Claremont School Board — February 21, 2024 | The night the board adopted the record of a meeting that has no other record

Participants

Everyone in the record. Attendance and the spelling of every board name come from the district’s **approved minutes of 21 February 2024**; titles come from the agenda masthead and the packet. Shares are of 19,654 transcribed words across 887 dialogue rows.
Name	Role	Participation
Chris Pratt	Interim Superintendent, SAU 6 (appointed 11 January 2024, effective 12 January)	109 segments, 4,168 words, 21.2 per cent — the largest share of the night. He introduces the district’s new monthly reporting system, which he built: “I kind of created this, this template for the principals to fill out based on the the board’s goals”. He dates his own tenure — “It’s been a little over a month” … “I’m glad I was asked to step up” — and reports two director vacancies open at once. He speaks of the Stevens High School principal in the third person (“I’ll meet with the the principal and the council is to see what we can do”), five weeks after reporting to this board as that principal himself; see flag 8.
Mary Henry	Business Administrator, SAU 6 (appointed 11 May 2023, started July 2023)	112 segments, 3,405 words, 17.3 per cent. Gives the district’s first monthly financial update from a document that is not in the public packet (flag 6), then the free-and-reduced-lunch report. She is also the person who asks, after the night’s first vote, “So this motion has passed, am I correct?” — because nobody declared it (flag 4). Speaks as the person who runs payroll: “I’ve got to go in and make a change in payroll and set up a whole new thing”.
Mike Koski	Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation & Assessment, SAU 6	103 segments, 2,976 words, 15.1 per cent. Presents the mid-year i-Ready benchmark results, the summer-programme impact data and the three instructional-coach job descriptions. Twice tells the board something the packet does not: that the district is “below national percentiles and they’re almost all”, and, of one chart, “I don’t believe this slide is in your packet”. Asked why grade one showed no gain, he answers “That’s a great question. I don’t know.” The ASR renders his surname `Coffee` and `Kosky`.
Heather Whitney	Chair, Claremont School Board; member, Finance Committee; chair, Parliamentary Procedure ad hoc committee	188 segments, 2,703 words, 13.8 per cent — more turns than anyone, mostly short. She reads the consent-agenda rule, disposes of the consent agenda without a vote, opens and closes citizens’ comment in seventeen seconds, opens and closes the public hearing, puts both substitute-pay motions and adjourns by consent. Her theory of the budget, stated to the assistant superintendent: “every intervention that we put in our budget is going to show results so we can justify them continuing to stay in the budget”.
Charlene Lovett	Historian, Post 29, American Legion, Claremont; the post’s appointed liaison to Stevens High School; US Army, retired	27 segments, 1,447 words, 7.4 per cent — the only outside presenter the agenda names. Her surname is settled by the packet itself: the agenda names the item “Student Opportunity , presentation by (Exhibits C) Charlene Lovett”, and the cover letter in the packet is signed “/s/ Charlene Lovett U.S. Army, Retired Historian, Post 29, American Legion”. On tape only her first name is spoken. She presents the post’s vote to sponsor Stevens students at the service academies’ summer programmes, up to $1,000 each. Eighteen days earlier she presided over the district’s deliberative session under a title New Hampshire law does not create.
Candace Crawford	Member (appointed 19 July 2023); Finance Committee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee	98 segments, 1,426 words, 7.3 per cent. Moves both substitute-pay motions and gives the SREB visioning report — three virtual meetings, an on-site visit 27–29 March, a report in late May or June, and a $10,000 architectural assessment. On the mid-year finances: “I love having this in my hot little hands”. On ESSER: “We just want to spend every cent”. She also says the quiet part about procedure: “I, I don’t know. Robert. Schools of order on this.”
Whitney Skillen	Member; chair, Policy Subcommittee; Capital Improvement Committee	43 segments, 1,382 words, 7.0 per cent. The sharpest documentary criticism of the night is hers, and it checks out against the documents (flag 7). She reports a policy subcommittee meeting held that same day, makes a motion that is never seconded, never put and never recorded anywhere (flag 4), and proposes moving the ad hoc committee’s policy drafting into a shared Drive so it can be done “offline without having to mess with people’s schedules and trying to meet” (flag 2). Not Heather Whitney, who presides; the two share a name on this board.
Frank Sprague	Vice Chair; chair, Finance Subcommittee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee; NHSBA delegate	72 segments, 1,067 words, 5.4 per cent. Asks the two hardest questions of the night: whether the district is “funding overages in other areas due to the fact that we have unfilled positions”, and, of the food-service account, “what is our deficit in”. Gives this meeting’s version of his own background — a building administrator who ran classroom walkthroughs with the present Disnard principal — which is at least the sixth version this corpus has recorded. Reports that Finance will meet when there is “more Esser information we’re going to meet on that”.
Arlene Hawkins	Member (elected 14 March 2023); Chair of the SAU 6 joint board	25 segments, 388 words, 2.0 per cent. Presses on whether falling free-and-reduced numbers mean incomes rose, and on what a teacher does when the growth is not there. Her own account of building substitutes — “I’ve had experience with building subs. It was an actual position” … “It was very successful that I’ve had that in other districts” — is the request the minutes carry forward to the next meeting.
Jennifer Gallagher	Member (elected 14 March 2023 to the one-year seat, which expires at the 12 March 2024 election); chair, Curriculum Committee and Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors Committee	28 segments, 375 words, 1.9 per cent. The only member to abstain on either vote, and she has to ask for it to be recorded: “Noel, could you just note that for the vote, I abstained?” and, later, “Jen abstains.” Reports that her ad hoc committee has not met and asks whether it should merge into Policy. On school-meal debt she asks the only question about children: whether families try to opt a child out of lunch.
Noelle Kronberg	School Board Clerk, Claremont School District (appointed 15 November 2023)	7 segments, 67 words, 0.3 per cent — every one of them performing the clerk’s function on request. She restates the donation motion, and reads both substitute-pay motions back to the board. She signs both sets of minutes: “Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, school board clerk”. The ASR renders her first name `Noel`.
Bonnie Miles	Member; chair, Capital Improvement Committee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee	Recorded present in the approved minutes; never heard and never named on the recording. Zero occurrences of “Miles”, “Bonnie” or any variant in 887 rows. The minutes make her the mover of the donation motion; the recording’s mover says three syllables and is not named. This page attributes not a single word to her, and says so wherever the minutes do. She was also absent from the 3 February deliberative session, where the vice chair said so on the record.
Nicole Bouchard Kylee Plummer	Student Board Members, Stevens High School (seated 1 November 2023)	Not present. The chair calls the item and moves past it: “Our student representatives are Nicole Bouchard and Kylie Plummer. Seeing as they’re absent, we will move forward to the public hearing.” The minutes read “not present”. The district’s own agenda and minutes spell the second name Kylee; the ASR renders it Kylie.
Ben Nester Jeff Small Angela Vivian	Director of Special Education; Director of Technology; Human Resource Director — all three printed on the agenda masthead	None of the three is audible and none is named in the minutes as speaking. All three appear in the packet instead, through the SAU department report, which is written in their voices. Their names do occur on tape only inside the superintendent’s summary of that document. Nester’s post is being advertised on this night, and so is Vivian’s.
Unidentified	Board-table and room voices	75 segments, 250 words, 1.3 per cent. Short assents, overlaps and one substantive turn: the mover of the $10,000 donation (“I’m making.”), a compliment on the new principals’ reports, and a well-informed remark on a bill to raise free-and-reduced eligibility “to 350% of the federal poverty level”. Six of the seven seated members are separately anchored in this recording; Bonnie Miles is not, and the roll call is unrecoverable, so naming these voices would be an elimination guess.

Agenda

An official agenda was posted and is in the packet: CSB Agenda 2.21.24.docx.pdf. Both sets of minutes are written on top of it, item by item, which is this clerk’s practice. Scheduled clock times are the agenda’s own; the linked times are the recording’s. The agenda heads item II “Consent Agenda (consent required)”. On 17 January the same line read “(vote required)”; on 6 March it reads “(consent approval required)”. Three labels in seven weeks — see flag 2.

Taken up	Item	Agenda text / disposition
6:30 p.m. 0:00:03	I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance	Done in one turn. The roll call that follows is unrecoverable from the audio — the whole of it is “Please call the board. Attendance. Other. Whitney. Present. You’re here. Witness.” and “Present. Yeah. Here.” Attendance on this page therefore comes from the minutes, which record all seven members present, Skillen at 6:32.
6:35 p.m. 0:00:50	II. Consent Agenda (consent required) — agenda; minutes of 17 January and of the 29 January working session; Youth and Government trip	Agenda: “Approve Minutes Approval- January 17, 2024 Board Meeting and January 29, 2024 Working Session”. Disposed of by the chair asking for objections and then instructing the clerk: “The the clerk will please record that the consent agenda has been approved.” No motion, no second, no vote. Minutes: “Consent agenda approved”. Flags 1 and 2.
0:01:40	II. Citizens Comments per Policy BEDH	Opened and closed in seventeen seconds with nobody present to speak. Minutes: “Citizens Comments per Policy BEDH- none”. Flag 10.
0:01:57	II. Student Board Member Report — Nicole Bouchard & Kylee Plummer	Not present. Called and passed over in one sentence.
6:40 p.m. 0:02:28	III. Public Hearing — $10,000 donation from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation (Exhibit B)	Agenda and minutes both spell the donor “Byrnes”; the letter in the packet is on the letterhead of “THE JACK AND DOROTHY BYRNE FOUNDATION, INC.” and signed by Dorothy Byrne. The hearing ran under a minute; the agenda had allotted ten. Minutes: “No comments”. Flag 14.
6:50 p.m. 0:02:57	IV. Closing of Public Hearing — and the vote on the donation	Minutes: “Bonnie Miles makes a motion to accept the donation in the amount of $10,000 from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation…, Candace Crawford seconds the motion”; “Voice vote taken: unanimously approved”. On the recording the mover says three syllables and is not named, and the chair announces “None opposed. The donation is accepted.”
6:55 p.m. 0:04:02	V. Superintendent Report (Exhibits 1–7, Principals’ Reports)	The first month of a new monthly reporting system: one SAU department report and six school reports, all in the packet, all on a template built to the board’s own goals. Twenty-six minutes. Flags 15, 8 and 9.
7:10 p.m. 0:16:40	VI.1 Student Opportunity — presentation by Charlene Lovett (Exhibits C)	Four documents in the packet: a cover letter and fact sheets for the West Point, Naval Academy and Coast Guard Academy summer programmes. Post 29 of the American Legion will sponsor accepted Stevens students up to $1,000 each. Twelve minutes; no vote sought and none taken.
0:29:14	VI.2 Update on Teacher Evaluation Development per SREA Collective Bargaining Agreement (discussion)	No exhibit. Ten products under review, a Google form to the principals, a shortlist to be demonstrated, then negotiation with the teachers’ association. The assistant superintendent gives the only date: “We have another meeting March 7th”.
0:38:24	VI.3 Monthly Financial Update (discussion) — and the free-and-reduced-lunch update	No exhibit letter, and no financial document anywhere in the 24-document packet. The board worked from a report handed round the table: “you have a copy of the report in your hands there”. Twenty-five minutes and roughly ten figures, none of them checkable against a published paper. Flag 6.
1:03:09	VI.4 Achievement Report (presentation and discussion) — Exhibits D	Five documents: mid-year benchmark results, summer-school i-Ready data and three instructional-coach job descriptions. Thirty-one minutes — the longest item. Flags 7 and 11.
1:34:49	VI.5 Substitute Teacher Pay (Discussion and vote) — Exhibits F	Two documents: the substitute-teacher job description, and a one-page comparison of eleven districts’ rates. Two motions carried, one motion made and abandoned, and no result announced from the chair for either vote. Flag 4.
1:49:22	VI.6 School Board Sub-Committees (Discussion) — six named committees	Capital Improvement, Finance, Policy, Curriculum, SRVRTC Visioning and Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors, each with a named chair on the agenda. Four report activity; none has minutes in any district share. Flag 2.
8:20 p.m. 2:00:10	VII. Other Business	One reminder, to send questions for the 20 March elementary principals’ presentation to Mrs. Weatherford.
8:25 p.m. read out only as a group	VIII. Future Dates / Future Agenda Items — eight items	The agenda lists eight, including the 12 March voting day, the 20 March organizational meeting and a July 2024 review of the cell-phone policy. The chair skipped them all: “We have multiple future, agenda items and, important dates. I really don’t want to take the time to go through them.” The minutes print the full list anyway.
8:30 p.m. 2:00:37	IX. Adjournment	“So if there is no objection, I’d like to adjourn.” Minutes: “Consent adjournment”. No motion, no second, no vote, and no adjournment time recorded.

