have been in your packet." A member asks "Do you have a name?" and the chair answers "Authorized authorized signatures. Status policy d a. Do you all have it in your pocket? I just want to make sure." "in your pocket" is the ASR for in your packet; the document is in the folder, created two days earlier with the rest. The policy is adopted thirty-six minutes later. | HIGH |
| 0:01:58 | Agenda and January minutes, in fifty-five seconds | "Do I have a motion to pass the agenda as amended?" — then "I'll second it. Any discussion? All in favor? I posed for sentience. Any corrections to the minutes from January 11th, 2024?" "I posed for sentience" is the ASR for opposed, for abstentions; the same garble recurs four more times in this file. No corrections are offered to the January 11 minutes, which were in this meeting's packet and which record a motion to enter nonpublic session under a chapter of law that does not exist. Both motions carry on voice votes with no count. | |
| 0:02:37 | Citizens' comments open and close in one sentence, and the nonpublic motion follows in the same breath | "Any citizens comments? See, I since I see no citizens present, I will close citizens comments for this evening. I'd like to move that the board now go into a nonpublic session under RSA 92-3. No. 92-A colon 328 and see I move, I make that motion. Second with the clerk please take the roll call." The citation is spoken aloud, corrected once mid-sentence, and still names a chapter that does not exist. The clerk's minutes render it "under RSA 92-A:3, I(a) and II(c)". No purpose beyond the citation is stated, and no member asks what the session is about. | MEDIUM OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:13 | The roll into nonpublic session — and the member who is not there | The clerk reads it: "Marjorie Erickson. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And. Crawford. Yes. Jennifer. Gallagher. Heather. Whitney. Yes." The names come from the masthead in order, so Erickson's is read although the minutes record her absent, and Gallagher's is read although she does not arrive for another twenty minutes — and no answer follows either. "And. Crawford." is the ASR for Candace Crawford. The minutes record "all present voting yes". | |
| 0:03:36 | Into nonpublic session — and the cut | "All right. We're going to go into nonpublic session, into the classroom, diagonally located from us." Sixteen recording-seconds later a motion is made to come back out. On the wall clock those sixteen seconds are fifty-six minutes: the minutes put the entry at 6:35 PM and the exit at 7:30pm, and a member arrived at 6:56pm and "joined the non-public session". The audio runs continuously across the join with nothing to mark it. The session was noticed under the employee-dismissal-promotion-compensation exemption and the reputation exemption; what was discussed is not recoverable from any public source. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:52 | Back into public session | "A motion to return to public session." — "To make a motion to return to public session." The minutes name Rocco Ruggeri as mover, Jennifer Gallagher as seconder, and time it at 7:30pm; the recording has the motion in the shared male cluster and the second inaudible as an attribution. Roll call by the clerk; eleven affirmatives across five rows. | |
| 0:04:35 | Three years — the motion the minutes leave blank | "You can keep these. Okay. Do I have a motion to seal the minutes? Candace." — "I'll make a motion to seal the minutes for three years." — "I'll second." The recording is unambiguous about the mover and about the term. The minutes are not. Their whole entry reads, from the district's own document: "Makes a motion to seal the minutes for , seconds" — no name before the verb, no name after seconds, and an empty space where the number of years belongs. No statutory ground was stated by anyone, and nobody asked what the three years rested on. | HIGH MEDIUM |
| 0:04:49 | The roll on the seal, and one answer that is not a yes | "Roll call. Vote by clerk. Please call the minister three years earlier. Yes." "call the minister three years earlier" is the ASR for something like call the minutes, three years; the sense is not recoverable and no correction is supplied here. Nine rows carry the roll. Every audible answer in them is affirmative except the row at 0:05:09, which the transcript renders 21. No. The minutes record "all present voting yes". This page reports what each source says and settles neither; with eleven members present a single negative would still clear the two-thirds RSA 91-A:3, III requires. | MEDIUM |
| 0:05:24 | The superintendent's report begins — and so does a monthly document | "Okay. We are returning to the open session of our school board meeting, and we are looking at item number four on the agenda. The superintendent's report." Then, from the interim superintendent: "Good evening everybody. So in your packets, which you should have is Newport that have been sent out and you'll get monthly is the department report and the department a made up of human resources special education technology curriculum." Newport is the ASR; the document is Department Monthly Reports (2).pdf, four sections signed by name — Angela, Ben, Jeff with two colleagues, and Catlin with Michael. He adds that "next month you'll also have a social security section in there". | POSITIVE |
| 0:05:53 | Human resources: three job fairs, a fourth of their own, and the substitute pipeline | "we'll be attending job fairs at Vera Plymouth SNHU in April" the packet document reads "job fairs at Rivier, Plymouth, SNHU in April"; the ASR's Vera is Rivier and "We're also trying to coordinate our own job fair, and we're shooting for March or April, depending on feedback from the building administrators." On substitutes: "making sure they have all the information they need, whether it's around the school protocols for emergency services or emergency situations in the school." He explains the season: "starting usually in mid to late March is when really the hiring season starts and people start applying for jobs." | |
| 0:07:42 | Special education, technology and curriculum | "We have a reading intervention pilot that does not has been implemented. If successful, based on student growth, the intervention will be applied to Bluff and Maple." The packet document names the pilot school the recording omits: "Reading intervention pilot @ Disnard has been implemented." On staffing: "Staffing is special. Ed continues to be a challenge. Just right now, not just for you six, but I think across the board that even before Covid and everything, it's always difficult to find, special education teachers". On technology: "Jeff and crew continuing to install high end switches for the fiber win and through E-Rate funding and working on distributing of new staff laptops that were purchased through Esther funding" "the fiber win" is the packet's Fiber WAN; Esther is ESSER. Then the math diagnostic, draft K–5 report-card standards, the SAS and SAT calendar and the January 23 professional-development day. | |
| 0:09:50 | One month in: weekly rounds, an organisation chart and a SWOT | "I've been getting meeting with the principals once a week in each of the buildings, so I'm able to meet with them. I have, once a week, also meetings with the various departments at the s o. We've been working a lot on, been working a lot with the various policy committees." Then: "It's been busy days. I think my marks one month. So here we are. The flew by." The chair: "Feels like three years." He describes an exercise "which identifies strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and threats internally and externally. We did that with the administration on Monday, and at some point I hope to do it with with all the school boards" — and closes "it's been a busy 30 days, but I think we're making some progress." The chair: "you you accomplished quite a bit in your first month and it is very much appreciated." | |
| 0:11:40 | Two questions on the report, and one nobody can answer | "I have just two questions. So I see the human resources going to job fairs at Revere. Keen isn't listed." — the answer, from two directions, is that Keene is not holding one. Then a question on the paraprofessional training, answered: "a consultant we brought in to do a full day training for our care professionals, and it really covers the nuts and bolts of being a fair professional." "care professionals" and "fair professional" are both the ASR for paraprofessional; the packet names the consultant as Terra Geer. Then, at 0:12:56, the question that goes wrong: "The bullet point for finishing ACA reporting. What's ACA." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:13:02 | The answer, and the minutes that record it as fact | The interim superintendent begins "That's the." and is spoken over. A member answers "Nondiscrimination policy."; the chair agrees, "Okay, that's the policy we're working."; a member adds "There's a c a is just general non-discretionary nondiscrimination. And then a sack I think is specifically for sexual harassment." a sack is the ASR for the policy code ACAC, which was on the board's April list. The questioner accepts it: "I was just double checking because I was like, I don't know if that's the same thing or not." The minutes then write the answer down as established: "Question from Jennifer Gallagher about the ACA acronym- the same policy that the board is working on." The bullet the question was about sits under Human Resources in the packet's department report, between coordinating job fairs and working on the substitute process. See flag 14. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:13:23 | Applications go online, and the chair says so for the camera | "I understand that that whole process of completing applications is now done electronically. And so anyone coming into the Saw office is directed to the website for employment as a substitute teacher or any position." Confirmed — "That's my understanding." — and then the chair makes the purpose explicit: "I'm I'm saying that for people who may be watching and who are interested in applying." | POSITIVE |
| 0:14:00 | Student teachers | "So do we get student teachers. And I've had when I was working in. Guidance, I had several. Student teachers, school student guidance counselors worked with under my supervision." The interim superintendent: "I can only speak from the high school right now. I know we had one. We had a student teacher counselor last year." and "anyone who wants to join us for getting their stuff done for student teaching, you know, it's a great place to get it done." The chair turns it into a recruiting instruction, and he takes it: "I think it's something I want to add to a bucket list and, you know, have Angela reach out to colleges and form that relationship with the different education departments." | |
| 0:15:33 | Unity asks whether its paraprofessionals could have gone | A member asks whether the January 23 training was open to "Unity paraprofessionals." The answer: "it wasn't because it was. The 23rd was at Claremont PTA, but it could certainly be made available." PTA here is the ASR for PD day; the packet's schedule is headed "January 23 Professional Development program." Then: "it's always an option there if, if we're offering professional development and unity has some teachers that want to participate. Absolutely." The minutes record it accurately, and as a limitation: the training "was not available to Unity paraprofessionals at the time due to conflicting PD days". | |
| 0:16:29 | The budget update — a figure the ASR breaks into four pieces | "Moving on to discussion. Action items from Mary Henry, our business administrator. Our budget update would be the data centers, which I believe is in our packet." "the data centers" is the ASR for the YTD expenditures. Then, across four consecutive rows: "We have one. Hundred and. 22,000. $952 left in our budget." The document in the packet, 2023-2024 YTD Budget SAU6 Meeting.PDF, printed on February 12, gives a grand total of $2,396,000.00 budgeted, $1,551,639.93 spent, $721,407.90 encumbered and a budget balance of $122,952.17, 5.13%. | POSITIVE |
| 0:16:58 | Health insurance, software and the line nobody names | "The overages, their intelligence. So it looks like we over estimated our health insurance last year, which we I think we found going through our budget and." Then: "We've got some other spots like in the software in my area because we moved it to the grant for one year. So that's why you have some sandwich there as well this year." "their intelligence" and "some sandwich" are ASR; the Business Office Software line is the one described, budgeted $72,315.04 with $0.00 spent. And the summary: "we've got some areas where we're over and some areas where we're under. Again, we've been very fortunate that even in the areas that we've gone over, we've had these areas that, we save some money." The report bears that out on both sides. What is not mentioned by her or by any member is the largest overrun on the page: Superintendent's Office salaries, $463,053.91 appropriated against $396,010.56 spent and $166,141.74 encumbered — $99,098.39 over, in the month after this board changed superintendents. | MEDIUM |
