SAU 6 Board — November 14, 2024 | The seal review happens, the raises are handed to the superintendent, and a second meeting nobody filmed

Participants

Every seat on the agenda masthead, marked present or absent per the draft minutes' roll call, plus the central-office administrators the masthead names. Name spellings follow the agenda and the draft minutes; the automatic transcript's rendering is given where it differs. Segment counts are from the dialogue CSV. Four members who answered the roll are never anchored to a voice in the recording, so their contributions here rest on the minutes; where the minutes and the recording disagree, both are given and the minutes govern.
Name	Role	Participation
Arlene Hawkins	SAU 6 Board Chair (re-elected 4/11/2024); chair of the SAU 6 policy subcommittee; Claremont School Board member	Present, and again the dominant voice at 125 of 434 segments. Called the meeting to order, moved both agenda additions and the motion into nonpublic herself, presented the corrections to the September minutes, ran the budget discussion, presented the eight sets of minutes recommended for unsealing, and closed the meeting. The transcript renders her roll answer Eileen. Hawkins; the mover of the agenda additions names her at 0:02:06 and the mover of the unsealing names her again at 0:42:17.
Rocco Ruggeri	SAU 6 Board Vice Chair; Unity School Board member; Unity's voice on the withdrawal study	Present, 23 segments. Moved the motion that delegated next year's raises to the superintendent (0:29:16); moved the seal of the nonpublic minutes and then withdrew it per the minutes; raised the two policy questions that changed the outcome of the policy vote; and gave the Unity planning-committee report. The chair recognises him by name twice — once a second before his policy question, and once immediately before the Unity report.
Kelly Simpson	SAU 6 Board member (Unity)	Present, 23 segments — and the only recorded No of the evening, on the raise delegation, per the draft minutes. Did the arithmetic on the salary and health-insurance increases live at the table (0:26:08) and it reconciles to the exhibit; see flag 18. Also pressed on why the SAU reimburses cell phones instead of buying a plan, and asked what the new mass-text system would send her about a district that is not hers.
Frank Sprague	SAU 6 Board member; chair of the SAU 6 superintendent-evaluation subcommittee; Vice Chair of the Claremont School Board	Present, 16 segments. Opened the FY24 budget-versus-actual questions the chair then built on, moved the return from nonpublic session per the minutes, and reported for the evaluation subcommittee — a meeting to come, and a warning that members may have to request access to the superintendent's evidence documents (0:40:35). The chair recognises him by name five times.
Heather Whitney	SAU 6 Board member; Chair of the Claremont School Board	Present per the draft minutes, which credit her with five of the evening's motions — the agenda additions, the second on the nonpublic motion, the policy slate, the friendly amendment that pulled policy KE, the second on the raise delegation, the unsealing motion and adjournment. She is not anchored to a single voice anywhere in the dialogue file. The chair's recognition 0.1 seconds before the policy motion is transcribed as two syllables that this corpus attests for both her name and Candace Crawford's, so the CSV leaves that speaker unnamed; the attributions on this page are the minutes'.
Candace Crawford	SAU 6 Board member; Claremont School Board member; SAU 6 policy subcommittee	Present per the draft minutes, which name her as the seconder of the unsealing motion. No segment in the dialogue file is attributed to her, and no name is spoken for her at any point in the recording.
Michael Petrin	SAU 6 Board member; Claremont School Board member	Present per the draft minutes, which credit him with the long question about paying mileage and cell-phone stipends as lump sums rather than against receipts (0:18:45), with the recollection of why the district stopped issuing phones, and with the second on the motion to return from nonpublic session. His roll answer is transcribed Michael. Patron, the standing garble of his surname in this corpus. The dialogue file puts those turns in an unnamed cluster: the chair recognises the speaker without using a name, and four seated members were candidates.
Atonya Hart	SAU 6 Board member (Unity); superintendent-evaluation subcommittee	Present — her first SAU 6 meeting in the record since the May retreat — and one attributed word, the abstention on the September minutes at 0:03:57, which the transcript renders Extension. The chair thanks her by name a beat later. The minutes name her as the seconder of the seal motion and of both policy motions.
