Participants
Everyone in the record. Attendance and the spelling of every board name come from the district’s approved minutes of 20 June 2024; roles come from the agenda masthead, which prints the seven board members, the school board clerk, the two student board members and the SAU 6 central-office administration. Segment and word counts are from the dialogue file (577 rows, 18,114 words). Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell to read the full text.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Chris Pratt | Superintendent, SAU 6 — the agenda masthead prints him as Superintendent, without the word interim the 15 May minutes still carried | 58 segments, 3,129 words, 17.3 per cent — the largest share of the night. He gives the end-of-year report (0:02:58 onward), walking the board through a document he says runs to “76 pages” (0:09:32) and which is seventy-two numbered pages in the packet. He says farewell to the departing special-education director: “I do want to acknowledge Ben Nestor, who this will be his last board meeting with us” (0:08:32) the recognizer renders the surname Nestor; the agenda prints Nester. He frames the schedule change (0:55:29, 0:55:53), answers on the cell-phone policy at length (1:25:31, 1:32:43), and is the one who tells the board what the phone policy was for: “The reason we initially started looking at this with all the school safety that was going on” (1:35:13). Asked directly for the collective-bargaining position on the schedule change (1:19:13), he answers about the teacher survey instead (flag 8). |
| Dr. Dale Winkler | Senior Vice President, Southern Regional Education Board — presenting remotely from Atlanta | 48 segments, 2,970 words, 16.4 per cent. He self-identifies at 0:13:55 and presents SREB’s Career Pathway Review of the technical centre: the six Perkins V needs-assessment areas, the data in pages four to fifteen of the report, promising practices at page sixteen, and five recommendations at pages seventeen to twenty-five. Asked by Whitney Skillen how often the local needs assessment is required, he answers correctly — “The required to at least every two years” (0:37:54) — which is what 20 U.S.C. §2354(c)(1)(B) says (flag 18). His recommendation that the CTE Vision Committee be sustained is what the board acts on later in the evening. The recognizer renders his employer as SRB, sRGB, Shri, shrub and the urban s. |
| Michael Herrington | Stevens High School — the agenda calls him “SHS Interim Principal” at item 2, “Stevens Interim Principal” at item 3 and “Principal SHS” at item 4; the packet’s own SHS letterhead prints “Dr. Michael Herringtont, Principal”. Participating remotely | 47 segments, 2,582 words, 14.3 per cent. Four titles in two documents, and no vote of the board on any of them appears in this project’s records. He presents the Puerto Rico trip (0:40:08 onward) and the seven-period schedule (0:56:48 onward), with his camera off and his audio dropping repeatedly — “You’re cutting in and out. So I’m trying to piece something together” (0:44:17). He gives the achievement case for the change: “62% of our students have to go in science scores this year” (0:57:17), the hall-pass data (1:02:52, 1:03:18), and the class-size answer (1:15:43). He is not a member of the board, so RSA 91-A:2, III’s conditions on remote member participation do not reach him. |
| Heather Whitney | Chair, Claremont School Board; member, Finance Committee | 129 segments, 2,325 words, 12.8 per cent — more turns than anyone, in shorter pieces. She opens (0:00:03), asks the clerk for the roll (0:00:30), moves the consent agenda by absence of objection (0:01:10), opens and closes citizens’ comments (0:01:48 to 0:02:52), and runs every item. She announces the permanent Tech Visioning Committee (0:39:33), constitutes the Communication ad hoc committee (1:46:06 onward), records the Capital Improvement chair change (1:49:49), and states her own engagement of district counsel for 7 August (1:59:20). She adjourns by consent (2:01:19). She is not Whitney Skillen, a different member of this board whose first name is Whitney. |
| Mike Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation and Assessment | 52 segments, 1,423 words, 7.9 per cent. He presents the cell-phone policy survey (1:21:42): “225 students and 32 out of 57 faculty”, a roughly fifty per cent return. He reads student comments verbatim from the survey exhibit, including one he characterises as among the harshest (1:24:12). He then presents the state assessment results for English language arts under Other Business — an item added to the agenda at the meeting — from a handout that is not in the packet (flag 12): “Unfortunately, I don’t have.… In your packet. Get them into the minutes” (1:51:39, 1:51:42). His figures: last year’s state average 51 per cent proficient, the district below it, and a 20 per cent middle-school opt-out rate against a 95 per cent participation expectation (1:57:43). |
| Unidentified | Chiefly the master-schedule builder for Stevens and the technical centre, in the room. The approved minutes name this voice as Charles Gessner; the dialogue file does not adopt the name because the recording never carries it usably | 39 segments, 1,040 words, 5.7 per cent. Dr. Herrington flags his arrival — “And if I can’t answer it, Mr. governor was showing up, and he’s got some more information as well” (1:05:44) the recognizer’s Mr. governor, and Frank Sprague’s “Someone asked Charlie a question” at 1:06:18, are consistent with Charles Gessner but neither is a usable rendering of the name — and he then does most of the technical work of the item: the ninety-per-cent first run (1:06:39), the distinction the board had misunderstood (1:07:05), and the double-blocking of every technical-centre class to protect the Newport transport window (1:10:52, 1:11:09). This project’s convention is to report the minutes’ attribution and not to adopt it into the dialogue file. The category also holds three roll-call answers and one second. |
| Mary Henry | Business Administrator, SAU 6 | 31 segments, 886 words, 4.9 per cent. The financial update, from Exhibit D: the 31 May budget balance (1:38:27), $1.3 million still encumbered for out-of-district placement (1:38:33), a projected year-end surplus of “close to a million” (1:39:23), and $1.84 million encumbered overall (1:39:43). She raises the roofs herself — “We met with the facilities committee the other day” (1:40:25) — gives the two figures (1:40:46), states the total and the deadline that drives it: “Because I would have to issue a purchase order to them before June 30th” (1:42:53). She is also the one who protects the $420,000: “that was my concern to and I brought that up. Well I brought that up to the committee as well” (1:45:16). |
| Michael Petrin | Member; Policy Committee, SRVRTC Visioning Committee; appointed to the new Communication ad hoc committee at this meeting | 30 segments, 849 words, 4.7 per cent. He moves the Puerto Rico trip (0:46:23) and insists on what it means when the board tries to make it provisional: “My motion is to approve the trip and which includes further fundraising” (0:48:48). He moves the handbook and schedule change (1:12:14). He carries the subcommittee’s roof recommendation into the room (1:42:14). He asks the question that produces the $420,000 exchange (1:40:07), presses on phone habits rather than pouches (1:31:28 onward), and closes the meeting with a request for data on 504 plans (2:00:38, 2:01:02) that this page treats separately (flag 17). The recognizer calls him Mr. patron, Michael Patron and Mr. Peterson. |
| Frank Sprague | Vice chair; chair, Finance Committee; Capital Improvement Committee; NHSBA delegate; appointed to the new Communication ad hoc committee at this meeting | 43 segments, 803 words, 4.4 per cent. He seconds the handbook motion (1:12:22) and speaks to the schedule from his own classroom data (1:54:46 on writing, and on mathematics continuity). On the roofs he gives the only policy argument made for the appropriation: “I think it’s important to keep like, the items like this out of the out of the Warren articles. During the vote in March” (1:43:56) the recognizer’s Warren articles is warrant articles. He volunteers for the ad hoc committee (1:48:50). Under by-law 1.08 it is the vice chair who appoints special and ad hoc committees; on this night he joined one instead (flag 3). |
| Candace Crawford | Member; Finance Committee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee. Made chair of the Capital Improvement Committee and chair of the newly permanent Tech Visioning Committee at this meeting | 25 segments, 542 words, 3.0 per cent. She speaks to the SREB process and the 30 May unpacking workshop (0:36:36, 0:37:29), asks the two questions about the trip that nobody answers — how many students, and whether fundraising allows scholarships “if the parental contribution cannot be met” (0:47:13, 0:47:32) — and asks whether the vote is final or exploratory (0:48:14). She moves the roof appropriation (1:43:18, 1:43:25). She volunteers for the Visioning chair (1:50:57) and takes the Capital Improvement chair from Bonnie Miles in the same five minutes, which is what puts the by-laws’ one-chair rule in play (flag 3). |
| Alex Herzog | Director, Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center — leaving the district | 10 segments, 502 words, 2.8 per cent. He reads a prepared statement on behalf of the Vision Committee’s chair — “So on behalf of Andre, who’s our chair of the Vision Committee” (0:10:41) — and signs it off as “Sincerely, Andy, the chair of the River Regional Vision Committee” (0:13:06). The approved minutes give the name in full: “Alex Herzog read a statement on behalf of Andre LaFreniere, chair of SRVRTC Vision Committee.” The chair says farewell twice (0:10:28, 0:10:36); the word resignation is never used of him on this tape, and no successor is named. His only other contribution is a joke about the length of the superintendent’s report (0:09:22). |
| Bonnie Miles | Member; Capital Improvement Committee; SRVRTC Visioning Committee. Stood down as Capital Improvement chair at this meeting | 29 segments, 457 words, 2.5 per cent. Her first words in the meeting are about the roofs, before citizens’ comments: “Do have that motion for the roofs for tonight. Okay. And is that in here?” (0:01:33), answered “It’s under the financial report” (0:01:41) — which establishes that the board expected the motion and that it was not on the agenda (flag 1). She speaks warmly on the SREB report (0:35:53), seconds the Visioning chair nomination (1:51:07), and gives the longest observational account of the phone policy (1:34:03, 1:36:02). She stays on Capital Improvement: “I’ll still be on the committee” (1:50:19). |
| Whitney Skillen | Member; chair, Policy Committee. Recorded by the minutes as arriving at 6:39 p.m. | 21 segments, 400 words, 2.2 per cent. Hers is the sharpest questioning of the night. She asks the Perkins V question (0:37:45). She asks what happens if the trip’s fundraising falls short (0:49:42) and then puts the equity point as a direction to the organisers: “I want a student to be able to sell $1,200 worth of something. And not that we pick a fundraising scheme where you can the max profit opportunities $800” (0:51:25). She asks whether the new schedule can still accommodate technical-centre classes (1:09:48). She seconds the roof motion (1:43:52) and moves the Visioning chair nomination (1:51:00). As Policy chair she gave no report; asked who else is on her committee, she answers “Me and Arlene” (1:48:12) and says the committee has little to do (flag 11). The recognizer calls her Miss Gillen and Miss Gillam. |
| Caleb Milbourn | Citizen, Ward 1 — the only member of the public to speak. Named from the approved minutes | 4 segments, 103 words, 0.6 per cent. He self-identifies in the standard podium form, which the recognizer mangles: “All right. Caleb.” / “Billboard, Ward one” (0:02:04, 0:02:05) the approved minutes read “Caleb Milbourn, Ward I spoke”; the page takes the surname from the minutes, not from the tape. Two questions: whether the district has an early learning centre “So that’s o six employees do not have to stress about finding childcare” SAU 6 employees, and “Is it a priority of the board to open any facilities here in Claremont to bring this money back to the district?” (0:02:32), against his own figure that “Stevens High School spends over 25% of its budget on sending students out of district”. Neither question was answered (flag 9). |
| Noelle Kronberg | School Board Clerk | 7 segments, 65 words, 0.4 per cent. She calls the roll (0:00:35, 0:00:37) and reads back all three motions before the vote, which is what by-law 2.07 requires: “If a motion on the floor is debated, the clerk shall read the motion back prior to the official vote” (flag 19). Her read-backs at 0:53:58 and 1:21:15 and 1:45:37 are heavily garbled by the recognizer — the roof read-back reaches the transcript as “a motion to across the continent for $82,000” — but the approved minutes carry the full figure. The chair addresses her as Kronborg, Grunberg and Cronenberg within twenty minutes. |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education / Student Services — his last board meeting | 1 segment, 8 words. The whole of his audible participation is the reply to Michael Petrin’s “Can we get Ben to take… a roll?” (2:01:26): “That’s a good thing for me” (2:01:27) — an in-joke on his years as the board’s substitute roll-caller. The superintendent and the chair both say farewell to him by name (0:08:32, 0:09:03). No successor is named anywhere on the recording or in the minutes, though the packet’s own superintendent’s report already lists Michael McCosker as Director of Student Services on the SAU leadership page (flag 16). |
| Multiple | The room | 3 segments, 30 words. The Pledge of Allegiance (0:00:15), the voice vote on the Puerto Rico trip (0:54:08), and the voice vote on the roofs (1:45:52). No tally was announced for any vote taken at this meeting; the minutes record each as “Voice vote taken, all present voting in favor”. |
| Arlene Hawkins | Member; Policy Committee; Curriculum Committee representative — absent | Zero rows. Recorded absent in the minutes and on tape. Her two subcommittee positions therefore went unreported at the meeting the by-laws require them to report to, and the chair’s attempt to fill the new ad hoc committee began with “Arlene is not here” (1:47:21) and Frank Sprague’s “I nominate Arlene” (1:47:23). The clerk reads her name in the roll as Riley Hawkins (0:00:35). |
Agenda
An official agenda was posted and is in the packet: CSB Agenda 6.20.24.docx.pdf the doubled extension is the district’s own file name, which reached Google Drive on Wednesday 12 June 2024, eight days before the meeting. Quotations in the third column marked as agenda or minutes text are from those documents, not from the recording. Scheduled clock times are left as plain text; a timestamp is a link into the recording. Three things to read off this table. The consent agenda is headed “Consent Agenda (vote required)” and no vote was taken on it — but the by-laws adopted a fortnight earlier now provide that consent items “will be moved,en masse, by consent (absence of objection)”, so the agenda and the rules now disagree with each other. Item 5 is headed “Financial Update (Discussion)” and produced the evening’s largest vote. And the agenda’s own Roman numerals run I, II, III, VI, V, VI, VII — there is no item IV and VI is used twice, in the agenda and again in the minutes that reproduce it. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell to read the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
6:30 p.m.
0:00:03 | I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance | Agenda: “I. 6:30 PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance”. On tape, from the chair: “I’d like to call to order. June 20th 20, 2024 Claremont School Board Meeting. Please stand for this Pledge of Allegiance.” The room recites it at 0:00:15. Unlike the organizational meeting three months earlier, the chair — not the superintendent — presides throughout. |
6:35 p.m.