| 0:18:24 | The chair asks for a year-end accounting of transfers and encumbrances | "I have one comment that I'm asking for and I, I sent this to you earlier today. That at the last saw meeting in June that the board be provided with the record of transfers. The rationale for those transfers and for incumbent incumbent encumbered items, so that the board can approve and close them, close up all the records and have you'll have board approval for that." The business administrator explains what encumbrances are for; the chair closes: "If we can have that listing in June, along with any transfers and rationales to transfers that were made through the year." She adds a standard: "I like people to buy their stuff well before the end of the year, because to me, the point of buying or budgeting is for the current fiscal year". The request is repeated on April 11 and the answer given there is that no transfers had been made that year. | POSITIVE |
| 0:20:11 | A board seat on the director-of-student-services search | "I understand that we're going to be looking for a director of Student services, and that you're looking for a board representative to be on that new. Okay. Is there anyone on the board who's interested in being on that committee?" A pause, then a question about whether it is an SAU post — "Yes. It's an essay position." — and the interim superintendent's "So you know where to find us if you decide to." A member volunteers and the chair records it: "Candace Crawford has volunteers." Timeline: "I talked to Angela yesterday, and I think we're going to try to set up interviews for next week." The appointment is made on April 11. | |
| 0:21:08 | The evening's only contract motion — and it is not the superintendent's | Under the agenda's one-word heading Other, with no document in the packet and no figure named: "I would like to bring forth a motion to authorize the superintendent to negotiate and enter into a contract with the HR human Resources director to be consistent with prevailing market rates for that position." Seconded; the chair asks twice for discussion — "Any discussion from the board? Questions from the board." — and gets none. Carried, with one abstention: "I abstained." The chair: "Thank you. Frank. Thank you everybody. You have your marching orders." The minutes name every member voting in favour and record Frank Sprague's abstention. No reason for the abstention appears in any source. | MEDIUM HIGH |
| 0:22:12 | The policy block opens: six policies, one subcommittee, five weeks | "Now we're moving to policies. And as the superintendent stated, we have been extremely busy with policies. We've been reviewing policies that were missing from the policy manual. That's that has been our first task for you tonight. Several policies that were in your packet that were emailed to you last week with policy." "emailed to you last week" is the chair's; the Drive copies were created on Tuesday February 13, two days before the meeting, and this page does not establish when the email went out. Later she names the committee: "the members of the committee, Kelly and Candace, as well as Superintendent Pratt, who's been at every meeting we've had." No notice, agenda or minutes of any meeting of that subcommittee exists in either district's share. See flag 10. | MEDIUM |
| 0:22:46 | Policy ACN, nursing mothers — second read, and the amendment that makes it more generous than federal law | "Policy. AC n is regarding nursing mothers accommodations. This is the second reading and hopefully adoption at the last meeting under paragraph C, the recommended change from the board was that the, the nursing mother who's an hourly employee who paid during nursing periods and not required to make up time during the use of that time during that time." The second-read text in the packet carries it: paragraph C reads, in the district's document, "A nursing mother who is an hourly employee will be paid during nursing periods." Moved "as written" and adopted. The chair, in a row the ASR mangles into the vote declaration: "or even adopted one policy ACM as of February 15th, 2024." The row reads "Posed. Abstentions or even adopted one policy ACM"; ACM is the ASR's form of ACN. See flag 18 for the vintage point — the New Hampshire statute this policy cites did not take effect for another seventeen months — and flag 15 for what the adopted text still says. | POSITIVE OBSERVATION |
| 0:24:11 | The order slips, and is put back | The chair moves straight to policy GBCD and is stopped: "You just skipped a c, Arlene." Then, dryly: "I took time to put these in order. Eileen." Eileen is this corpus's recurring ASR form of Arlene, as is Our lean later in this file. The chair: "It's a good thing you guys are at the meetings. I'm telling you." | |
| 0:24:23 | Policy AC, non-discrimination — the title is cut, and the reason given is a jurisdictional one | "Now we're doing policy AC. This is an updated policy that includes procedures and reporting for discrimination. This is the nondiscrimination equal opportunity employment. And for the title of this policy at the same level, they say you are not required to have an anti-discrimination plan." Then: "That is the district levels. So I would like to remove that portion of the title from the policy so that it will read nondiscrimination Equal Opportunity employment as the title for this policy." "at the same level" and say you are the ASR's forms of at the SAU level and SAU, which recur throughout this file. On the substance: "this says that education is a civil right that's protected under federal law and how to bring complaints both at the same level and beyond, the Human Rights Commission and so on. And Superintendent Pratt provided input for the titles under section D, that we have a title nine co-ordinator and a 504 coordinator". Asked whether a Title IX policy already exists: "This is updating it to the most current version as recommended as a sample from the New Hampshire School Board Association." See flag 13. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:26:27 | Policy AC is moved to a second read — the one policy handled as the board's own rules require | "I'll make a motion to adopt this Apollos. Or is this first second. Oh, I make a motion to move it to second read as amended by Arlene." The mover corrects herself mid-sentence, and the correction is the right one. Several people second at once; the chair says "Did you get that? Well, we had multiple seconds." and a member settles it: "We'll go with Rocco." The minutes record Whitney Skillen as mover and Rocco Ruggeri as seconder, and the recording independently corroborates the choice of seconder. Adopted at second read on April 11. | POSITIVE |
| 0:26:47 | Policy GBCD, criminal history records checks — noticed as a first read | "the next policy is in fact, a new policy. Policy GBCD. This is background investigations and criminal history records. Check. The rationale for this policy is that it reverses some legislation about state responsibility for criminal history records, checks, as well as prohibiting employment or appointment." — "Any volunteers who have had their credentials revoked or are under current suspension." Both descriptions match the NHSBA sample's own revision note, which attributes the changes to 2023's SB39 and SB136. She describes the SAU's edits: "We'll see in red the areas that we have blacked out, crossed out, mostly because they refer to students or schools, and the SA has no responsibility towards schools or students." And she tells the districts to act: "Each local district should definitely update their policy or implement a policy if you don't have them." That instruction is legally exact — RSA 189:13-a, V puts the duty to adopt this policy on "The governing body of a school district, chartered public school, or public academy", and does not name the school administrative unit. See flag 20. | POSITIVE |
| 0:28:39 | …and adopted at it, which the chair notices only afterwards | "Any questions? Frank." — "Make a motion. We adopt this policy." Seconded, and carried on a voice vote in four seconds. Then the chair begins to declare the wrong thing and is corrected: "Opposed? Moving this to second reading. In the next." — a member: "The next." — the chair: "We adopt the document. Oh, we adopted it. So it's not moving. Adopted?" — the member: "Yes. You're on." The agenda had noticed this policy as a first read. See flag 4. | HIGH |
| 0:29:28 | Policy EHB, data and records retention — adopted in ninety seconds, revised in eight weeks | "The ESB is data, records retention. This is also a new policy. And it's basically very simply following the sample, just changing the word district to say you. Anyone have any questions or comments? Do I have a motion right." ESB is the ASR for EHB. No question is asked. "I make a motion. We adopt this policy second." — "All right. All in favor? Any discussion of questions? All in favor? I paused. Abstentions. We have adopted this policy." The whole item runs about ninety seconds. On April 11 the same policy returns as a revision because, per those minutes, the technology director "found some discrepancies in the policy as written and the way things are actually done (that are more effective)". See flag 4 and flag 16. | HIGH OBSERVATION |
| 0:30:19 | Policy KF, use of school buildings — the superintendent's own proposal | "This is a new policy. This was brought to us by our superintendent. We had quite a wonderful discussion about this policy. It is the use of school buildings and facilities." The mechanism: "the use of the building, the principal will forward the application to the superintendent, and the superintendent may bring it to the SA School Board for final approval." Two of the three timings she describes are in the packet copy — fees "no later than one week prior to the event", and an application deadline the SAU's edit lengthened from two weeks to one month. The third, "All promotional materials, including advertising, must prominently state that the building is not a school sponsored event", which she attributes to Claremont's own policy, does not appear in the copy in the packet folder. | |
| 0:31:35 | The one substantive objection of the evening: viewpoint bias | A member, unattributed on the recording and named in the minutes as Heather Whitney: "Concern, just about having any board have final approval. My concern is just viewpoint bias and, possible, rubbing against, actually the policy, the title nine policy where we could open ourselves up to a third person. Yeah. Bringing forth complaint. And I also have concerns with anything that, you know, the board chooses a shield today can be used as a weapon tomorrow." And again, at 0:32:13: "I've always felt we have to be very, very careful about always being seen as neutral, having no viewpoint bias." The chair answers that the subcommittee had aired it: "it was a lively, wonderful discussion. We really listened. We listened, we heard, we offered opinion. And that's why we're bringing this forward the way it is." See flag 19. | POSITIVE |
| 0:32:58 | The board discovers it owns no buildings | "My, viewpoint is different in the South. Doesn't have any buildings. Right." "the South" is the ASR for the SAU. Then: "That's Claremont's building." — a member: "So you don't you rent it? Yes. That you rent." — the interim superintendent: "I agree with many buildings." and then, across two rows with another member's "The claim." between them, "Maybe it's something that should be moved to the." and "To the the claim on." "I agree with many buildings" and "the claim on" are ASR; the sense from the surrounding turns is agreement that the SAU has no buildings and that the policy belongs to Claremont. The chair: "We don't have any buildings." A member states the conclusion: "It's not relevant. This policy is not relevant." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:34:00 | The practical question, and the answer that ends the item | "Well, then the question is which if somebody comes to the office and wants to." — "Rent the high school gym, are you saying they now are going to need to go to the city of Claremont?" The answer, from another member: "No, it's the Claremont School Board." The chair explains the route: "this policy says that they go to the principal first and then the the principal forwards the application to the superintendent" and "Everything funnels to the superintendent." Then, at 0:34:53: "So we had a lively discussion about this and we don't need it." The chair: "We don't." | |
| 0:35:40 | The motion is withdrawn, and the board votes on the withdrawal | A member warns that tabling would kill it — "You made a motion to table it. Table and table. It eliminates it." — and the mover withdraws instead: "So I make a motion to withdraw my motion." The chair works through the procedure aloud, asks whether the second must also be withdrawn, and then puts it: "So now we vote on withdrawing the motion. All in favor of withdrawing Mr. Sprague's motion? Please say I, I opposed abstention. Okay. The motion is now withdrawn." The board then refers the policy on: "does this. Board suggest. That this. Policy be looked at it both. The unity and the Claremont level." The minutes record it as "Board suggests this policy be considered at the Claremont and Unity level." | POSITIVE |
| 0:36:58 | Credit for work that produced nothing | "I just make a well I don't want to underestimate Kelly's efforts on this or my efforts on this. I would really like to applaud" — then, of the chair — "Our efforts on this policy. She did work on it. Yes, we all were." Our lean, in the row between, is the ASR for Arlene. The chair's own reply: "But it's not going anywhere. So what does that tell?" The minutes record only "Candace Crawford applauds Arlene Hawkins' work on this policy". | |