Discussion timeline

Chronological, from the dialogue file. Times are the transcript’s own start seconds, rendered from the same number the link seeks to, so text and link cannot disagree. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording. Transcript quotations are reproduced exactly as recorded, garbles included; see the method footer.

Time	Topic	What was said	Flags
0:00:03	Call to order, Pledge, and a roll call the recording loses	“I’d like to call to order the February 21st, 2024 meeting of the Claremont School Board.” The roll that follows survives only as “Please call the board. Attendance. Other. Whitney. Present. You’re here. Witness.” and “Present. Yeah. Here.” — two rows, eleven seconds, no names recoverable. The approved minutes supply the answer: all seven present, Skillen at 6:32.
0:00:50	The consent-agenda rule, read aloud	“Our first order of business is the approval of the items on the consent agenda. All items on the consent agenda will be accepted or approved without discussion. Unless a motion is made to move a specific item to the regular agenda.” The rule as stated is about discussion. Nothing in it says how the items are to be adopted.	2
0:01:10	The four items — including the minutes of a meeting with no other record	“Approval of board minutes from January 17th, 2024. Approval of minutes of the working session on January 29th, 2024. Approval of the board agenda as written, and approval of the annual Youth and Government trip to Concord, which will be led by Miss Chastity.” The advisor is Jill Chastenay in her own letter in the packet and “Ms. Chastenay” on the agenda. The 29 January working session has no video, no notice, no agenda and no other minutes anywhere.	1
0:01:40	“The clerk will please record that the consent agenda has been approved”	The whole of the adoption: “Is there any wish to move any of these items to the regular agenda? Seeing none.” then “The the clerk will please record that the consent agenda has been approved.” No motion, no second, no vote, no objection sought to the adoption itself. Eight seconds of tape adopt two sets of minutes, an agenda and a student trip.	1 2
0:01:57	Citizens’ comment, opened and closed in one breath	“Is there anyone present wishing to speak this evening?” at 0:01:40 and “Seeing no one wishing to speak, we are going to close citizens comments.” at 0:01:57. Seventeen seconds. Nobody was in the room to speak and nobody was turned away.	10
0:02:28	The public hearing on a $10,000 gift, opened and closed	“Is there anyone in the public who would like to speak, or any ward member who would like to make a comment? Seeing none, we’ll close the public hearing.” The agenda had scheduled ten minutes for it; it took about twenty seconds. The statute did not require a hearing at all at this amount — flag 14.	14
0:02:57	A motion the recording cannot name	The mover’s whole contribution is I’m making. The chair replies “A second. Second. Would you record the motion and and state the motion, please?” The approved minutes name Bonnie Miles as mover and Candace Crawford as seconder. Neither name is spoken on the tape.
0:03:08	The clerk restates the motion, and the ASR loses it	“The amount of $10,000 to the foundation to help them be afraid. Boston field trip.” The garble is in the recording, not in the clerk. Both sets of minutes record the motion correctly.
0:03:20	“We don’t need a roll call”	The chair: “We don’t need a roll call. Any discussion from the group? I just I have a quick question. Every eighth grader gets to.” — and the superintendent: “Yeah, that’s the intentions.” That exchange is the whole of the board’s inquiry into a $10,000 gift and the trip it funds.
0:03:30	The vote, and the thanks	“So all in favor of accepting the donation? Say I, I any opposed seeing.” then “None opposed. The donation is accepted.” This is the one vote of the night the chair does declare. The donor is thanked as “Miss Burn” — Dorothy Byrne, whose letter of 12 January 2024 is Exhibit B.	14
0:04:02	The superintendent’s report — and a reporting system that did not exist a month ago	“We have a few pages here in front of you in regards to the reports. I think we’d be here for a while if I went over every single one of them.” Seven documents: the SAU department report and six school reports. The SRVRTC and Disnard forms carry the instruction verbatim: “Each report will be sent to the board in their packets. Please make sure that you have completed this 1 week prior to the Board meeting. This will start Feb. 2024. Deadline is on February 8th Thanks”.	15
0:04:33	Recruiting: three job fairs, and one of the district’s own	“we’ll be going we’ll be attending those in regards to recruiting” — the SAU report names Rivier, Plymouth and SNHU in April; the ASR renders them “Rivera Plymouth and Sion H.” A district job fair is proposed for “March, late March, early April, because that’s really the hiring season”.
0:06:45	Laptops from federal relief money, a ticketing system, a content filter	“They’re working on distributing new staff laptops from ESA funding” — ESSER, throughout this file rendered `ESA`, `SR` and `Esser`. The SAU report adds ERATE-funded network switches. The superintendent presses the ticketing system: “get people in the habits of using the ticketing system not just for technology, but also for maintenance as well.”
0:08:03	The template, and the board’s own goals	“I kind of created this, this template for the principals to fill out based on the the board’s goals of communication, organizational, organizational structure, training and professional development, student achievement, operations, culture and climate, and curriculum instruction.” Next month it becomes one document: “it’s kind of a living document next month in separate sheets. It’ll be in one document.”	15
0:10:18	Two director posts advertised at once	“we’re in the process of interviewing for Ben’s replacement for the director of student services” — Ben Nester, whose resignation was announced 14 December 2023 — and, immediately after, “we posted for the director of.” … “Human resources.” Both post-holders are printed on this meeting’s own agenda masthead.
0:11:05	Board members invited onto a hiring committee, on the record	“I would love to have, you know, any board members who would like to serve on that committee.” … “I think it’s an important position in that you’re you might have some good questions and look at it from a different angle than us as administrators do.” No names are taken and the minutes do not record the invitation.
0:12:20	“It’s been a little over a month”	“It’s been a little over a month, but we’re getting things done. You know, I appreciate the support from the board. All the teachers have been great. The SA staff has been great. It’s a it’s a great district. I’m glad I was asked to step up.” Forty days after the SAU 6 board appointed him interim.
0:12:51	The vice chair on the new reports	“it’s just a great format. And again, I’m going to look through this as you suggested, and I think it’s great food for, food for thought”. The chair follows: “one of the schools has their school goals with actual measurable goals in terms of data. And another school showed the student progress from the fall to the spring of last year.” Those are Disnard and Maple Avenue.	15
0:14:21	An unplaced voice, and what nobody asked	“I just love this. It’s all here and it’s all in the order. And we can find this. I have a question to ask.” The question, when it comes, is about a book fair. In the same seven documents sit a school with no nurse since October, a technical centre with no full-time custodian, three unfilled special-education paraeducator posts and a change of principal at the high school. None is raised.	8 9
0:15:49	“This will help us drive the budget”	The chair: “This will help us drive the budget. This will help?” and “the board to see what the priorities are and what the recurring themes are. Right. And it will really help keep us focused.” The minutes render it “Heather Whitney noted that this may help the Board with the budget going forward”.
0:16:05	The bowling team	“I just want to give a shout out to Coach Fitzpatrick and our bowling team who are state champions” — three … “Times in the last four years.” The departing seniors are named on air; this page does not reproduce the names, which the transcript garbles and which serve no purpose here.
0:16:40	A presenter the agenda names and the chair does not	“The first item on the agenda is will be a presentation from Miss Charlene, who reached out to the board to present a great opportunity for our senior students.” Only the first name is spoken, here and everywhere else on the recording. The agenda and the packet’s cover letter both give the surname.
0:16:55	Post 29’s offer: up to $1,000 a student	“Thank you, Chair Whitney.” … “I am a Stevens High School alum, 22 year Army veteran, and a current member of post 29 American Legion here in Claremont. And our commander, Steve Blish, had hoped to be here this evening, but he’s feeling unwell”. The cover letter had promised he would attend: “I will be accompanied by our Post 29 Commander, Steve Blish.”
0:18:02	Three academies, three deadlines, one that had already closed	“We didn’t include the Air Force Academy only because their application window is closed. It will reopen in December.” The three fact sheets in the packet give the deadlines she reads out: West Point 15 March, Coast Guard 1 April, Naval Academy 15 April. Costs $625, $750 and $700 — all inside the $1,000 sponsorship.
0:20:01	Stevens alumni at the academies, and a photograph in the athletic director’s office	Two former students are named from the floor, and the vice chair adds three more from memory: “There used to be a photo in the administration. When I was, working at Stevens.” … “There were actually five of them in that class that went into service academies.” That sentence is also this meeting’s version of his own biography — a Stevens administrator who coached cross-country — and the corpus now holds at least six versions of it.
0:24:28	Why a table in the foyer did not work	“we had great support from the counselors, the high school counselors, and they made sure we had a table in the foyer and all that. But our experience showed that the best way to get this discussion rolling is really to make sure that the entire community is aware, because students have to have these discussions with their parents, families and friends.”
0:25:02	How one student’s chance actually happened	“her principal gave her the opportunity to show her the paperwork and said, I think you should apply.” … “it was only by chance of luck that she, you know, the principal talked to me in time”. The argument in one anecdote: an opportunity that depends on a single adult noticing is not a system.
0:27:04	The superintendent speaks of the Stevens principal in the third person	The chair: “Mr. Pratt. Is there any way we could make sure that this gets reinforced at the school level?” The answer: “Yeah, I’ll meet with the the principal and the council is to see what we can do.” On the 17 January recording he had reported to this board “as being the principal at the high school” — a quotation from that meeting’s dialogue file, not this one. The Stevens report in this packet is written by someone calling themselves “the new interim principal”, and is unsigned.	8
0:27:43	The physics teacher who kept telling them it was possible	“Dave Stockwell was the physics teacher and he was retired Air Force, and he talked to the kids constantly and kept giving them ideas about what was possible because he was retired military himself. And that’s why there were so many kids during that period of time who were who went to the military academies.”
0:28:20	Recruiters, then and now — and the liaison appointment	“when I was in high school, we had the recruiting offices downtown on what was then Tremont Square.” … “the post did appoint me as the liaison between the post and the high school”. The packet’s cover letter gives her post office as Historian; the liaison appointment is stated only on tape and in the minutes.
0:29:14	Teacher evaluation, and the contract that requires it	The chair frames it: “a brief update on the Teacher Evaluation development tool, per the SR e Collective Bargaining agreement. Whitney was involved with the collective bargaining agreement, Frank and myself.” — naming Whitney Skillen and Frank Sprague in the third person while placing herself in the group. The union is the SREA; the ASR renders it `SR e`.
0:30:04	Ten products, a Google form, and a shortlist	“what I’ve done in our last administrative team meeting is that I put a total of 123456, I mean, ten different programs out there.” Then: “I gave them the links to that. And then I sent out a Google form. So the principles are going to review those links” — and the top three vendors will present at an administrators’ meeting.
0:32:09	The vice chair on walkthroughs, and the principal who did them with him	“Melissa Lewis has along with me, we did we did this. The walkthrough was a Middleton was the superintendent.” … “principals need to be visible, and that’s a good means for that to happen.” Melissa Lewis signs the Disnard report in this same packet as “School Principal”. The minutes record the exchange: “Melissa may have input”.
0:35:27	A 360 for administrators — including board members and families	“I also reached out to Alex and Mark in regards to, doing evaluations for administrators and proposed a 360”. Who answers it: “any teachers in the building, office staff, board members, the administration would present names of families they could, you know, include in that.” Neither the agenda nor the minutes carry this item; it exists only on tape.
0:37:40	The union’s list, and the date the answer is due	The assistant superintendent: “we had met in December with you and your representatives to discuss an evaluation system, we got a long list of criteria” … “We have another meeting March 7th, so the Thursday after vacation.” And: “Chris is getting the principal side and I think we can get to a decision come spring.” The vice chair’s closing note: “Got to get the fearfulness out of it. I mean people are fearful of change.”
0:38:24	The monthly financial update begins — from a document the public does not have	The chair introduces it: “Next on our agenda is a is our newly instituted monthly financial update. We’re going to try to be doing this as a second meeting of each month.” Then the business administrator: “So you have a copy of the report in your hands there.” The mid-year position is “roughly $829,000”. No such document is in the 24-document packet.	6
0:39:14	Out-of-district tuition up about $400,000	“our outer district tuition is up right now. Roughly $400,000.” With a qualification: “there’s there’s stipulations behind what I can pull from the general budget. And I need an opportunity to review that with Ben” — Ben Nester, the departing special-education director, who does not speak.
