Claremont School Board — March 6, 2024

MEDIUM The approved minutes name Arlene Hawkins as the mover of the night's second amendment; the recording has the chair making it, and Hawkins does not speak until an hour later

RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to include "the names of members who made or seconded each motion" — a requirement in force since 2018, 244:1, effective January 1, 2019, and therefore binding on every meeting in this corpus. The approved minutes discharge it here: "Arlene Hawkins made a motion to amend the original motion to require that the $420,000 from the contingency fund only be transferred if the proposed budget as set forth by the school board is passed by the voters; no second, motion fails."

The recording does not support it. The whole passage, from 0:29:25 to 0:31:51, is one voice — a voice that is running the meeting, that says "Could we amend the and I don't know how to do this. So bear with me," that dictates the text and then asks the clerk "How's that? Did you get that, Noel?", that negotiates the wording back with her, and that then puts the question and rules on it: "And so, is there a second for that amendment motion." … "Seeing no second. Yes. It's the amendment fails." Those are the chair's actions and the chair's words, and the dialogue file attributes every one of them to Heather Whitney. Arlene Hawkins has three segments in the entire recording — 1:42:12, 1:42:16 and 1:43:30 — and all three fall in the by-laws item, seventy minutes after this exchange.

What this page does not claim. The dialogue file's own note on the chair's cluster records that it is a heavy merge, with fifteen segments reassigned to other speakers by override; a diarizer that merges can also swallow a short turn. It is possible that Hawkins spoke a sentence inside that run. What is not possible on this record is that Hawkins made the motion, dictated it to the clerk, and then presided over its failure. The board's own draft by-laws, rule 2.09, would have made the difference matter: a motion that draws no second is not before the body, and the identity of the person who could not get one is the only trace it leaves. The safe statement is the narrow one — the minutes and the recording disagree about who moved it, and this page cannot settle which is right. What would settle it is the video: the recording is audio-derived here, and a camera on the room at 0:29:25 would answer the question in a second.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (names of members who made or seconded each motion; 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019); approved 3.6.24 minutes, item III; the dialogue transcript at 0:29:25–0:31:51.

MEDIUM Neither vote on the $420,000 was counted aloud, and the approved minutes record the successful main motion as a vote "on the amendment"

Two votes were taken on this money. The first, on Crawford's motion to postpone, is on the recording in its entirety as: "All in favor of amending the motion. Say I. I all opposed say nay. Nay nay." followed by "I abstain abstain okay." No total was announced, no result was declared, and the board's next indication of the outcome is the chair's "So we're going to return to the original motion." The second, on the main motion, is: "Is there any objection to moving the question? All in favor of the motion as written? Say I, I any opposed seeing no opposition. The motion passes." Again no count.

The minutes fill the first gap and open a worse one. They supply a full named tally for the failed amendment — for: Crawford; against: Whitney, Sprague, Miles, "Whitney Skilen", Gallagher; abstaining: Hawkins — which is complete, is a proper discharge of RSA 91-A:2, II's requirement to record "a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions," and cannot be checked against the recording at all. It also records Bonnie Miles, who seconded the motion, among those who voted against it. Then, for the decision that actually moved $420,000, the minutes read in full: "Voice vote taken on the amendment: all voting in favor; the motion passes." There was no amendment before the board at that point; both amendments had failed. The district's only written record of its own transfer of $420,000 describes the vote as being on something else.

This is a defect of the record, not of the vote. Nothing in RSA 91-A requires a tally to be announced on a voice vote, and the board's draft by-laws (rule 2.14) make a roll call available to any member on request; none was requested. What the statute does require is that the minutes record the final decision, and here they name the wrong question. The consequence is practical: a reader of the approved minutes cannot tell from them that the transfer was approved unconditionally, which is the single fact that distinguishes it from the conditional version the chair had tried and failed to move two minutes earlier.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes to include names of members, persons appearing, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions; 2023 codification, in force from Oct. 3, 2023; the mover/seconder clause from 2018, 244:1); approved 3.6.24 minutes, item III; the recording at 0:26:23 and 0:35:51. The 2025, 112:1 additions to RSA 91-A:2, II — start time, end time and who produced the minutes — took effect August 22, 2025 and are not applied to this 2024 meeting.