Bonnie Miles	SAU 6 Board member; Claremont School Board member	Absent per the draft minutes.
Whitney Skillen	SAU 6 Board member; Claremont School Board member; superintendent-evaluation subcommittee	Absent per the draft minutes — as she was on 11 April and 12 September. Two people on this board answer to Whitney — Whitney Skillen and Heather Whitney. Every reference on this page is to the one the minutes name.
Marjorie Erickson	SAU 6 Board member; chair of the Unity School Board	Absent per the draft minutes, as on 11 April and 12 September. She speaks nowhere in the 2024 SAU 6 recordings.
Shannon Popescu	SAU 6 Board member (Unity)	Absent per the draft minutes.
Christopher Pratt	Superintendent of Schools, SAU 6	Present, 47 segments. Read all three roll calls in the clerk's absence — the attendance roll and the roll-call votes into and out of nonpublic session — and is the person to whom the board then delegated the setting of staff raises. Explained what the mileage and cell-phone stipends are for, and where they come from: "it's my understanding that if for myself and Assistant Superintendent Kosky, that is that it's in the contract of that stipend" (0:20:04). The transcript renders the assistant superintendent's surname Kosky.
Mary Henry	Business Administrator, SAU 6	Present, 94 segments — 22 percent of the meeting. Presented the FY26 proposed budget, the health and dental renewals, the surplus and the revenue offsets, and undertook to send a corrected budget and a written summary of every increase by 22 November. Twice told the board a document it had asked for was not in the packet.
Noelle Kronberg	SAU 6 School Board Clerk	Absent. The chair: "And just so people are aware, Miss Cronenberg is not here tonight. So that's why Mr. Pratt was so gracious in taking a local" (0:01:00) — the transcript's rendering of her surname, and of a roll call. She nonetheless signs the draft minutes, "Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, board clerk", and signs the Claremont board's minutes of the same night, at which she was present and read the roll.
Michael Koski	Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Innovation, SAU 6 (masthead)	Named on the agenda masthead. No attributed segment; named on the recording only by the superintendent, describing what their two contracts provide.
Michael McCosker	Director of Student Services, SAU 6 (masthead)	Named on the agenda masthead. Does not speak and is not mentioned in the minutes' narrative. The special-education administration lines carry a $2,500 mileage stipend the chair attributes to this office.
Patrick O'Hearn	Director of Human Resources, SAU 6 (masthead)	Named on the agenda masthead. Does not speak. His function is the largest single driver of the FY26 increase at $99,004.44, most of it in salaries; the business administrator explains on the record that the travel and professional-development money budgeted for the post has gone unspent.
Jeff Small	Director of Technology, SAU 6 (masthead)	Named on the agenda masthead. Does not speak, and unlike September the board did not need him. The information-management function carries a $2,500 mileage stipend and a $1,000 cell-phone reimbursement in the proposed budget.
Chelsea Weatherford	SAU 6 central office — named twice from the chair as the person to contact	Not present as a participant. She is named as the person who will post the unsealed minutes to the website (0:42:43) and as the person a board member should ask to be removed from the mass-text system. A different person from Tim Weatherford, a summer-school teacher elsewhere in this corpus; do not merge them.
Citizens	Citizens' comments	Nobody appeared. The chair opened and closed the item in one breath — "All right. Are there any citizens comments? Not seeing any citizens in the audience" (0:03:59). The draft minutes record "Citizens Comments- none". Nobody was turned away; see flag 16.

Agenda

Item numbering, wording and scheduled clock times from the posted agenda (SAU#6 School Board Agenda 11.14.24.docx (1).pdf), with dispositions from the draft minutes and the recording. Scheduled times are printed plain; the "Taken up" column gives the moment in the recording. Two items on this page were not on the posted agenda — the chair added both by amendment before the meeting began, and one of them, the unsealing of previously sealed minutes, is the item this meeting will be remembered for. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.

Taken up	Item	Agenda text / disposition
0:00:02	I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance	Scheduled 6:30 PM, and called to order on the second: the chair's first six words are a clock reference. She reads the standing reminder about cell phones from the agenda itself.