0:39:39	Special-education transportation about $220,000 over	“our special ed transportation is up over budget, about $220,000, which is considerable amount, but the cost of transportation is very expensive on a daily basis for the students that are out of district.”
0:40:26	“The numbers within the spreadsheet don’t exactly line up”	“And the numbers within the spreadsheet don’t exactly line up within the actual budget itself. So have a lot of variables within the salary benefit lines because of that.” And: “I’d have to go through to find it all and I’m, I’m not going to do that.”	6
0:40:48	“Unless someone tells me I have to” — and a counsellor with no dollars beside them	“I feel the number that’s out there, bottom line is right. I’m not going to go to that extent. Unless someone tells me I have to.” Then: “our district wide psych services is up a little bit, but the mental health counselor was not in the budget. I don’t know why, but they weren’t.” and “I see them listed, but I don’t see a dollar amount associated with it. And that’s something we’ve had for a while.” Neither set of minutes records this.	6
0:42:16	A duplicate purchase order for 90,000	“I’m finding things like a duplicate or a duplicate purchase order was entered for 90,000. But I have to have the time to go through the whole budget and do that, and I haven’t.” No follow-up question is asked and the minutes do not mention it.	6
0:42:38	Under budget: substitutes, health insurance, wages	“our district wide substitute line” — “Right now we have roughly 190,000 left in it. Our health insurance is under budget overall throughout the whole bunch of about 311,000.” … “the total combined is roughly $322,000 under budget.” Of that: “109,000 is maintenance because we haven’t been able to hire maintenance staff”. The substitute line is the one the board is about to spend from.
0:44:05	One fewer administrator at the middle school than the budget carried	“under CMS, the school administrative salary line, there was a budgeted number in there.” … “And it looks like we have one less admin roll over there.” The explanation offered is a shift into ESSER, and it is a guess: “that’s what I’m thinking happened. But again, I’m not 100% sure.”
0:44:46	$951,000 unspent in regular instruction against $955,000 over in special education	“The regular instruction line is, we have $951,000 in it that we haven’t spent. But on the special ed side, we’re 955,000 over. That leads me to believe that somewhere within those budget lines, there are things sitting in the wrong place.” And: “overall, right now we’ve spent 97% of our budget.” A near-million-dollar misclassification, described aloud, on a document the public cannot see.	6
0:47:10	The vice chair names the risk	“So so my only my only concern is that we’re funding overages in other areas due to the fact that we have unfilled positions. That’s worrisome to me.” The answer: “out of district expenses are something that we haven’t got control over and we don’t know what’s going to happen” and “I’m thankful that we’ve had areas where we haven’t filled.”	6
0:48:11	ESSER: spend every cent, and the deadline	“I’m getting concerned. I concerned that we want to spend all of that esser funds that runs out, I think September 1st.” … “And we have to kind of spend it by the 15th in order to actually get it. I just want to make sure we can spend every cent.” The superintendent: “Spend we don’t leave any on the table.” The vice chair: “That would be hard to explain to the public.”
0:49:10	Reconciling the federal claims person by person	“go back in time to make sure that I have all the people and that I know how much money we’ve claimed on each person and how much money if we’ve over claimed, we’ve under claimed or whatever we have to do, so that we can make sure we get every.” “Penny and then what we have left.” Of the state: “I think the state has they have a lot of new people. So a lot of things have changed.” The vice chair: “We can get the same story twice in a.” — and the answer, “Write and get it in writing.”
0:51:02	Free and reduced: 628 this year, roughly 730 last	“we had roughly 628 kids that qualified this year for free and reduced. What shifted within our numbers is our population was more free than reduced than it has been in the past.” and “last year, we had roughly 730 kids. So we’re we are down.” A fall of about a hundred children in one year. Flag 11 does the arithmetic on what that is worth in state aid.	11
0:52:00	The pattern is upside down	“we have more kids in the high school and in the middle school that have qualified than we do in the lower grades, which is unusual.” The superintendent adds: “We did. We pushed that really high last year.”
0:53:05	A bill in the House, and a caution against counting on it	An unidentified voice in the room, plainly briefed — the phrasing is a legislator’s, and the superintendent had met “all the, the, the regional reps” days earlier, but nobody names the speaker and this page does not: “We could go to they to increase the eligibility for Fahrt to 350% of the federal poverty level. But that was in the House. It was a very narrow vote.” and “I would be misleading if I suggested that I was confident that we’re going to get that into law.” This page does not name the speaker.
0:53:28	“Go to Concord, push Concord” — and why the count is money	“go to Concord, push Concord, reach out to your reps. You know, these things are all very important and free and reduced. Is a big driver now on, adequacy aid.” The superintendent had already done it: “I met with all the, the, the regional reps and we spoke about, you know, how we can work together”.	11
0:54:48	The deadline that overlaps the grace period	“there’s a window when someone is is allowed to still be on at the beginning of the year. And we only have a deadline of October 1st. That window overlaps with that deadline”. And on process: “most of our manual entries, it takes time.”	11
0:56:03	A smart scanner	“can we invest in a smart scanner to try to reduce the amount of manual entry that we have to do for a paperwork like that?” Answer: “if people don’t write things in the right spot or their handwriting isn’t good, you know, it just doesn’t translate” and “When you’re entering a thousand applications, it’s a lot of work.”
0:57:17	Did incomes go up, or did the count go down?	“with the numbers down, you’re not saying that the income level for our community has gone up and people are not qualified.” The answer names the mechanism: “I don’t think they’re meeting the they’re not meeting the income levels. If you go to Walmart and make 19, $20 an hour, you don’t meet the levels.” And: “we did have a bigger push this year to have people fill in forms and submit them and all that. And we’re still down.”	11
0:58:13	The school where the district may not hand out a form	“we have one school that’s a c p school, which means they’re automatically free. We cannot push forms in those schools. We can’t tell them to fill it out.” and “We can’t even have forms out according to the federal government.” `a c p` is CEP, the federal Community Eligibility Provision. The rule that decides which schools qualify had changed four months earlier — flag 11.	11
0:59:39	The food-service deficit, and the courts	Asked “what is our deficit in”: “Last I checked, it was around 15,000, so it wasn’t horrible.” Then: “I know that when someone hits a certain amount that I will be taking people to court to get money. So yes, I will be. There are people that just refuse to pay.” The vice chair remembers the old arrangement, when “you got the person that’s making the collections looking right at you”; the answer is that “the federal government doesn’t allow us to do it now.”	13
1:01:22	Can a family opt a child out of lunch?	“Do any families, try to, like, opt out of the ability for their student to get school lunch in order to avoid, their student getting lunch when they don’t have permission or funds to do so, and kids are just getting lunches that their families don’t want them to get. Does that happen?”	13
1:01:54	“We cannot deny a student a meal”	“It does, but we cannot tell students. We cannot deny a student a meal, and we can’t tell them they have to have something else.” The superintendent: “That’s a conversation the parents have to have with their child saying.” That is the rule New Hampshire law states — flag 13.	13
1:02:11	Ice cream and PowerAde	“often there’s the lunch, but then there’s the ice cream, chess and the power a cooler. So if someone comes in and they’re not going to pay, they are they taking the ice cream and the power aide” — answered “No, no they can’t couldn’t take anything like that okay. Oh they have to take just the lunch.” The reimbursable meal is served; the extras are not.	13
1:03:09	The achievement report begins	“Feel free to jump in at any time with questions. Don’t wait till the end. We’ll start with the benchmark results.” What the board is looking for: “for some of our students who are behind their grade level, we need a year and a half year and a quarter, maybe a year and three quarters worth of growth.”
1:05:09	Reading the chart from the board table	Two minutes of the board working out how to read its own packet: “so what’s good is when the number above that is less.” — “Frank what are you looking at? I’m sorry.” — “if you look on the screen. That’s why it just didn’t print. Good.” The mid-year benchmark exhibit in the packet is charts only; it carries no numbers a reader can extract.
1:07:19	“How does this compare to state averages?”	The chair asks. The answer: “We are below national percentiles and they’re almost all.” and “where it’s a minimum of a two year process to, to get close to that level.” Neither figure appears in any document in the packet.	6
1:08:04	“I don’t believe this slide is in your packet”	Said of the grade-by-grade breakdown — the slide that shows where the district’s problem actually is: “as we moved down the grade levels we see that population falling away.” The televised audience saw it; the published packet does not contain it.	6
1:10:11	No maths programme yet	“I think that’s because we don’t have a math program in place yet. That’s something we’re working on this year.” Teachers to be trained over the summer; implementation next school year. The board is at this moment funding two new instructional coaches to support programmes that do not all exist.
1:10:38	How long has the benchmark been in place?	“How long have.” “You have the benchmark assessments been in place? Just the assessments.” The answer is a guess — “I know they happened last year. I think they’ve been. I think this has been used for 4 or 5 years because I really tests.” — and a voice from the room supplies In 2016.
1:11:54	Growth is large; status is not	“In terms of growth it’s large. Yeah. In terms of status, we have one third of our kids at grade level.” And, on the district’s spread: “there, there are pockets of huge growth. And it’s just still inconsistent across the district.” A member’s reply: “But there’s movement happening, and that’s how you get there.”
1:12:58	What finds the reason for an inconsistency: the evaluation system	The chair: “What tools do you use to identify the reasons for those inconsistencies at the school level?” The answer ties the night’s two big items together: “this is where the teacher evaluation system comes in. And so more frequent observations will help.” and “for reading, we are currently testing every two weeks those students who are behind grade level.”
1:16:56	“We have an issue with tier one teaching”	The chair, remembering an earlier presentation: “I think Stephanie was with you at that time and touched on the fact that we have an issue with tier one teaching.” The answer is the low-floor, high-ceiling method: “we can offer students more low floor, high ceiling types of problems”, taught by “Doctor Derek Staves”, whose posters are on the wall of the room.
1:19:33	The complaint the chair remembers as a parent	“I felt that we were not teaching all the students were a lot of the energy was teaching at the low level questions and middle kids in the kids that are a little bit more farther along were not being challenged enough.” The formula offered back: “The student is the producer, right, instead of the consumer.”
1:23:07	Summer camp: a red line, a blue line, one letter per child	“this is the same. I ready benchmark the students who attended summer school. We used their scores from the spring of the year prior.” “Each letter across the bottom is a different student.” The exhibit is in the packet and shows individual pupils as anonymised letters — the right way to publish it.
1:24:45	“Should be much higher”	Of grade one: “here I best scores are are 100. And we don’t see a lot of growth in this in this group.” From the board table: “Should be much higher. There should.” and, of the money that paid for it, “Esser money was Covid.”
1:26:27	“That’s a great question. I don’t know.”	Asked why grade one showed no gain from a five-week summer programme. A member answers: “I appreciate your honesty.” Then the candour goes further: “Data attendance certainly wasn’t consistent across the five weeks. We have some students who attended three weeks out of five.” and “I was going to correlate those, but it became really complicated.” “And so I stopped.”
1:27:38	Reading versus maths, and where teachers were trained	“I think overall, most of our teachers are better at teaching reading than teaching math. They they just tends to be based on your college experience that that’s a greater emphasis than the math instruction.”
1:28:19	Next summer’s enrolment rule — and next summer’s money	“Next year we’re asking that parents sign up for all five weeks. And we will only have enrollment open for five weeks. Sign ups.” Ninety seconds later the chair supplies the missing half: “this year is the last year that the summer program is funded by SR” and “we will not have funding for this. Next summer’s to come.”
1:29:35	The coach job descriptions, offered without being read	The chair: “I was going to be a job description. Those are in your packets.” The assistant superintendent: “Coaching job descriptions, right? I don’t have to read it, but I’d take any questions.”	7
1:29:42	The critique that checks out against the documents	“the three these three job descriptions to me are a good start. But I would like to see a more development of the essential job function section. In my opinion, the three, prompts that are listed there seem like an extension of the summary of the position, as well as the educational and experience requirements.” and “build that section out more to actually list what the coach is going to be doing on a daily basis”. Read the three exhibits and she is exactly right — flag 7.	7