MEDIUM The constraint the board relied on comes from the wrong paragraph of RSA 198:4-b — and the vote that authorised the retention is nowhere on this record

RSA 198:4-b — last amended by 2020, 38:25, effective September 27, 2020, so the current text is the text that governed this meeting — contains two different devices, and the board used both names for one pot of money.

• Paragraph I is the contingency fund: "A school district annually by an article separate from the budget and all other articles in the warrant… may establish a contingency fund to meet the cost of unanticipated expenses that may arise during the year." It is created by the voters, by its own warrant article, and it is the only place in the section where the words "unanticipated expenses" appear.
• Paragraph II is retained year-end unassigned general funds: a district "by a vote of the legislative body may authorize, indefinitely until specific rescission," retention of unused year-end unassigned general funds, capped at "5 percent of the current fiscal year's net assessment under RSA 198:5." Paragraph II(a): "Prior to expending retained general funds, the school board shall hold a prior public hearing on the action to be taken with such funds," with notice "published in a newspaper of general circulation in the relevant municipality at least 7 days before the meeting is held." Paragraph II states no purpose limitation whatever.

The agenda, the motion and the minutes all call this money the Retained Fund Balance, and the public hearing the board held is the hearing paragraph II(a) requires — paragraph I requires no hearing at all. So this is paragraph II money. But the constraint the chair stated, and the one that defeated the postponement, is paragraph I's: "I did pull up the RSA related to contingency funds… We can't assign these funds to anything. It has to be unanticipated expenses. And so we may find ourselves in a situation where we won't have an opportunity to assign those dollars to this year's general fund" (0:09:35). The same premise runs through the rest of the debate — Gallagher at 0:33:51: "we can't use this for and $20,000 [$420,000] for anything else but unanticipated costs" — and it is what makes Crawford's two-week wait look risky rather than merely cautious. Whether the money can be spent in two weeks' time on the same lines is a question paragraph II does not answer either way.

A second, quieter gap. Paragraph II makes the legislative body — the voters — the source of the retention authority. The chair described the money as something "Miss Henry brought forth that it would be prudent for us to put this in a contingency fund" in August 2023 (0:28:08); this project's records date the board's retention vote to 18 October 2023, where the recording has the chair putting the motion as "to retain up to 424,000". Neither the recording, nor the packet, nor the minutes refers to the district-meeting vote that would authorise any of it. That vote may well exist — a standing authorisation under paragraph II is the normal way districts do this, and it need not be re-taken. But it is not in this record, and this project has not located the warrant article. What would settle it: the district's annual report or the warrant for whichever annual meeting adopted the authorisation.

Not flagged: the amount. $420,000 against a district appropriation of roughly $34.9 million is far inside paragraph II's 5 per cent of net assessment ceiling — the last documented net assessment in this corpus, for FY2022–23, was $31,392,419, against which a $426,494 retention was 1.36 per cent.

Sources: RSA 198:4-b, I and II (2023 codification; source note ends 2020, 38:25, eff. Sept. 27, 2020); RSA 198:4-b at gc.nh.gov; CSB Agenda 3.6.24, item III; the companion pages Claremont School Board — October 18, 2023 (the retention vote) and January 17, 2024 (the business administrator's advice that a hearing would be required).

MEDIUM Policy ACN was adopted at a single reading on the authority of a New Hampshire statute that would not take effect for sixteen months, and cites the federal provision that actually bound the district to the wrong title of the U.S. Code

Policy ACN, Nursing Mothers Accommodation, is headed "Category: Priority (Required by Law)" and lists its authorities at the foot: "NH Statutes RSA 275:78-83" and, under the heading "Federal Statutes", three lines: "20 U.S.C 1681, et seq", "42 U.S.C. 2000gg" and "42 U.S.C. 218d". Three of those four are exactly right for the wrong or the right reasons; the two that matter are wrong.