| 0:37:43 | Policy DGA, authorised signatures — on no posted agenda, adopted in ninety seconds | "Move on to the final policy of the evening. Policy DGA, which is authorized signatures. This is an easy policy. It's a new one. It's to give structure as to who should be signing documents on behalf of the essay." And on the editing: "The only edits are the highlighted in green change district to the point." A member objects that it was not on the printed agenda and had been added while they were out of the room: "Yes. This policy isn't listed here under the secondary added. Yes we did. I was absent for that." The chair: "The agenda was amended." A motion follows immediately — "I make a motion that we adopt this policy second." — and it carries. The chair closes the block: "None. Abstentions? None out of the policy. Piece of the agenda. Thank you folks. A lot of work." See flag 4. | HIGH |
| 0:38:51 | The subcommittee's deadline, and the handover to the evaluation report | "We're trying to get all the required for priorities done. Missing priorities by the end of this fiscal year. So we should be working very hard as a committee." "required for priorities" is the ASR; NHSBA marks four of the six policies here "Category: Priority/Required by Law". Then: "Superintendent evaluation subcommittee report. The time of art is a chair, and we have asked Whitney to speak." "The time of art" is the ASR for Atonya Hart, whom the agenda names as the subcommittee's chair. | |
| 0:39:14 | Evaluating a superintendent who has been in post five weeks | "We are we met with the interim superintendent to talk about how this evaluation process is going to work. And we're kind of starting from square one since we have a new superintendent." The subcommittee has reconciled two documents: "we reviewed and objectives and goals chart that he shared with us. That was based on the routine report and the goals that we had developed with Mr. Ryan." "the routine report" is the ASR; "Mr. Ryan" is Dr. David Ryan, who facilitated this board's objectives-and-key-results work in November 2023. The plan: "reconcile them with the goals that the the saw defined last spring, to make sure that we have a holistic evaluation tool and then do a condensed evaluation for this year based on the goals of the set and then the goals that Mr. Pratt is helping us write for himself and for his office." | |
| 0:40:33 | A July-to-June cycle, and rules for members who are leaving | "this year's condensed evaluation is going to be unique and one time and not carried forward into into the schedule that moves forward. The schedule that moves forward is going to be a July to June calendar." Then the exceptions, at 0:41:29: "The exceptions are up for election and exiting. Board members will complete their evaluations in February" and "New board members will not complete evaluations in their first year and up for election or and exiting board members cannot serve on the Superintendent and Valuation committee because we need that to last through the the, the, the, the year through July." She is explicit that none of it exists yet: "All of this needs to be written into policies and procedures". The instrument is described as a spreadsheet with "a column that for percent completed, last action, last date of action, and then date completed if it is 100% complete", the point being "to look at progress, not necessarily just judge on what's 100% complete". | |
| 0:43:45 | What the last instrument got wrong | "having done a number of these evaluations and heard what other people have had to say. Also doing them is the avoid the inability or eliminate the inability to say, I haven't seen any evidence of this in the past." And: "We've had indicators that have asked us for the performance in a certain area, and as a board member, you have no way of knowing this because it doesn't really relate to our scope. So what we're really trying to do is make this relevant to both the board and to the superintendent, and really make sure that nobody can say, I have no idea." The chair asks whether the previous year's policy and instrument will be revisited; the answer is that they are on the list — "we were working with a goals document that was written by Mr. Pratt, that was based on the report that didn't comprehensively capture all of the previous." | |
| 0:48:35 | The chair proposes meeting half as often | "Last item under discussion items is the say meeting dates. I am proposing that for the rest of the school year that we hold an essay meeting on alternating months so that this would be our February meeting. The next time we would meet would be April, and then we would have a June meeting to wrap up things for the school year." Her reason: "I think we're all we've all had a lot of meetings this year, and to be able to get done what we need to get done, I think at the essay level, we can do that by meeting bi monthly. It's an action item. So I think we do need a motion. I'll make a I would like." The motion is completed by another voice: "To make a motion to change our meeting schedule to a bi monthly schedule." The minutes name Heather Whitney as mover and Candace Crawford as seconder; the dialogue file labels the motion row for the chair, but the underlying diarization places it in Heather Whitney's cluster, so the minutes and the diarization agree. | |
| 0:49:25 | Three members speak against it | First a condition: "My my only discussion would be if something comes up, obviously something important. We would have to have." Then the substance, in a run the dialogue file assigns to one member and the minutes split between two: "Feel as though we lose touch with our superintendent, our interim superintendent meeting by monthly, but and and the financial pieces and the things that are important to us. But that's just me." and "I mean, I think there's a value to meeting monthly. And, you know, they can meetings can be shorter, but I think there's a value to getting the updated information for each school district." Then, unambiguously Bonnie Miles on both readings: "I think we should be here for them and have the monthly meetings." And the policy point, at 0:50:10: "we were working hard to get all these policies. Now you want to go two months, two months and then." | |
| 0:50:43 | And a fourth objects to the week, not the month | "Apparently you guys made a decision. This meeting should have been last Thursday, but you made it so it was after Unity's. The two meetings in one week that I could live without. I don't know why you thought you should change that." The answer, from a member the record does not name: "it was designed to a year ago. Make the Saw meeting, follow the unity meeting. And I've mentioned on several occasions the calendar doesn't line up that way because it's not every month at the second. Thursday is the same week as the second Tuesday." And the rationale: "So you get all your meetings for the school done in one week, the other three weeks of the month. You can go off and vacations and family time and whatever it is you want." The objector: "I hate giving up two nights to family time and we're all joking." | |
| 0:51:53 | Both sides of the same problem | "Ones, but I also don't like having meetings every single week except for one. Like one week off. Where I'm not doing extra activities is not enough for my family size. But we're all going to be different. So I hear what you're saying that it's hard to give up family time on one week, especially back to back meetings." The chair sets out the calendar as it stands: "right now, the first week of the month, we have the Claremont School Board, the second the week of the month, there's a Unity school board" and "first and third our Claremont second is unity and saw." A member supplies the history: "You say you used to be the third. So it was you know for the staff it was week one. And then for the other school it was week two and then for everybody was week three. And it was, it was dragging everyone around three different weeks. And then I didn't make it up. I'm just relaying with the conversation." | |
| 0:53:19 | The question that turns the vote | "Just to Atanas and point though could could that be met. Could those needs be met at a district level." The chair concedes ground: "I just think we'll lose some things. But I won't know until we try, I guess." A member is blunter: "Well, I don't want to have a meeting just to have a meeting. That doesn't make sense." And the business administrator removes the strongest practical objection at 0:53:43: "I can have a monthly. Anyways. I don't have a problem doing that. Right. The middle of the month. You guys don't have a meeting? I still send you just a quick update and a financial if you want that." Two members supply the long view: "And I believe a few years ago the meetings were quarterly." and "Its 30 years ago it was twice a year." | POSITIVE |
| 0:54:25 | The chair proposes a trial, and the board does not adopt one | "But I'm wondering what if we try it for the rest until June and then see how that works and then, you know, have an end date and then come back and revisit if that is something that people want to try. But I also hear Bonnie saying, all of us getting together builds a good solid board." She adds a reading of the history: "We had discussed that in the past and I felt that more from the unity folks that we were separate but we're not." The clerk is then asked to read the motion back and cannot — "Is and actually said there's motion was just to." — and the chair supplies it herself: "It was it was seconded. So right now the motion is with no end date. They're just going to buy monthly." The trial period the chair had proposed is not in the motion, and no amendment is offered. A member offers the fallback: "That's that's what my thought was is if we find that it's not working we okay. Not happy. Can we visit it." Carried on a voice vote with no count. | MEDIUM |
| 0:56:40 | March 12, April 11, and a retreat with no date | "we urge all residents voting residents to register and to go out and vote on March 12th. The next essay board meeting will be April 11th. 11th. That's the second Thursday." Then: "We really need to talk about our board retreat. We need to come up with a date, possible date and location so we can discuss that at the April meeting." And the April policy list: "We'll have the sexual harassment policy and the grievance process. I encourage everyone to read that policy. It's really important policy. Before we meet in April, we'll also have data governance and security. I know Geoff has had input into that already. And we'll also bring up the policy DB which is transfer of appropriations." "policy DB" is the ASR for DBJ; all three appear on the April 11 agenda under their proper codes. | POSITIVE |
| 0:57:41 | Other business: the association's webinars, and a right-to-know session | "the New Hampshire School Board Association has posted their future webinars, and we are a member. And if we register for a webinar that gives us the opportunity to view it at a later time at our own convenience, and we also get the handouts from those webinars." The programme: "Future topics include the right to know law, which is extremely important. It will be an orientation for new board members after March. I believe that's in May. Have a webinar on communicating and. Messaging on collective bargaining, on special education law and the new platform for the Department of Education data and assessment information." Then, from another member: "But we're going to do a watch party. So we'll invite everybody." The chair: "So bring the popcorn." | POSITIVE |
| 0:59:11 | Adjournment | "I'd like to make a motion to adjourn. Second." — the row holds both the motion and another member's second. "Any discussion? All in favor?" One audible assent, rendered "I think those presentation." Then: "Meeting adjourned. Thank you folks." The minutes time the motion at 8:24pm; the recording position converts to about 8:25 PM on the post-cut offset. | |
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 February 15, 2024, which matters here: RSA 91-A:2 and RSA 91-A:3 had both been amended nineteen weeks earlier, effective October 3, 2023; RSA 189:13-a had last been amended on September 26, 2023; paragraph IV of RSA 194-C:9 did not yet exist; the New Hampshire nursing-mothers statute the board's new policy cites as its legal reference would not take effect for another seventeen months; and RSA 193:38 was amended after this date and is therefore cited on this page only with that caveat. Positive findings are included: a page that only accuses is not a record. Cards run HIGH, then MEDIUM, then OBSERVATION, then POSITIVE.
HIGH The minutes record the motion sealing a fifty-six-minute nonpublic session with no mover, no seconder and no number of years — and the board's own correction of that blank has never been posted
RSA 91-A:2, II is explicit: "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." That clause has bound this board since 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019, and is untouched by the October 2023 amendment.
What the posted minutes say. Under the nonpublic-session heading, after the entries for the motion in and the motion out, the district's document reads in its entirety: "Makes a motion to seal the minutes for , seconds" — followed by "Roll call vote taken by Noelle Kronberg; all present voting yes". There is no name before the verb, no name after seconds, and an empty space where the term belongs. Every other motion in these seven pages carries both names. This one carries neither, and it is the motion that closes off the only record of fifty-six of the meeting's one hundred and fourteen minutes.