0:00:43	II. General Business — Secretary Roll Call of Attendance	Scheduled 6:35 PM. The agenda calls the clerk the Secretary; the clerk was absent and the chair asked "Would someone from the administration please take the roll call of attendance?" The superintendent read it. Eight present, four absent per the draft minutes. The transcript garbles most of the answers, so the attendance printed on this page is the minutes', not the tape's.
0:01:00	II. Agenda — Amendments and Final Approval	The chair moved two additions of her own: under item IV a fourth discussion item on previously sealed minutes, and under Other Business a second item on the contact information system. Heather Whitney moved the additions and Rocco Ruggeri seconded, per the minutes; the mover on tape says "as described by Chair Hawkins". Voice vote, no count. Neither addition appears on the posted agenda, so the public had six days' notice of a meeting whose most consequential item was announced at 6:31 p.m.
0:02:19	II. Minutes Approval — 9/12/2024	The chair offered two corrections: that the board "did not actually receive the global review of actual to budgeted 2425 budget as listed in that agenda", and that the September minutes name the three health plans and their employee contributions. Ruggeri moved, Sprague seconded; Atonya Hart abstained because she had not been there, and the minutes record it by name. Sixty-three calendar days after the meeting they record, and six days after they reached the public share in this meeting's own packet, the September minutes were approved with two corrections the chair had to supply herself — one of them to record a document the board never got.
0:03:59	II. Citizens Comments	"Not seeing any citizens in the audience." The minutes: "Citizens Comments- none." No member of the public spoke and none was turned away. See flag 16.
0:03:59	III. Non-Public Meeting Session 91-A:3	Scheduled 6:40 PM. The posted agenda quotes subparagraph (c), reputation of a person other than a member of the body. The motion the chair actually made, and the minutes' own heading, are RSA 91-A:3, II(a) — compensation of a public employee — and II(m) — whether to disclose sealed minutes. The motion states its exemptions on its face and the vote was by roll call, as RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires. See flag 9.
0:06:35	III. Return to public session; motion to seal	Sprague moved the return, Petrin seconded, roll call taken by the superintendent. Ruggeri then moved "to seal the minutes from the non public meeting for nine years" and Hart seconded — and the board talked itself out of it. The minutes: "Mr. Ruggeri withdrew his motion, minutes were not sealed." Under RSA 91-A:3, III that makes those minutes disclosable within 72 hours. See flag 6 and flag 19.
0:07:00	IV.1. Budget Discussion (Discussion) (Exhibit A) — Mary Henry, Business Administrator	Scheduled 7:00 PM and the evening's longest item at twenty-eight minutes. Exhibit A is the FY26 proposed budget, version 1: $2,794,151.54 against an FY25 budget of $2,489,151.00, an increase of $305,000.54 before revenue offsets and $180,000.54 after them, printed on the sheet as a "Total Budget % Increase 7.23%". The minutes add two sub-items the agenda does not carry — the year-to-date FY25 review and the audit-presentation timeline — each with the same note: "Not included in the Board packet." See flag 10 and flag 12.
0:29:16	IV.1. Motion on FY26 raises	Not an agenda item, and the only vote of the night with substance behind it. Ruggeri moved "to give the superintendent the authority to give six staff, raise increases per his discretion for fiscal year 2526. Between the two and a half, 3%"; the minutes render it "to give the Superintendent authority to give SAU staff raise increases at his discretion to between 2.5%-3%". Whitney seconded. Voice vote with no count on tape; the minutes record Kelly Simpson opposed. See flag 1.
0:34:56	IV.2. Policies (Action)	Seven policies, all listed as first reads: a. BEDB Agenda Preparation and Dissemination · b. EHAC Electronic/Digital Records and Signatures · c. GBEAA Confidential Student Information · d. GBEAB Mandatory Code of Conduct Reporting · e. GBEB Staff Conduct · f. KE Public Complaints · g. KEE Website Accessibility and Grievance. Whitney moved all seven as written, Hart seconded; after Ruggeri's question Whitney amended her own motion to pull KE to a second read. Six adopted on a single first reading, one voice vote, no count. See flag 4.