1:30:59	What does a coach’s day look like?	“Are you going to round every day just so we know our you know, are the coaches going around every day. What is a day look like for an instructional coach.” The nearest thing to an answer: “I would say 70 to 80% of the job is working with teachers.” And a concession: “now that we’ve had the position for you, when you know what it looks like” … “We’re able to now we’re able to redo the job description based on the actuals.”	7
1:32:58	The board’s bargain with itself	“every intervention that we put in our budget is going to show results so we can justify them continuing to stay in the budget” and “People that can be working really hard, but if it’s not making a difference in the district, then need to shift our resources somewhere else.” The superintendent agrees on the mechanism: “it’s going to drive our budget decisions. Without the data. It’s going to be tough.”
1:34:14	Institutional knowledge, and who writes the manual	“And that should be documented in their job description?” — the point being whether a coach builds systems or only runs them. A member: “We need to increase our institutional knowledge.” In a district that has lost a superintendent, a business administrator, a special-education director and an HR director inside eighteen months, that is not an abstract worry.	7
1:34:56	Substitute pay: $80, $100, $125	“The superintendent was able to provide with the list of a few, what the going rate is for teachers and the one you have shows, teachers, powers and nurses.” Then: “we went through and got the lowest 80. The mid is 100. In the in the higher end is 125.” and “the principals I agree with them is that they would like to see the the sub pay be $125 a day.” The exhibit lists eleven districts, from Lempster at $85 to Lebanon, Keene, Hanover, Rivendell and Monadnock at $125.
1:36:06	“By December they’re getting pretty fried”	“they’re stepping up to cover these classes when someone else is up for PD or they’re sick or what have you. So I mean by December they’re getting pretty fried.” Four of the six principals’ reports in the same packet name substitutes as a current challenge; the technical centre names it twice.	15
1:37:11	What the district pays now	“What is it now. 60 or 80.” — “14 something an hour.” — “80 something a day.” The minutes settle it: “currently around $80 for a full day”.
1:37:40	The motion	“I would like to make a motion to, raise the substitute, pay to $125 per day and base it on a per diem basis and have the new, range go into effect as of March 1st.” A single word answers it 0.24 seconds later: Second.	4
1:37:59	The money is already in the line	“it’s an observation from what you said earlier about the substitute pay. Line item. We have funds available. Definitely. We have plenty of.” That is the $190,000 the business administrator had reported unspent fifty-five minutes earlier — the only place in the night where a figure from the unpublished financial report does visible work.	6
1:38:43	Long-term substitutes, and a check that the new rate does not invert the scale	“Is it less than 125 a day?” — “Long term subs. Because they have to carry a certification. They still have to carry teaching license.” “So it’s up around $200 or something.” “I just wanted to make sure that we weren’t.” A careful question, asked and answered.
1:39:17	Retired teachers and attendance bonuses	“having a varying rate for if a if a, if a sub is a certified teacher or a previous teacher that has worked in the district and has like, local experience to attract folks to come out of retirement?” and “I also like the, bonuses for days. Worked in a year or in consecutive days.” Both ideas are in the exhibit: Bow, Henniker and Keene run exactly those schemes.
1:40:31	Pass it now, come back with the rest	“I would like to, pass this motion and ask the administration to come back in another month for follow up of special situations such as long term subs”. And, on how to choose: “I would want to know which is the best right scenario for our budget to do this, based on what Mary would recommend.”
1:41:06	The question that reopens it: paraprofessionals	“a lot of times you get these long term subs, it could be a classroom teacher, but they could also be covering the roles of power.” — `power` and `parent` are this recording’s renderings of para. The board is being asked whether one rate covers both.
1:41:45	Equal pay for a substitute, whoever they are covering	“I would think it should be the same rate because it’s the substitute teacher is the the person that is employed as a substitute teacher doesn’t have the certification in either education or paraprofessional.” The vice chair disagrees: “I’m going to disagree with you from respectfully that they have very, very different, different jobs that they perform.” The chair notes what actually happens: “my understanding is that the pair is actually act as substitute teachers in the elementary school.”
1:43:03	“Seeing no discussion. All in favor of.”	“So seeing no discussion. All in favor of. And if you would, please. No. I’ll read the motion.” The chair stops mid-vote to have the clerk read it back.	4
1:43:09	The clerk reads it back — and the tape says $124	“I. Yes, with a motion to raise the substitute pay to $124 a day on for the basis going into the March 1st.” The figure everywhere else — in the motion as moved, in both sets of minutes and in the administration’s recommendation — is $125. This page reproduces the transcript as it stands and does not correct it: it is not possible to tell from an audio transcript whether the clerk misread the number or the recogniser misheard it.	4
1:43:19	“All in favor, say aye” — and no result is announced	“All in favor, say aye. I can. Can I just make ask a question to make sure I got this right? So I well, I just want to clarity.” There is no call for opposed, no count and no declaration. The next four minutes are spent on a different question.	4
1:43:46	“So this motion has passed, am I correct?”	The business administrator has to ask, because nobody said so: “So this motion has passed, am I correct? All right. So now the question is right just for teachers. But the problem is does that mean your sub pay is staying the same for a paraprofessional set right now? Today?”	4
1:44:24	The clock, and a choice about the meeting	“We’re at 815. So we can either extend the meeting and and move this forward, or we can take it up at another meeting and really flesh it out”. This is the only wall-clock reference on the recording, and it is what dates the start and the adjournment on this page.
1:44:58	A motion that goes nowhere	“I make a motion to make the pay for substitutes across all positions equal to the motion we just passed. Then they’re all equal, and we can come up with how we’re going to make them unequal again later.” and “if that’s has to be a deeper discussion, why not just keep it equal for now?” Nobody seconds it. The chair never puts it. Neither set of minutes mentions it.	4
1:46:02	An abstention, recorded on request, three minutes after the vote	“Jen, Noel, could you just note that for the vote, I abstained?” Addressed to the clerk, not to the chair, and volunteered rather than asked for. It is the only reason the record shows a six-to-nothing-with-one-abstention result rather than a bare “unanimously approved”.	4
1:46:07	Payroll sets the date	“I’ve got to go in and make a change in payroll and set up a whole new thing” … “I’m not trying to be a pain here. That’s the best date.” … “I’m looking at payroll. Payroll dates because I don’t want to start midstream in a payroll” … “The 11th. I’m sorry. March 11th. Because that would be the start of a new pay cycle if you would do that for me.” The administration, not the board, chooses the effective date.
1:47:34	How to undo a vote already taken	“Since you have already voted on that motion.” — “Can, we can you can take a motion off the floor, make a new.” — “I, I don’t know. Robert. Schools of order on this.” — “Well, we can just make another motion.” The board’s own Rules of Procedure were not adopted for the year until the 20 March organizational meeting; a draft is Exhibit D of the 6 March packet.	4
1:47:41	The second motion, and a date corrected on the floor	“I’ll make a motion that, the administration, I make a motion that we, defer the implementation of the teacher substitute teacher pay raise until March 8th.” Corrected within seconds to 1111 and “March 11th”. Seconded: “I’ll second that.” The abstention is repeated before the vote: “I still abstain.” “And Jennifer still standing.”	4
1:48:27	The second vote, also undeclared	The clerk: “Yes. So there’s a motion to defer the invitation of the teacher substitute pay raise to March the 11th.” The chair: “Okay. Seeing no discussion. All in favor? I thank you very much.” Again no call for opposed, no count, no declaration. Then: “Jen abstains.”	4
1:48:43	Building substitutes — a request that survives into the minutes	“Got ten minutes. Can I just ask? I’ve had experience with building subs. It was an actual position.” and “person who came in every day and was my building sub and if not, if a person was not absent, teachers would clamor for the hour to have additional support in their classroom.” The minutes carry it forward: “Request for information on building subs at the next meeting”.
1:49:22	Capital Improvement: one building left to walk	“I think the last building left is is Maple Avenue.” The committee chair is not heard; the answer comes from the Policy chair — “I won’t be available during most business hours starting next week.” No date is set on the record and none is minuted.	2
1:50:24	Finance: a meeting to come, on the federal money	“when we have some, more Esser information we’re going to meet on that. It’s a possibility when Candy and I look at this spreadsheet that we may want to get together and chat about some of the things.” Two members of a three-member subcommittee, agreeing on air to meet about a spreadsheet the public has not seen.	2 6
1:50:52	Policy: “a meeting today”	“The policy subcommittee had a meeting today. We are working through our mission to update the Claremont School Road Policy Manual by aligning it with the sample policy manual by the New Hampshire School Board Association.” and “that’s to today’s meeting was just a working session to make more progress on those policies. And we sent one of those to the chair for first read.” No notice, agenda or minutes of that day’s subcommittee meeting appears in any district share.	2
1:51:13	Which policy went to the chair	“First read in the next meetings agenda.” The next meeting’s agenda, 6 March, carries exactly one policy for first read, presented by the Policy chair: Policy ACN, Nursing Mother’s Accommodations. The identification rests on that match, not on anything said here. Worth noting for its date: New Hampshire’s own nursing-mothers statute did not take effect until 1 July 2025, so in February 2024 the binding law was the federal PUMP Act, 29 U.S.C. §218d.
1:51:19	Credit where the subcommittee gives it	“I just want to shout out Mr. Pratt, he’s been super helpful since he has joined us in the policy committee.” — answered “It’s a team effort.” The minutes record it: “Mr. Pratt has joined the policy committee meetings and has been very helpful”.
1:51:43	Curriculum: nothing	“Curriculum Committee doesn’t have any updates.” One sentence, from the chair of a standing committee, in the last month of her term.	2
1:51:53	The ad hoc committee that could not find a date	“the disruptive behaviors Committee hasn’t met, since the last time I reported that we met. So we were supposed to meet, at our last meeting, and that meeting got canceled. And then I tried to see if anybody could join me for a meeting today.” The proposal: “since its policy, I wasn’t sure if ad hoc could just join with policy to do some policy work.”	2
1:52:43	A workflow proposed on television	“if you could identify this those policies that your committee wants to make edits to.” … “Then I’m going to delegate to that committee to make the suggested edits to those policies so that then the policy committee can bring them to first read.” A sensible division of labour — and, as it is next described, one that would move the drafting off the record.	2
1:54:03	“You could get a lot of this done offline”	“for if the ones that are in place that have emails, you could, put the draft of the policy or revising into your share drive and share it with those members.” “And you could get a lot of this done offline without having to mess with people’s schedules and trying to meet.” The committee is described as “Mostly it’s, teachers.” plus “there were a couple of community partners, like folks from law enforcement and parole.” Flag 2 sets out why the offer is narrower in law than it sounds.	2
1:55:03	SREB: three virtual meetings, sixteen to twenty people	“we’ve had three meetings, virtual meetings with Sram representatives. These are two our virtual meetings January 15th, February 1st and February 15th.” and “16 to 20, you know, people who were on these, zoom calls”. Two of those three dates fall after the deliberative session and before this meeting; none appears on any agenda in this corpus.	2
1:55:30	The radius the group sent back	“they had pulled together data from a 50 mile radius of Claremont, and the group said, wait a minute, that’s too far.” and “we came back and did a 33 mile radius”. Business leaders on the calls also pushed back on pay-scale data: “hey, wait a minute, that’s a little skewed, that that’s not reasonable.”
1:57:17	On site 27–29 March	“March 27th, 28th and 29th will be the on site visits.” “2 or 3 people from shred will come to Claremont, interview students, business leaders, school administrators, etc.” `Sram`, `shred`, `sRGB` and `S` are this recording’s renderings of SREB, the Southern Regional Education Board.
1:58:06	Report in late May or June, then $10,000 for an architect	“late May June is when the full report will be due”; then “there is one architectural firm in the state that all the tech centers use for analysis” and “That would be about $10,000 for that architectural analysis.” The target: “the goal is to have data for both the from sRGB for new programs, additional programs, and an architectural review for the 2526 budget by the end of November.”
1:59:41	Will the state aid be there?	“So the 25, 26 year.” … “Does that coincide when we would be able to get the state aid for.” — “The building.” The answer: “I don’t know that answer.” “To be continued. That will be part of our analysis, obviously.”
2:00:10	Other business, and an adjournment by consent	“Just a reminder to send questions to Miss Weatherford for the elementary school principals who will be presenting on the 20th to us for our pre-populated agenda. We have multiple future, agenda items and, important dates. I really don’t want to take the time to go through them. So. So if there is no objection, I’d like to adjourn.” No motion, no second, no vote, and no time recorded. Two hours and forty-two seconds of recording.