What the recording says. At 0:04:35 the chair says "Do I have a motion to seal the minutes? Candace." and a member answers "I'll make a motion to seal the minutes for three years." The second, "I'll second.", falls inside the chair's own diarized row and cannot be attributed from the audio.
What makes this a HIGH rather than a clerical slip. The board itself found the defect and fixed it — and the fix was never published. The draft minutes of April 11, 2024 record, under Minutes Approval: "Discussion: item 3, fourth bullet- motion to seal the minutes for three years made by Candace Crawford and seconded by Heather Whitney is missing", and the February minutes were then approved "as amended". The file in the public share was created on May 29, 2024 — forty-eight days after that amendment — and still contains the blank. No approved-form version of these minutes exists in any district share. The public record of this meeting therefore states that a nonpublic session was sealed by nobody, for no stated period, and there is no posted document from which a member of the public could learn when the seal expires.
Two things are recorded the other way. The rest of these minutes are the most complete this board produced in this stretch — a named mover and seconder for all sixteen other motions, a named tally on the contract vote, and clock times for the nonpublic session at both ends. And the board caught its own error at the next meeting without prompting, which is the mechanism working.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification — the text in force on this date); 2.15.24 Draft SAU6 School Board Minutes; 4.11.24 Draft SAU6 Board Minutes; dialogue transcript 15580 SAU6021524.mp4.CSV.
HIGH The interim superintendent's contract, whose terms this board delegated on January 11 "for subsequent approval", did not come back to it in public at this meeting — or at the next one
On January 11, 2024 this board terminated one superintendent's contract and, minutes later, appointed Christopher Pratt interim Superintendent of Schools effective January 12, with the terms of his contract expressly delegated to the chair and legal counsel for later approval. That is what the motion said and what the minutes of that meeting record. February 15 is the next meeting of this board, and the first at which he sits.
The search, stated so it can be checked. The word contract occurs once in the 460 rows of this recording, at 0:21:08, and it is the motion authorising a contract with the human resources director. The posted agenda has no item touching the superintendent's compensation. The seven pages of minutes have none. None of the ten documents in the packet is a contract, a salary schedule or a compensation memorandum. At the next meeting, April 11, the agenda again has no such item and the minutes again record none. And the document tables in MAP.md, which were built by opening all twenty-six SAU 6 packet folders from 2023 to 2026 in the browser rather than through the Drive search index, contain no superintendent's contract anywhere in the corpus. A Drive title search for one returns nothing, which on these shares proves little either way and is not relied on.
What cannot be excluded, and is not. The evening opened with a fifty-six-minute nonpublic session noticed under the exemption for "The dismissal, promotion, or compensation of any public employee", and its minutes were sealed for three years. Compensation may well have been discussed there; RSA 91-A:3, II permits a public body to consider and act upon such a matter in nonpublic session, subject to RSA 91-A:3, III's disclosure and sealing rules. So this page does not say the contract was never discussed. It says something narrower and checkable: no approval of it appears anywhere in the public record of this meeting, and none appears in the public record of the next one either.
What the next meeting establishes affirmatively. On April 11 the board went into nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and (b) and then sealed those minutes for six months, and the reason it gave on the record is decisive on the timing: the chair moved to seal "to allow time for the negotiations to finish", and on the recording of that meeting put it as "I would just to the contract until the negotiations are done". Three months after the appointment, the negotiations were still unfinished. The same minutes also record the evaluation timetable being built around a written evaluation that "contractually" had to reach him by June 1 — so an instrument of some kind was being treated as binding by then, while its approval had never been taken in public.
The consequence is the one the January 11 delegation created. A board that appoints a chief executive without settling his terms takes on a duty to settle them where the public can see; RSA 194-C:5, III places the fixing of SAU salaries on this board, not on its chair. On the public record, six months after the appointment the terms had still not come back.
Sources: SAU 6 — January 11, 2024 and its draft minutes; this meeting's agenda and minutes; SAU 6 School Board Agenda 4.11.24 and 4.11.24 draft minutes; SAU 6 — April 11, 2024; RSA 91-A:3, II(a), III; RSA 194-C:5, III.
HIGH Three policies were adopted at the reading the agenda noticed as a first read — contrary to the board's own policy BGAA, adopted five weeks earlier — and one of the three appeared on no posted agenda at all
This is not a statutory point. RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of the time and place of a meeting, not of its subject matter, and the notice given here was ample (flag 17). The rule broken is the board's own, and the board wrote it for itself on January 11, 2024.
The rule. SAU 6 policy BGAA, Policy Development, Adoption, and Review, adopted at the previous meeting of this board, paragraph E.2: "All new policies, and/or revisions to existing board policies are subject to a 'first reading' by the full board to occur at a regular board meeting." Paragraph E.5: "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."
What happened. The agenda labelled five policies. ACN was labelled "(Second Read/Adoption)" and was adopted — correctly. AC was labelled "(First Read)" and was moved to a second read — correctly. GBCD and EHB were labelled "(First Read)" and both were adopted, at 0:28:39 and 0:29:46. KF was labelled "(First Read)" and its motion was withdrawn. DGA was on no version of the agenda, was added from the floor at 0:01:03 as "a first read", and was adopted at 0:38:23. The minutes record all three adoptions under headings that still read "(First Read)".
Neither of BGAA's two escape hatches was met or invoked. Paragraph G.1 permits adoption "at any meeting by a majority vote of Board members in attendance, provided that public notice of the proposed action was given at least one week in advance and that each Board member was notified of the proposed action", and adds that a meeting agenda is sufficient notification to members "if it identifies the policy to be acted upon". The only dated public notice recoverable is the creation of the packet in the district's Drive share on Tuesday, February 13 — two days, not one week — and for DGA no agenda identified it at all. Paragraph G.2 permits waiving "the second meeting limitation" for "matters of unusual or unexpected urgency"; no urgency was asserted for any of the three, and the chair's own description of DGA was "This is an easy policy."
It was not deliberate, and the recording shows it. At 0:28:50 the chair begins to declare GBCD advanced — "Moving this to second reading. In the next." — and has to be corrected: "We adopt the document. Oh, we adopted it. So it's not moving. Adopted?"
And it had a cost eight weeks later. Policy EHB, adopted here in about ninety seconds with no question asked, came back to the April 11 meeting as a revision because, per those minutes, the technology director "found some discrepancies in the policy as written and the way things are actually done (that are more effective)". A second reading is what would have surfaced that.
Sources: SAU 6 policy BGAA, Policy Development, Adoption, and Review, paragraphs E.2, E.5, G.1 and G.2, from the second-read copy adopted 1/11/24; this meeting's agenda; this meeting's minutes; 4.11.24 draft minutes; Drive creation timestamps for all ten packet documents.
MEDIUM The nonpublic session was noticed, moved aloud and minuted under a chapter of New Hampshire law that does not exist — and under a paragraph that contains no exemptions at all
There is no RSA chapter 92-A. Title VI of the Revised Statutes Annotated runs 91, 91-A, 91-B, 91-C, 92, 93, 93-A, 93-B and 94 onwards; chapter 91-A is the Right-to-Know Law and chapter 92 is "Tenure and Oath of Office in Certain Cases". The nonpublic-session provisions everyone in the room plainly meant are at RSA 91-A:3.
The error appears here three times, in three different hands. The agenda heads item III "Non-Public Meeting Session RSA 92-A:3, I and II". The chair moves it aloud at 0:02:37 as "under RSA 92-3. No. 92-A colon 328 and see" — correcting herself once, and to the wrong chapter both times. The clerk writes it into the minutes as a motion "to move to non-public under RSA 92-A:3, I(a) and II(c)".
A second, independent defect sits underneath the first. The agenda lays the two exemptions out as "I. (a) The dismissal, promotion, or compensation of any public employee…" and "II. (c) Matters which, if discussed in public, would likely adversely affect the reputation of any person…", as though the first belonged to paragraph I. It does not. RSA 91-A:3, I contains no subject-matter exemptions whatever — I(a) is the prohibition itself ("Public bodies shall not meet in nonpublic session, except for one of the purposes set out in paragraph II"), I(b) the motion requirement, I(c) the confinement requirement. Every exemption is in paragraph II. The employee-compensation exemption is II(a). So the motion the clerk recorded cites, as one of its two grounds, a subparagraph that is not a ground.
Why that is not merely pedantic here. 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." And I(c): "All discussions held and decisions made during nonpublic session shall be confined to the matters set out in the motion." Read literally, the only exemption under paragraph II that this motion states is the reputation exemption at II(c). The employee-compensation exemption — the one that would cover a superintendent's or a director's terms of employment — is not among the matters the motion sets out, whatever the agenda printed beneath the heading. Fifty-six minutes and a three-year seal rest on it.
This is a standing defect of this board's paperwork, not a one-off. The same phantom chapter is on the 12/14/23 agenda, on the 1/11/24 agenda, and in the 1/11/24 minutes — which this board approved without comment at 0:02:25, twelve minutes before repeating it. It is reported here as a defective citation in the documents; it is not silently repaired, and no assumption is made that the body meant 91-A:3, II even though it plainly did. It ends after this meeting — see flag 21.
Sources: RSA Title VI, chapter list (negative anchor — there is no chapter 92-A); RSA 91-A:3, I(a)–(c) and II; RSA 91-A:3 (2023 codification); this meeting's agenda, item III; this meeting's minutes.
MEDIUM The board handed the compensation of an SAU employee to the superintendent to settle, with no figure named and no return to the board — where the statute puts the fixing of SAU salaries on the board
RSA 194-C:5, III: "The school board of each school administrative unit shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel" and "shall apportion the expense of the salaries and benefits among the several districts". Unamended since 1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996, so the current text governed. Note for the project's own reference file: this sentence is in paragraph III, not paragraph I as pending_legal_anchors.md has it.
The motion, at 0:21:08, was "to authorize the superintendent to negotiate and enter into a contract with the HR human Resources director to be consistent with prevailing market rates for that position." The minutes render it "for Interim Superintendent Chris Pratt to negotiate and enter into contract with HR director based on current market rates". No dollar figure, range or ceiling was stated; no document was in the packet; no report back to the board was required; and no member asked a question — the chair invited discussion twice and got none. One member abstained without giving a reason.
Two things temper this. "Consistent with prevailing market rates" is a standard, even if an unquantified one, and the board plainly meant to bind the negotiation to it. And an SAU board that authorises a negotiation has not necessarily failed to fix a salary: the apportionment among the districts under the same paragraph runs through the SAU budget, which this board adopts. But the effect of the motion as passed is that the compensation of a central-office director was settled by one officer, in private, with nothing on the public record fixing it and nothing requiring it to come back — and the post was filled on April 11 with a nomination that names the appointee but not the terms. That is the same shape as flag 3.
Sources: RSA 194-C:5, III; dialogue transcript; this meeting's minutes; 4.11.24 draft minutes (nomination of a Director of Human Resources effective April 15, 2024).