0:00:30 | II. General Business — Secretary Roll Call of Attendance | Agenda: “Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members (Board Members who arrive after the meeting begins will be noted as ‘present’ at the point in the agenda at which they arrive)”. Chair: “Miss, would you please call? Roll call.” What survives is fragmentary: three bare answers of Here, the clerk’s Riley Hawkins (0:00:35) and 20 miles. Here. (0:00:37), and a “Present. Here.” absorbed into the chair’s own onset at 0:00:44 the recognizer’s Riley Hawkins is Arlene Hawkins and 20 miles is Bonnie Miles. The roll cannot be mapped to members from the tape. The approved minutes are the authority: present Crawford, Miles, Petrin, Sprague, Whitney, with Skillen arriving at 6:39 p.m.; absent Hawkins. Skillen’s arrival is recorded in the roll-call bullet rather than at the agenda point, which is what the agenda’s own convention asks for. |
| 0:00:44 | II. Consent Agenda (vote required) — 1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda; 2. Minutes Approval, June 5, 2024 | Agenda: “Consent Agenda (vote required) 1. Amendments and Final Approval of board agenda 2. Minutes Approval- June 5, 2024 CSB Meeting”. The chair amends the agenda from the chair: “I am asking for Grace here. Mr. Kosky is going to be able to present the New Hampshire Sass scores. During other business, we were not sure whether these scores were going to be available to us, so it was not put on the agenda at the time it was posted” (0:00:44). Then: “Are there any board members that object to moving the consent agenda as written and as described? Seeing no objection, the consent agenda is moved” (0:01:10). No motion, no second, no vote. Minutes: “a. Mr. Koski will present SAS scores during other business”. The document approved is the 6.5.24 draft minutes in this packet — the minutes that record the adoption of the by-laws. |
| 0:01:48 | II. Citizens Comments | Agenda: “Citizens Comments”, with no rules printed. Chair: “Is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak to citizens? Comments. The non-agenda items?” and then the time limit, “Just just so you know that it’s a three minute” (0:01:58), which is what policy BEDH allows. One speaker, about a minute; the whole period ran from 0:01:48 to 0:02:52. The chair closes it with “Normally we don’t give responses, but, we’re thinking about all of those things” (0:02:43) and moves straight to the superintendent’s report — where BEDH provides that “After closing public comment, the Board Chair will open ‘Board Discussion Regarding Citizens Comments.’” See flag 9. |
6:47 p.m.
0:02:52 | III. Superintendent Report — End of the year data | Agenda: “III. 6:47 PM Superintendent Report • End of the year data”. Pratt walks the Superintendent’s End of Year Report 2024, seventy-two numbered pages, which he describes as “76 pages” (0:09:32). Contents by his own account: enrolment and discipline data, assessment data by school, technical-centre communications, social-services data, IEP and 504 counts by building (0:07:25), his end-of-year letter, photographs and the 2024–25 calendar. The board’s only questions are about how it was distributed (0:09:39). Disposition: no vote. Two items inside the report never reached the agenda, the discussion or the minutes (flags 15 and 16). |
| 0:08:32 | III. Farewell to the Director of Special Education | Not on the agenda. Pratt: “I do want to acknowledge Ben Nestor, who this will be his last board meeting with us”; the chair adds “we we knew about this resignation a while ago” (0:09:03). Minutes: “The Board and the Superintendent thanked and said farewell to Ben Nester”. No successor named, no transition described, and no date given for the vacancy — ten days before the fiscal year turned and eight weeks before the board next met. |
7:10 p.m.
0:10:16 | VI.1 SREB Virtual Presentation (Presentation) (Exhibit A) the agenda’s numeral; there is no item IV | Agenda: “1. SREB Virtual Presentation (Presentation) (Exhibit A) Report from consulting group employed by district to assess current CTE program. Recommendations for improving and expanding.” Alex Herzog reads the Vision Committee chair’s statement (0:10:41 to 0:13:06); Dr. Winkler presents from 0:13:55 to 0:35:21; board comment and questions to 0:39:45. Two packet exhibits carry it: the Career Pathway Review findings and the slide deck. Disposition: no vote. The chair then announces what the board will do with it: “this evening we are going to seek permanent membership and identify a chair of that committee” (0:39:33). |
| 0:39:53 | VI.2 FY 24-25 SHS Trip to Puerto Rico (Discussion/Vote) | Agenda: “2. FY 24-25 SHS Trip to Puerto Rico (Discussion/Vote) Dr. Michael Herrington, SHS Interim Principal”. No exhibit; nothing in writing anywhere in the packet. Presented remotely from 0:40:08; moved by Petrin at 0:46:23; an unidentified voice seconds at 0:46:33; the minutes credit the second to Frank Sprague. Discussion covers criteria, funding, scholarships, numbers and behaviour standards. The clerk reads the motion back (0:53:58) and the voice vote carries at 0:54:07. Approval to run an overnight out-of-state trip is what board policy IJOA requires; what the record does not contain is a cost, a vendor, a student count that two sources agree on, or a scholarship answer (flag 13). |
| 0:54:13 | VI.3 SHS Period Schedule / Approval of SHS Handbook (Discussion/Vote) (Exhibit B) | Agenda: “3. SHS Period Schedule/ Approval of SHS Handbook (Discussion/Vote) (Exhibit B) Mr. Chris Pratt, Superintendent & Dr. Michael Herrington, Stevens Interim Principal. Discussion concerning proposed period schedule at SHS and update on collective bargaining impact related to schedule change”. The handbook had been laid on the table on 5 June precisely for that reason: the 5 June minutes record “Heather Whitney noted that Mr. Upton recommended holding off on the handbook to be sure the schedule change does not impact the union contract”. On 20 June the chair asks for the update at 1:19:13 and gets an answer about the teacher survey. Moved by Petrin (1:12:14), seconded by Sprague (1:12:22), carried by voice at 1:21:21. See flag 8. |
| 1:21:28 | VI.4 SHS Impact of New Cell Phone Policy on Academic Performance and School Culture (Discussion) (Exhibit C) | Agenda: “4. SHS Impact of New Cell Phone Policy on Academic Performance and School Culture (Discussion) (Exhibit C)… Benefits, challenges and expansion of policy to CMS”. No document in the folder is labelled Exhibit C; the survey it means is Cell Phone Policy Survey.pdf, posted 18 June. Koski presents from 1:21:42; Pratt gives the effects he saw as principal (1:25:31); Sprague, Crawford, Petrin and Miles all speak. Disposition: no vote — and none was needed, but the expansion of the policy to the middle school is announced rather than decided: “Now that the middle school is going to have the phones” (1:27:21). See flag 10. |
| 1:37:55 | VI.5 Financial Update (Discussion) (Exhibit D) — Mary Henry | Agenda: “5. Financial Update (Discussion) (Exhibit D) Mary Henry, Business Administrator”. Headed Discussion; produced a $583,000 appropriation. The board knew: Bonnie Miles asked about the roofs motion at 0:01:33, ninety minutes before the item, and was told “It’s under the financial report”. Henry reports the FY24 position (1:38:23 onward), raises the roofs (1:40:25), gives the figures (1:40:46) and the June 30 purchase-order deadline (1:42:53). Crawford moves (1:43:18), Skillen seconds (1:43:52), Sprague speaks for it (1:43:56), the clerk reads it back (1:45:37) and it carries unanimously by voice (1:45:53). Minutes: “Candace Crawford made a motion to appropriate $583,000…” See flags 1, 2 and 5. |
| 1:46:06 | VI.6 Development of Communication Ad Hoc Committee (Discussion) (Exhibit F) | Agenda: “6. Development of Communication Ad Hoc Committee (Discussion) (Exhibit F) Led By Heather Whitney, Chair Define goals of committee, timeline, composition of committee”. Exhibit F is the 11 May board retreat minutes, whose action plan required the board to “Establish an Ad Hoc Communication Committee by the last meeting in June.” The chair asks for volunteers (1:47:02); Petrin and Sprague put their hands up (1:47:47, 1:48:50); the chair directs the clerk to “document” them (1:49:11). Two members, no chair designated, no vote, and the appointment made by the chair rather than the vice chair — three departures from by-law 1.08 (flag 3). |
| 1:49:32 | VI.7 Sub-Committees (Discussion) — a) Capital Improvement b) Finance c) Policy d) Curriculum e) SRVRTC Visioning, Nomination of Chair of subcommittee | Agenda: “7. Sub-Committees (Discussion) Reports by subcommittee chairs if available”, with the five committees lettered a–e and a starred “Nomination of Chair of subcommittee” against the Visioning Committee. Not one subcommittee reported — the chair asks “Is there any is there any burning issues that we haven’t addressed in the meeting this evening” (1:49:39) and takes up her own business instead. Capital Improvement passes from Miles to Crawford by absence of opposition (1:49:49 to 1:50:28). Skillen then moves Crawford as chair of the Visioning Committee (1:51:00) and Miles seconds (1:51:07); the chair does not put it: “Is there is there saying that there’s no opposition? I’m going to consider this a consent” (1:51:13). See flags 3, 4 and 11. |
8:20 p.m.
1:51:39 | V. Other Business — New Hampshire SAS results for English language arts | Agenda: “V. 8:20 PM Other Business”, with nothing under it; the item was added by the chair on the consent agenda at 0:00:44. Koski presents from a handout the public cannot see: “Unfortunately, I don’t have… In your packet. Get them into the minutes. First, first slide is our overall district average grades 3 to 8” (1:51:39, 1:51:42). Content: last year’s state average of 51 per cent proficient, the district below it, a new writing component, school-by-school and strand-level breakdowns, and the opt-out arithmetic (1:57:34, 1:57:43). Disposition: no vote. No such handout is in the packet folder (flag 12). |
8:25 p.m.
1:58:33 | VI. Future Dates / Future Agenda Items the agenda’s second item VI | Agenda: “a) Schedule Public Forum to discuss district’s plan to improve academic achievement b) Schedule Joint City Counsel and Claremont School Board Meeting c) August 7th at SAU6 Administrative Office- Update on Strategic Plan Development, Presentation By Matt Upton on Board Roles and Responsibilities and Right to Know Laws” “City Counsel” is the district’s own spelling. On tape the chair reports the forum is still “on our radar” (1:58:33), that she hopes to meet the mayor “within the next 3 or 4 weeks” (1:58:55), and that “I have employed the services of Matt Upton” for 7 August (1:59:20). Crawford asks “Is it true that there are no school board meetings in July?” (2:00:08) and is answered (2:00:11). Petrin asks for 504 data next year (2:00:38). See flags 6 and 11. |
8:30 p.m.
2:01:19 | VII. Adjournment | Agenda: “VII. 8:30 PM Adjournment”. Chair: “If there’s no objection, I’d like to adjourn the meeting. Is there any objection? Meeting adjourned.” Minutes: “Consent adjournment”, with no time. No motion, no second, no vote — consistent with this board’s settled practice and now with by-law 2.07. |
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. Quotations are reproduced exactly as the speech recognizer rendered them: square brackets mark an insertion or correction and the garbled wording is kept visible wherever the correction changes the sense; repeated stutters are sometimes condensed; nothing else has been smoothed and no missing word is supplied. Single-word transcript items are set in italic rather than quotation marks. Quotations from the agenda, the minutes, a packet document, the by-laws, a board policy or a statute are labelled as such in the sentence that carries them. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell to read the full text.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:03 | The chair opens; no superintendent hand-over this time | Whitney: “I’d like to call to order. June 20th 20, 2024 Claremont School Board Meeting. Please stand for this Pledge of Allegiance.” Three months earlier the superintendent opened, because board policy BDA makes him the presiding officer of an organizational meeting. This is an ordinary regular meeting and the chair presides throughout. | |
| 0:00:35 | The roll, and what the tape cannot tell you | The clerk reads two names the recognizer mangles — Riley Hawkins and 20 miles. Here. (0:00:37) — and three bare answers of Here land at 0:00:35, 0:00:39 and 0:00:42 in a cluster the diarizer cannot separate. A “Present. Here.” is absorbed into the chair’s own onset at 0:00:44. No answer on this tape can be tied to a member. The approved minutes give the roll: Crawford, Miles, Petrin, Sprague, Whitney present, Skillen arriving at 6:39 p.m., Hawkins absent. | |
| 0:00:44 | The chair amends the agenda from the chair, and the consent agenda is disposed of without a vote | Whitney: “The consent agenda includes. Includes approving the board agenda as written. I am asking for Grace here. Mr. Kosky is going to be able to present the New Hampshire Sass scores. During other business, we were not sure whether these scores were going to be available to us, so it was not put on the agenda at the time it was posted.” Then: “Are there any board members that object to moving the consent agenda as written and as described? Seeing no objection, the consent agenda is moved” (0:01:10). The agenda heads the item “(vote required)”; by-law 2.10, adopted fifteen days earlier, says consent items “will be moved,en masse, by consent (absence of objection)”. The practice now matches the rules and contradicts the agenda. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:01:33 | Ninety minutes before the item, a member asks whether the roofs motion is happening tonight | Miles: “Do have that motion for the roofs for tonight. Okay. And is that in here?” Whitney: “It’s under the financial report” (0:01:41). This is the record’s proof that the board expected a $583,000 vote and that the agenda did not say so. By-law 2.09 requires the superintendent, with the chair, to “itemize any and all items to be presented in the agenda to ensure members of the public and board are aware, in advance, of any items that may require or result in board action.” | HIGH |
| 0:01:48 | Citizens’ comments: one speaker, two questions, no answer, sixty-four seconds | The chair opens the floor and states the three-minute limit (0:01:58). Caleb Milbourn, Ward 1: “Does the district have any early learning centers? So that’s o six employees do not have to stress about finding childcare. If people are going to spend money on childcare, why not offer this service? To incentivize teachers to stay and also to attract new talent? Second thing that I would like to bring up. Stevens High School spends over 25% of its budget on sending students out of district.” (0:02:05) and “Is it a priority of the board to open any facilities here in Claremont to bring this money back to the district?” (0:02:32). Chair: “Normally we don’t give responses, but, we’re thinking about all of those things” (0:02:43). | MEDIUM |
| 0:02:58 | The end-of-year report: seventy-two pages, and the board asks only how it was distributed | Pratt: “This final report, you’ll find his, it’s a wealth of data in here in regards to. It’s pretty much all the data that we have at the district level… Like always, this report will be available on the school website.” He lists the contents through to “IAP students by building how many of you have in each building? Also 504 students. How many you have in each building?” (0:07:25) IAP is IEP. The only board response is the chair’s on circulation: “I believe it’s posted on the website, and, Kip Ryan also posted it on What’s Up Claremont… it’s it’s a very transparent report” (0:09:39). No question is asked about anything in it. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:08:32 | The special-education director’s last meeting, with no successor named | Pratt: “I do want to acknowledge Ben Nestor, who this will be his last board meeting with us, and I know in the time I’ve worked, you have really enjoyed working with Ben, having him around as a as a resource that’s been crucial.” Whitney: “we we knew about this resignation a while ago when we’ve kind of all been misty eyed about it before” (0:09:03). The name of the person taking the post is on page three of the packet document being discussed and is never spoken. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:09:22 | The technical-centre director jokes about the report’s length; it is seventy-two pages, not seventy-six | Herzog: “Mister. I want to thank you. The Yankee wants to thank you for not using all the paper and all the toner to print all that. So thank you.” Pratt: “Yeah, I put it out. It was needed. We can give it to you, but. Yeah. No, I think we’re up to 76 pages” (0:09:32). The packet PDF carries seventy-two numbered pages and is forty-one megabytes. | |
| 0:10:41 | The Vision Committee’s chair addresses the board through someone else, and the minutes give his name | Herzog: “So on behalf of Andre, who’s our chair of the Vision Committee. He asked me to read this before we get our Shri report… And I’m reading this off what Andy said.” He closes: “Sincerely, Andy, the chair of the River Regional Vision Committee” (0:13:06). The approved minutes print the name the tape never manages: “a statement on behalf of Andre LaFreniere, chair of SRVRTC Vision Committee”. This project has carried four competing renderings of this surname since February 2023; this is the first district document to settle one. | |