Items flagged for review

Flags are a reviewer’s aid, produced by reading the recording and the 24-document packet against the New Hampshire and federal law in force on 21 February 2024. Every statute was re-fetched in the codification that applied on that date; where a provision has since been amended the flag says so and names the session law it is not applying. Quotations from the 3 February deliberative session come from that meeting’s own dialogue file (Cablecast show 15552) and are attributed as such.

HIGH The board adopted into its permanent record the minutes of a meeting that cannot show it was noticed, where it was held, when it began, or who was there — and adopted them without a motion, a second or a vote

The document. Minutes from CSB working session 1.29.24 (1).pdf, three pages, filed in this meeting’s packet. It is the only record of that session in any district share: there is no Cablecast recording, no agenda, no notice, and no section for it in this project’s meeting map. Read end to end it contains a title, a running head repeated on each page, and about forty bullets. It records no attendance, no start or end time, no location, no call to order, no adjournment, no motion, no second, no vote and no signature.

What the document nevertheless establishes. Its own text names five of the seven board members by first name as taking on tasks — “Slide 2: Heather will present”, “Slide 3: Frank will present”, “Slide 5 elaborates on how slide 3 will be addressed; Candy will present”, “Slide 6- Jenn will present (struggling students/social workers)”, “Slide 8- expanding of CTE; Bonnie will present” — together with two administrators: “Ben recommended having a printed copy available for attendees” and “Mary will get Candy the changes in minimum pay for paras”. Four members are a quorum of seven. The document therefore proves on its own face that a quorum of the Claremont School Board convened and transacted business.

What the law calls that. RSA 91-A:2, I, in the text in force from 2023, 188:1, eff. 3 October 2023, defines a meeting as “the convening of a quorum of the membership of a public body, as defined in RSA 91-A:1-a, VI”, “whether in person, by means of telephone or electronic communication, or in any other manner”, to discuss or act upon matters within the body’s jurisdiction. RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) reaches “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.”

There is no “working session” exclusion. Paragraph I’s four exclusions are (a) “Strategy or negotiations with respect to collective bargaining”, (b) “Consultation with legal counsel”, (c) “A caucus consisting of elected members of a public body of the same political party who were elected on a partisan basis”, and (d) “Circulation of draft documents which, when finalized, are intended only to formalize decisions previously made”. None reaches this session. Exclusion (c) is never available to a New Hampshire school board: RSA 671:30 requires every school district without a special statute to use the non-partisan ballot system for the election of district officers, and has been unamended since 1979, 321:1, eff. 21 August 1979. Exclusion (d) cannot reach a session at which the decisions are made rather than formalised, and paragraph I adds that “A chance, social, or other encounter not convened for the purpose of discussing or acting upon such matters shall not constitute a meeting if no decisions are made” — a session convened to assign a presentation and rewrite its wording is the opposite of that.

What the session decided, in its own words. The slide-by-slide assignment above; wording changes to the district’s public case, including “Change language on first slide to all match (approve not approving)”, “‘maximize the resources that we have ‘and’ look for efficiencies’”, “Change language to program from curriculum”, “Add ‘a single’ before ‘social worker with SHS’” and “add ‘for all learners’ and bold it after ‘improve classroom environment’”; a review of the business administrator’s slides including “Estimated revenues so everyone knows where the money comes from”; and two instructions: “Get warrant articles out to everyone” and “Make sure to make a motion to restrict reconsideration of warrant articles at the very end (if it is passed)”. All quotations in this paragraph are from the working-session minutes.

And it worked — which is how we know the session was substantive. Five days later, at the deliberative session of 3 February, the directed wording turns up on the public record. From that meeting’s dialogue file (show 15552): the vice chair says he is “always going to want to maximize the resources that we have and look for efficiencies”; a member says “Previously, all three elementary schools were sharing a single social worker with Stephens High”, that the district’s goals “include increased access to community supports”, and that it will “improve the classroom environment for all learners by decreasing disruptive behaviors that negatively impact a healthy school climate and culture”; the chair says the board “have been affected by the reassessment”; and at 1:10:27 of that recording — a position in show 15552, which is why it is not linked from this page — a voice moves, in terms, “RSA 40 colon 13 comma Roman numeral four. I moved to restrict reconsideration.” The clause the working session directed to be removed — “relieve principals form duties not directly related to their job description” — does not appear. The script and the performance match.

What RSA 91-A:2, II required and did not get. Four things. Notice — “notice of the time and place of each such meeting…shall be posted in 2 appropriate places…at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings”: nothing of the kind is in any district share, and the minutes do not record a place at all. Contents — minutes “shall include the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, and a brief description of the subject matter discussed”: only the third of those is present. Movers and seconders — “The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes”, in force since 2018, 244:1, eff. 1 January 2019: no motion is recorded, though the document ends by directing that one be made. Timeliness — minutes “promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting”: see below. Start and end times are a separate matter and are not part of this finding: that requirement arrived with 2025, 112:1, eff. 22 August 2025, and is not applied here.

The date in the record does not match the date the board set. The draft minutes of 17 January, filed in this same packet, fix the session as “January 24th at 6:00 at Dow (working session)”. The surviving minutes are headed 29 January. Either the session moved with no record of the change, or two sessions were held and one has left no trace whatever. Nothing in any district share settles which.

When it reached the public. Google Drive metadata dates the file’s creation to 14 February 2024, 4:09:38 p.m. ET. Monday 29 January plus five business days is Monday 5 February; 14 February is the twelfth business day. It became public eleven days after the deliberative session it was written to prepare — that is, after the only audience that could have used it had already voted on the articles.

And the adoption itself took no vote. At 0:01:40 the chair says “The the clerk will please record that the consent agenda has been approved.” No member moved it, no member seconded it, no vote was taken and no member asked a question about it. Both sets of minutes record the whole transaction as “Consent agenda approved”. Flag 2.

Which limb of the severity rule, and why this is HIGH. The project’s grading rule turns on whether minutes exist: HIGH where a body met and no minutes exist anywhere, MEDIUM where the record mitigates the gap. On that axis this is the mitigated limb — minutes exist and were formally approved. This page grades it HIGH on a different axis, and says so plainly: no notice of any kind is recoverable, and the minutes cannot themselves establish that a lawful meeting took place, because they record no time, no place and no attendance. Approving such a document does not cure the defect; it writes it into the district’s permanent record. The 17 January page graded the same session MEDIUM and was right to: it was grading the arrangement of a session that had not yet happened, on a record in which the chair contemplated minutes. This flag grades what the board actually adopted, seven weeks later, having read it or not.

What would settle it. A posted notice for 24 or 29 January 2024; the district’s posting log; or a paper copy of these minutes date-stamped on or before 5 February. The negative here rests on the packet read in full, the Claremont Meeting Minutes share, this project’s meeting map and the absence of any Cablecast recording — not on a Drive keyword search, which is demonstrably unreliable on these folders: a title search for “working session” run for this page returned two unrelated files and not the document under discussion.

Sources: Minutes from CSB working session 1.29.24; draft minutes CSB meeting 1.17.24; approved minutes 21 February 2024; RSA 91-A:2, I and II (2023 codification; source note ends 2023, 188:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); RSA 671:30; Google Drive file metadata read 2026-08-29; the 3 February 2024 deliberative session page and its dialogue file.

MEDIUM Nothing on the consent agenda was moved, seconded or voted — and the district’s own label for that line has changed three times in seven weeks

What was on it. Four items: final approval of the agenda; the minutes of 17 January and of the 29 January working session; and the annual Youth and Government trip to Concord. Two sets of minutes and a student overnight trip, adopted together.

How it was adopted. The chair read the rule — “All items on the consent agenda will be accepted or approved without discussion. Unless a motion is made to move a specific item to the regular agenda.” — listed the four items, asked “Is there any wish to move any of these items to the regular agenda? Seeing none.”, and then said: “The the clerk will please record that the consent agenda has been approved.” No motion, no second, no vote. Elapsed time from the first word of the item to the words “has been approved”: fifty-nine seconds, most of it reading the rule.

The label the district gives it has moved three times. The 17 January agenda heads the item “Consent Agenda (vote required)”. This meeting’s agenda heads it “Consent Agenda (consent required)”. The 6 March agenda heads it “Consent Agenda (consent approval required)”. Three formulations on three consecutive agendas. This page reports the sequence and does not infer a motive for it; nothing on any recording explains the change, and no minute records a decision to make it.

Why it is a defect and not merely a style. Acting by unanimous consent is lawful, and RSA 91-A:2, II’s requirement that minutes name “the members who made or seconded each motion” has nothing to bite on where no motion is made. But the same paragraph requires minutes to record the body’s final decisions, and what the minutes record here is four words: “Consent agenda approved”. A reader of the district’s permanent record cannot tell who supported adopting the 29 January minutes, whether anyone dissented, or whether any member had read them. On 17 January the same board disposed of a consent agenda its own paper said required a vote; on 21 February it did the same thing under a label that no longer said so.

The same pattern closes the meeting. “So if there is no objection, I’d like to adjourn.” Minutes: “Consent adjournment”. No motion, no second, no vote, and — because the requirement did not yet exist — no time.

Sources: CSB Agenda 2.21.24 (packet); _CSB Agenda 1.17.24; CSB Agenda 3.6.24; approved minutes 21 February 2024; RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification); the recording as cited.

MEDIUM This district’s minutes reach the public share only when the next meeting’s packet is assembled — which is why three consecutive sets were late, and why the working session’s were seven business days past the deadline

What the statute requires. RSA 91-A:2, II: minutes “shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting”, and “business day means the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday, excluding national and state holidays”.

What the Drive metadata shows, meeting by meeting. Every one of these dates is the createdTime of the district’s own public copy, read 2026-08-29.

3 January 2024 public hearing — deadline Wednesday 10 January. Posted 16 January, the 8th business day (15 January was a national holiday), at 9:47 a.m., fifteen seconds after the folder 2. CSB 1.17.24 itself was created.
17 January 2024 board meeting — deadline Wednesday 24 January. Posted 14 February, the 20th business day, at 4:09:38 p.m., inside the folder for this meeting.
29 January 2024 working session — deadline Monday 5 February. Posted 14 February, the 12th business day, at the same second as the 17 January minutes.
21 February 2024, this meeting — deadline Wednesday 28 February. Draft posted 29 February at 8:58 a.m., the 6th business day, twenty-three seconds after the folder 5. CSB 3.6.24 was created. Its own modifiedTime is 28 February at 4:19 p.m., inside the window — the document was finished on time and published a day late.

The pattern is the finding. These are not four independent slips. In every case the minutes appear in the public share at the moment the next meeting’s packet is built, because that is the district’s publication mechanism. A meeting whose minutes are approved four weeks later is published four weeks later; a working session that never got a packet of its own waited for the next board packet that had room for it. The one set that was nearly on time is the one whose next meeting came quickly.

Why it bit hardest on the working session. Those minutes were written to prepare the deliberative session of 3 February. They became public on 14 February. A voter who wanted to know, before the first session of the annual meeting, how the board had decided to present the budget could not have found out.

Limits, stated plainly. The statute requires minutes to be “open to public inspection”. A paper copy available at the SAU office satisfies that; posting to Google Drive is a proxy, and it is the only proxy this record offers. Where the underlying document’s modifiedTime falls inside the window — as the 21 February draft’s does — the document plainly existed in time, and only its publication slipped. This page therefore states the Drive dates as Drive dates and does not assert that no copy was inspectable anywhere.

Sources: Google Drive createdTime/modifiedTime for the four documents and the three packet folders, read 2026-08-29; RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification).

MEDIUM The board voted twice and declared neither result — the business administrator had to ask whether the first had passed — and a third motion, made on the record, was never seconded, never put and never written down anywhere

The first vote. A member moved to raise substitute pay to $125 a day effective 1 March; a single word seconded it. After discussion the chair said “So seeing no discussion. All in favor of. And if you would, please. No. I’ll read the motion.”, the clerk read it back, and the chair said “All in favor, say aye.” and immediately continued into a different question. There is no call for those opposed, no count, and no announcement of the outcome anywhere on the recording. Two and a half minutes later the business administrator asks, because she has payroll to run: “So this motion has passed, am I correct?”

The second vote. Same shape. The clerk reads the deferral motion back; the chair says “Okay. Seeing no discussion. All in favor? I thank you very much.” No opposed, no count, no declaration.

What the minutes say, and why they say more than the tape can. Both sets record, for each motion, a named tally: “Voice vote taken: Heather Whitney, Frank Sprague, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen, Arlene Hawkins, Candace Crawford voting in favor; Jennifer Gallagher abstained”. That is precisely what RSA 91-A:2, II asks of minutes, and it is better than most in this corpus. It is also unverifiable from an audio transcript: a show of hands is visible on the video and inaudible on the tape. The page reports the minutes as the better record of the tally and the recording as the better record of the procedure.

One attribution the two records do not agree on. The minutes name Whitney Skillen as seconding the first motion. In the dialogue file the one-word second is assigned to the cluster identified as Jennifer Gallagher — the member who then abstained on that same motion. A 1.4-second row containing a single word, 0.24 seconds after the previous speaker, is exactly the fragment a machine diarizer misplaces, and the minutes are the better evidence. This page records the disagreement and does not choose.

The motion that vanished. At 1:44:58 a member says, in terms: “I make a motion to make the pay for substitutes across all positions equal to the motion we just passed.” Nobody seconds it. The chair does not put it, does not rule it out of order, and does not acknowledge it. The discussion moves to payroll dates and then to a different motion. Neither set of minutes contains any trace of it. An unseconded motion is not before the body, so the minutes’ silence is defensible; the record of what a member of this board actually proposed on television, however, now exists only on the tape.