MEDIUM The minutes reached the public share one hundred and four days after the meeting
RSA 91-A:2, II: minutes "shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". The meeting was Thursday, February 15, 2024. Counting business days and excluding the New Hampshire legal holiday on Monday, February 19 — RSA 288:1's "the third Monday in February, known as Washington's Birthday" — the fifth business day was Friday, February 23, 2024.
The file 2.15.24 Draft SAU6 School Board Minutes (1) (2).pdf was created in the district's Drive share on May 29, 2024 at about 10:18 a.m. — ninety-six days past that deadline, one hundred and four days after the meeting, and forty-eight days after the board approved the minutes on April 11. The folder it sits in, 3. SAU 4.11.24, was itself created three minutes earlier, on the same morning: the whole of the April 11 packet was posted forty-eight days after the April 11 meeting.
Two honest limits. Posting to a Google Drive share is not what the statute requires — inspection at the SAU office would satisfy it, and nothing in this record shows a requester was refused or that the minutes were unavailable there. And the district's habit of filing each meeting's minutes inside the following meeting's packet means a folder location is a filing convention, not a date stamp. What the Drive creation timestamp does establish is when the document became available in the one share the district actually publishes to, and on that measure it was three and a half months.
Graded MEDIUM on the second limb of this project's severity rule: the meeting was noticed, fully packeted two days in advance, and the minutes exist and are detailed. What is missing is timeliness, not the record — though see flag 1 for the one part of the record that is still missing today.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification); RSA 288:1; Google Drive createdTime for file 1EIGc-aLqOcigmrWMd_AV5EKkqnDC4Qyg (2024-05-29, 14:18 UTC) and for folder 1xJcxKI7lKQGyZN_ICEk0lo_SUxGz2rrW (2024-05-29, 14:15 UTC).
MEDIUM The largest overrun on the budget report in front of the board was the Superintendent's Office salary line, and nobody mentioned it
The packet document 2023-2024 YTD Budget SAU6 Meeting.PDF, printed on February 12, 2024, shows account 100.41.2321.110 Supt Office Salaries with a budget of $463,053.91, $396,010.56 spent and $166,141.74 encumbered — a budget balance of minus $99,098.39, or 21.40% over. It is the largest single negative on the report, and the Superintendent's Office function as a whole (2321) is $60,957.27 over on a $752,518.22 appropriation.
The item was noticed as "Budget Update … a. YTD Expenditures" and ran eight minutes. The business administrator identified the overage the board discussed as health insurance, which is also true — Human Resources health insurance is $29,570.62 over a $13,692.80 line — and gave the correct grand-total balance. No member asked about the superintendent's office, and it was not named. Five weeks earlier this board had terminated a superintendent's contract with six months' severance and appointed a successor mid-year; those are exactly the events that would move this line. This page states the arithmetic and the timing and does not assert the causal link: the report gives no detail below the account level, and the underlying transactions are not in any public document.
Two other lines on the same page are worth recording because they recur. Supt Office TSA 403b carries $4,960.00 spent and $720.00 encumbered against a $500.00 appropriation. And function 2310, School Board, carries $4,400.00 spent and $3,000.00 encumbered against a budget of $0.00 — see flag 11. By the April 11 report the Superintendent's Office salary overrun had grown to a projected $107,557.44.
No statute is cited against any of this. RSA ch. 32, the Municipal Budget Law, applies by its own terms to towns, school districts and village districts and does not name school administrative units; an SAU's budget authority lives in RSA 194-C:9. Line overruns inside a total are not deficit spending, and the SAU as a whole was under budget on this report. The flag is about what a budget update did not tell the board that its own document said.
Sources: 2023-2024 YTD Budget SAU6 Meeting.PDF; dialogue transcript; SAU 6 — April 11, 2024; RSA 32:1 and RSA 194-C:9 (2023 codification), cited only to show which chapter governs.
MEDIUM No statutory ground was stated for the three-year seal, and one answer in the roll on it is not a yes
RSA 91-A:3, III requires two things of a body that wants to keep nonpublic minutes from the public. The disclosure duty is the default — minutes and decisions "shall be publicly disclosed within 72 hours of the meeting" — and the exception runs 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 determination. Neither the recording nor the minutes contains any of those three grounds. The motion on tape is "I'll make a motion to seal the minutes for three years" and nothing else; the minutes' version is the blank at flag 1. This is the third meeting of this board in a row at which minutes were sealed with no ground stated — ninety-nine years on December 7, thirty years on January 11, three years here. The trend is the right way; the omission is the same.
The roll. The clerk read it at 0:04:49. Nine transcript rows carry the roll and its answers; every one that is audibly a vote reads as an affirmative except the row at 0:05:09 is rendered 21. No. The minutes record "all present voting yes". This page reports both and settles neither. The words are not resolvable into a name from the recording, the ASR mangles names throughout this file, and with eleven members present a single negative would still satisfy the two-thirds the statute requires, so nothing turns on it for the validity of the seal. What it bears on is whether "all present voting yes" is an accurate record.
What does not apply. RSA 91-A:3, IV, added by 2023, 189:1 effective October 3, 2023, requires review of a seal "no more than 10 years" after the last vote to maintain it. Three years is inside that, so the term chosen creates no problem under paragraph IV — unlike the ninety-nine-year seal this board voted in December. The difficulty is that the only posted version of the minutes does not say three, so nothing in the public record starts the clock.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III and IV; RSA 91-A:3 (2023 codification); dialogue transcript; this meeting's minutes; December 7 and January 11 pages for the two earlier seals.
MEDIUM Six policies came to this meeting from a subcommittee that has left no notice, no agenda and no minutes anywhere in either district's public share
RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) defines "public body" as "Any legislative body, governing body, board, commission, committee, agency, or authority of any county, town, municipal corporation, school district, school administrative unit, chartered public school, or other political subdivision, or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto." The trailing clause is what reaches a policy subcommittee. A public body owes notice under RSA 91-A:2, II and minutes open to inspection within five business days.
The chair describes the subcommittee's work in the first person throughout the policy block and names it at 0:29:03: "the members of the committee, Kelly and Candace, as well as Superintendent Pratt, who's been at every meeting we've had." Three of twelve board members, plus the superintendent, meeting more than once between January 11 and February 15. On policy KF she reports its internal deliberations at 0:32:43: "it was a lively, wonderful discussion. We really listened. We listened, we heard, we offered opinion." Six documents and one drafting decision after another reached the full board from those meetings; none of the meetings is in any public record.
The search. This meeting's own packet folder holds ten documents, itemised in the appendix, and none is a subcommittee record. The next meeting's folder holds nine, and none is. The two-stage, folder-by-folder enumeration reported on the December 7 page covered every SAU 6 packet folder plus the Claremont Meeting Minutes share, and the January 11 page additionally opened the district's four named subcommittee folders in Drive and found them empty. Nothing found since changes that.
The mitigation, and it is real. Everything the subcommittee produced was published in the packet two days before the meeting and debated in open session, and one of the six was talked out of existence on the record. RSA 194-C names no committee structure for an SAU board and prescribes no subcommittee minutes; the duty argued here comes from RSA 91-A alone, and whether a three-member advisory group of this kind is a "subcommittee" within VI(d) has not been decided against this board by anyone. Graded MEDIUM for that reason, and because the outputs, unlike the deliberations, are fully public.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification); dialogue transcript; the ten-document enumeration of 2. SAU 2.15.24 and the nine-document enumeration of 3. SAU 4.11.24 in MAP.md §§41 and 45.
MEDIUM How this board is constituted and how often it meets: two statutory offices unfilled, a roll assigned to an officer who does not exist, a School Board line spent against a zero appropriation, and a vote to meet half as often taken without the trial period the chair proposed
The offices. RSA 194-C:5, I: "The school board of each school administrative unit 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." Unamended since 1996. The agenda masthead prints a chair, a vice chair — not one of the three statutory offices — and a clerk. No secretary and no treasurer appear anywhere on this meeting's paperwork, though Bonnie Miles was elected SAU treasurer on August 17, 2023. The agenda's general-business line still reads "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members", and at 0:00:31 the chair's cue comes through as "About clerk. Let's do a roll call" and the clerk takes it. The same line, unchanged, is still on the April 11 agenda, at the meeting where the board reorganises: the April 11 minutes record the election of a chair and a vice chair and no election of a secretary or a treasurer.
The zero-dollar line. On the report before the board, function 2310 School Board carries a budget of $0.00 against $4,400.00 spent and $3,000.00 encumbered. Two accounts make it up: School Board Contracted Services, $3,200.00 spent and $1,800.00 encumbered against nothing appropriated, and School Board Secretary, $1,200.00 spent and $1,200.00 encumbered against nothing appropriated. The SAU is paying for a school board secretary out of an appropriation of zero while the office RSA 194-C:5, I requires it to fill stands empty on its own masthead. Neither line was mentioned.
The cadence. At 0:54:25 the chair proposed a bounded experiment — "what if we try it for the rest until June and then see how that works and then, you know, have an end date and then come back and revisit" — but the motion already on the floor had no end date, the clerk could not read it back, and the chair put it as it stood: "right now the motion is with no end date. They're just going to buy monthly." It carried on a voice vote with no count. Three members had spoken against. The board thereby cancelled the March 14 meeting its own agenda lists under Future Dates two inches below, and left itself two meetings — April 11 and a June date it never held — before the school year ended. No statute is breached by any of that: RSA 194-C fixes no minimum number of SAU board meetings, and April 11 falls inside the April 1 to June 1 organisational window. It is recorded because a body that meets six times a year cannot supervise a chief executive whose contract, at that point, it had not seen.
Sources: RSA 194-C:5, I; this meeting's agenda; 2023-2024 YTD Budget SAU6 Meeting.PDF, function 2310; SAU 6 School Board Agenda 4.11.24 and its minutes; dialogue transcript.
OBSERVATION The published recording is missing about fifty-six minutes, and nothing marks the cut
The arithmetic closes to within about a minute and a half, from four independent sources. The meeting began at 6:30 PM (agenda, minutes heading, and the chair's own opening word) and the adjournment motion is timed in the minutes at 8:24pm — 114 minutes. The published file runs 59 minutes 25 seconds. The minutes put the entry into nonpublic session at 6:35 PM and the motion out at 7:30pm — 55 minutes. On the recording those two moments are 0:03:36 and 0:03:52, sixteen seconds apart. 114 minus 59 is 55; measuring instead from the recording position at which the board actually left the room, which converts to about 6:34 PM, gives 56. The two derivations agree to within a minute, and this page rounds to fifty-six.
The audio runs continuously across the join. There is no fade, no slate, no caption and no gap: the chair says the board is going "into the classroom, diagonally located from us" and, sixteen seconds later, a motion to return is made. A member of the public watching the published recording would reasonably conclude that the nonpublic session lasted a few seconds. It lasted almost an hour, and a member of the board arrived during it.