• RSA 275:78 et seq. was not law on March 6, 2024. Its source note reads "2023, 191:20, eff. July 1, 2025" — enacted in 2023, effective sixteen months after this vote (penalties at RSA 275:82 later still). Its definition of "employer" does reach a school district once in force: "the state or any of its political subdivisions, which has 6 or more employees working in the state." But on this date it imposed no duty at all.
• "42 U.S.C. 218d" is the wrong title. The provision the policy's own text tracks — reasonable break time, "a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion," "for 1 year after the child's birth" — is 29 U.S.C. §218d, added to the Fair Labor Standards Act by the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, Pub. L. 117-328, div. KK, §102(a)(2), effective December 29, 2022. Title 42's §218 is the National Advisory Council on Migrant Health. The federal statute that actually required this policy is cited under a title where it does not exist.
• The other two hold up: 20 U.S.C. §1681 et seq. is Title IX, and 42 U.S.C. §2000gg is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, enacted in the same omnibus as the PUMP Act.

The floor amendment, and what it did. Whitney Skillen objected that the opening sentence "just kind of like, abruptly stops" and read it out: "It reads the district provides a supportive environment as to time and place for students and employees collectively. Nursing mothers. Period." What is actually missing from the packet sentence is punctuation, not words: it opens a quotation mark before the parenthesised defined term and never closes it. Frank Sprague's fix, adopted as a friendly amendment with no objection, was to insert two words: "the district endeavors to provide a supportive environment." A policy sentence that stated what the district does now states what it tries to do, in the one paragraph of a Priority (Required by Law) policy that states its purpose. Under 29 U.S.C. §218d the employer's duty is not an endeavour. The board voted the change without anyone raising that, and then adopted the policy outright — the chair, at 1:41:06: "The policy is adopted. No second read is required."

What cuts the other way, and it is substantial. Adopting a nursing-accommodation policy in March 2024 put Claremont sixteen months ahead of the state statute it cites, and in compliance with a federal statute that had bound it since December 2022 and that the district had had no policy for. The body of the policy is materially stronger than either statute requires: three nursing periods a day, paid for hourly employees, no make-up time, a private space with an outlet, a chair, and proximity to a sink and refrigerator "if feasible", cleaning by district staff, coverage of students as well as employees, a two-week notice-and-plan process, and a prohibition on conduct that frustrates it, referable to the Title IX coordinator. The defect is in the citations and in one verb, not in the substance.

Sources: Exhibit C — CSB Policy ACN, First Read (packet PDF); RSA 275:78 (source note: 2023, 191:20, eff. July 1, 2025); 29 U.S.C. §218d (PUMP Act; Pub. L. 117-328, div. KK, §102(a)(2), Dec. 29, 2022); 42 U.S.C. §218 (National Advisory Council on Migrant Health).

MEDIUM The draft by-laws on the table conflict with the board's own policy on officer terms, and their Right-to-Know appendix gives three different counts of the grounds for a nonpublic session

Exhibit D is a twenty-page draft, "Claremont School Board By-Laws 2024-2025", which the chair intended the incoming board to adopt at its first meeting after the election. Two problems in it are visible from the document itself.

One. Rule 1.03 reads: "Per CSB policy BDB, The CSB shall elect the chair and vice-chair… for a term of two years unless the term is interrupted by election results, resignation or officer removed by 2/3 majority (5 of 7) vote." Arlene Hawkins, who had been asked to check the draft against district policy, reported at 1:43:30 that the policy it cites says the opposite: "that's the policy. Discrepancy that I came upon in our policy. It says one year." So the draft attributes to a named district policy a rule that policy does not contain. The chair acknowledged the substance — "That would be a departure from what our custom is" — and said she had added the removal clause herself, the Manchester original having none. The point was still unresolved on March 20, when the board heard "further discussion on one year v. two year period for chairs" and held the by-laws over again.