Why MEDIUM. Nothing here is unlawful on its face. The statute requires the minutes to name movers and seconders and record final decisions, and the minutes do both. The defect is in the room: a chair who does not declare a vote leaves the body, the clerk and the administrator to reconstruct it, and on this night the administrator had to ask out loud.

Sources: the recording as cited; approved minutes 21 February 2024; draft minutes 21 February 2024; RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification); the dialogue file.

MEDIUM Five board subcommittees reported activity, one of them a meeting held that same day, and none of them has minutes in any district share — and the board was invited, on television, to move policy drafting into a shared drive

What was reported. Policy: “The policy subcommittee had a meeting today” — a working session that produced a policy sent to the chair for first read. SRVRTC Visioning: “we’ve had three meetings, virtual meetings with Sram representatives. These are two our virtual meetings January 15th, February 1st and February 15th”, each with “16 to 20, you know, people who were on these, zoom calls”. Ad Hoc Disruptive Behaviors: a meeting scheduled and cancelled, and an attempt to convene another the same day. Finance: a meeting agreed for the near future. Capital Improvement: building walkthroughs, with Maple Avenue outstanding.

What the law requires of them. RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) makes “any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto” a public body in its own right. RSA 91-A:2, II then applies to each of them: 24 hours’ posted notice, minutes naming members and describing the subject matter, open to inspection within five business days. The Visioning Committee’s three sessions were held by electronic communication, which RSA 91-A:2, III permits only where in-person attendance “is not reasonably practical”, requires that reason to be “stated in the minutes of the meeting”, requires a physically present quorum, and requires that “All votes taken during such a meeting shall be by roll call vote”. Paragraph IV is not the applicable paragraph — it reaches only bodies of state government.

What exists. Nothing. No notice, agenda or minutes for any subcommittee session appears in this packet, in the 6 March packet, or in the Claremont Meeting Minutes share. The district maintains four named subcommittee folders in its public Drive — Capital Improvement, Claremont Policy Sub Committee, Curriculum Committee and Ad Hoc SAU Exploratory Subcommittee — and all four were found empty on 2026-08-29. There is no Visioning Committee folder at all.

The proposal made on the record. Solving a genuine scheduling problem for a committee that could not meet, the Policy chair suggests: “for if the ones that are in place that have emails, you could, put the draft of the policy or revising into your share drive and share it with those members.” “And you could get a lot of this done offline without having to mess with people’s schedules and trying to meet.” The offer is narrower in law than it sounds. RSA 91-A:2-a — in force since 2008, 303:4, eff. 1 July 2008, and never amended — provides that “Unless exempted from the definition of ‘meeting’ under RSA 91-A:2, I, public bodies shall deliberate on matters over which they have supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power only in meetings held pursuant to and in compliance with the provisions of RSA 91-A:2, II or III”, and that “Communications outside a meeting, including, but not limited to, sequential communications among members of a public body, shall not be used to circumvent the spirit and purpose of this chapter as expressed in RSA 91-A:1.” Circulating a draft is lawful; deliberating on it by comment thread is not. The exclusion at RSA 91-A:2, I(d) covers only drafts “intended only to formalize decisions previously made”.

Two things worth saying for the committee’s benefit. First, the same member is the one member of this board who insists on documentation, and her instinct here is to get work done rather than to avoid the public. Second, the committee she is advising is described as “Mostly it’s, teachers” with “a couple of community partners, like folks from law enforcement and parole” — and a board committee containing non-members is squarely inside RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d)’s trailing clause.

Which limb, and why MEDIUM. The mitigated limb. These bodies met, the fact that they met was reported in open session and is in the minutes, and the board treats their work as reportable. What is missing is the subcommittees’ own records. That is a real and repeated defect across this corpus, not a one-night failure, and it is graded consistently with the other Claremont board pages.

Sources: the recording as cited; approved minutes 21 February 2024; RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); RSA 91-A:2, II and III (2023 codification); RSA 91-A:2-a (2008, 303:4, eff. July 1, 2008); the four empty district subcommittee folders, verified 2026-08-29.

OBSERVATION The district’s first monthly financial report is not in the 24-document packet, and neither is the achievement slide that shows where the problem is

What is not there. The agenda’s item VI.3 is “Monthly Financial Update (Mary Henry, Business Administrator, discussion) FRL update” — the only substantive item on the agenda with no exhibit letter. Twenty-four documents were published for this meeting and not one of them is a financial statement. The board worked from paper handed round the table: “So you have a copy of the report in your hands there”, and later, of a second document, “what I will do is I will forward this to you afterwards so you can see what I have.”

What was in it, so far as the recording preserves it. A mid-year position of “roughly $829,000”; out-of-district tuition “Roughly $400,000” over; special-education transportation “about $220,000” over; about $190,000 left in the district-wide substitute line; health insurance about $311,000 under; combined wages “roughly $322,000 under budget”, of which “109,000 is maintenance”; a duplicate purchase order “entered for 90,000”; a mental-health counsellor listed with no dollar amount; one fewer middle-school administrator than the budget carried; and — the largest of them — “we have $951,000 in it that we haven’t spent. But on the special ed side, we’re 955,000 over.” Overall, “we’ve spent 97% of our budget”. None of those figures can be checked by anyone outside the room.

The same gap in the achievement item. “I don’t believe this slide is in your packet” — said of the grade-by-grade breakdown, which is the slide that locates the district’s weakness. And, in answer to the chair’s question about state comparison, “We are below national percentiles and they’re almost all” — a fact that appears in no published document. The benchmark exhibit that is in the packet is charts with no extractable numbers, which is why the board spent two minutes at 1:05:09 working out how to read it.

What this is not. No statute requires a school board to publish a packet at all, and none required this report to be in it. RSA 91-A:4, I gives every citizen a right to inspect governmental records on request, and nobody in this record asked and was refused. The district publishes packets voluntarily and generously — see flag 16.

What it is. A measure of what the public record actually contains. The board’s own decision that night to raise substitute pay rested on a figure from this unpublished report — “We have funds available. Definitely. We have plenty of.” And the minutes’ account of a near-million-dollar misclassification is nine bullets of prose ending “It appears that some things are sitting in the wrong place within the budget”. This is the second consecutive Claremont board meeting at which the financial document the board relied on was absent from the public folder: on 17 January the packet contained a 54-page line-item budget with no revenue side at all.

Sources: the packet folder, all 24 documents read in full; the agenda; approved minutes 21 February 2024; RSA 91-A:4, I (2023 codification; the section was later amended by 2024, 49:1, 2, eff. Aug. 13, 2024, which is not applied here); the 17 January page, flag 1.

OBSERVATION Two of the three instructional-coach job descriptions still advertise the 2022–23 school year, and none of the three lists an essential job function — exactly as the member said

The critique. “the three these three job descriptions to me are a good start. But I would like to see a more development of the essential job function section. In my opinion, the three, prompts that are listed there seem like an extension of the summary of the position, as well as the educational and experience requirements.”

The documents bear it out exactly. All three are headed “JOB DESCRIPTION LAST UPDATED: 02/14/2024”. Under “ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS”, the K-5 description offers three paragraphs beginning “Qualified candidates will have an understanding of and experience with implementing best teaching practices”, “Qualified candidates will have curriculum expertise” and “The ideal candidate should be able to facilitate adult learning”. Those are selection criteria, not functions. The 6-8 and 9-12 descriptions carry the same three paragraphs — and both still open “We are looking for a 6-8 Instructional Coach for the 2022-23 school year” and “We are looking for a 9-12 Instructional Coach for the 2022-23 school year”. They were re-dated on 14 February 2024 and the school year inside them was not.

Why an empty “essential job functions” heading is not a formatting quibble. Each of the three documents ends with the sentence “External and internal applicants, as well as position incumbents who become disabled as defined under the Americans With Disabilities Act, must be able to perform the essential job functions (as listed)”. The Act itself gives that list evidentiary weight: 42 U.S.C. §12111(8) provides that “if an employer has prepared a written description before advertising or interviewing applicants for the job, this description shall be considered evidence of the essential functions of the job.” A description whose essential-function list contains no functions cannot do the work its own closing sentence assigns to it. Nothing here is a violation of anything — no accommodation dispute is in this record — but the document is weaker than the district needs it to be.

What the board was actually being asked. These are the descriptions for positions the FY25 budget funds, on a ballot nineteen days away. The answer given was candid: “now that we’ve had the position for you, when you know what it looks like” … “We’re able to now we’re able to redo the job description based on the actuals”, and “I would say 70 to 80% of the job is working with teachers.” The minutes record the exchange in a single line: “Whitney Skillen requested more development of the essential job functions”.

Sources: Exhibit D — K-5 Instructional Coach, 6-8 and 9-12; 42 U.S.C. §12111(8); the recording as cited.

OBSERVATION The packet discloses that Stevens High School has a new interim principal and a new interim assistant principal — and neither is announced to the board, named in the minutes, or mentioned on the recording

What the document says. Exhibit 4, the Stevens principal’s report, opens: “As the new interim principal, I have begun familiarizing myself with communication software…An introduction to myself as the new interim principal has been sent out to parents.” Under Organizational Structure: “Rick Elliott has accepted the position of interim assistant principal. Mr. Elliott, a graduate of Stevens, has a warm, student-centered approach to education”. And under Operations: “The goal for the school year is not to change any operational processes through the end of the year in order to keep smooth continuity between Chris and myself.”

The report is unsigned. Its only identification is the line “School: Stevens High School”. Five of the other principals’ reports name their author or their school’s head; this one does not. This page does not name the interim principal, because no document in this packet, no line of the minutes and no word of the recording does.

What the recording shows instead. The superintendent, who on the 17 January recording reported to this same board “as being the principal at the high school”, now speaks of that principal in the third person: “I’ll meet with the the principal and the council is to see what we can do.” The minutes render it “Mr. Pratt will meet with principal and counselors at SHS”. Nobody asks who that is.

Why it matters here and not only as biography. Rick Elliott is the instructional coach who presented to this board on 17 January, and whose value the board debated as it built the budget. On this night the board spends half an hour on three instructional-coach job descriptions, funds two new coach posts in the budget the voters will decide on 12 March, and asks “What is a day look like for an instructional coach.” Nobody mentions that the district’s 9-12 coach has just moved into administration.

What this narrows. The corpus previously placed the Stevens principal changeover somewhere between 17 January and 6 March 2024, with no acting principal ever named. The packet moves the outer edge back: the reports carry the instruction “Please make sure that you have completed this 1 week prior to the Board meeting…Deadline is on February 8th”, and the whole packet was uploaded on 14 February. So the change had happened by mid-February 2024 at the latest, and it is documented in the district’s own public file rather than announced.

Sources: Exhibit 4 — SHS Principal Reports; Exhibit 1 — SRVRTC (for the reporting deadline); approved minutes 21 February 2024; the 17 January page; Google Drive metadata read 2026-08-29.

OBSERVATION One elementary school has had no nurse since October, the packet says so, and nobody at the table mentions it

What the document says. Exhibit 3, the Bluff Elementary report, under Current Challenges: “Bluff has been without a school nurse since October. This has posed a challenge for administrators who have had to act as the designee for covering the nurse’s office and services.” Four months, in a report published a week before the meeting.

What the statutes actually require — a negative worth stating. New Hampshire’s school-health statutes are permissive. RSA 200:27: “The local board in each school district may provide school health services to include school nurse services and school physician services to every child of school age in the district” (1971, 499:1). RSA 200:29 is titled “School Nurse; Certification” and begins “A superintendent may nominate and school board appoint a school nurse” — it sets qualifications for the post, not a duty to fill it. So a vacancy is not, on these sections, a breach of anything.

What the vacancy does leave without a holder. RSA 200:38, “Control and Prevention of Communicable Diseases; Duties of School Nurse” (source note ends 2001, 83:2, II), assigns duties in mandatory terms — “Each school nurse shall ensure that…All children shall be immunized prior to school entrance in accordance with RSA 141-C:20-a” and shall have “a complete physical examination prior to school entrance in accordance with RSA 200:32” — and makes the nurse “responsible for informing school administrators of the noncompliance and for assisting with meeting such requirements”. Those duties attach to the office. Where the office is empty they have no holder, which is exactly what the report describes when it says administrators “have had to act as the designee”.

A limit this page keeps. The state’s minimum-standards rules for schools may impose more than the statutes do. This page does not cite an Ed 306 section number, because that part was readopted and renumbered effective 13 December 2024, and citing today’s numbering against a February 2024 meeting is precisely the vintage error this project has had to correct elsewhere. A reviewer with the pre-readoption text can close that gap.