No rule is cited against this and none is known. Nothing in RSA 91-A requires a public body to record a meeting at all, still less to publish an unedited recording, and a body that broadcasts is entitled to stop broadcasting when it goes into a lawful nonpublic session. The observation is about what the published artifact conveys. It matters here for two specific reasons. First, the minutes of that session are sealed for three years, so the recording is the only other artifact of it and it has been altered without notice. Second, it changes how every timestamp on this page must be read: recording positions are clock times with two different offsets, 6 hours 30 minutes before the cut and 7 hours 26 minutes after it.
This is the same pattern the project documented on the December 7, 2023 SAU 6 recording, where a ten-minute recess is forty-five recording-seconds long. A zero-gap transcript on these files is evidence of an edit, not of a continuous feed.
Sources: dialogue transcript; this meeting's minutes (6:35 PM, 7:30pm, 8:24pm); this meeting's agenda; Cablecast show 15580; SAU 6 — December 7, 2023.
OBSERVATION The citizens' comment period was opened and closed in a single sentence, because nobody was there
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 note: 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022 — in force on this date.
At 0:02:37 the chair said "Any citizens comments? See, I since I see no citizens present, I will close citizens comments for this evening." The minutes record "Citizens Comments- none". The period was on the posted agenda, it was opened, nobody was turned away, and nobody asked to speak. No violation is asserted.
Two questions the statutory text does not settle are stated rather than resolved. Does it reach an SAU board at all? It speaks of "school boards" and "school district matters", and an SAU board is neither a school board of a district nor a body with district matters of its own — though it is composed entirely of district school board members. Is the thirty minutes a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time? The text will bear either reading, and a body that must sit in silence for half an hour when nobody has come is not an obvious construction.
The board's own answer arrives eight weeks later and is worth recording. On April 11 it adopted policy BEDH, Public Comments & Participation at Board Meetings, which the chair introduced, per those minutes, as "the same as Claremont's policy, based on state law that each board provides 30 minutes for all public comments." This board therefore treats RSA 189:74 as applying to it. On the same evening it heard a citizen from the floor at length. Neither fact is retrospective, and neither turns this meeting into a breach.
Sources: RSA 189:74; dialogue transcript; this meeting's minutes; 4.11.24 draft minutes.
OBSERVATION The board struck "Anti-Discrimination Plan" from a policy's title and left the plan itself, with an October 2020 deadline, in the body of the text
The chair's stated reason for the amendment, at 0:24:23, was jurisdictional: "for the title of this policy at the same level, they say you are not required to have an anti-discrimination plan." — "That is the district levels." The motion moved policy AC to a second read as amended, and the shortened title, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunity Employment, is what appears on the April 11 agenda when it was adopted.
The premise is reported here as the chair's characterization, not confirmed as law. The NHSBA sample's own revision note attributes the plan requirement to 2019's SB263, 2019 N.H. Laws ch. 282, which "requires each district to adopt a policy that sets the framework for developing a coordinated plan to prevent and address incidents of discrimination". The codified section that act produced, RSA 193:38, is written in terms of what may not be done in "public schools" and of a claimant's civil remedy, and it was amended by 2024, 117:1, effective September 1, 2024 — after this meeting. Establishing what its February 2024 text required, and of whom, is not something this page can do from these documents, and it is not asserted either way. What can be said is that the distinction the chair drew — district duty, not SAU duty — is the same distinction that is demonstrably correct for the criminal-records policy adopted the same night (flag 20), and that she repeatedly told the district boards to adopt their own.
What was left in. The first-read copy in the packet retains section C, "District Anti-Discrimination Plan", which directs that "No later than October 15, 2020, the Superintendent shall develop and provide to the Board for approval, a coordinated written District Anti-Discrimination Plan" and requires an update "No less than once every two years". Nothing on the recording or in the minutes touches section C; the amendment was to the title. Whether the body of the policy was edited before the April 11 adoption cannot be determined from any posted document, because no adopted-form copy of policy AC has been published.
Sources: FOR FIRST READ DRAFT Policy AC, sections C and D and its NHSBA revision notes; RSA 193:38 (source note 2019, 282:1, eff. Sept. 17, 2019; 2024, 117:1, eff. Sept. 1, 2024); dialogue transcript; 4.11.24 draft minutes.
OBSERVATION A board member asked what an acronym in the superintendent's report meant, was given an answer the document does not support, and the minutes wrote the answer down as fact
The packet's Department Monthly Reports (2).pdf lists, under Human Resources, seven operational bullets: coordinating job fairs at three colleges, coordinating a job fair of their own, "Finishing ACA reporting", working on the substitute process, revamping onboarding, researching recruitment tools, and streamlining open enrollment.
At 0:12:56 a member asks: "The bullet point for finishing ACA reporting. What's ACA." The interim superintendent begins "That's the." and is spoken over. A member answers "Nondiscrimination policy."; the chair agrees, "Okay, that's the policy we're working."; a member elaborates, "There's a c a is just general non-discretionary nondiscrimination. And then a sack I think is specifically for sexual harassment." The questioner accepts it. The minutes record: "Question from Jennifer Gallagher about the ACA acronym- the same policy that the board is working on."
The document does not support that. The bullet sits in a human-resources operations list between job fairs and the substitute process; the department report contains no policy item anywhere; and the policy codes the board was in fact working on that night are AC and, in April, ACAC — not ACA, which appears in none of the six policy documents in the packet and in none of the cross-reference tables inside them. This page does not assert what the district meant by ACA, because no document in the record says. What it records is that a question about the superintendent's own report was answered by three people from the board rather than from the report, that the officer who wrote the report did not finish his sentence, and that the minutes then converted the answer into a finding of fact.
It is a small thing and it is recorded because of what it is a small instance of: this meeting's minutes are, in several places, more confident than its record.
Sources: Department Monthly Reports (2).pdf; dialogue transcript; this meeting's minutes; the six policy documents in 2. SAU 2.15.24.
OBSERVATION What the adopted policies actually say: a private nursing space "in each building" from a body with no buildings, an orphaned reference to unpaid nursing periods, and six policy-history blocks that record no adoption at all
These are drafting observations on the documents in the public packet, not legal findings. They are recorded because a policy manual is a governmental record under the board's own policy BGAA paragraph H.1, and because the copies in the share are the only versions the public can read.
Buildings. Policy ACN section D, adopted at 0:23:49: "Nursing mothers will be provided with a private place, other than a bathroom, in each building in which a nursing mother spends her working day", with seven specified features including a sink and a refrigerator where feasible and cleaning "by District staff assigned to that duty". Forty minutes later, at 0:32:58, the same board withdrew policy KF on the ground that the SAU owns no buildings — "We don't have any buildings." Both propositions are now the board's.
Unpaid. The amendment the board made at the first reading rewrote one sentence of paragraph C so that "A nursing mother who is an hourly employee will be paid during nursing periods." The next sentence was not touched and still reads "Nursing mothers shall not be required to 'make up' time relating to the use of unpaid nursing periods." Read together, the second sentence now protects a category the first has abolished.
Officers the SAU does not have. ACN section B directs an administrator who cannot accommodate a nursing mother to "consult with the District's Human Rights/Non-Discrimination Officer". Policy AC, read for the first time twenty minutes later, names the SAU's coordinators as a Title IX Coordinator and a 504 Coordinator, on the interim superintendent's advice; and the AC sample's own list of coordinator titles leaves the Human Rights Officer line blank for a district to fill.
No adoption dates. Every one of the six policy documents in this packet carries a "District Policy History" block with the second-reading line blank. ACN's reads "First reading: 1/11/2024" and then nothing, in the copy posted for the meeting that adopted it. So does BGAA's, adopted on January 11. So do the blocks in the NHSBA samples for AC, GBCD, EHB, DGA and KF, which also still carry NHSBA's adoption/revision-notes blocks — text the association's own instruction says "should be removed prior to adoption" — its bracketed choices for districts to complete, its {**} placeholder cross-references, and, in GBCD, ten numbered footnotes each headed "[Delete footnote]". Strike-throughs and highlighting do not survive text extraction from these PDFs, so this page does not state which passages the SAU's own edits removed; the point is that the posted copies are working drafts and none of them is the text as adopted. BGAA paragraph E.6 requires that "Prior to final approval by the Board, each policy will be titled, dated, and coded", and paragraph H.4 that "An up-to-date policy manual shall be maintained on the District's website with a hard copy, in the Superintendent's Office."
Sources: Second Read Priority Policy ACN, sections B, C, D and its policy-history block; Policy AC, section D; Policy GBCD; Policy EHB; Policy DGA; Policy KF; Policy BGAA, paragraphs E.6, H.1 and H.4.
OBSERVATION The records-retention policy adopted here gives the superintendent a duty the statute gives to members of the school board — and was revised eight weeks later
RSA 189:29-a: "Members of the school board shall establish a records retention and disposition schedule for all official records of the school district." Source note 1983, 94:1, eff. July 23, 1983 — never amended, so the current text governed.
Policy EHB, adopted at 0:29:46, opens: "The Superintendent shall develop and maintain (a) a schedule for the minimum retention of various district records ('Record Retention Schedule') as required under RSA 189:29-a, and (2) procedures for records retention and/or destruction." Its paragraph A adds that the Superintendent "shall update the Record Retention Schedule from time-to-time" and "shall inform the Board of any revisions to EHB-R no later than the second School Board meeting after the changes were made."
Two things are worth stating and neither is an accusation. The wording is NHSBA's, not the SAU's, and appears in the sample as distributed; whether a board that adopts a policy directing its superintendent to develop and maintain the schedule, and to report revisions to it, has "established" the schedule within RSA 189:29-a is a question the statute's four sentences do not answer, and no case is cited here for it. And the section speaks of "the school district" — the SAU is not one, so the board adopting this policy is again legislating beyond what the statute asks of it, as it did with the criminal-records policy the same night.
The policy also assumes a companion schedule, EHB-R, that no posted document shows the SAU to have, and it imposes real duties in its own right: annual public notice of the document-destruction policy, litigation holds, a hold on destruction on receipt of a right-to-know request with a ninety-day floor, and prescribed methods for destroying sensitive information. None of it was discussed. The item ran about ninety seconds and drew no question; on April 11 the technology director's review sent it back to the board as a revision.
Sources: RSA 189:29-a; FIRST READ 2.15.2024 Policy EHB, opening paragraph and sections A, B and C; 4.11.24 draft minutes, item VII.2.j.
POSITIVE The fullest packet this board has posted — ten documents, more than fifty-seven hours ahead
RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of the time and place of a meeting "posted in 2 appropriate places … at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings". It requires no packet at all.