| 0:13:55 | SREB presents the Career Pathway Review, remotely, from Atlanta | Winkler: “As stated, I’m Dale Winkler, senior vice president at the Southern Regional Education Board. SRB was pleased to collaborate over the past year with the CT Vision Committee to conduct a career pathway review of programs offered at the sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center of Thurmont.” SRB is SREB; Thurmont is Claremont He sets the review against the Perkins V comprehensive local needs assessment and its six areas, and walks the report’s structure: data at pages four to fifteen, promising practices at sixteen, five recommendations at seventeen to twenty-five. | |
| 0:31:10 | The recommendation that produces the evening’s only new public body | Winkler: “The CTE Vision Committee provides a means for addressing the recommendation and it’s important to CTE Vision Committee. Continue to meet and guide the city programs, and you’ll find that there are recommendations there for how to make that a permanent, focus and committee on May 30th, the CTE Vision Committee, along with three members of your school board, meant to unpack the findings and the recommendations in the report.” meant is met Three board members attended a working session with the consultant on 30 May; no notice, agenda or minutes for it is in any district share (flag 2). | HIGH |
| 0:32:37 | The three next steps the workshop chose | Winkler: “based on discussions during the unpacking workshop and the little poll that we took… develop programs of study for all content areas… Define the purpose and operating procedures for the CTE Vision Committee” (0:33:11) and “create and implement a student advisement program that begins in the middle grade” (0:33:41). The second of those — a defined purpose and operating procedures — is what the board did not supply when it made the committee permanent later the same evening. | HIGH |
| 0:37:45 | The Perkins V question, and a correct answer | Skillen: “How often are the local needs assessments required by the Perkins Five act?” Winkler: “The required to at least every two years. They should be done. We often go in and help schools with the first process, but then districts will, you know, take and learn from the process that we use, and you can conduct it on your own after that” (0:37:54). 20 U.S.C. §2354(c)(1)(B) requires the eligible recipient to “not less than once every 2 years, update such comprehensive local needs assessment”. | POSITIVE |
| 0:39:07 | The chair announces, before any motion, that the Visioning Committee will become permanent | Whitney: “at the unpacking workshop, it was a recommendation from the stakeholders that the school board adopt the, the the sugar River Valley Technical Center Committee as a permanent part of the board, to demonstrate our commitment to this endeavor”, and then “So this evening we are going to seek permanent membership and identify a chair of that committee” (0:39:33). The agenda offered only a “Nomination of Chair of subcommittee”. No motion to make the committee permanent was ever made, and the by-laws adopted on 5 June enumerate the board’s standing committees without it. | HIGH |
| 0:40:08 | The Puerto Rico trip, presented remotely with the camera off | Herrington: “I am not being a person tonight. And I have the second apology, because at 630 tonight, I found out that my camera on my computer is no longer, compatible with Chrome.” the sense is not being [in] person The proposal came from a parent; the aim is juniors and seniors every other year, five days, over a school break, priority to students who have completed a second year of Spanish (0:41:25, 0:42:00). “The trip is put together through the same company that they went on before, and I believe we even have a substantial credit with them” — the company is never named on the record. | MEDIUM |
| 0:43:50 | The chair asks for criteria and a funding mechanism; the answer is that the students pay | Whitney: “So I’m wondering what the criteria is. If it’s open to all students, if we’re limiting it to specific students… And what the funding mechanism.” Herrington: “The funding method is mostly going to be funded by the student, which is why I’m trying to get this in as quickly as possible” (0:44:17) and “I know the parent has several funding fundraisers, wants to do, but have approval before we can start any of that” (0:44:39). Board policy IJOA, adopted 15 April 2009, already answers the question the board is circling: “Arrangements for financing all field trips must be made prior to the trip. If student contributions are involved, the necessary funds must be in the hands of the Principal before the trip will be taken.” Nobody cites it. | MEDIUM |
| 0:45:38 | The chair raises equity from the last time the district did this | Whitney: “I know in the past there has been questions when educational tours, was offering these opportunities. In the past, there was some concerns about equity for student access and the limitations to students that may not have parents or support systems that have the financial means by which to, support this.” | |
| 0:46:23 | The motion, and the seconder the tape cannot identify | Petrin: “I’d like to make a motion to approve the student’s High School of Puerto Rico trip for the 2025.” A single unidentified voice answers “Second second question” (0:46:33). This page does not name that voice; the approved minutes say Frank Sprague seconded, and RSA 91-A:2, II requires the minutes to carry “the names of the members who made or seconded each motion”, which they do. | |
| 0:46:49 | How many students? Three different answers, none of them settled | Crawford asks. Herrington: “I don’t have a final count. I think that was and again, for giving me about 35. And it had to do with, it had to do with how many, chaperons you need and like, personnel. So, I mean, I can get to a 300 again. We have to put it out for people.” The approved minutes record a fourth figure: “Dr. Herrington said he thinks it would be about 25 students”. | MEDIUM |
| 0:47:32 | The scholarship question, asked twice, never answered | Whitney relays it: “Doctor Harrington, the question was, does the fundraising allow for scholarships if the parental contribution cannot be met?” Herrington: “This is my first time going through this. I believe there there is some leeway there… But I feel like there is some scholarship there. I don’t have to worry about” (0:47:43) the closing clause is garbled and its sense is not recoverable. The minutes: “Dr. Herrington was unsure but believes that there may be an opportunity for this”. | MEDIUM |
| 0:48:14 | Is this final approval or a first step? The mover settles it | Crawford: “So if we approve this tonight, is this the final approval or would this be just the approval to begin fundraising and and figure out a as it go?” Petrin: “My motion is to approve the trip and which includes further fundraising” (0:48:48). Herrington argues against a provisional approval: “you can’t fundraise and then not Lo and then you have to return monies and figure that out. That would be fairly complicated” (0:49:00). The board approved the trip itself, ten days before the fiscal year ended and eight weeks before it next met. | MEDIUM |
| 0:49:42 | The equity question put as a direction to the organisers | Skillen: “Will be the implications and possible challenges that we have to face if the fundraising goal is not met? For every student that hoped to attend the trip…” and then, after Petrin explains how such fundraising has worked (0:50:08), the point in full: “Like if it’s if it’s selling something. I want a student to be able to sell $1,200 worth of something. And not that we pick a fundraising scheme where you can the max profit opportunities $800. Does that make sense?” (0:51:25). The only cost figure spoken all evening is Petrin’s recollection of past trips, “the estimated cost of the trip is $1,200” (0:50:08). | MEDIUM |
| 0:52:38 | Behaviour and academic eligibility, asked for but not written into the motion | Petrin: “I know the music trip they took to Florida had was tied into a passing class. You had to be passing your classes and behavior. So I would also ask that hopefully you would put something in place where being able to participate.” Herrington agrees (0:53:08). No condition of any kind reached the motion the clerk read back (0:53:58): “To approve high school Puerto Rico trip for the 2024 2025 school year.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:54:07 | The vote | Whitney: “All in favor, say aye.” The room: Aye aye (0:54:08). No count, no roll, no negative called for on the tape. Minutes: “Voice vote taken, all present voting in favor; the motion passes”. | |
| 0:55:29 | The superintendent frames the schedule change as evidence-driven, not doctrinal | Pratt: “we’re not saying that period scheduling is better than block, or block is better than period… We’re basing, you know, moving to period schedules based on what we’re seeing academically, behaviorally… It may change 4 or 5 years down the road, but with the population of students we have now, based on the the low test scores we’re seeing and the gaps in learning that we’re seeing based on a block scheduling” (0:55:53). | |
| 0:57:17 | The achievement case, in the principal’s figures | Herrington: “when we look at, the current what we are in our staff, science scores, you know, 62% of our students have to go in science scores this year. That’s a very significant number… you had, 46.5%, not yet approaching the standard and the math.” And: “what’s worse is that the Excel diagnostic, which is really needed for remediation… in 94.9% of the students tested, which is about half of the student body” (0:57:55) Excel is IXL, the district’s diagnostic platform; staff and SAT here are the NH SAS state assessment. None of these figures is in the packet; the SAS handouts came out under Other Business an hour later and are not there either. | MEDIUM |
| 1:02:52 | The hall-pass data — the sharpest thing said all evening | Herrington: “The average path time being made is 15 minutes. That’s 15 minutes out of class for these kids. And that tells me personally they can’t sit in class for 78 minutes.” path is pass Then the distribution: “the statistic that I gave in front of you are the passes for a semester two, which was 88 student days… You had one with 422… Your your mean is 63 and your medians 47” (1:03:18, 1:03:45). The handout he refers to is not in the packet. | MEDIUM |
| 1:05:44 | A fourth voice arrives, and the record cannot name him | Herrington: “And if I can’t answer it, Mr. governor was showing up, and he’s got some more information as well.” Sprague, a moment later: “Someone asked Charlie a question” (1:06:18). The approved minutes name him Charles Gessner and credit him with the two clarifications that follow. Neither the recognizer’s Mr. governor nor the bare Charlie is a usable rendering of a surname, so the dialogue file leaves the cluster unattributed and this page reports the minutes’ attribution rather than adopting it. | |
| 1:06:39 | The ninety-per-cent figure, and what it does not mean | The schedule builder: “the schedule that we built the first run was 90%, which is I mean, we’ve scheduled anywhere from like 82 all the way up to 95. And as you know, just because you get 90 doesn’t mean that that’s a great schedule either”, and then the correction the board needed: “that note, it tells me that 100% of the kids got 90% of what they wanted. Correct. It doesn’t mean that 90% of the kids got everything they wanted” (1:07:05). Herrington had told the board “97% of the students, got what they wanted” (1:04:42); the minutes record the correction. | POSITIVE |
| 1:09:48 | Can the technical centre still work under forty-five-minute periods? | Skillen: “There might have been some conflict with tech classes because of the length of time it takes to do them… is there a way that this schedule accommodates that, like a double period?” The answer: “we double blocked every single tech center class… You’ll come to the tech center for periods one and two. There’s your 90 minutes” (1:10:52), and the transport constraint that drives it — “for the students that are dealing with transportation to and from Newport on our end, we want to make sure that they can get back here in time for the start of block three” (1:11:09), with the caveat “If Newport decides to change their bell schedule in any way, shape or form, which we don’t have control over, then we might have to do a little bit of work on our ends” (1:11:54). | |
| 1:12:14 | The motion on the handbook and the schedule change | Petrin: “I’d like to make a motion to approve the students high school handbook, including the schedule change.” Sprague: “Second. I’ll second” (1:12:22). Discussion follows on continuity in mathematics (1:12:35), communication with families (1:13:56) and class sizes (1:15:36). | |
| 1:14:34 | What happens over the summer: one person, available on his own account | Whitney: “is there a mechanism in place to communicate with the students of Stevens High School? To disseminate this information and their parents and provide them an opportunity to have questions answered and addressed?” Herrington: “I’ve been using to communicate with parents at the end of the school year… I’m there all summer. And I think those things out and be available to any parent that wants to talk and go over things” (1:14:53), “And I’m back August 14th. So families” (1:15:15). The board next meets on 7 August; the school year’s new schedule was communicated to families with no board meeting in between. | MEDIUM |
| 1:15:43 | Class size, and a reference to the law nobody pins down | Herrington: “class sizes are going to be reduced. You we work hard to make sure that, the case for certain specialized classes that actually, now meet the, you know, criteria in the law about how big they can be, but other classes small.” The rule he means is the State Board’s class-size standard, which on this date was Ed 306.17; it was renumbered to Ed 306.14 and retitled “Student-Educator Ratios” effective 13 December 2024, six months later. The board asked for no numbers and none were given. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:19:13 | The chair asks for the collective-bargaining update the agenda promised; she does not get one | Whitney: “Did you have any comments to make about the teachers reception to this and the collective bargaining update?” Pratt answers on the survey only: “there was an overwhelming support from the from the faculty that they prefer a period schedule over the block under the current circumstances” (1:19:20). Herrington adds the survey detail (1:19:49). The words contract, union, agreement and bargaining do not occur again in the recording. The item had been tabled on 5 June on counsel’s advice for exactly this reason. | MEDIUM |
| 1:21:06 | The vote on the handbook and schedule | Whitney: “Is there any further discussion from the board before we vote? Seeing none. Would, you know, would you please read the motion again?” The clerk’s read-back survives only as “If there’s a motion to approve the issues, including. Okay.” (1:21:15). Whitney: “All in favor? I seeing none a pose, a motion passes” (1:21:21) a pose is opposed. No count. | |
| 1:21:42 | The cell-phone survey: numbers the packet does not carry | Koski: “I we put out a survey to staff, teachers and students for both surveys. Received a around 50% return, which which is great. So 225 students and 32 out of 57 faculty. And then you have the results in front of you for the questions we were able to quantify.” The survey exhibit prints charts and sample comments but no numbers in machine-readable form; these two counts exist only on the recording. On compliance: “Nobody said very difficult… Most said it was very easy” (1:22:49, 1:23:13). | |
| 1:24:12 | The student comment the assistant superintendent reads out | Koski: “the much worse comments are, from an adult perspective, not so severe, I would say. So one was, without having phones in school, we won’t be able to capture funny moments with our friends and we look back on our camera. We won’t see the good times we had.” He then names the real residual problem: “There’s still an issue with air Buds and that a phone can be out of the bag, invisible… but a student can still be listening to music” (1:25:01). | |
| 1:25:31 | What the policy is said to have changed | Pratt: “we we started seeing immediately when we had the had the students put their phones in pouches and stuff. We we saw a huge, huge decline in bullying and harassment. We saw a decline in, students, incidents taking place in the bathroom… we saw an increase in students talking to each other, interacting more with each other in the cafeteria” (1:25:54). And the origin: “The reason we initially started looking at this with all the school safety that was going on… when they were intruders in schools majority. The time they found out they knew where to find where people were based on the cell phones going off and the pinging” (1:35:13). No figure is given for any of these declines. | |
| 1:27:21 | The policy is extended to the middle school, in a subordinate clause | Pratt: “we’ll be able to look at it even on a bigger scale. Elijah scale. Now that the middle school is going to have the phones. And I think it’s people have to understand the way it’s, you know, works at the high schools is going to look different at the middle school”. The agenda item was headed “Benefits, challenges and expansion of policy to CMS”. The extension is stated as settled; no motion, no vote, and the minutes record none. New Hampshire had no statewide school phone restriction on this date — the state-level ban arrived a year later, effective 1 July 2025. | MEDIUM |
| 1:31:28 | The member who wants the habit rather than the pouch | Petrin: “I like the no foreign policy and I understand the use of the pouches… the school responsibility is teaching the kids some self-control of not using their phones right now. They’re not using their phones because they can’t” no foreign policy is no phone policy, and the illustration from the room: “My phone’s gone off five times from my pocket tonight. I, I didn’t check my phone because not because it’s not in the pouch, but because I’m at a meeting” (1:32:10). Pratt describes a planned relaxation day that never happened (1:32:43, 1:33:33) the recognizer’s “So, Donald, we’d like to have a a rollback one day” is so down the line; it names no one. | |