What the board did with it. The board thanked the administration warmly for the new reports, said they would “help us drive the budget”, and asked one question about the reports’ contents — whether the book fair was at all the elementary schools. Three of the six reports name staffing vacancies as their current challenge; none was raised.

Sources: Exhibit 3 — Bluff Elementary; RSA 200:27; RSA 200:29; RSA 200:38; the recording as cited.

OBSERVATION The public comment period opened and closed in seventeen seconds

The statute. RSA 189:74, from 2022, 333:1, eff. 6 September 2022, requires a school board to “provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters at a meeting of the school board held under RSA 91-A:2” and provides that “The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes.”

What happened. “Is there anyone present wishing to speak this evening?” at 0:01:40; “Seeing no one wishing to speak, we are going to close citizens comments.” at 0:01:57. Both sets of minutes read “Citizens Comments per Policy BEDH- none”.

Why this is an observation and not a finding. The text does not settle whether the thirty minutes is a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time, and nobody was turned away: no member of the public was in the room. The board’s own policy BEDH is the sharper document, and the 17 January page sets out where that policy contradicts itself. What is recorded here is simply the shortest citizens’ comment period in this corpus, three weeks before a budget ballot.

Sources: RSA 189:74; the recording as cited; approved minutes 21 February 2024.

OBSERVATION About a hundred fewer children qualified for free or reduced-price meals than last year, and the statute prices each one — while the federal rule that decides which schools may not collect the forms had changed four months earlier

The counts, as given to the board. “we had roughly 628 kids that qualified this year for free and reduced” against “last year, we had roughly 730 kids. So we’re we are down.” The composition shifted too: “our population was more free than reduced than it has been in the past”, and “we have more kids in the high school and in the middle school that have qualified than we do in the lower grades, which is unusual.”

What the statute pays. RSA 198:40-a, II, in the text enacted by 2023, 79:150, eff. 1 July 2023 and therefore in force on this date, sets “$4,100 per pupil in the ADMR, plus differentiated aid as follows”, including “An additional $2,300 for each pupil in the ADMR who is eligible for a free or reduced price meal anytime during the determination year”. RSA 198:40-d adds a 2 per cent annual adjustment beginning 1 July 2024.

The arithmetic, which is this page’s and not the district’s. 730 − 628 = 102 children; 102 × $2,300 = about $234,600 of differentiated aid. That is the order of magnitude the business administrator was pointing at when she said “free and reduced. Is a big driver now on, adequacy aid” and “go to Concord, push Concord, reach out to your reps.” Three limits, stated because they matter. ADMR is average daily membership in residence, not a headcount, so the district’s own tally is not the State’s figure. The statute counts eligibility “anytime during the determination year”, so the year in which a drop flows through depends on a calculation cycle nothing in this record describes. And for a school operating under the federal Community Eligibility Provision the count is not built from household applications at all.

The CEP point the business administrator makes, and its date. “we have one school that’s a c p school, which means they’re automatically free. We cannot push forms in those schools. We can’t tell them to fill it out.” “We can’t even have forms out according to the federal government.” That is the Community Eligibility Provision, and the rule governing which schools may use it had changed shortly before: USDA’s final rule at 88 Fed. Reg. 65778 (26 September 2023) lowered the minimum identified-student percentage from 40 per cent to 25 per cent, effective 26 October 2023 — four months before this meeting. More schools became eligible in exactly this window, and an eligible school collects no household forms.

The other mechanisms named at the table, none of them speculative. Wages: “If you go to Walmart and make 19, $20 an hour, you don’t meet the levels.” The application window: “there’s a window when someone is is allowed to still be on at the beginning of the year. And we only have a deadline of October 1st. That window overlaps with that deadline”. And processing: “When you’re entering a thousand applications, it’s a lot of work.” A member asked the right question — “with the numbers down, you’re not saying that the income level for our community has gone up and people are not qualified.” — and was told the district had pushed harder this year and the count still fell.

Why an observation. No statute is breached by a falling eligibility count. It is reported here because it is the single largest revenue variable discussed at this meeting, because the board treated it as a legislative problem rather than an administrative one, and because the federal rule change that bears on it went unmentioned.

Sources: the recording as cited; RSA 198:40-a, II (2023, 79:150, eff. July 1, 2023); RSA 198:40-d; 88 Fed. Reg. 65778 (Sept. 26, 2023), eff. Oct. 26, 2023; approved minutes 21 February 2024.

OBSERVATION A consent-agenda exhibit published in the district’s public folder names four students, gives one student’s grade, and prints a student’s district e-mail address

What the document is. Exhibit A, a letter of 13 February 2024 from the Stevens High School Youth and Government advisor asking the board to approve the delegation’s trip to Concord on 12–13 April. It is an admiring letter about students doing well, and the board approved the trip on the consent agenda without discussion.

What it contains. The full names of four named students with the offices they were elected to, the grade level of one of them, the size of the delegation, and — carried through into the published PDF as a live link — a student’s district e-mail address on the district’s own mail domain. This page reproduces none of it.

The rule. Under 34 CFR 99.3 a student’s name, grade level, electronic mail address and “participation in officially recognized activities” may all be designated as directory information and released without consent — but only if the agency has first done what 34 CFR 99.37(a) requires: given “public notice to parents of students in attendance and eligible students in attendance” of the “types of personally identifiable information that the agency or institution has designated as directory information”, of the “parent’s or eligible student’s right to refuse to let the agency or institution designate any or all of those types of information”, and of the “period of time within which a parent or eligible student has to notify the agency or institution in writing”. Absent that designation and notice, the disclosure is governed by the general consent rule at 20 U.S.C. §1232g(b)(1).

What this page can and cannot establish. It cannot establish whether Claremont has designated these categories, given the annual notice, or honoured an opt-out — none of that is in this packet, and the district’s directory-information notice is not among the documents this project holds. So no violation is asserted. What is on the record is that the district put a named student’s working school e-mail address into a permanently public folder, in a document nobody at the meeting read aloud or discussed, and that an e-mail address of that form is ordinarily also a login identifier for school systems — which is why 34 CFR 99.3 treats identifiers used for electronic access differently from a name on a list.

What would settle it. The district’s FERPA directory-information notice for the 2023–24 school year.

Sources: Exhibit A — Consent Agenda Item Youth and Government Trip 2024; 34 CFR 99.3; 34 CFR 99.37; 20 U.S.C. §1232g(b)(1).

POSITIVE Asked about unpaid meal accounts, the district described exactly what New Hampshire law requires — the child is served, and the debt is the adults’ problem

What the statute says. RSA 189:11-a, VIII, added by 2019, 301:1, eff. 1 July 2019: a school lunch meal payment policy “shall ensure that all students have access to a healthy school lunch, that the school district will make every reasonable effort to inform parents of the policy, and that no student will be subject to different treatment from the standard school lunch meal or school cafeteria procedures.”

What was said. Asked whether families try to opt a child out of lunch to avoid charges, the business administrator answered: “It does, but we cannot tell students. We cannot deny a student a meal, and we can’t tell them they have to have something else.” The superintendent: “That’s a conversation the parents have to have with their child saying.” On where the notice goes: “They get a bill, they get an email” and “Goes to the parents.” On extras beyond the reimbursable meal: “No, no they can’t couldn’t take anything like that okay. Oh they have to take just the lunch.” And on the older practice the vice chair remembered, of the cafeteria staff collecting from children directly: “the federal government doesn’t allow us to do it now.”

That is the rule, correctly stated and correctly applied. The reimbursable meal is served regardless of the balance; the child is not singled out; the à la carte items are restricted, which is a restriction on purchases and not on the standard meal; and the communication goes to the household. Nothing in this exchange departs from §VIII, and the board member who asked the question asked the right one.

The counterweight, reported in the same breath. The deficit was given as “around 15,000”, and the collection practice was stated bluntly: “I know that when someone hits a certain amount that I will be taking people to court to get money. So yes, I will be. There are people that just refuse to pay.” Paragraph VIII governs how the student is treated; it says nothing about recovering a debt from an adult, and litigation against households is not barred by it. This page reports both halves without deciding whether suing families over school-meal debt is wise policy, which is a question for the board and not for a statute.

Sources: RSA 189:11-a, VIII (2019, 301:1, eff. July 1, 2019); the recording as cited; approved minutes 21 February 2024.

POSITIVE The board held a noticed public hearing on a $10,000 gift that the statute did not require it to hold — and did the thing the statute did require as well

What the statute requires, in the text in force on this date. RSA 198:20-b, III splits at $20,000. For “unanticipated funds in amount of $20,000 or more” the school board “shall hold prior public hearing” with newspaper notice “at least 7 days before”. For funds below that line, the duty is different and lighter: “For funds less than $20,000, school board shall post notice in agenda and include notice in meeting minutes.”

The vintage matters, and it cuts the district’s way. The $20,000 line is the text of 2023, 38:1, effective 18 July 2023. Before that date the threshold was $5,000, and a $10,000 gift would have required both the hearing and seven days’ newspaper notice. On 21 February 2024 the higher threshold applied, so this donation needed only the agenda-and-minutes notice.

What Claremont did. Both. The agenda carries the item in terms — “Donation to Claremont Middle School in the amount of $10,000 from the Jack and Dorothy Byrnes Foundation to help fund the 8th grade Boston field trip. (Exhibit B)” — both sets of minutes carry it verbatim, the donor’s letter is published as Exhibit B, and the board scheduled and held a public hearing it did not owe. The hearing itself was brief because nobody came; that is not the board’s doing.

Two limits, and one small documentary error. Paragraph I of the section makes the board’s authority to accept unanticipated funds depend on the district having adopted an enabling article at an annual meeting; nothing in this packet shows that article, and this page does not assert it. And the district misspells its donor: the agenda and both sets of minutes say “Byrnes Foundation”, while the letter in the packet is on the letterhead of “THE JACK AND DOROTHY BYRNE FOUNDATION, INC.” and is signed by Dorothy Byrne. The minutes get it both ways in a single item, writing “Byrne Foundation” in the motion and “the Byrnes” in the discussion.

Sources: RSA 198:20-b (2023 codification; source note ends 2023, 38:1, eff. July 18, 2023); CSB Agenda 2.21.24; Exhibit B — CMS JDB Donation; approved minutes 21 February 2024.

POSITIVE The district began publishing a monthly written report from every school, on a template built to the board’s own goals, and published the first set in full — including what is going wrong

What was done. Seven documents in this packet that did not exist a month ago: one SAU department report and one from each of Bluff, Disnard, Maple Avenue, Claremont Middle School, Stevens High School and the technical centre. The superintendent describes building it: “I kind of created this, this template for the principals to fill out based on the the board’s goals of communication, organizational, organizational structure, training and professional development, student achievement, operations, culture and climate, and curriculum instruction.” The forms carry their own deadline: “Please make sure that you have completed this 1 week prior to the Board meeting. This will start Feb. 2024. Deadline is on February 8th”.

Why it counts. No statute requires any of it. RSA 91-A requires meetings to be open and minutes kept; it does not require a district to publish a per-school written account of its goals, its professional development, its data and its problems, a week in advance, on the internet. Before February 2024 this corpus has no such document for Claremont at all.

And the reports are candid. Under Current Challenges the district published, in its own public folder: “Bluff has been without a school nurse since October”; “Lack of substitutes to cover classes when Teachers are sick” and “No FT custodial staff” at the technical centre; “vacant positions in the following areas: Special Educator (1), SPED Paraeducators (3), Grade 5 Classroom Teacher that were not filled for the 23-24 school year due to shortage of applicants” at Maple Avenue; and “Late Bus”, “Short Staffed”, “Subs” at the middle school. A district that publishes its vacancy list a week before a budget ballot is not managing its record.

Stated with its counterweight. The board asked one question about the contents of those seven documents, and it was about a book fair — flags 9 and 8. And the reports are not yet uniform: the technical centre’s is headed “Month : January 2024” while the other five are February, and the Stevens report is unsigned. The superintendent said the next set would be consolidated: “it’s kind of a living document next month in separate sheets. It’ll be in one document.”

Sources: Exhibit 7 — SAU6 Office Monthly Report; Exhibits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6; the recording as cited.

POSITIVE All twenty-four documents were public a full week before the meeting — the largest and earliest packet in this corpus

What the metadata shows. The folder 4. CSB 2.21.24 was created on 14 February 2024 at 4:08:52 p.m. ET, and every one of its twenty-four documents between 4:09:28 and 4:09:39 p.m. the same afternoon — agenda, six principals’ reports, the SAU department report, five achievement exhibits, four military-academy documents, two substitute-pay exhibits, the donation letter, the Youth and Government letter, a special-education fact sheet, and two sets of minutes. Seven days and two hours before the meeting was called to order.