Two. Appendix D of the draft is the board's own statement of the Right-to-Know Law, and it cannot count. Its opening sentence says there are "eight grounds upon which Board of School Committees may enter nonpublic session" and then lists nine, numbered (1) to (9). Later it requires that a motion "state one or more of the nine statutory bases cited above," then twice more says "one of the eight statutory reasons." Its closing Checklist for Compliance lists seven. The real figure is neither: RSA 91-A:3, II runs from (a) to (m), with (f) repealed — twelve operative grounds. The draft's nine are a defensible working subset for a school board, and its ninth item, review of sealed minutes on a change of circumstance, correctly reflects subparagraph (m) added by 2023, 189:1; but the appendix omits II(g) (security-related issues bearing on immediate safety) and II(j) (confidential, commercial or financial information), both of which a school board can reach.

Three, and this is the substantive one. The appendix tells the board that it "should periodically review their sealed minutes of non-public sessions to determine if the reasons for sealing such minutes still exist." That was accurate before October 2023 and is no longer the whole rule. RSA 91-A:3, IV, added by 2023, 189:1, effective October 3, 2023 — five months before this meeting — makes the review mandatory in the absence of an adopted procedure and puts an outer limit on it: it "shall occur no more than 10 years from the last time the public body voted to prevent the minutes from being subject to public disclosure," and minutes not reviewed inside the window become subject to public disclosure without further action. The draft carries neither the deadline nor the consequence. Five weeks after this meeting the SAU 6 board — on which Arlene Hawkins chairs the policy subcommittee — moved a new policy BEDG written specifically to implement that paragraph, deadline included.

Sources: Exhibit D — Claremont School Board Rules and Procedures (the by-laws draft), rules 1.03 and 2.01 and Appendix D; RSA 91-A:3, II(a)–(m) and IV (¶IV added 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023); approved 3.20.24 minutes, item VII.7; the companion page SAU 6 Board — April 11, 2024 (policy BEDG).

MEDIUM The only document that told the public what this hearing was about reached the district's public share on the afternoon of the hearing, and the minutes reached it on the seventh business day

The hearing on the $420,000 is governed by RSA 198:4-b, II(a), which requires that "Notice of the time, place, and subject of such hearing shall be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the relevant municipality at least 7 days before the meeting is held." That is a different and stricter notice than RSA 91-A:2, II's ordinary 24-hour posting for a public meeting. This page cannot tell you whether it happened. Newspaper publication leaves no trace in the district's document share, and no affidavit of publication is in the packet. Someone at the table put the requirement at ten days rather than seven — "We have ten days to post that. Is that correct?" (0:25:03) — while the board was briefly considering continuing the hearing to a later date.

What can be measured is the district's own posting of the documents. Google Drive dates the five exhibits to February 28–29 and March 4, comfortably ahead of the meeting. It dates the agenda — the only document in the packet that states the time, place and subject of the hearing — to 2:15 p.m. on March 6, 2024, about four and a quarter hours before the 6:30 call to order. The board's own draft by-laws, introduced the same evening, would require action items to reach the superintendent's assistant "no later than noon seven days prior to the meeting" (rule 2.10) and packets to go to members "no later than the Wednesday prior" (rule 1.09).

The minutes are measurable too. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to be "promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting." Five business days after Wednesday March 6 is Wednesday March 13. Drive dates the draft minutes to Friday March 15 at 1:24 p.m. — the seventh business day. The honest limits: posting to a Google Drive share is not what the statute measures. Inspection at the SAU office would satisfy it, the district may have had the draft available earlier, and nothing on this record shows a requester being refused. The Drive timestamp is a ceiling on how late the public copy appeared, not proof of a breach.

Sources: Google Drive createdTime metadata for CSB Agenda 3.6.24 (2024-03-06T19:15Z), Exhibit B (2024-03-04), Exhibit D and Exhibit C (2024-02-29), and 3.6.24 draft minutes (2024-03-15T17:24Z); RSA 198:4-b, II(a); RSA 91-A:2, II.