| 1:37:55 | The financial update begins; the year-end number | Henry: “As of May… 31st… You had… 870… Thousand and $35 in surplus” (1:38:23 to 1:38:28) — which is exactly the “Budget Balance” line of Exhibit D, $870,035.10, on a printed budget of $35,300,311.92. She adds $1.3 million still encumbered for out-of-district placement (1:38:33), a likely year-end figure — “I’m confident that we’re going to probably have close to a million by the time everything is said and done” (1:39:23) — and “I have 1.84 million that’s encumbered roughly in the budget right now” (1:39:43). | |
| 1:40:07 | The $420,000, and two numbers in the same breath | Petrin: “Does this include the 475?” Henry: “Yes it does. I put it on there” (1:40:10). Whitney: “You mean the give back to the taxpayer four” (1:40:15); Henry: “Hundred and 20. Was it a 420? I think it was that what you’re talking about?” (1:40:18). The approved minutes resolve it silently and give the question to the wrong member: “Frank Sprague asked if this report includes the $420,000 previously voted on to retain from the fund balance; it does”. The arithmetic supports $420,000: Exhibit D’s budget of $35,300,311.92 less the district-meeting appropriation of $34,880,312 is $419,999.92. | MEDIUM |
| 1:40:25 | A subcommittee that met off the record puts $583,000 on the table | Henry: “I know that I’m going to bring this up to feed on mind. We met with the facilities committee the other day. And we have a couple projects that really need to be done. We have two roofs.” She gives them: “Plot up, for 273,000, and then Dennard is 310,000” (1:40:46) Dennard is Disnard Elementary School; there is no committee called the Facilities Committee on the board’s own list. And the maintenance director’s ranking: “speaking with Steve, he said if there was a preference on one or the other, he would say that the gym roof needs to be done before dinner, but they both really need to be done” (1:41:14). | HIGH |
| 1:41:37 | The capital improvement plan that does not exist yet | Henry: “this is 583,000. He already put bids out in February. So, and the one he had wanted to go with is New England Weather Guard, which is the people or the people that did the other sections of the roof. So nobody’s pointing fingers at each other to say, no, it’s your roof.” Earlier: “I know we’ve been talking about capital improvement plans and getting those together. We haven’t done that yet… To be able to start putting away for these things into the trust” (1:41:14). The reason given for the award is continuity with the previous contractor, not price, and no bid tabulation, opening date or number of bids appears anywhere in the record. | MEDIUM |
| 1:42:14 | The source of the money, named once, by a member | Petrin: “in that subcommittee meeting, you know, we we talked and we had some discussion, and it was the correct me if I’m wrong, it was the opinion of that subcommittee that we should move forward with doing those roofs and take it out of the the fund balance. And still we would still have a balance there, but, put that money to use to do those two roofs.” And: “The the bids are in. We just need to pull the trigger” (1:42:42). This is the only statement in the whole record of where the $583,000 comes from, and it names a fund the board cannot spend without a noticed public hearing. | HIGH |
| 1:42:53 | The deadline that drives the whole item | Henry: “A total amount, yes. Would be 583,000. And it needs to be to New England. Weather guard is the company. Because I would have to issue a purchase order to them before June 30th.” Then the split again: “This was 310,000 and the high school was 273,000” (1:43:06). The purchase order had to issue inside FY24, which is what makes this a question about the year’s appropriation rather than about next year’s budget. | HIGH |
| 1:43:18 | The motion is assembled at the table, with the chair supplying the verb | Whitney: “Is there a motion on the floor to. This is Crawford?” (1:43:13). Crawford: “I will so move.” Whitney: “So the motion will read” (1:43:20); Crawford begins “That we spend” (1:43:22); Whitney interjects “We appropriate” (1:43:24); Crawford restates: “We appropriate, 583,000 to cover the, repairs to the roofs at Disney and the third phase at Stevens High School to be done by” (1:43:25), with Skillen supplying the contractor’s name (1:43:43). Skillen then seconds (1:43:52). A school board cannot appropriate; the legislative body does that. The minutes adopt the chair’s verb: “a motion to appropriate $583,000”. | HIGH |
| 1:43:56 | The only argument made for the appropriation | Sprague: “I just think I want to support this. And I think it’s important to keep like, the items like this out of the out of the Warren articles. During the vote in March, I think it’s if we can pay for them. I think we do that continue to do that so that it doesn’t, you know, we don’t risk not being able to do it well.” Warren articles is warrant articles Henry adds the deferred-maintenance point (1:44:18). Nobody asks which appropriation the money leaves, and nobody mentions a hearing. | HIGH |
| 1:44:45 | The chair protects the taxpayer money, and is told it survives on the revenue side | Whitney: “just to reaffirm that we’re looking to have roughly $1 million budget surplus. That’s what your estimate is, because I just want to make sure that we preserve the 420,000 that we assured. So we’re not this is not risking.” Henry: “You would be able to do that between that and your revenues. So it may not be right here in this bottom line, but you’ve got revenue money of about 200,000 extra” (1:45:03), and “that was my concern to and I brought that up. Well I brought that up to the committee as well” (1:45:16). $583,000 against a reported balance of $870,035.10 leaves $287,035.10 before the extra revenue is counted. | HIGH |
| 1:45:37 | The read-back, and the vote | Kronberg: “There’s a motion to across the continent for $82,000 to cover the repairs to the route. Citizens married. And the third phase of Stevens High School student by the name of weather guard to.” the recognizer has destroyed this read-back: across the continent is to appropriate, $82,000 is $583,000, Citizens married is at Disnard. The approved minutes carry the figure correctly Whitney: “All in favor” (1:45:50); the room answers (1:45:52); “None opposed. Motion passes unanimously” (1:45:53). Six members were present; no count was taken and none is recorded. | HIGH |
| 1:46:06 | A new public body is created from the chair, out of volunteers | Whitney: “We’re getting a little pinch for time here… a development of a communication ad hoc committee at our retreat in May. It was decided by the board or identified by the board, that communication between the board and the community could be improved.” She sets its remit (1:46:33, 1:47:02) and asks: “Do I have any any volunteers for one more committee?” Sprague jokes “I nominate Arlene” in the absent member’s name (1:47:23); the chair offers to defer it to the autumn (1:47:37); Petrin (1:47:47) and then Sprague (1:48:50) volunteer. Whitney: “Noel, if you wouldn’t mind documenting that our two brave volunteers for the Communication ad Hoc Committee will be Michael Patron and Frank Sprague” (1:49:11). Two members, not three; no chair; no vote; and by-law 1.08 gives the appointment of special committees to the vice chair. | HIGH |
| 1:48:10 | The Policy Committee, in passing | Petrin: “who else is on the policy subcommittee?” Skillen: “Me and Arlene” (1:48:12), and then: “the spreadsheet for the system of keeping up with the policies is made, and really, it’s just a matter of carving out time to like, make the system work… there’s not a lot of work to spread across three people” (1:48:20). By-law 1.05(2), adopted fifteen days earlier, provides that the Policy Committee “shall hold at least one regular monthly meeting and ideally consist of three CSB members and an administrative advisor, selected by the Superintendent… Shall report to the full Board monthly.” Two members, no administrative advisor, and no report. | MEDIUM |
| 1:49:39 | Subcommittee reports: the item is opened and closed without one | Whitney: “Is there any is there any burning issues that we haven’t addressed in the meeting this evening that, chairs would like to speak to?” Skillen offers “I’ll have a report” (1:49:38) and none follows. No subcommittee reported at this meeting — not Finance, not Policy, not Capital Improvement, not Curriculum, not Visioning — on an agenda that asked for reports “if available” and under by-laws that require three of them monthly. | MEDIUM |
| 1:49:49 | The Capital Improvement chair changes hands, by absence of opposition | Whitney: “there is going to be a request for a change of chair for the Capital Improvement Committee. Miss Miles, who has been the chair of that committee and done excellent work, has found that her personal obligations have reached to a level where she does not feel that she can devote the time that the position requires, and she would like the board to accept Miss Crawford as the new chair.” Miles: “I’ll still be on the committee” (1:50:19). Whitney: “if there’s no opposition to that, I miss Grunberg would please document that in the minutes” (1:50:28). No motion, no vote — against board policy BDE, which requires committees and delegations to be “approved by vote of a majority of the Board.” | HIGH |
| 1:51:00 | A motion is made and seconded, and then not put | Skillen: “I’ll make a motion to nominate Candace Crawford for the chair of the Tech Vision Permanent Tech Visioning Committee”; Miles: Second (1:51:07). Whitney: “Is there is there saying that there’s no opposition? I’m going to consider this a consent” (1:51:13). By-law 2.07 provides that “When a motion is made and seconded, it shall be considered by the Board and not otherwise”, and puts the chair’s no-objection shortcut before a formal motion. An hour earlier the same recording carried a statement from a different chair of the same committee (0:10:41), and nothing in the record says whether the board was choosing the chair of the committee or of its own three representatives on it. | HIGH |
| 1:51:39 | State assessment results, from a document the public cannot see | Koski: “Unfortunately, I don’t have… In your packet. Get them into the minutes. First, first slide is our overall district average grades 3 to 8” (1:51:42), and “It’s in black and white. Looks like this. There you go. State average is not been published yet for this year. So last year’s state average for the Ela test was 51% proficient” (1:51:56). Neither handout is in the packet folder, and by-law 2.09 requires that “Any and all presentations by the administration to the board or any committee shall be contained in the agenda and made available to the public in its original format online so the public may download or access the information prior to or during board meetings.” | MEDIUM |
| 1:57:04 | Opt-outs, and what they do to the number the board was just given | Whitney: “did we have another 20% opt out of the Ela”; Koski: “at the middle school it was that 20% rate” (1:57:13). Whitney: “if a child doesn’t take it at a certain level, it’s recorded as a zero. Yes against us” (1:57:34); Koski: “They expect 95% participation and so below that 95% mark, those start counting” (1:57:43). Whitney: “So this isn’t necessarily an accurate assessment. I mean I don’t think that’s going to skew it too much” (1:57:50). Petrin asks for the state participation rate as a control and does not get it (1:58:08, 1:58:20). | |
| 1:58:33 | Future dates, at the hour the chair had set for adjournment | Whitney: “So we are at our 830 mark. And then I try to hold this to this. So briefly review. We have some future dates here. We still have on our radar developing a public forum to discuss the district’s plan to improve academic achievement.” The forum had been on the future-dates list since 20 March. On the city: “I’m going to hopefully be meeting with the mayor within the next 3 or 4 weeks to start chatting about developing an agenda for a joint City Council Claremont School board meeting” (1:58:55). That joint meeting happened on 30 September 2024. | |
| 1:59:20 | The chair says she has engaged the district’s attorney | Whitney: “August 7th. I have employed the services of Matt Upton to come give a presentation to the school board and a retreat type setting to review the right to know laws. Board roles and responsibilities, and to be able to talk strategically about unique things that the board has to deal with, such as what should we be looking at when we have a suspension come forward?” and “So that is going to be happening on August 7th. He’s already committed to that” (1:59:47). No cost is stated, no vote was taken, and by-law 4.01(g) provides that “The chair position holds no other independent authority beyond the above except when granted by board”. The 7 August session was not a retreat: it was a regular meeting with a consent agenda, a nonpublic session and two votes. | MEDIUM |
| 2:00:08 | What happens in July, asked and answered | Crawford: “Is it true that there are no school board meetings in July?” Whitney: “That is correct. That does not mean there are not subcommittee meetings in July, but no officially. Duly noticed. School board meetings. And I do just request the chairs of the subcommittees to review, what the deadlines are for, bringing forth a purpose statement, developing, meeting cadence, etc.. I did send a letter out for that” (2:00:11). The July recess is the board’s own adopted policy BEA, not an unexplained gap. But the sentence as recorded sets subcommittee meetings against “duly noticed” board meetings, and every subcommittee is a public body under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) with the same notice and minutes duties. No summer meeting schedule was adopted, though the 5 June future-dates list carried “Development of summer meeting schedule”. The chair’s letter to subcommittee chairs is in no district share. | MEDIUM |
| 2:00:38 | The last request of the year: data on 504 plans | Petrin: “the data on 504 plans. You know, the numbers that we have now compared to historical numbers, are we are we going up? Are we leveled out? And maybe a little insight or little insight as to what they’re one of the 5 or 4 plans are for.” And: “Just when I hear that some kids have 504 plans, that they can leave the class and take a walk. It’s just kind of interesting to see where those plans, you know, what they’re for” (2:01:02). Whitney: “Got it on the list. Now you’re on the list” (2:01:14). The building-level 504 counts he asks for are on page sixty-two of the report the board had already received that evening. | OBSERVATION |
| 2:01:19 | Adjournment by consent, and a farewell | Whitney: “If there’s no objection, I’d like to adjourn the meeting. Is there any objection? Meeting adjourned.” Petrin, over the applause: “Can we get Ben to take” (2:01:26); Nester: “A roll? That’s a good thing for me” (2:01:27) — the only words attributable to him in the whole recording, and the last on any recording in this project’s records. | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer’s aid, produced by reading the recording and the district’s eleven-document packet against the New Hampshire and federal law in force on 20 June 2024, and against the board’s own adopted by-laws and policies. They are not findings of violation and they are not legal advice. Each card names the rule it rests on, and says plainly where the rule is a board rule rather than a statute. Four vintages matter here. RSA 91-A:2 is applied in its 2023 codification (2023, 188:1, effective 3 October 2023); the 2025, 112:1 additions — start time, end time and the name of the person who produced the minutes — are not applied. RSA 91-A:3 is applied as amended by 2023, 189:1, effective 3 October 2023, under which paragraph II runs (a) to (m) with (f) repealed. RSA 91-A:4 is cited only in its pre-2024 form; the 2024, 49:1–2 amendment took effect 13 August 2024, eight weeks after this meeting. And the State Board’s class-size standard is cited as Ed 306.17, its number on this date, not the Ed 306.14 it became on 13 December 2024. Where no verified rule supports a concern it is graded OBSERVATION and labelled as such. Severity tracks legal grounding, not importance.
HIGH The board voted $583,000 out of “the fund balance” under an agenda item headed “Discussion”, using a verb no school board possesses, ten days before the fiscal year closed
What happened. Item 5 of the agenda reads “5. Financial Update (Discussion) (Exhibit D) Mary Henry, Business Administrator”. Under it the board voted to spend $583,000 on two roofs. The board expected the vote: ninety minutes earlier, before citizens’ comments, Bonnie Miles asked “Do have that motion for the roofs for tonight. Okay. And is that in here?” (0:01:33) and was told “It’s under the financial report” (0:01:41). The motion was assembled at the table, with the chair supplying the operative verb — Crawford began “That we spend” (1:43:22), Whitney interjected “We appropriate” (1:43:24), and Crawford restated the motion in the chair’s words (1:43:25). The approved minutes adopt it: “Candace Crawford made a motion to appropriate $583,000…”
Where the money was said to come from. Once, from a member: “it was the opinion of that subcommittee that we should move forward with doing those roofs and take it out of the the fund balance. And still we would still have a balance there” (1:42:14). And once, from the business administrator, the timing that fixes which year the money belongs to: “Because I would have to issue a purchase order to them before June 30th” (1:42:53).