The comparison that gives it weight. For the 17 January meeting the packet went up the afternoon of 16 January and the agenda itself about four hours before the meeting. For 6 March the folder went up on 29 February. This is the earliest and the largest packet the project has recorded for this board, and it is a real service to anyone who wanted to read 24 documents before a two-hour meeting.

Stated with its counterweight, because it is the same act. That 4:09 p.m. upload is also the moment the minutes of 17 January and of the 29 January working session became public for the first time — the 20th and 12th business days respectively, where the statute allows five (flag 3). The district’s virtue and its defect here are two faces of one habit: everything is published when the packet is built, and nothing is published before.

Sources: Google Drive createdTime for the folder and all 24 documents, read 2026-08-29; MAP.md §§42 and 43.

Appendix — source files

Official and public sources

Recording: Claremont Community Television, Cablecast show 15585 — “School Board Meeting 2/21/24”. Title reproduced exactly as the site gives it. Runs 2:00:42.
Minutes of this meeting: 5. approved CSB meeting minutes 2.21.24 — approved, filed in the district’s Claremont Meeting Minutes share, created there 11 March 2024. The 2.21.24 draft CSB meeting minutes (1).pdf, filed in the 6 March packet and created 29 February 2024, is the same document word for word — the same pattern the 17 January minutes followed.
Packet: 4. CSB 2.21.24 — 24 documents, all twenty-four read in full for this page on 2026-08-29, every one created 14 February 2024 between 4:08:52 and 4:09:39 p.m. ET:
- CSB Agenda 2.21.24.docx.pdf — the official agenda. Masthead: seven board members, the clerk, two student board members and six SAU administrators including Christopher Pratt as Interim Superintendent. Heads item II “Consent Agenda (consent required)”.
- draft minutes CSB meeting 1.17.24 (1).pdf — approved on this night’s consent agenda. Fixes the working session as “January 24th at 6:00 at Dow”.
- Minutes from CSB working session 1.29.24 (1).pdf — the subject of flag 1. Three pages; no attendance, no times, no location, no motions, no votes, no signature.
- NH SPED Facts (1).pdf — a two-page NHASEA advocacy fact sheet updated 1 December 2023 (19.1 per cent of NH pupils identified in 2022 against 14.6 per cent in 2001; average cost per special-education pupil $28,361 against $16,127; the State meeting 18.6 per cent of the cost). The same document was Exhibit B of the 17 January packet; it is filed here without an exhibit letter and is not discussed on the recording. The minutes record only “Inclusion of NH Special Education report”.
- Exhibit 1- SRVRTC.pdf — the technical centre, headed “Month : January 2024” while the rest are February. Region 10 agreement being drafted with Sunapee and Newport; new career counsellor and health science technology teacher planned; no full-time custodian; substitutes named twice as a challenge.
- Exhibit 2-Maple - SAU 6 Principal Reports - February 2024.docx.pdf — the fullest of the six. Publishes a full year of i-Ready growth by grade, the school’s instructional-minutes expectations, its curriculum list, and four unfilled positions.
- Exhibit 3-Principal Report- Bluff Feb. 8, 24.docx.pdf — names Christine Baker as the school’s principal in its own header. 77 per cent of pupils tested at or above grade level in phonological awareness; a lockdown drill on 10 January; no school nurse since October (flag 9).
- Exhibit 4- SHS Principal Reports.pdf — unsigned, written by “the new interim principal”; records Rick Elliott’s appointment as interim assistant principal (flag 8).
- Exhibit 5- Feb Disnard SAU 6 Principal Reports.pdf — names Melissa Lewis as School Principal and Nichole Boynton as Student Services Coordinator; four measurable school goals, two of them behavioural; a $500 Exxon Mobil grant.
- Exhibit 6- CMS Principal’s Report Feb.pdf — the middle school, in note form. NAEP testing 1 February; a $12,000 science grant and a $13,000 art grant; “Yondr Pouches March”; lateness to class down over 50 per cent.
- Exhibit 7- SAU6 Office Monthly Report .pdf — four departments in their own voices: Human Resources (Angela), Special Education (Ben), Technology (Jeff, Jason and Brandon) and Curriculum/Grants (Catlin / Michael). Records a full-day paraprofessional training with consultant Terra Geer on 23 January.
- Exhibit A- Consent Agenda Item Youth and Government Trip 2024.pdf — the advisor’s request for the 12–13 April YMCA programme at the State House, signed Jill Chastenay. See flag 12: this page does not reproduce the student names, grade or e-mail address the letter carries.
- Exhibit B- CMS JDB Donation 2.21.24.pdf — the donor’s letter of 12 January 2024 on the letterhead of the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation, signed by Dorothy Byrne, with a copy of the instrument. Addressed to Erin Lynch at Claremont Middle School.
- Exhibit C- School Board - Cover letter for Fact Sheets on summer programs at military academies .docx.pdf — 13 February 2024, addressed “Chair Whitney and Members of the Claremont School Board”, signed “/s/ Charlene Lovett U.S. Army, Retired Historian, Post 29, American Legion”. The document that settles the presenter’s surname.
- Exhibit C- Fact Sheet on U.S. Military Academy 2024 — West Point Summer Leaders Experience; 1,100 places; sessions 1–7 and 8–14 June; deadline 15 March; cost $625.
- Exhibit C- Fact Sheet on Naval Academy Summer Programs — Summer STEM, rising 9th to 11th graders; deadline 15 April; cost $700.
- Exhibit C- Fact Sheet on Coast Guard Academy Summer Program — AIM, rising seniors; deadline 1 April; cost $750 for the on-campus sessions.
- Exhibit D- Benchmark results Mid-Year 2024.pdf — the K-5 fall-to-winter i-Ready charts. Images only; it carries no extractable figures, which is why the board spent two minutes learning to read it and why the grade-by-grade slide discussed on air is not recoverable from it.
- Exhibit D- Summer School iReady data.pdf — spring-to-fall Lexile and Quantile plots for grades 1–4 summer-camp attenders, with proficiency bands given for each grade. Individual pupils appear as anonymised letters.
- Exhibit D- K-5 Instructional Coach.pdf, Exhibit D- 6-8 Instructional Coach.pdf and Exhibit D- 9-12 Instructional Coach.pdf — three SAU 6 job-description forms, all stamped “LAST UPDATED: 02/14/2024”, two of them still advertising the 2022–23 school year. Flag 7.
- Exhibit F- Sub Job Description (1).pdf — the substitute-teacher description, “LAST UPDATED: 2/13/2024”, reporting to “Building Principal/HR Director”. Twenty-one essential job functions, in contrast to the coach forms. Requires a high-school diploma or GED, “New Hampshire Dept of Education certification preferred”, and a criminal background check.
- Exhibit F- Y2024 Substitute Rates by District Study 2 (1).xlsx - Sheet1.pdf — eleven districts’ teacher, paraprofessional and nurse substitute rates, with bonus schemes. Lempster $85; Londonderry $90; Bow, Henniker and Wilton-Lyndeborough $100; Con Val $110; Hanover, Lebanon, Monadnock, Rivendell and Keene $125. The source of the “lowest 80. The mid is 100. In the in the higher end is 125” the board was given.
Documents outside this packet that this page relies on, and where they are:
- _CSB Agenda 1.17.24.docx.pdf, in 2. CSB 1.17.24 — establishes the earlier “(vote required)” wording.
- CSB Agenda 3.6.24.docx (1).pdf and 2.21.24 draft CSB meeting minutes (1).pdf, in 5. CSB 3.6.24 — establish the third consent-agenda wording, the 6 March public hearing on the $420,000 retained fund balance, and the identity of the policy sent to the chair for first read.
- draft minutes 1.3.24 CSB Public Hearing (1).pdf — used only for its Drive creation date, in flag 3.
- The dialogue file of the 3 February 2024 deliberative session (Cablecast show 15552), used in flag 1 to test the working session’s instructions against what was actually said to the voters. Every quotation from it is identified as such.
Explicit negatives, from reading all 24 packet documents in full rather than from a search: the packet contains no financial statement or revenue schedule of any kind (flag 6); no notice document for this meeting or for the 29 January working session; no minutes, agenda or notice for any board subcommittee (flag 5); and no exhibit at all for agenda items VI.2 (teacher evaluation) and VI.3 (monthly financial update).
A negative that is search-derived and therefore weaker, flagged as such: no record of a board session on 24 January 2024 — the date the 17 January minutes fix — was located in the packet, the 6 March packet, the Claremont Meeting Minutes share or this project’s meeting map. The Google Drive search API is demonstrably unreliable on these shared folders: a title contains ‘working session’ query run for this page returned two unrelated files and did not return Minutes from CSB working session 1.29.24 (1).pdf, which is the document this whole page turns on. Folder contents were therefore established from get_file_metadata on each known file and from the project’s meeting map, not from search.

Project files

Relative links; they work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/.

Dialogue: ../Dialogue/15585 SchoolBoard022124.mp4.CSV — 887 rows, 19,654 words, running to 2:00:42.
Video: ../../Input/Videos/15585 SchoolBoard022124.mp4
Diarized transcript: ../../Input/Transcripts/15585 SchoolBoard022124.mp4.json
Map: ../../Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md §42.
Companion pages: 17 January 2024 — the night the FY25 budget got its final number, whose minutes this meeting approved; 3 February 2024 — the deliberative session, which the 29 January working session was convened to prepare; 5 January 2024 Finance Committee; 3 January 2024 budget hearing; 11 January 2024 SAU 6, which appointed the interim superintendent who gives this meeting’s first report.

Laws and rules cited on this page

New Hampshire statutes, in the text in force on 21 February 2024. RSA 91-A:2, I, II and III — the definition of a meeting and its four exclusions; 24 hours’ posted notice; minutes to include the names of members, persons appearing and a description of the subject matter; the names of movers and seconders; five business days to public inspection; and the conditions on electronic participation. 2023, 188:1, eff. 3 October 2023. The start-time, end-time and minutes-producer requirements are 2025, 112:1, eff. 22 August 2025, and are not applied.
RSA 91-A:2-a — deliberation only in compliant meetings; communications outside a meeting, “including, but not limited to, sequential communications”, not to be used to circumvent the chapter. 2008, 303:4, eff. 1 July 2008; never amended.
RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) — “public body” includes a school district’s governing body “or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto”.
RSA 91-A:4, I — right to inspect governmental records. Cited in the 2023 codification; the section was amended by 2024, 49:1, 2, eff. 13 August 2024, which is not applied here.
RSA 671:30 — non-partisan ballot system required for the election of school district officers. 1979, 321:1, eff. 21 August 1979; never amended. This is what forecloses the political-caucus exclusion for any New Hampshire school board.
RSA 198:20-b, III — unanticipated funds: prior public hearing and 7 days’ newspaper notice at $20,000 or more; agenda and minutes notice below that. 2023, 38:1, eff. 18 July 2023 — before that date the threshold was $5,000.
RSA 198:40-a, II — $4,100 per pupil in the ADMR plus $2,300 for each pupil eligible for a free or reduced price meal. 2023, 79:150, eff. 1 July 2023. RSA 198:40-d — 2 per cent annual adjustment from 1 July 2024.
RSA 189:11-a, VIII — school lunch meal payment policy: access for all students, reasonable effort to inform parents, and no student subject to different treatment. 2019, 301:1, eff. 1 July 2019.
RSA 189:74 — school board public comment period of no less than 30 minutes. 2022, 333:1, eff. 6 September 2022.
RSA 200:27, RSA 200:29 and RSA 200:38 — school health services (permissive), school nurse certification (permissive as to appointment), and the school nurse’s mandatory immunisation and examination duties.
RSA 40:13 — official ballot referendum; cited only for context on the annual meeting. Durable: last amended 2019, 192:2, eff. 10 July 2019.
Federal. 42 U.S.C. §12111(8) (a written job description prepared before advertising is evidence of a job’s essential functions); 34 CFR 99.3 and 34 CFR 99.37 with 20 U.S.C. §1232g(b)(1) (FERPA directory information, notice and opt-out); 88 Fed. Reg. 65778 (USDA, 26 September 2023, eff. 26 October 2023 — the Community Eligibility Provision identified-student percentage lowered from 40 per cent to 25 per cent); 29 U.S.C. §218d (the PUMP Act, in force from 29 December 2022 — the law that actually applied to nursing-mother accommodations in February 2024, New Hampshire’s own provisions not taking effect until 1 July 2025).