All ten documents in 2. SAU 2.15.24 were created in the district's Drive share within five seconds of each other on Tuesday, February 13, 2024, at about 8:59 a.m. — two days and nine and a half hours before a 6:30 PM Thursday meeting. That is more than twice the statutory minimum, and the substance is what matters: the agenda, six complete policy texts in the versions the board would work from, the year-to-date budget report the business administrator presented, the first written departmental report of the new superintendent's tenure, and the previous meeting's draft minutes. Every substantive item on the agenda except the personnel update had a document behind it, in public, before the meeting.
Set against the same board's practice, this is a marked improvement: the January 11 packet ran to four documents, and the whole of that night's business — the removal of a superintendent and the appointment of a successor — was noticed as the single word "Superintendent". Set against what followed, it is better than that too: the April 11 packet reached the public share on May 29, forty-eight days after that meeting.
Sources: Google Drive createdTime for all ten files in folder 1we3hskN7wrj2ntYhuwBjvqWPQn8tN11O, 2024-02-13, all within five seconds of 13:59 UTC; RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification); SAU 6 — January 11, 2024.
POSITIVE The board adopted a nursing-mothers policy seventeen months before the state law it cites took effect, and made hourly employees' nursing periods paid — which federal law does not require
The vintage point, stated plainly because it cuts in the board's favour. Policy ACN's legal reference reads "RSA 275:78-83". The source note on RSA 275:78, RSA 275:79 and RSA 275:81 is "2023, 191:20, eff. July 1, 2025", with the penalty section following a year later still. On February 15, 2024 none of that subdivision was in force. The New Hampshire duty at 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" — would not bind this SAU for another seventeen months. RSA 275:78, II's definition of employer, which reaches "the state or any of its political subdivisions, which has 6 or more employees working in the state", would reach it then.
What did bind on the day was the federal PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, 29 U.S.C. §218d, in force since December 29, 2022: "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". The adopted policy meets both, and its one-year period matches the statute's.
And the board's own amendment goes past the federal floor. Section 218d(b) provides that an "employer shall not be required to compensate an employee receiving reasonable break time…unless otherwise required by Federal or State law". The change this board made at the first reading, and confirmed at 0:22:53 — "the nursing mother who's an hourly employee who paid during nursing periods and not required to make up time" — requires exactly the compensation federal law leaves optional. The board legislated ahead of the state statute and above the federal one, for its own hourly employees, and did it as a second reading properly noticed and properly taken. See flag 15 for the drafting residue the amendment left behind.
Sources: RSA 275:79, RSA 275:78 and RSA 275:81 (source notes "2023, 191:20, eff. July 1, 2025"); HB 358, 2023 N.H. Laws ch. 191; 29 U.S.C. §218d(a), (b); Second Read Priority Policy ACN, paragraph C.
POSITIVE The board talked itself out of a policy rather than into one, after a member raised a viewpoint-bias objection that the record shows was heard
Policy KF was the only item of the evening that got a real argument, and it is the only policy that did not pass. Fourteen minutes, five participants, and two distinct grounds.
The constitutional ground came first. At 0:31:35: "Concern, just about having any board have final approval. My concern is just viewpoint bias and, possible, rubbing against, actually the policy, the title nine policy where we could open ourselves up to a third person… And I also have concerns with anything that, you know, the board chooses a shield today can be used as a weapon tomorrow." And again: "I've always felt we have to be very, very careful about always being seen as neutral, having no viewpoint bias." The concern is well aimed at the text: the sample the board was working from provides that "The Board must approve any special requests or exceptions to this policy", that approval "may be denied due to lack of appropriate space or if a previous activity by the applicant resulted in a violation of any aspect of any School Board policy or guidelines", and that "No school building or facility shall be used for any purpose which could result in picketing, rioting, disturbing the peace or damage to property" — a restriction that names one form of protected expression alongside three forms of disorder. No court decision is cited here and none is needed: the point is that a member of the board identified the risk from the text before adopting it.
The jurisdictional ground finished it. The board established on the record that the SAU owns no buildings, rents its office from Claremont, and would therefore be approving applications for premises belonging to two other bodies. The mover withdrew rather than tabling — on a warning from another member that tabling "eliminates it" — the board voted the withdrawal, and the policy was referred to "The unity and the Claremont level".
Three things make this the healthiest twenty minutes in the file: the objection was raised before the vote, not after; the chair answered it by describing where the subcommittee had already weighed it rather than by dismissing it; and the board declined to adopt a policy it had concluded did not apply to it, which is the opposite of what it did with three others the same night.
Sources: dialogue transcript; First Read Policy KF; this meeting's minutes (which attribute the viewpoint-bias concern to Heather Whitney).
POSITIVE Eight things this meeting got right, recorded because a page that only accuses is not a record
1. A written department report, monthly, in the packet. The interim superintendent's first act at this board was to put a four-section document behind his own report — human resources, special education, technology, curriculum and grants, each signed by the responsible director — and to commit to it as a standing item — "you'll get monthly is the department report" — with a finance section added next month. Nothing in law requires it. The January 11 packet had no such document and neither had any before it in this stretch.
2. The right body was told to adopt the criminal-records policy. RSA 189:13-a, V provides that "The governing body of a school district, chartered public school, or public academy shall adopt a policy relative to hiring practices based on the results of the criminal history records check" — and does not name the school administrative unit, although paragraphs I(a), III and VI put the operational duty to run the checks squarely on "The employing school administrative unit". At 0:28:03 the chair said "Each local district should definitely update their policy or implement a policy if you don't have them." That is exactly the right allocation, and she repeated the point for policies KF and AC. IN FORCE FROM 2023, 164:1, 2, eff. Sept. 26, 2023 — the current text is the text that governed here.
3. One policy was handled precisely as the board's own rules require. Policy AC was noticed as a first read, amended on the floor, moved to a second read as amended, and adopted at the next meeting. The mover corrected herself mid-motion to get it right.
4. The seconder was settled out loud. "Did you get that? Well, we had multiple seconds." — "We'll go with Rocco." RSA 91-A:2, II requires the seconder's name in the minutes; this is a chair making sure the clerk could supply one.
5. A year-end accounting was demanded before it was needed. The chair asked, in February, for a June listing of "the record of transfers. The rationale for those transfers and for incumbent incumbent encumbered items, so that the board can approve and close them" — and repeated the request on April 11.
6. The business administrator volunteered to keep reporting to a board that had just voted to meet less. "I can have a monthly. Anyways. I don't have a problem doing that… I still send you just a quick update and a financial if you want that."
7. The chair used the broadcast. On the substitute-application process: "I'm I'm saying that for people who may be watching and who are interested in applying." On the election: "we urge all residents voting residents to register and to go out and vote on March 12th."
8. The forward calendar was accurate. Every policy the chair previewed for April — the Title IX sexual-harassment policy and grievance process, data governance and security, and transfer of appropriations — appears on the April 11 agenda under its proper code, and the search she announced produced two nominations at that meeting. The board also booked its own right-to-know training: "Future topics include the right to know law, which is extremely important."
Sources: RSA 189:13-a, I(a), III, V, VI; RSA 91-A:2, II; Department Monthly Reports (2).pdf; dialogue transcript; SAU 6 School Board Agenda 4.11.24.
POSITIVE The board corrected its own minutes at the next meeting — and the phantom chapter of law ends with this agenda
Two corrections belong on the record of this meeting because they are the record correcting itself.
The blank was found. On April 11, when these minutes came up for approval, a member stopped the vote: the draft minutes of that meeting record "Discussion: item 3, fourth bullet- motion to seal the minutes for three years made by Candace Crawford and seconded by Heather Whitney is missing", and the February minutes were then approved as amended rather than as presented. That is a board reading its own minutes against its own memory and catching a real omission. That the amended text was never posted is flag 1; that the board found it is this one.
The citation is fixed. The non-existent RSA chapter 92-A appears on the SAU 6 agendas of December 14, 2023, January 11, 2024 and February 15, 2024, and in the minutes of January 11 and February 15. It does not appear again. The agenda for April 11, 2024 heads its nonpublic item "Non public meeting session RSA 91-A:3, II (a)", with the exemption printed correctly beneath it and no paragraph-I misnumbering; the April 11 minutes cite "RSA 91-A:3, II a & b". Whoever prepares this board's paperwork corrected it between February 15 and April 11, without anyone having raised it on the record. This meeting is the last one carrying the defect.
Sources: 4.11.24 Draft SAU6 Board Minutes; SAU 6 School Board Agenda 4.11.24; this meeting's agenda; this meeting's minutes; December 14 and January 11 pages.
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
- Remote video: Cablecast show 15580, 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 file runs 59 minutes 25 seconds against a meeting of 114 minutes, and it is an edit: about fifty-six minutes were removed between recording positions 0:03:36 and 0:03:52, with continuous audio across the join and nothing marking it (flag 9). Recording positions convert to clock times with two offsets: add 6 hours 30 minutes before the cut, 7 hours 26 minutes after it.
- Packet folder: 2. SAU 2.15.24 — 10 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, flag 4 and flag 6, and are shown in Eastern time.
- Agenda: _SAU 6 School Board Agenda 2.15.24 .docx (1).pdf the leading underscore, the doubled space and the space before
.docx are the district's — created February 13, 2024 at about 8:59 a.m.; 96,472 bytes. Twelve board members on the masthead with two officers and a clerk; six central-office administrators headed by "Chris Pratt, Interim Superintendent of Schools"; sections I through VIII with clock times from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM; the line "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members"; item III citing "RSA 92-A:3, I and II" with the texts of two exemptions beneath it, mis-numbered; five policies under item V.3, three of them labelled "(First Read)"; two consecutive items numbered 3.; and a Future Dates list naming an SAU meeting on March 14 that the board cancelled that night. See flags 2, 4, 11 and 17.
- Minutes of this meeting: 2.15.24 Draft SAU6 School Board Minutes (1) (2).pdf the
(1) (2) is the district's — seven pages, 139,775 bytes, signed "Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, school board clerk", built on the agenda template with bullets inserted under each item and two of the template's clock times corrected. Filed in the next meeting's packet folder, 3. SAU 4.11.24, and created there on May 29, 2024 at about 10:18 a.m. — three minutes after that folder itself was created. They are the source on this page for attendance, the arrival time of the twelfth member, the nonpublic session's start and end, all movers and seconders but one, the named tally on the contract vote, and the adjournment time. See flags 1, 2, 6 and 8.
- Budget document: 2023-2024 YTD Budget SAU6 Meeting.PDF — three pages, 15,315 bytes, stamped "Printed: 02/12/2024" at 2:36 p.m., header "From Date: 2/1/2024 … To Date: 2/29/2024". Seven functions, a grand total of $2,396,000.00 budgeted and a budget balance of $122,952.17. Quoted on this page for the Superintendent's Office salary line, the Superintendent's Office TSA line, the Human Resources health-insurance line, the Business Office software line and the School Board function. See flag 7 and flag 11. The report's own date range ends on a day seventeen days after it was printed, which is how a year-to-date report through month-end is ordinarily run and is noted here only so a reader is not surprised by it.