Why the vocabulary matters. A New Hampshire school board does not appropriate; the legislative body does. What the board has is the transfer power in RSA 32:10, I: “If changes arise during the year following the annual meeting that make it necessary to expend more than the amount appropriated for a specific purpose, the governing body may transfer to that appropriation an unexpended balance remaining in some other appropriation”, provided that “The total amount spent shall not exceed the total amount appropriated at the town or district meeting” and that records are kept “such that the budget committee, if any, or any citizen requesting such records pursuant to RSA 91-A:4, may ascertain the purposes of appropriations to which, and from which, amounts have been transferred”. In force from 2017, 127:4, effective 15 August 2017; RSA 32:1 applies the chapter to school districts. A fund balance, by contrast, is not an appropriation at all. Year-end unassigned general funds are governed by RSA 198:4-b, II, which caps retention at 5 per cent of the current year’s net assessment and provides at II(a) that “Prior to expending retained general funds, the school board shall hold a prior public hearing”, noticed “in a newspaper of general circulation in the relevant municipality at least 7 days before the meeting is held.” In force from 2020, 38:25, effective 27 September 2020. Paragraph II carries no purpose limitation at all — the “unanticipated expenses” wording belongs to paragraph I, which is the separate contingency fund.
The board knew the mechanism. On 6 March 2024 it held exactly that hearing, on exactly that statute, to release the $420,000 of FY23 fund balance that is inside the very budget Exhibit D prints. Three and a half months later it took a larger sum from money described in the same words with no hearing, no notice and no citation.
What the record most likely describes, and why that is not an answer. The money was almost certainly still inside the FY24 appropriation on 20 June — Exhibit D shows a budget balance of $870,035.10 at 31 May, the purchase order had to issue before 30 June, and nothing suggests the total appropriation was exceeded. On that reading this was a lawful RSA 32:10 transfer. But nobody said so. No source appropriation was named, no transfer was voted, the statute was never mentioned, and the only account of the source on the record is “the fund balance”, which would have required a hearing. The finding is the absence of any stated authority for the largest single sum the board moved all year, not a determination that the spending was unlawful.
The board’s own rule, adopted fifteen days earlier. By-law 2.09: “The superintendent with consultation of the board Chair shall itemize any and all items to be presented in the agenda to ensure members of the public and board are aware, in advance, of any items that may require or result in board action.” By-law 2.11: “An affirmative vote of the majority of members present and voting of CSB shall be necessary to appoint or remove any employee of the school district, to modify salaries,appropriate, or transfer money per Board policy DBJ.” The item was known in advance and was not itemized; the vote was a voice vote with no announced tally, recorded by the minutes as “all present voting in favor”.
Sources: RSA 32:10, I(a)–(c) and II (source note ends 2017, 127:4, eff. Aug. 15, 2017); RSA 198:4-b, I and II(a) (2023 codification; source note ends 2020, 38:25); CSB Agenda 6.20.24, item 5; Exhibit D, Claremont May 2024 Budget Report; approved minutes, 20 June 2024; Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 2.09 and 2.11; the companion page Claremont School Board — March 6, 2024, where the RSA 198:4-b hearing was held.
HIGH Two subcommittee meetings drove this agenda and neither exists in the public record — against a by-law the board had adopted fifteen days before
What the statute requires. RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) defines a “public body” to include “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.” RSA 91-A:2, I makes a meeting the convening of a quorum of a public body to discuss or act on a matter within its jurisdiction; ¶II requires 24 hours’ notice posted in two places or published, and minutes open to inspection within five business days.
What the board’s own by-laws require, from 5 June 2024. Rule 1.05(c): “Notice of the meeting including place and time must be posted at least 24 hours in advance on the SAU 6 website.” Rule 1.05(d): “Minutes must be recorded and available for public inspection on the SAU 6 website within 5 days of the meeting. Minutes should include the names of board members present and a brief description of the subject matter discussed… The subcommittee chair is responsible for ensuring the minutes are sent to the Executive Assistant to the Superintendent to post on the SAU 6 website per RSA.” Rule 1.09 requires a committee’s supporting documentation to be “submitted in writing with the agenda… no later than the Wednesday prior to the regular scheduled meeting.”
The first meeting: the capital-improvement site meeting that produced the $583,000. The business administrator: “We met with the facilities committee the other day. And we have a couple projects that really need to be done” (1:40:25). Michael Petrin: “in that subcommittee meeting, you know, we we talked and we had some discussion, and it was… the opinion of that subcommittee that we should move forward with doing those roofs” (1:42:14). Henry again, on having raised the taxpayer money there: “I brought that up to the committee as well” (1:45:16). There is no committee called the Facilities Committee on this board’s list; the body with that remit is the Capital Improvement Committee, whose by-law 1.05(3) duty is to “consult with the Director of Buildings and Grounds, Superintendent and Business Administrator”. Whichever it was, a quorum of it met, formed an opinion, and that opinion carried a $583,000 vote a few days later.
The second meeting: the 30 May unpacking workshop. Dr. Winkler: “on May 30th, the CTE Vision Committee, along with three members of your school board, meant to unpack the findings and the recommendations in the report” (0:31:10). Candace Crawford: “They were probably 30 members of the community there, including school board members and staff” (0:37:29). Three of the seven members of a seven-member board is one short of a board quorum but is the whole of the SRVRTC Visioning Committee’s board membership — Miles, Crawford and Petrin — so the committee had a quorum, at a session at which priorities were ranked by poll and which produced the recommendation the board acted on that night.
What was searched. The 20 June packet folder (eleven documents, listed and read in full), the 21 August packet folder (eight documents) and the 4 September packet folder (five documents) were each enumerated; the four district subcommittee folders were verified empty by this project on 2026-08-29. No notice, agenda or minutes for either meeting was found. Google Drive’s search API under-reports on these shares, so the correct statement is “not found”, not “does not exist”.
Which limb of the severity rule. The unmitigated one: public bodies met, nothing on the record explains the absence of minutes, and the board had adopted a rule requiring them a fortnight earlier. This page grades it as the 20 March 2024 page graded the same defect on the same committee. The practice changed within six weeks: the 21 August packet carries Exhibit B- Meeting Minutes Finance Subcommittee 7.22.24 and Exhibit A- Capital improvements Committee Minutes 7.29.24, both from July meetings held during the recess. The June meetings are the ones with no paper.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); RSA 91-A:2, I and II (2023 codification); Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 1.05 and 1.09; packet folder 2. CSB 8.21.24; the companion page Claremont School Board — March 20, 2024.
HIGH A new public body was created and the chairs of two others changed — no vote on any of it, at the first meeting under by-laws that regulate all three
What the board’s rules require. Board policy BDE, Committees and Delegates (first reading 7 April 2004, adopted 2 June 2004, reviewed 19 December 2018) is one sentence: “Standing and special committees and delegations shall be appointed by the Chairperson of the Board and approved by vote of a majority of the Board.” By-law 1.08, adopted 5 June 2024: “All special committees or ad hoc committees shall be created at the direction of the CSB and consist of three (3) members, unless a different number is ordered by the CSB. The vice-chair shall appoint all special committees and shall designate their chairs, unless otherwise ordered by the CSB by a simple majority.” By-law 1.07: “No member of the CBS shall serve as chair of more than one standing committee, until each member has been named as chair of a standing committee or has refused to accept the chairmanship of a standing committee when tendered.” The by-laws’ own preamble adds that “Nothing in this document shall violate New Hampshire law or the policies of the CSB.”
Three dispositions, none of them a vote.
- The Communication ad hoc committee was constituted from volunteers: “Do I have any any volunteers for one more committee?” (1:47:02), then “Noel, if you wouldn’t mind documenting that our two brave volunteers for the Communication ad Hoc Committee will be Michael Patron and Frank Sprague” (1:49:11). Two members, not three. No chair designated. Appointed by the chair, not the vice chair. No vote. The minutes record it in one line: “Michael Petrin and Frank Sprague volunteered to sit on the ad hoc communication committee”.
- The Capital Improvement chair passed from Bonnie Miles to Candace Crawford: “if there’s no opposition to that, I miss Grunberg would please document that in the minutes” (1:50:28). Minutes: “no objections, Candace Crawford will be the new chair”.
- The SRVRTC Visioning Committee was made permanent and given a chair. The chair announced the change before any motion — “this evening we are going to seek permanent membership and identify a chair of that committee” (0:39:33). Whitney Skillen then moved and Bonnie Miles seconded (1:51:00, 1:51:07), and the chair declined to put the question: “Is there is there saying that there’s no opposition? I’m going to consider this a consent” (1:51:13). By-law 2.07 provides that “When a motion is made and seconded, it shall be considered by the Board and not otherwise”, and places the chair’s no-objection shortcut before a formal motion, not after one.
Three further consequences the record does not resolve. First, no motion to make the Visioning Committee permanent was ever made; a standing public body came into existence on the chair’s announcement, and the by-laws adopted a fortnight earlier enumerate the board’s standing committees at rule 1.05 without it. Second, Candace Crawford took the chair of two committees in the same five minutes while Bonnie Miles, Michael Petrin and Heather Whitney chaired none — which is what by-law 1.07 addresses. Third, the committee already had a chair: an hour earlier the technical-centre director read a statement “on behalf of Andre, who’s our chair of the Vision Committee” (0:10:41), a person the approved minutes name as Andre LaFreniere and who is not a member of the board. Nothing in the record says whether the board was choosing the chair of the committee or of its own three representatives on it.
Why it matters more here than at an ordinary meeting. Each of these committees is a public body in its own right under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d). This was the last meeting before a recess in which two of them met; the newly created one had no chair to call a meeting, and the one made permanent had two people describing themselves as its chair on the same recording. This is a board-rule finding, not a statutory one: no New Hampshire statute requires a school board to vote on committee appointments.
Sources: board policy BDE, Committees and Delegates; Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 1.05, 1.07, 1.08 and 2.07; approved minutes, 20 June 2024, item 7; Exhibit F, board retreat minutes 11 May 2024; RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d).
MEDIUM The by-laws in force at this meeting misstate the Right-to-Know Law they were written to explain — and the board’s next nonpublic motion used their numbering
What the statute says. RSA 91-A:3, as amended by 2023, 189:1, effective 3 October 2023. Paragraph I(a): “Public bodies shall not meet in nonpublic session, except for one of the purposes set out in paragraph II.” I(b): the motion “shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II… The vote on any such motion shall be by roll call”. Paragraph I contains no exemptions at all. The grounds are in paragraph II, which runs (a) through (m) — thirteen lettered subparagraphs with (f) repealed, so twelve live grounds.
What the by-laws say. Appendix D of the by-laws adopted 5 June 2024 opens: “It is the duty of every school board member to be familiar with and adhere to requirements outlined in RSA 91-A:3”, and then states: “RSA 91 -A:3 sets forth eight grounds upon which Board of School Committees may enter nonpublic session” — followed by a list of nine, numbered (1) to (9), which omits three of the statute’s live grounds. A compliance checklist later in the same appendix reduces the same list to six lettered items and then continues the lettering into procedural steps, so that “g) Motion to enter a non-public session is seconded” appears as though it were a ground.
Why it is not academic. At the board’s next meeting, on 7 August 2024, the motion to go into nonpublic session was recorded as “Arlene Hawkins made a motion to move to non-public under RSA 91-A:3, I & II (1) Compensation of a public employee”. That citation uses the by-laws’ numbering rather than the statute’s letters, and it cites paragraph I, which contains no exemption anyone can rely on. The ground meant is II(a). The roll-call vote required by I(b) was taken and recorded, and no minutes were sealed.
Three further misstatements in the same document. By-law 4.03 heads the clerk’s duties “per RSA 671:20 and RSA 671:25” — two sections about the preparation and delivery of ballots, which say nothing about board minutes; RSA 671:20 in the form in force on this date is a single sentence. Rule 1.05(c) and rule 1.11 both cite “RSA 91-A:II”, which is not a citation. And Appendix A, headed “REGULATIONS OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION… PURSUANT TO Ed. 303”, gives the board’s meeting duty as “at least once a month (except the month of July)”, where the rule it purports to quote, Ed 303.01(f), says “Hold meetings for the transaction of business at least once in 2 months and require the attendance of the superintendent or designee” (New #8583, eff. 3-15-06; ss by #10649, eff. 7-26-14). The by-law is the stricter of the two, so nothing turns on it, but it is presented as the State Board’s text and is not.
What this page does not say. Nothing was decided in nonpublic session at the 20 June meeting; none was held. The finding is that the governing document in force on this date misdescribes the statute it exists to implement, and that the first nonpublic motion taken under it repeated the error.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(a)–(b), II(a)–(m) and III (source note ends 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023); Claremont School Board By-Laws, Appendix D, rules 1.05, 1.11 and 4.03, Appendix A; 8.7.24 draft CSB meeting minutes, item 3; N.H. Code Admin. Rules Ed 303.01; RSA 671:20.
MEDIUM A $583,000 contract was awarded on a bid process no document in the record describes, against a board policy that sets a $5,000 threshold
What the board’s policy requires. DJE, Bidding Requirements — first reading 23 June 2004, second reading and adopted 4 August 2004, reviewed 20 February 2019: “All contracts for, and purchases of supplies, materials, equipment, and contractual services in the amount of $5,000 or more, shall be based, when feasible, on at least three competitive bids.” And: “All bids must be submitted in sealed envelopes, addressed to the Superintendent or designee… Bids shall be opened at the time specified and all bidders and other persons shall be invited to be present.” And: “The bidder to whom the award is made shall be required to enter into a written contract with the District.”
What the record contains. One sentence: “He already put bids out in February” (1:41:37). No number of bids, no bid tabulation, no opening date, no statement that the opening was public, no low bidder named, and no written contract mentioned. The reason given for the award is continuity, not price: “the one he had wanted to go with is New England Weather Guard, which is the people or the people that did the other sections of the roof. So nobody’s pointing fingers at each other to say, no, it’s your roof.” The packet contains no bid document; Exhibit D is a general-ledger report and carries none. The minutes carry the total and the contractor and nothing else.
The limits of this flag. No New Hampshire statute requires a school district to competitively bid a locally funded purchase, and this project has verified that the roof work is not described anywhere as federally funded, so the Uniform Guidance procurement standards at 2 CFR 200.318–.327 are not engaged. The rule broken, if any, is the district’s own. It is also entirely possible that three sealed bids were received, opened publicly in February and tabulated properly; the point is that a board voting $583,000 was given none of that and asked for none of it. The one question about the money that was asked — the chair’s, at 1:44:45 — was about protecting the $420,000, not about the procurement.
Sources: board policy DJE, Bidding Requirements; Exhibit D; approved minutes, 20 June 2024, item 5.
MEDIUM What the board authorised to happen over the summer — and the one thing it authorised that it had no rule permitting
The recess itself is lawful and self-imposed. Policy BEA, Regular Board Meetings (adopted 2 January 2019) fixes regular meetings for “the first and third Wednesday of each month… (with the exception of the month of July)”. So the chair’s answer to Candace Crawford — “That is correct. That does not mean there are not subcommittee meetings in July, but no officially. Duly noticed. School board meetings” (2:00:11) — describes the board’s own rule. It is worth saying plainly, because a two-month gap in a public record invites the opposite inference. The State Board’s own minimum is lower still: Ed 303.01(f) requires meetings “at least once in 2 months”.
What was left to run without the board. A $583,000 roof contract, with the purchase order to issue before 30 June and the work “as soon as possible”. Fundraising for an out-of-state student trip, beginning at once on the mover’s insistence. A high-school schedule change communicated to families by one administrator on his own account — “I’m there all summer… And I’m back August 14th” (1:14:53, 1:15:15). A special-education directorship changing hands on 1 July with no successor named on the record. A strategic-planning consultancy the board had never voted, working through July to September on ESSER money that had to be obligated by 30 September 2024. And the board’s own retreat deadlines: a purpose statement for every subcommittee “by the first Board meeting in August” and a common folder format “by first meeting in August”. On 7 August that item was “Moved to next meeting for sake of time”.