0:40:35	IV.3. Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee (Discussion)	Ninety seconds. Sprague reported a committee meeting to come after Thanksgiving and told the board the superintendent's evidence documents may need permission to open: "you might have to write have to ask for permission to the document." Pratt answered that he had checked the sharing settings. No motion.
0:41:47	IV.4. Sealing / unsealing previously sealed minutes (added by amendment)	The item the chair added at 6:31. She read eight dates — 13 July 2018, 14 June 2018, 10 May 2018, 17 July 2018, 13 April 2023, 11 May 2023, 31 July 2023 and 17 August 2023 — and said "The board did review previously sealed minutes and has agreed to unseal the minutes from the following dates". Whitney moved, Crawford seconded, voice vote in public session as RSA 91-A:3, II(m) requires. See flag 2, flag 6 and flag 17.
0:43:11	V. Future Dates / Future Agenda Items	Scheduled 8:15 PM. The agenda lists Claremont 11/20/2024, the SAU 6 strategic-plan meeting 11/21/2024, the SAU 6 FY26 budget public hearing 12/12/2024 and Unity 12/10/2024; future agenda item, "Audit Dates". To these the meeting added a working budget meeting on 3 December, chosen from three candidate dates on the floor. The agenda's own list does not mention the Claremont School Board meeting held six hours later that same evening. See flag 3.
0:44:20	VI. Other Business — Update on Unity study	Scheduled 8:20 PM. Ruggeri: the planning committee met 26 September and concluded in favour of withdrawal, the report went to the state about 8 October, and "They had their board state board meeting today to review many items as well as our planning committee withdrawal report." Next steps: state feedback or approval, a presentation to the town, a March vote. And the date this corpus has nowhere else: "if the town voted in favor, the unity would still be part of Siu six until July 1st, 2026."
0:45:46	VI.2. Contact information system (added by amendment)	The second addition. Every board member is now on the superintendent's mass-notification texts; members who do not want them are to ask the central office to be removed; and members who receive one are told not to contact the superintendent's office but their own board chair. Kelly Simpson, from Unity: "So you're telling me that I will get texts about things that happen at Claremont Schools." No vote taken on any of it.
0:47:29	VII. Adjournment	Scheduled 8:30 PM. The chair asks for a motion twice in one breath — "Do I have a motion to adjourn any other future business? Other business? Without a motion to adjourn?" — and a second arrives before any motion is audible. Whitney moved and Sprague seconded per the minutes. The recording ends nineteen seconds later. Neither the minutes nor the tape gives a clock time.

Discussion timeline

Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Output/Dialogue/16142 SAU6111424.mp4.CSV) and link into the recording. Quotations reproduce the transcript verbatim, ASR errors included, with editorial insertions in square brackets; quotations from the agenda, the minutes, a packet document or a statute are attributed to that document in the sentence that carries them. Recording time and clock time can be relied on up to the nonpublic session and not after it — the recording has no gap anywhere, yet the room's next meeting began fifty-seven minutes after this recording ends. See flag 7.