- Department report: Department Monthly Reports (2).pdf — 114,132 bytes; four sections attributed to Angela, Ben, "Jeff, Jason, and Brandon", and "Catlin / Michael", plus the full schedule of the January 23 professional-development day. It is the source on this page for the correct forms of four names and terms the ASR garbles — Rivier, Disnard, Fiber WAN, ESSER — and for the consultant's name, Terra Geer. See flag 14 and flag 20.
- The six policy documents, all created February 13, 2024 at about 8:59 a.m.: Second Read Priority Policy ACN_ Nursing Mothers Accommodation (1) (2).pdf (49,617 bytes; the SAU's own text, legal reference "RSA 275:78-83", policy history "First reading: 1/11/2024" and a blank second-reading line) · FOR FIRST READ DRAFT Policy AC_ Non-Discrimination_ Equal Opportunity Employment_ and Anti-Discrimination Plan-4 - Google Docs (2).pdf (111,506 bytes) · FOR FIRST READ DRAFT PRIORITY Policy GBCD_ Background Investigation and Criminal History Records Check - Google Docs (2).pdf (135,123 bytes) · FIRST READ 2.15.2024 Policy EHB_ Data_Records Retention - Google Docs (2).pdf (101,053 bytes) · First Read Policy KF_ Use of School Buildings and Facilities.docx - Google Docs (2).pdf (67,155 bytes) · FOR FIRST READ Policy DGA_ Authorized Signatures-4 - Google Docs (2).pdf (65,695 bytes). Five of the six are NHSBA samples carrying the association's copyright notice, which restricts reproduction to policy development by subscribing districts; they are quoted here only in the passages the board discussed or adopted. See flag 15.
- The tenth document in the folder, this meeting's business only in the sense that the board approved it: draft minutes SAU 6 SB 1.11.24 (1).pdf — approved "as presented" at 0:02:25, and the subject of the January 11 page.
- The board's own rule on how policies are adopted, cited throughout flag 4 and flag 15: 2nd Read_ SAU BGAA_ Policy Development_ Adoption_ and Review .docx.pdf, adopted by this board on January 11, 2024, from the 1. SAU 1.11.24 folder. Paragraphs E.2, E.5, E.6, G.1, G.2, H.1 and H.4 are quoted.
- The next meeting, used on this page for five facts — that the board amended these minutes to supply the seal's mover, seconder and term; that the phantom chapter was corrected; that policy EHB had to be revised; that the AC second read was taken; and that the superintendent's contract negotiations were still unfinished: SAU 6 School Board Agenda 4.11.24.docx (3).pdf and 4.11.24 Draft SAU6 Board Minutes (1).pdf, the latter filed in the 1. SAU6 9.12.24 folder, 154 days after the meeting it records. See the April 11 page.
- Explicit negatives. No approval of the interim superintendent's contract, and no document setting out its terms, appears in this meeting's agenda, minutes, packet or recording, in the next meeting's agenda, minutes or packet, or in the document tables of any of the twenty-six SAU 6 packet folders MAP.md enumerates from 2023 to 2026 — those tables having been built by opening each folder in the browser rather than through the Drive search index, whose negatives are not reliable on these shares. The word contract occurs once in the 460 rows of this recording and refers to the human-resources director (flag 3). No notice, agenda or minutes of any meeting of the SAU 6 policy subcommittee was found in either district share, although six of its policies were reported to the public at this meeting; that negative rests on the two-stage enumeration itemised in the December 7 page's appendix and on the four empty subcommittee folders opened for the January 11 page (flag 10). No approved-form version of these minutes, incorporating the April 11 amendment, exists in any district public share (flag 1). No adopted-form copy of any of the six policies is posted; every copy in the share carries a blank second-reading line (flag 15). No statutory ground for the three-year seal appears anywhere in the public record (flag 8). And no reason for the one abstention on the contract vote appears in any source.
- A neighbouring record this page does not rest on. A Claremont School Board working session was held on January 29, 2024, three weeks before this meeting; its only surviving record is Minutes from CSB working session 1.29.24 (1).pdf, filed in the Claremont packet folder 4. CSB 2.21.24 and approved on the Claremont consent agenda of February 21. It is a district record, not an SAU 6 one; nothing at this meeting refers to it, and nothing on this page depends on it. It is named here only so that a reader tracing late January and February 2024 knows it exists.
Project files
Relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/.
- Dialogue transcript: ../Dialogue/15580 SAU6021524.mp4.CSV — 460 rows, 8,464 words, 10 named speakers, 77 rows (16.7%) Unidentified.
- Video: ../../Input/Videos/15580 SAU6021524.mp4.
- Diarized transcript: ../../Input/Transcripts/15580 SAU6021524.mp4.json — used on this page only through the dialogue CSV's own Diarized As column, which is what establishes that the vice chair's voice is inside another member's cluster and that the bi-monthly motion is not the chair's.
- Document map: ../../Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 41. Its document table, folder link, minutes link, minutes-location note and Cablecast link are all correct as of this run, including its note that these minutes are filed in 3. SAU 4.11.24; the ten titles listed there match the folder exactly.
- Neighbouring pages: SAU 6 — January 11, 2024, the last meeting of this board and the one that changed superintendents; SAU 6 — April 11, 2024, the next meeting and the annual reorganization; SAU 6 — December 14, 2023 and December 7, 2023. On the Claremont district side, the deliberative session of February 3, 2024, twelve days before this meeting.
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:2 (2023 codification — the text in force on February 15, 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." 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 governs and the start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements added by 2025, 112:1 are not applied. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 1, 4, 6, 10, 17, 20.
- RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) — "public body" includes "Any legislative body, governing body, board, commission, committee, agency, or authority of any county, town, municipal corporation, school district, school administrative unit, chartered public school, or other political subdivision, or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto." The trailing clause is what reaches the policy subcommittee. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 10.
- RSA 91-A:3 — I(a): "Public bodies shall not meet in nonpublic session, except for one of the purposes set out in paragraph II." 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," and "The vote on any such motion shall be by roll call, and shall require the affirmative vote of the majority of members present." I(c): "All discussions held and decisions made during nonpublic session shall be confined to the matters set out in the motion." II: "Only the following matters shall be considered or acted upon in nonpublic session:" — every exemption is in this paragraph and none is in paragraph I. II(a): "The dismissal, promotion, or compensation of any public employee or the disciplining of such employee, or the investigation of any charges against him or her…" 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 and decisions publicly disclosed within 72 hours unless, "by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session", divulgence is determined likely to affect adversely such a reputation, "render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism". IV: review of a seal "no more than 10 years" from the last vote. Vintage: the source line ends "2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023", which added paragraph IV — one hundred and thirty-five days before this meeting, so IV applies. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 2, 3, 8.
- 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 onwards. 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 2.
- 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." III: the SAU board "shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel" and "shall apportion the expense of the salaries and benefits among the several districts." 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 statutory offices. Correction for the project's reference file: the salary and apportionment sentences are in paragraph III, not paragraph I as pending_legal_anchors.md records. Verified 2026-08-29. Flags 3, 5, 11.
- RSA 189:13-a — V: "The governing body of a school district, chartered public school, or public academy shall adopt a policy relative to hiring practices based on the results of the criminal history records check and report of misdemeanors and felonies received under paragraph II" — the SAU is not named as the body owing that duty. I(a) and VI: "The employing school administrative unit, school district, or chartered public school shall complete a criminal history records check on every selected applicant for employment" and "shall be responsible for completing the criminal history records check" — the SAU is named for the operational duty. Vintage: the source note ends "2023, 55:1, eff. July 31, 2023; 164:1, 2, eff. Sept. 26, 2023", so the text served today is the text in force on this date. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 20.
- RSA 189:29-a — "Members of the school board shall establish a records retention and disposition schedule for all official records of the school district," plus microfilm, fireproof-storage and disposal-record provisions. Source note "1983, 94:1, eff. July 23, 1983"; never amended. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 16.
- 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 12.
- RSA 288:1 — legal holidays, including "the third Monday in February, known as Washington's Birthday". Source note ends "1999, 105:2, eff. Aug. 6, 1999; 106:2, eff. Aug. 6, 1999"; unamended since. Used only for the business-day arithmetic behind the February 23 deadline. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 6.
- RSA 275:79, RSA 275:78 and RSA 275:81 — New Hampshire's nursing-mothers subdivision, from HB 358, 2023 N.H. Laws ch. 191. 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 all three reads "2023, 191:20, eff. July 1, 2025", with the penalty section a year later still. The statute was not in force on February 15, 2024, and is cited here only as the future obligation the board legislated ahead of, never as a rule it breached — even though the policy it adopted names it as its legal reference. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 18.
- 29 U.S.C. §218d — the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act. (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". (b): an "employer shall not be required to compensate an employee receiving reasonable break time…unless otherwise required by Federal or State law". Added by Pub. L. 117-328, div. KK, §102(a)(2), effective December 29, 2022 — in force on the meeting's date. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 18.
- RSA 193:38 — discrimination in public schools, the section produced by 2019's SB263. Source note "2019, 282:1, eff. Sept. 17, 2019. 2024, 117:1, eff. Sept. 1, 2024." Cited on this page only to record that the February 2024 text is not what the current text serves, and that this page therefore does not resolve whether the anti-discrimination-plan duty the NHSBA sample describes reaches a school administrative unit. No conclusion is drawn from it. Verified 2026-08-29. Flag 13.
- 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, G.1, G.2, H.1 and H.4, from the second-read copy adopted 1/11/24; and the NHSBA samples of policies AC, ACN, DGA, EHB, GBCD and KF as they stand in this meeting's packet. Flags 4, 13, 15, 16, 19.
- Not cited, and why. No provision was found requiring an SAU board to post a packet, to state reasons for an abstention, to publish an unedited recording, to announce a vote count, to hold a minimum number of meetings a year, or to bring a superintendent's contract to a public vote once the terms have been delegated — where this page notes those things it does so as an observation, not as a rule. RSA ch. 32, the Municipal Budget Law, is named once only to exclude it: RSA 32:1 states the chapter's application in terms of towns, districts, school districts and village districts and does not name school administrative units, whose budget authority is in RSA 194-C:9 — whose 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 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 February 2024 date. Title IX is named on this page only as the board named it; the binding version on this date was the 2020 rule at 85 FR 30026, not the 2024 rule eCFR now serves, and no Title IX holding is asserted here. RSA 275:42, I is not relied on: 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. A search for legislation 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.