The thing that had no rule behind it. The chair: “August 7th. I have employed the services of Matt Upton to come give a presentation to the school board and a retreat type setting… He’s already committed to that” (1:59:20, 1:59:47). No cost was stated and no vote was taken. By-law 4.01 lists the chair’s duties exhaustively — presiding, voting, appointing standing committees with board consent, conferring with the superintendent and vice chair, agenda preparation, media point of contact, onboarding, maintaining a chair’s folder, attending training — and then says: “The chair position holds no other independent authority beyond the above except when granted by board.” Engaging counsel is not among them. By-law 2.11 requires an affirmative majority vote “to modify salaries,appropriate, or transfer money”. Appendix B of the same document makes the superintendent “the executive head of the public schools… responsible for planning and administering their affairs”.
What can be said in fairness. Matthew Upton was already the district’s attorney and had advised on the handbook a fortnight earlier: the 5 June minutes record that “Mr. Upton recommended holding off on the handbook”. The 7 August date was printed on this meeting’s agenda under Future Dates, so the board and the public had notice of the event even though the engagement was never put to a vote. And the chair may simply have been speaking loosely for the district. What the record does not contain is a vote, a fee, or any board decision to spend money on it.
The session was also not a retreat. The by-laws and the Right-to-Know Law recognise no such category: RSA 91-A:2, I’s four exclusions from the definition of a meeting are collective-bargaining strategy, consultation with legal counsel, a party caucus, and the circulation of drafts formalising decisions already made — there is no work-session or retreat exclusion. In the event, the 7 August session was a full regular meeting under BEA, with a roll call, a consent agenda that approved these minutes, a nonpublic session and a motion creating another ad hoc committee. The district treated it correctly; only the 20 June description of it was wrong.
Sources: board policy BEA, Regular Board Meetings; Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 2.11 and 4.01, Appendix B; Exhibit F, board retreat minutes 11 May 2024, action plan; 6.5.24 draft minutes; 8.7.24 draft minutes; RSA 91-A:2, I (2023 codification); Ed 303.01(f).
MEDIUM No draft minutes were ever filed, and the only public copy appeared on the thirty-fourth business day — a direct consequence of the recess the board did not plan around
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”. The by-laws adopted 5 June repeat the duty for subcommittees at rule 1.05(d) and put the board’s own on the clerk at rule 4.03(a): “Minutes of all meetings shall be available for inspection within the period of time as required by law.”
The arithmetic. The meeting was Thursday 20 June 2024. Five business days later is Thursday 27 June 2024; no New Hampshire legal holiday falls in between. No draft of these minutes was filed in any district share. The approved version, 13. approved CSB Minutes 6.20.24, was created in Google Drive on 8 August 2024 — the day after the 7 August meeting approved it on consent, and the thirty-fourth business day after the meeting it records — RSA 288:1’s “July 4, known as Independence Day” excluded.
Why the pattern is visible here and not elsewhere. This district files a meeting’s draft minutes with the next meeting’s packet. The 5 June draft reached Drive on 12 June, the fifth business day, inside the packet for this very meeting. Because there was no July meeting, there was no next packet, and the 20 June minutes had nowhere to go until August. The approved 5 June minutes reached the minutes share on 25 June, five days after this meeting approved them; the approved 20 June minutes reached it on 8 August, one day after the 7 August meeting approved them. The district’s posting habit is prompt; its production schedule is tied to meetings, and the board scheduled none.
Which limb of the severity rule. The mitigated one: the meeting was noticed and packeted, minutes exist, they are complete and they were eventually published. This page therefore grades it MEDIUM, as the 20 March 2024 page graded a nineteen-business-day delay. It is nonetheless the longest such gap this project has measured for a Claremont board meeting, and the Drive timestamp is a ceiling on how late the public copy appeared rather than proof that nobody could have obtained it earlier on request under RSA 91-A:4.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification); Google Drive createdTime metadata for 13. approved CSB Minutes 6.20.24 (2024-08-08T17:37:54Z), 12. approved CSB minutes 6.5.24 (2024-06-25T15:12:55Z) and the packet folder 11. CSB 6.20.24 (2024-06-12T19:53:12Z); 8.7.24 draft minutes, consent agenda.
MEDIUM The handbook and the schedule change were approved without the collective-bargaining update the agenda promised — the very thing the item had been tabled for
What the board had decided two weeks earlier. The 5 June minutes: “Heather Whitney noted that Mr. Upton recommended holding off on the handbook to be sure the schedule change does not impact the union contract. Heather Whitney made a motion to lay the handbook on the table until a legal review, Frank Sprague seconded; voice vote taken, all present voting in favor, the motion passes.” The board tabled the item, on its attorney’s advice, pending a legal review of the collective-bargaining impact.
What the 20 June agenda promised. Item 3, verbatim: “SHS Period Schedule/ Approval of SHS Handbook (Discussion/Vote) (Exhibit B)… Discussion concerning proposed period schedule at SHS and update on collective bargaining impact related to schedule change.”
What was said. The chair asked for it: “Did you have any comments to make about the teachers reception to this and the collective bargaining update?” (1:19:13). The superintendent answered about the teacher survey: “there was an overwhelming support from the from the faculty that they prefer a period schedule over the block under the current circumstances” (1:19:20). The principal added the survey’s own detail (1:19:49). No legal review was reported, and the result of the review the board had waited for is nowhere on the recording or in the minutes. The minutes reduce the exchange to “Superintendent Pratt shared that there is support from the teachers regarding this”.
Why it matters. A change from a seventy-eight-minute block to a seven-period day alters teacher load and preparation time, which are ordinarily terms of a collective bargaining agreement. The board itself identified that risk on 5 June, obtained counsel’s advice to wait for it, and then voted on 20 June without receiving it. On the same night the chair reported that the district’s attorney would be with the board on 7 August. Nothing here says the schedule change was unlawful or that it breached any agreement — only that the board resolved not to decide until it had a specific answer, and then decided without one.
A smaller point in the same item. Asked about class sizes, the principal replied that specialised classes will “now meet the, you know, criteria in the law about how big they can be” (1:15:43). The standard he means is the State Board’s class-size rule, Ed 306.17 on this date, renumbered Ed 306.14 and retitled “Student-Educator Ratios” effective 13 December 2024. No number was given and none was asked for, so the record does not show whether any class was over the standard before the change.
Sources: 6.5.24 draft minutes, item 1; CSB Agenda 6.20.24, item 3; approved minutes, 20 June 2024, item 3; Exhibit B, SHS handbook changes; N.H. Code Admin. Rules Ed 306.
MEDIUM Citizens’ comments ran a little over a minute, and the board discussion its own policy requires afterwards did not happen
What the statute and the policy say. RSA 189:74 (2022, 333:1, effective 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. The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes.” Board policy BEDH, Public Participation at Board Meetings (first reading 17 May 2023, adopted 6 September 2023) implements it: “The Board will provide a minimum of thirty minutes in total to hear all public comments under RSA 189:74”; “Speakers will each be allotted 3 minutes to speak”; and, critically, at B.3, “The Board Chair will close the public comment period after there is no response to the Board Chair’s vocal invitation to the audience to make a public comment”.
What happened. The chair opened the floor at 0:01:48 and stated the three-minute limit at 0:01:58. One speaker, Caleb Milbourn of Ward 1, asked two questions. The chair closed at 0:02:43 with “Normally we don’t give responses, but, we’re thinking about all of those things” and moved to the superintendent’s report at 0:02:52. The whole period ran about sixty-four seconds.
The thirty-minute point, stated carefully. The statute’s text does not settle whether the thirty minutes is a floor on elapsed time or on the opportunity, and BEDH B.3 expressly allows the chair to close once nobody responds. Nobody was turned away and nobody was cut short. This page does not assert a violation of RSA 189:74 on these facts.
The point that is not soft. BEDH B.5 is mandatory in form: “After closing public comment, the Board Chair will open ‘Board Discussion Regarding Citizens Comments.’ The Board may have no responses, ask clarifying questions, or request that the Administration gather more information and provide a response in the next regularly scheduled public meeting.” That step did not happen. The policy also contemplates precisely the answer the chair gave — that the board does not respond spontaneously — and then provides a mechanism for the response to come later. The next regularly scheduled public meeting was seven weeks away, and neither question reappears on the 7 August or 21 August agendas. The second question — whether it is a board priority to bring out-of-district placements back to Claremont — is the largest single cost pressure in this district’s budget, and the business administrator reported $1.3 million still encumbered for it later the same evening (1:38:33).
Sources: RSA 189:74; board policy BEDH, Public Participation at Board Meetings, sections B.3, B.5 and B.6; approved minutes, 20 June 2024.
MEDIUM The district’s own survey records staff challenging students whose phone use is a disability accommodation — and nobody at the table mentioned it
What the exhibit says. The Cell Phone Policy Survey reproduces a teacher’s comment in full: “Dislike: As always, there are complications and exceptions, and it can be difficult to keep those in mind. We have several students that require the use of phones who have special permission to use them, and we still on occasion have staff that will confront them about the use of those phones without realizing their exemption status. Ultimately, students are just finding alternative ways around using their phones.”
What the law requires. 34 CFR 300.323(d) requires a public agency to ensure that a child’s IEP “is accessible to each regular education teacher, special education teacher, related services provider, and any other service provider who is responsible for its implementation”, and that each such person is informed of “His or her specific responsibilities related to implementing the child’s IEP” and of “The specific accommodations, modifications, and supports that must be provided for the child in accordance with the IEP”. Promulgated at 71 FR 46753, 14 August 2006; unchanged. For a student on a Section 504 plan rather than an IEP, 34 CFR 104.33(a) requires the recipient to “provide a free appropriate public education to each qualified handicapped person”, which 104.33(b)(1) defines as “the provision of regular or special education and related aids and services” designed to meet the student’s needs. 45 FR 30936, 9 May 1980.
Why this is a board matter and not a classroom one. The comment is not an allegation from outside; it is in the district’s own evidence, in the packet, in the exhibit the assistant superintendent presented, and it says the failure recurs. The board discussed the survey for twenty-two minutes. Not one member raised it, the assistant superintendent did not mention it in summarising the comments, and the minutes do not record it. In the same item the superintendent described the accommodation the district does document — a signed card for students who bring no phone at all (1:30:22) — which shows the district knows how to build an exemption the staff can see.
And the policy was extended in the same breath. “Now that the middle school is going to have the phones” (1:27:21). The agenda item was headed “Benefits, challenges and expansion of policy to CMS”; the expansion was announced rather than moved, and the minutes record no decision on it. New Hampshire had no statewide school phone restriction on 20 June 2024 — the state-level restriction arrived in the 2025 budget trailer, effective 1 July 2025, and this project has not located a codified section for it — so on this date the policy, its exemptions and its extension were entirely the district’s own to design.
Sources: Cell Phone Policy Survey; 34 CFR 300.323(d); 34 CFR 104.33(a)–(b); approved minutes, 20 June 2024, item 4.
MEDIUM No subcommittee reported, at the last meeting before the recess, under by-laws requiring three of them to report every month
What the by-laws require, from 5 June 2024. Rule 1.05(1): the Finance Committee “shall hold at least one regular monthly meeting and shall consist of three members… Shall report to the full Board monthly.” Rule 1.05(2): the Policy Committee “shall hold at least one regular monthly meeting and ideally consist of three CSB members and an administrative advisor, selected by the Superintendent… Shall report to the full Board monthly.” Rule 1.05(3): the Capital Improvement Committee “shall ideally be composed of three board members and meet at least quarterly… Shall report to the full Board monthly.” Rule 1.05(4): ad hoc committees “Shall report to the full Board monthly.” Rule 1.11 makes each chair “responsible for setting meetings, creating agendas, assigning a minutes recorder”.
What happened. The agenda heads item 7 “Reports by subcommittee chairs if available” — a qualifier the by-laws do not contain. The chair opened it with “Is there any is there any burning issues that we haven’t addressed in the meeting this evening that, chairs would like to speak to?” (1:49:39). Whitney Skillen said “I’ll have a report” (1:49:38) and none follows on the recording or in the minutes. Nothing was reported by Finance, Policy, Capital Improvement, Curriculum or the Visioning Committee. The minutes for item 7 carry only the two chair changes.
Two committees were below strength. Asked who else sat on Policy, the chair of it answered “Me and Arlene” (1:48:12) — two members and no administrative advisor — and described the workload as insufficient for three: “there honestly isn’t a lot for there’s not a lot of work to spread across three people” (1:48:20). The new Communication ad hoc committee was created with two.
And no summer schedule was set. The 5 June future-dates list carried “Development of summer meeting schedule (currently no meetings in July, subcommittees will still meet)”. It is not on the 20 June agenda and it was not taken up. The chair instead asked the chairs to “review, what the deadlines are for, bringing forth a purpose statement, developing, meeting cadence, etc.. I did send a letter out for that” (2:00:11). The letter is in no district share. The two subcommittee meetings that did happen over the recess — Finance on 22 July, Capital Improvements on 29 July — produced minutes, which is an improvement on the June position at flag 2, and both were filed as exhibits to the 21 August packet rather than in any subcommittee folder.
Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 1.05 and 1.11; CSB Agenda 6.20.24, item 7; 6.5.24 draft minutes, future dates; Exhibit B, Finance Subcommittee minutes 22 July 2024 and Exhibit A, Capital Improvements Committee minutes 29 July 2024, both filed with the 21 August packet.
MEDIUM Three separate presentations of student-achievement data were made from documents the public could not see, against a by-law requiring every administration presentation to be online
What the by-laws require, from 5 June 2024. Rule 2.09, final paragraph: “Any and all presentations by the administration to the board or any committee shall be contained in the agenda and made available to the public in its original format online so the public may download or access the information prior to or during board meetings.”
Three occasions. The principal’s achievement figures for the schedule item — science, reading and writing, mathematics and the IXL diagnostic (0:57:17, 0:57:55) — come from a document the packet does not contain. His hall-pass distribution, which he refers to as “the statistic that I gave in front of you” (1:03:18), is likewise not in the packet. And the state assessment results presented under Other Business are explicitly a handout: “Unfortunately, I don’t have… In your packet. Get them into the minutes. First, first slide is our overall district average grades 3 to 8” (1:51:39, 1:51:42), “It’s in black and white. Looks like this” (1:51:56), and “there’s a second handout for that”. Neither handout is in the eleven-document folder. The 5 June packet had carried the mathematics and science results as its Exhibit G; the June ELA results were never posted.
What that costs. The board took its decision on the seven-period schedule on data that only the members and the room could see; the public heard percentages read aloud and can check none of them. The assistant superintendent’s own instruction — “Get them into the minutes” — was not followed either: the minutes summarise the discussion and reproduce none of the figures, and the state average appears there as 50 per cent where the recording has 51.
The limit. This is a board rule, adopted fifteen days earlier, not a statute. The Right-to-Know Law does not require a public body to publish an agenda at all, still less its exhibits; RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of the time and place. What the law would reach is a refused request for the documents under RSA 91-A:4, and no such request appears anywhere in this record.
Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 2.09; packet folder 11. CSB 6.20.24; approved minutes, 20 June 2024, item V.
MEDIUM An overnight out-of-state student trip was approved with no written proposal, no cost, no vendor, no student count two sources agree on, and no answer on scholarships
What the board’s policy requires. IJOA, Field Trips and Excursions (first reading 1 April 2009, second reading and adopted 15 April 2009): “Any overnight or out-of- state field trips must have the approval of the Claremont School Board.” The board’s approval was therefore necessary, and it was given. The same one-page policy also answers, in advance, the question the board spent ten minutes on: “Arrangements for financing all field trips must be made prior to the trip. If student contributions are involved, the necessary funds must be in the hands of the Principal before the trip will be taken.” Nobody cited it.
What the record does not contain. No exhibit — the agenda lists none and the folder holds none. No total cost: the only figure spoken is a board member’s recollection of past trips, “the estimated cost of the trip is $1,200” (0:50:08). No vendor: “The trip is put together through the same company that they went on before, and I believe we even have a substantial credit with them” (0:41:25). No dates beyond “a five day trip” aligned to a school break. And no settled number of students: the principal says “for giving me about 35… I can get to a 300 again” (0:46:49) and the approved minutes record a third figure, “about 25 students”.
The two questions that were asked and not answered. Candace Crawford: “does the fundraising allow for scholarships for students?” (0:47:13), relayed by the chair as “does the fundraising allow for scholarships if the parental contribution cannot be met?” (0:47:32). The answer: “This is my first time going through this. I believe there there is some leeway there… But I feel like there is some scholarship there” (0:47:43). Whitney Skillen: what happens “if the fundraising goal is not met? For every student that hoped to attend the trip” (0:49:42), and then the concrete version — a fundraising scheme whose profit ceiling is below the cost is no answer for a student with nothing to contribute (0:51:25). Both concerns were left with the organisers, who begin fundraising immediately and report to no board meeting for seven weeks.
And the conditions asked for did not reach the motion. Michael Petrin asked for academic and behavioural eligibility criteria (0:52:38) and the principal agreed (0:53:08). The motion the clerk read back is: “To approve high school Puerto Rico trip for the 2024 2025 school year” (0:53:58). No criterion, no cost ceiling, no scholarship provision and no reporting requirement is in it.
What this flag is not. It is not an assertion that the trip was improper, that any student was excluded, or that any statute was breached. New Hampshire imposes no field-trip statute on school boards; the applicable rule is the district’s own, and the one requirement it makes — board approval — was met. The finding is that the board gave an unconditional approval on a record that contains no document.
Sources: board policy IJOA, Field Trips and Excursions; CSB Agenda 6.20.24, item 2; approved minutes, 20 June 2024, item 2.
OBSERVATION The exhibit letters do not line up, and the packet’s only legal-background document is an eleven-year-old brief on a statute that had since been rewritten twice
The mismatch. The agenda cites Exhibits A, B, C, D and F. The folder contains two files labelled Exhibit A, two labelled Exhibit B, one Exhibit D, one Exhibit F — and one Exhibit G, which the agenda never mentions. There is no file labelled Exhibit C; the cell-phone survey the agenda calls Exhibit C is filed as Cell Phone Policy Survey.pdf, and it went up on 18 June while everything else went up on 12 June. There is no Exhibit E anywhere, and none is cited.
What Exhibit G is. New Hampshire Children in Need of Services: Impacts of 2011 Legislative Changes to CHINS — a Carsey Institute and NH Kids Count regional issue brief, Fall 2013, by Lisa Speropolous and Barbara Wauchope, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It analyses the narrowing of CHINS eligibility on 30 September 2011 and its restoration by HB 260-FN with effect from 1 September 2013. It went into the packet with everything else on 12 June 2024.
Why that is worth recording. It is never mentioned on the recording and never mentioned in the minutes. No agenda item carries it. It is the only document in the packet that discusses New Hampshire law, and the law it discusses is RSA 169-D:2 as it stood in 2013; the section’s last pre-October-2023 amendment is 2021, 182:5, and it was amended twice more in 2024. A reader coming to the board’s public packet for the district’s position on truancy and status offences would find an eleven-year-old third-party brief and nothing else. This page reports the fact and does not speculate about why it is there; the likeliest explanation is that it relates to the departing director of special education’s work and was filed without an item.
Sources: packet folder 11. CSB 6.20.24 with Google Drive createdTime metadata for each file; CSB Agenda 6.20.24; RSA 169-D:2.
OBSERVATION A police canine walked through a school building, and the only public record of it is one paragraph in a seventy-two-page report nobody asked a question about
What the packet says. Page 52 of the Superintendent’s End of Year Report 2024, under the technical centre’s communications: “In conjunction with Claremont PD, the Clarmeont PD Police Drug Dog did a walk through our building on 5/29/24. The Police Dog only alerted his handler to one item.. A student’s lunch.” the misspelling is the district’s
What the record does not contain. No agenda item, no discussion on the recording, no mention in the minutes, no board authorisation and no report of the outcome beyond that sentence. The board’s discussion of the whole report consisted of one exchange about how it had been circulated (0:09:39).
The rule, with its vintage stated. Board policy JIH, Student Searches and Their Property — first read and adopted July 1998, revised February 2005 — provides at paragraph 9 that “The Superintendent is authorized to arrange for the use of trained canines to aid in the search process.” The live text of JIH carries a revision dated 3 March 2026, so this page cannot certify that paragraph 9 read the same way on 29 May 2024, and does not rely on it. On the face of the current policy the sweep needed no board vote. What the policy does require of any search — parental notification, two authorised persons, a record of contraband — is not engaged by a walk-through that alerted to nothing.
Why it is flagged at all. A law-enforcement canine unit in a school building is a matter the public would expect a school board to know about and to have a position on. Here it reached the board buried in a report presented for information only, on the last night before an eight-week recess, and left no trace in the district’s minutes. No rule shown to be broken; graded OBSERVATION for that reason.
Sources: Superintendent’s End of Year Report 2024, page 52; board policy JIH, Student Searches and Their Property, read from the district’s live policy index with its own history block.
OBSERVATION The special-education directorship changed hands on 1 July and the successor is named only in a packet document, never spoken and never minuted
What was said. The superintendent: “I do want to acknowledge Ben Nestor, who this will be his last board meeting with us” (0:08:32). The chair: “we we knew about this resignation a while ago” (0:09:03). Minutes: “The Board and the Superintendent thanked and said farewell to Ben Nester”. That is the whole of it. No successor, no transition arrangement, no date for the vacancy, and no discussion of what happens to the district’s special-education caseload over the summer — on the last board meeting of a fiscal year in which $1.3 million was still encumbered for out-of-district placement (1:38:33).
What the packet already said. Page 3 of the superintendent’s own report, in the board’s hands that night, lists the SAU leadership team and gives “05. Michael McCosker, Dir. Student Services”. The SAU 6 board had approved his appointment effective 1 July 2024 at its meeting of 11 April 2024. By 7 August the Claremont agenda masthead prints him in Ben Nester’s place. So the answer to the question nobody asked was on page three of the document being presented.
Why it is only an observation. Nothing requires a school board to announce a staff succession at a particular meeting, and the appointment had been made by the body that makes it. The finding is about the record: a district’s public account of the departure of its special-education director, taken at face value, tells a reader that the post fell vacant and nothing more. This corrects a note this project has carried — that Michael McCosker is named nowhere in the 2024 Claremont board record. He is named, in the 20 June packet.
Sources: Superintendent’s End of Year Report 2024, page 3; approved minutes, 20 June 2024; 8.7.24 draft minutes, masthead; the companion page SAU 6 Board — April 11, 2024.
OBSERVATION A request for data on what individual students’ 504 plans are for, at a meeting whose packet already carried the counts
What was asked. Michael Petrin, in the last minutes of the meeting: “the data on 504 plans. You know, the numbers that we have now compared to historical numbers, are we are we going up? Are we leveled out? And maybe a little insight or little insight as to what they’re one of the 5 or 4 plans are for” (2:00:38), and “Just when I hear that some kids have 504 plans, that they can leave the class and take a walk. It’s just kind of interesting to see where those plans, you know, what they’re for” (2:01:02). The chair put it on the list for the next school year.
Two things worth separating. The numbers he asks for — current and historical counts — are ordinary aggregate reporting, and page 62 of the report the board received that same evening already gives 504 counts by building. The content of individual accommodation plans is different: a Section 504 plan is an education record under 34 CFR 99.3 and its disclosure to a board member is governed by the legitimate-educational-interest rule at 34 CFR 99.31(a)(1), not by board membership as such. Nothing in the request asks for a name, and a summary of accommodation types across a district is not itself an education record; in a building with a small number of plans, however, a type-by-building breakdown can identify a child.
Why this is graded OBSERVATION and not higher. No disclosure was made, no data was produced at this meeting, and the request as worded is capable of a wholly aggregate answer. It is recorded here because the board’s own minutes carry it forward as a future agenda item — “Michael Petrin requested to have an update on enrollment and enrollment projections as well as an overview of 504s and their purpose” — and because the safe form of that answer is a design question the board has not yet been asked to consider.
Sources: approved minutes, 20 June 2024, future agenda items; 34 CFR 99.3; 34 CFR 104.33.
POSITIVE A board member asked the federal-compliance question about the consultancy the district had paid for, and got a correct answer
The exchange. Whitney Skillen: “How often are the local needs assessments required by the Perkins Five act?” (0:37:45). Dr. Winkler: “The required to at least every two years. They should be done. We often go in and help schools with the first process, but then districts will, you know, take and learn from the process that we use, and you can conduct it on your own after that. But at least every two years, the data in those six components are supposed to be looked at” (0:37:54).
The provision. 20 U.S.C. §2354(c), the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act as amended by Perkins V, Pub. L. 115–224, 31 July 2018. Subsection (c)(1) requires an eligible recipient to “conduct a comprehensive local needs assessment related to career and technical education and include the results of the needs assessment in the local application”, and to “not less than once every 2 years, update such comprehensive local needs assessment”. Subsection (c)(2) sets out the required components, which are the six areas Dr. Winkler walked the board through: student performance, size and scope and quality, programs of study implementation, recruitment and retention and training, and equal access.
Why it earns a positive. The board had bought a review whose whole value depends on being repeated; nobody else in the room asked what the repeat obligation was, and the answer — two years — is the one the statute gives. It also puts a date on the district’s next duty that the record would otherwise not carry. The minutes record the exchange accurately: “Whitney Skillen asked how often the comprehensive needs assessment should be conducted as part of the Perkins V… Dr. Winkler stated it should be every 2 years”.
Sources: 20 U.S.C. §2354(c)(1)–(2); Exhibit A, SREB Career Pathway Review; approved minutes, 20 June 2024, item 1.
POSITIVE The clerk read every motion back before every vote — a rule fifteen days old, working from the first night
The rule. By-law 2.07, adopted 5 June 2024: “Any board member may request that the motion on the floor be read back by the clerk prior to the official vote… If a motion on the floor is debated, the clerk shall read the motion back prior to the official vote.”
What happened. All three motions were debated, and all three were read back. Puerto Rico: “Miss Kronborg, would you mind reading the motion?” (0:53:47), and the read-back at 0:53:58. Handbook: “Would, you know, would you please read the motion again?” (1:21:06). Roofs: “Mr. Cronenberg, would you please read the motion again?” (1:45:27), read back at 1:45:37. The chair asked for the read-back each time without being prompted by a member.
Why it matters here. The roof motion was assembled at the table out of three people’s sentences and a figure the business administrator had twice corrected herself on. The read-back is the only mechanism the board has for fixing the words before the vote, and it is what allows the approved minutes to carry the motion in a settled form. The speech recognizer destroys the read-backs on this recording — the roof read-back reaches the transcript as “a motion to across the continent for $82,000” — but that is a defect of the transcript, not of the meeting.
One further piece of good practice in the same class. When the principal reported that “97% of the students, got what they wanted” (1:04:42), the person who had actually built the schedule corrected the board on the record: “the schedule that we built the first run was 90%” (1:06:39) and “it tells me that 100% of the kids got 90% of what they wanted… It doesn’t mean that 90% of the kids got everything they wanted” (1:07:05). The approved minutes carry the correction rather than the original claim.
Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 2.07; approved minutes, 20 June 2024, items 2, 3 and 5.
OBSERVATION The consent agenda still says “(vote required)” and the by-laws now say the opposite — the practice was fixed by changing the rule
The long-running defect. This project’s pages for 20 December 2023, 17 January 2024 and 20 March 2024 all record the same thing: an agenda heading the consent agenda “(vote required)” and a chair disposing of it by absence of objection. It happened again here: “Are there any board members that object to moving the consent agenda as written and as described? Seeing no objection, the consent agenda is moved” (0:01:10).
What changed on 5 June 2024. By-law 2.10: “The consent agenda is a tool used to streamline meeting procedures by collecting routine, non-controversial items into a group. Such agenda items may include ministerial tasks such as but not limited to: approval of minutes and current agenda, acceptance of donations, approval of class trips, and acceptance of reports requiring no action… Items may be removed on the request of one member… When prompted by the chair consent agenda items will be moved,en masse, by consent (absence of objection).” the missing space after the comma is the district’s own
So the practice is now the rule, and the agenda is the thing out of date. The heading “(vote required)” survived into the 20 June agenda, into the 7 August agenda and into the 21 August agenda; the label has drifted three times in this corpus already — “(vote required)” on 17 January, “(consent required)” on 21 February, “(consent approval required)” on 6 March. Nothing in New Hampshire law requires a vote on a consent agenda, so the defect was always a mismatch between the district’s own documents rather than a statutory failure. One further wrinkle: by-law 2.10 lists “approval of class trips” as consent-agenda business, and the board took the Puerto Rico trip as a full discussion and vote item instead, which is more scrutiny than its rules require.
Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 2.10; CSB Agenda 6.20.24; the companion pages 20 December 2023, 17 January 2024 and 20 March 2024.
OBSERVATION New Hampshire puts the district’s records retention schedule on the board members themselves; this board handed the design of its subcommittees’ records to the subcommittee chairs
The statute. RSA 189:29-a, Records Retention and Disposition: “Members of the school board shall establish a records retention and disposition schedule for all official records of the school district.… A complete record of all records destroyed or discarded shall be maintained along with notations of the methods and dates of disposal.” 1983, 94:1, effective 23 July 1983; never amended, so this is the text in force on 20 June 2024 and throughout this corpus.
What the board did instead. Exhibit F, the 11 May retreat minutes cited on this meeting’s agenda, carries an action plan: “Each subcommittee shall create a Google folder, by the first meeting in October, specific to the subcommittee that includes: Meeting cadence, Legacy communication documents, Working documents…” and “Subcommittee chairs will communicate and establish a universal format for folders for legacy communication and to include the meeting cadence, policies, and critical activities/deadlines (when applicable) by first meeting in August.” By-law 1.11, adopted 5 June, adds that each subcommittee chair is “responsible for maintaining a Subcommittee Chair digital folder… The folder shall include an outline of subcommittee responsibilities, expectations, meeting agendas/minutes and a summary of work to be done at time of chair transition.” On 20 June the chair asked the chairs to review those deadlines (2:00:11).
Why the two do not meet. Subcommittee agendas and minutes are official records of the school district. What the board created is a filing convention for public-body records, designed by the chairs of the bodies that hold them, with a retention period nowhere stated and a disposal rule nowhere stated. The district does have a records policy — EHB, Data Records Retention, first reading 20 February 2019, adopted 6 March 2019 — but the text the live policy index serves carries a revision dated 7 May 2025, eleven months after this meeting, so this page does not quote its 2024 wording. What can be said of the current text is that it assigns the schedule to the Superintendent “as required under RSA 189:29-a”, where the statute assigns it to members of the school board, with the board’s involvement preserved only through “directives of the Board” and a duty to inform the board of revisions.
What would settle it. The district’s record retention schedule EHB-R, in the version in force in June 2024, and any board vote adopting it. Neither has been located by this project. Graded OBSERVATION because the page cannot show that no schedule exists — only that none appears in the district’s public shares, and that the retention question was not asked at the meeting where the board designed a new set of records.
Sources: RSA 189:29-a (1983, 94:1, eff. July 23, 1983); Exhibit F, board retreat minutes 11 May 2024, action plan; Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 1.11; board policy EHB, Data Records Retention, read from the district’s live policy index with its own history block.
OBSERVATION A board goal-setting retreat set a norm of meeting off the record before bargaining, and treats two different legal devices as interchangeable
What the retreat decided. Exhibit F’s action plan, under “Improving Collective Bargaining Effectiveness”: “Gain better understanding of what the will of the board is via a non-meeting or non-public meeting to ensure Board values and goals are brought to the bargaining table”, and “Establish a norm that the board will meet in a non-meeting or non-public once before collective bargaining with SREA and paraprofessionals’ union to gain a better understanding of what the will of the board is and determine what the board is fighting for, aligned with the strategic plan.”
The two devices are not interchangeable. A non-meeting under RSA 91-A:2, I(a) is a gathering the statute excludes from the definition of a meeting altogether: “Strategy or negotiations with respect to collective bargaining”. It requires no notice, no motion and no minutes — and it permits no decisions, because a body that decides is meeting. A nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3 is part of a noticed public meeting: it needs a motion stating the specific paragraph II exemption on its face, a roll-call vote in public, minutes, and a two-thirds recorded vote if they are to be sealed. Choosing between them is not a matter of taste, and the board’s own by-laws describe only the second.
Two further points on the same paragraph. The stated purpose runs wider than bargaining strategy — “determine what the board is fighting for, aligned with the strategic plan” — and I(a) reaches strategy and negotiations, not the board’s general priorities. And the caucus exclusion at I(c) is not available to this board in any event: RSA 671:30 requires every New Hampshire school district without a special statute to use the non-partisan ballot system for the election of district officers, so there is no party caucus to hold. 1979, 321:1, effective 21 August 1979; never amended.
Why OBSERVATION. No such session had been held when this meeting took place, the collective bargaining agreements at issue were not before the board, and a non-meeting for bargaining strategy is expressly lawful. The finding is that the norm as written invites the wrong one to be used, and that the document recording it is a packet exhibit of this meeting.
Sources: Exhibit F, board retreat minutes 11 May 2024, action plan; RSA 91-A:2, I (2023 codification); RSA 91-A:3; RSA 671:30.
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
- Recording: Claremont Community Television, Cablecast show 15814 — “School Board Meeting 6/20/24”. Title reproduced exactly as the public archive displays it, confirmed 2026-08-29, together with the archive’s event date of 20 June 2024 and its total run time of 7,326 seconds.
- Minutes of this meeting: 13. approved CSB Minutes 6.20.24 — approved on the 7 August 2024 consent agenda, eight pages, read in full. No draft version exists in any district share; the approved file reached Google Drive on 8 August 2024 (flag 7). The minutes carry two typographical errors of their own — Dr. JHerrington and Candace Crawfrod — reproduce the agenda’s defective Roman numerals, and at one point invert the sense of the case for the schedule change, recording that shorter periods should lead to “more engagement and students seeking to leave class during lessons”.
- Packet: 11. CSB 6.20.24 — 11 documents, all eleven read in full for this page on 2026-08-29:
- CSB Agenda 6.20.24.docx.pdf — the official agenda, posted 12 June 2024. Masthead prints the seven board members, the clerk, the two student board members and six central-office administrators, with Christopher Pratt as Superintendent, no longer interim, and Ben Nester as Director of Special Education. the doubled extension is the district’s own file name
- Superintendent’s End of Year Report 2024 (1).pdf — seventy-two numbered pages, forty-one megabytes; the SAU leadership team, district enrolment and discipline data, per-school assessment charts, technical-centre reports including the 29 May canine walk-through (flag 15), social-services data, IEP and 504 counts by building at page 62, the superintendent’s end-of-year letter, photographs and the 2024–25 calendar. No figure from it is reproduced on this page (see the privacy note below).
- Exhibit A-SREB-Career Pathway Review Findings and Recommendations with Unpacking Notes May 2024.pdf and Exhibit A- SREB- SAU6 Board Meeting 06-20-2024.pptx.pdf — the review and the slide deck; data at pages 4–15, promising practices at 16, five recommendations at 17–25, and the 30 May unpacking notes at appendix D.
- Exhibit B-24-25 SHS Student Handbook .docx (1).pdf and Exhibit B- SHS handbook changes .pdf — the handbook approved at this meeting and its one-page change list: employees updated, next year’s calendar added, “Schedules have been updated to be based on periods”, and dress-code language “altered to be more inclusive & less gender-specific (The previous wording was changed/adapted by the Women in Literature class.)”. Its letterhead names the Stevens leadership: Rick Elliott and Paige Jarvis as assistant principals and Dr. Michael Herringtont as principal.
- Cell Phone Policy Survey.pdf — the document the agenda calls Exhibit C, though the file is not labelled. Charts without printed numbers, plus verbatim staff and student comments including the accommodation comment at flag 10. Posted 18 June, two days before the meeting, where the rest of the packet went up on 12 June.
- Exhibit D-Claremont May 2024 Budget Report 6-12-24 (1).pdf — twenty-two pages of general ledger for 1–31 May 2024, printed 12 June 2024. Grand total: budget $35,300,311.92, spent to date $28,427,388.93, encumbrance $6,002,887.89, budget balance $870,035.10, 2.46 per cent. The difference between that budget figure and the district-meeting appropriation of $34,880,312 is $419,999.92. It carries no roof line, no capital project and no bid information.
- Exhibit F- CSB Retreat Meeting Minutes 5.11.24.pdf — the 11 May goal-setting retreat, attended by five of seven members plus the clerk, with an agenda, a self-evaluation under policy BAA, three goals and a dated action plan. The source of the Communication ad hoc committee, of the subcommittee folder scheme at flag 21 and of the bargaining norm at flag 22.
- Exhibit G- New Hampshire Children in Need of Services_ Impacts of 2011 Legis.pdf — a Carsey Institute / NH Kids Count issue brief of Fall 2013. Cited on no agenda item and mentioned nowhere (flag 14).
- draft CSB meeting minutes 6.5.24.pdf — approved on this night’s consent agenda, and the document that records the adoption of the by-laws: “Mike Petrin made a motion to approve the by-laws as presented, Bonnie Miles seconded; voice vote taken, all present voting in favor, motion passed”, with four members present.
- The by-laws in force at this meeting, adopted 5 June 2024 and filed with the 5 June packet: Exhibit E- Claremont School Board By-Laws .pdf — twenty-two pages, five chapters and seven appendices. Read in full for this page. The rules relied on here are 1.02, 1.05, 1.07, 1.08, 1.09, 1.11, 2.07, 2.09, 2.10, 2.11, 4.01 and 4.03, and Appendices A, B and D.
- Board policies, read in full from the district’s live policy index Claremont SB Policies (for Web) on 2026-08-29 — adoption dates taken from each policy’s own history block, not from the index:
- Neighbouring district documents this page relies on: 5.15.24 draft CSB meeting minutes (1).pdf (the date change from 19 to 20 June, and the $54,000 unbudgeted pre-bond planning vote); 5.22.24 draft CSB minutes (1).pdf (a meeting held solely for a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(c), with roll-call votes in and out and a ten-year seal); 8.7.24 Draft CSB Meeting Minutes (3).pdf (the next meeting, which approved these minutes and carried the defective nonpublic citation at flag 4); and the two July subcommittee minutes filed with the 21 August packet.
- A meeting the corpus does not have. The 7 August 2024 Claremont School Board meeting has a packet folder in the district’s 2024 share (1. CSB 8.7.24) and draft minutes filed with the 21 August packet, but no recording, no Cablecast show and no section in this project’s map. It was a full regular meeting under policy BEA: roll call, consent agenda, a two-hour presentation by district counsel, a nonpublic session on compensation, and a motion creating an ad hoc committee on Unity’s possible withdrawal from SAU 6. Anything a reader traces from 20 June to 21 August passes through it.
- Explicit negatives, from reading all eleven packet documents in full rather than from a search: the packet contains no bid document of any kind for the roofs; no written proposal for the Puerto Rico trip; no handout for either set of assessment data presented; no subcommittee agenda, notice, minutes or report of any kind, for a meeting at which two subcommittee meetings were described and a third subcommittee created; no legal review of the schedule change; and no record retention schedule.
- Negatives that are search-derived and therefore weaker, flagged as such: no notice, agenda or minutes for the capital-improvement site meeting or for the 30 May unpacking workshop was located in the 20 June, 21 August or 4 September packet folders or in the four district subcommittee folders; and no copy of the chair’s letter to subcommittee chairs, and no fee, engagement letter or board authorisation for the 7 August counsel session, was located anywhere. This project has established that the Google Drive search API under-reports on these shared folders, so the correct statement in each case is “not found”, not “does not exist”.
Project files
Relative links; they work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/.
Laws and rules cited on this page
- New Hampshire statutes, in the text in force on 20 June 2024. RSA 91-A:2, I and II — a meeting is the convening of a quorum able to communicate contemporaneously to discuss or act on matters within the body’s jurisdiction; four exclusions, of which the first is collective-bargaining strategy; 24 hours’ notice posted in two places or published; minutes to include the names of members, persons appearing, a brief description of the subject matter and final decisions, and “the names of the members who made or seconded each motion”, open to inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting. 2023 codification; source note ends “2023, 188:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023”. Deliberately not applied: 2025, 112:1, which added the start time, end time and minutes-producer requirements from 22 August 2025. The mover-and-seconder clause is 2018, 244:1, effective 1 January 2019, and binds this meeting.
- RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) — “public body” includes any board or committee of a school district “or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto”.
- RSA 91-A:3, I(a)–(b), II(a)–(m) and III — paragraph I contains no exemptions; every ground is in paragraph II, which runs (a) to (m) with (f) repealed, twelve live grounds; the motion must state the specific paragraph II exemption on its face and the vote must be by roll call; nonpublic minutes are public within 72 hours unless sealed by a recorded two-thirds vote. 2023, 189:1, eff. 3 October 2023.
- RSA 91-A:4 — the right to inspect governmental records on request. Cited in its pre-2024 form; the 2024, 49:1–2 amendment took effect 13 August 2024 and is not applied.
- RSA 32:10, I and II — the governing body’s power to transfer an unexpended balance from one appropriation to another, capped by the total appropriated at the district meeting, with records that let a citizen ascertain the appropriations to and from which amounts moved. Source note ends 2017, 127:4, eff. 15 August 2017. RSA 32:1 applies the chapter to school districts.
- RSA 198:4-b, I and II — paragraph I is the contingency fund for “unanticipated expenses”, established by a separate warrant article; paragraph II is the retention of year-end unassigned general funds, capped at 5 per cent of the current year’s net assessment, with II(a) requiring a prior public hearing noticed in a newspaper of general circulation at least 7 days ahead before retained funds are expended. Paragraph II states no purpose limitation; paragraph I’s does not reach it. 2020, 38:25, eff. 27 September 2020.
- RSA 189:29-a — “Members of the school board shall establish a records retention and disposition schedule for all official records of the school district.” 1983, 94:1, eff. 23 July 1983; never amended.
- RSA 189:74 — school board public comment period of no less than 30 minutes, excepting emergency meetings and meetings held solely for nonpublic session. 2022, 333:1, eff. 6 September 2022.
- RSA 671:30 — every school district without a special statute uses the non-partisan ballot system for the election of district officers, which forecloses the political-party caucus exclusion in RSA 91-A:2, I(c). 1979, 321:1, eff. 21 August 1979; never amended.
- RSA 671:20 and RSA 671:25 — the district clerk prepares the official ballots and delivers them to the town moderator. Cited only because the board’s by-laws cite them for something else (flag 4). RSA 671:20 is quoted in its 1979, 321:1 form; the paragraph added by 2025, 281:1 did not exist.
- RSA 189:1-c and RSA 194:23-f — at least one nonvoting student member per public high school, with all the rights of a board member except the vote. RSA 194:23-f applied in its 2022, 195:2 text; the 2024, 69:1 amendment, effective 13 August 2024, is not applied.
- RSA 288:1 — New Hampshire legal holidays, used for the business-day arithmetic at flag 7. The list runs from January 1 through Christmas Day and includes “July 4, known as Independence Day”; it does not include Juneteenth. Source note ends 1999, 106:2, eff. 6 August 1999.
- RSA 169-D:2 — children in need of services. Cited only to date the packet’s Exhibit G (flag 14); the section’s last pre-October-2023 amendment is 2021, 182:5.
- New Hampshire administrative rules. Ed 303.01(f) — a school board shall “Hold meetings for the transaction of business at least once in 2 months and require the attendance of the superintendent or designee” (New #8583, eff. 3-15-06; ss by #10649, eff. 7-26-14). Ed 306.17 — class size, cited under the number it carried on this date; it was renumbered Ed 306.14, “Student-Educator Ratios”, effective 13 December 2024, and that renumbering is not applied here.
- Federal. 20 U.S.C. §2354(c) — the Perkins V comprehensive local needs assessment, its six required components, and the duty to update it “not less than once every 2 years”. Pub. L. 115–224, title I, §133, 31 July 2018.
- 34 CFR 300.323(d) — a child’s IEP must be accessible to every teacher and provider responsible for implementing it, and each must be informed of their specific responsibilities and of the specific accommodations to be provided. 71 FR 46753, 14 August 2006.
- 34 CFR 104.33(a)–(b) — Section 504 free appropriate public education, defined as the provision of regular or special education and related aids and services designed to meet the student’s needs. 45 FR 30936, 9 May 1980.
- 34 CFR 99.3 — FERPA’s definition of an education record, cited at flag 17.
- Board rules. The Claremont School Board By-Laws, adopted 5 June 2024, and policies BEA, BDE, DJE, IJOA, BEDH, JIH and EHB, listed above with their adoption dates. These are the district’s own rules, not state law, and every flag that rests on one says so.
- Deliberately not cited. No New Hampshire statute requires a school district to seek competitive bids for a locally funded purchase, so flag 5 rests only on policy DJE. The Uniform Guidance procurement standards at 2 CFR 200.318–.327 are not engaged, because nothing in the record describes the roof work as federally funded. And no statewide restriction on student cell phones existed in New Hampshire on this date; the state-level restriction took effect 1 July 2025 and this project has not located a codified section for it, so none is cited.