Time	Topic	What was said	Flags
0:00:43	The superintendent reads the roll for the board that employs him	The clerk is absent and the chair asks the administration to take the roll: "Yep. Frank Sprague. Here are the Whitney here. Ines Crawford here. Tanya. Hot here. Michael. Patron here." Then: "Kelly. Kelly. Simpson. Sorry. Here, here. Eileen. Hawkins." The chair answers her own name. Every surname in that list is a known garble in this corpus, and the roll on this page is the draft minutes' list. The same voice will read the two roll-call votes on the nonpublic session, and will be handed the authority to set staff raises twenty-eight minutes later.	HIGH
0:01:27	The item that matters most arrives as an amendment	"Under Roman numeral four, under discussion items to add a number for." Then: "Question and vote. See it regarding. Sealed minutes. Previously sealed minutes." She repeats both additions for the record: "Please add number four on ceiling previously sealed minutes and under other business number two contact Information system." The minutes render the first "discussion and vote regarding previously sealed minutes". Neither is on the agenda that was posted to the public share six days earlier.	MEDIUM
0:02:19	The chair corrects the record to say what the board did not receive	"I have two. One is on on page two, under Roman numeral five. Under item number one, to include that the board did not actually receive the global review of actual to budgeted 2425 budget as listed in that agenda." And: "Just so that the minutes reflect we did not have that." The second correction names the three health plans: "specifically A, B, S, O, S 20 and a b 15. Both of those are at no increased cost to the saw. And then there is the third option a b 20, which shows a 15% contribution by employees if they choose that plan." Five minutes later she will find that the same year-to-date review is missing again.	OBSERVATION
0:03:59	Into nonpublic under two exemptions, one of them not the one noticed	In a single turn the chair disposes of public comment and moves the session: "All right. Are there any citizens comments? Not seeing any citizens in the audience. I'd like to move to the agenda item. Roman numeral three, non public meeting session. I would like to move that we enter into a non public meeting session under RSA 91. Dash a colon 3.2 A and M." The minutes give it correctly as RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and (m) and print both texts. The posted agenda had quoted subparagraph (c) instead. The chair moved it herself; Whitney seconded; the superintendent took the roll.	MEDIUM
0:04:59	Forty-six seconds	"Motion passes. And for those. Thank you. Watching the public. The public meeting will continue after the non public session. Thank you. Okay. We're going to retire." That sentence and the chair's next words — "So do we have a motion to return to public session Mr. Sprague" — are 46 seconds apart, and the dialogue file contains no gap greater than two seconds anywhere in the recording. The agenda had scheduled this session from 6:40 to 7:00 p.m. Two readings are possible and the recording does not choose between them; see flag 7.	MEDIUM
0:06:35	A nine-year seal, moved and talked away	"I'll make a motion to seal the minutes from the non public meeting for nine years." The chair says Second. and then the room reconsiders: "I don't I don't think we need to know." · "I don't think so." · "It's pretty. Generic to two sentences. Is that right?" · "Okay. No need to see the minutes." The minutes record what the tape leaves ambiguous: "Mr. Ruggeri withdrew his motion, minutes were not sealed." Nine years is one year inside the ten-year ceiling the board's own policy BEDG asks it to respect, and no statutory ground was stated for the seal. Because the seal failed, RSA 91-A:3, III made those minutes disclosable within 72 hours.	MEDIUM POSITIVE
0:07:35	Two documents the chair asked for, and neither is there	Henry: "the agenda that wasn't listed. So when you first one that went out wasn't listed. So I did not get 2425 together." The chair: "I had requested that be part of the packet last week, along with the timeline for a presentation of audits. So those are not in the packet?" Henry: "No. The audits I can talk about, but I didn't put something together for it." The minutes carry both as sub-items with the same note: "Not included in the Board packet." The year-to-date review is the same document the chair had just amended the September minutes to record as undelivered.	OBSERVATION
0:08:11	What drove the increase: people taking the insurance	"their increases are mainly in benefits because of changes in personnel that we've had. We have new employees that are now taking insurance that weren't before, which are impacting it." And on the offset: "One position. One position to the budget. But that is being paid for or offset. Removing our, one of our positions portion of it back into title one time, where it was called, utilizes funds, to try to do it on that position." Retirement fell — "Retirement went down almost 5%. Which is good." Exhibit A bears both out: the New Hampshire retirement lines fall in the information-management, superintendent's-office-adjacent and business-office functions, and the largest single increase on the sheet is Human Resources at $99,004.44, of which $68,688.68 is salary.
0:10:55	Three health plans, and dental up almost ten percent	"The lowest option we have, the one that's the least expensive went up by 7.7%." Then: "Like $50, the next one is up by 3%. And then the third one, which is the most expensive one, is only up by 2%." Dental: "dental hasn't gone up in a long time. So this is it finally went up and I was surprised dental went up actually by 9.93%." The chair adds the point the September minutes were corrected to carry: "And I just want to state that employees do contribute a portion of the provide a contribution toward their health care." Henry's comparison against the old carrier: "Well, actually, we're still lower than what we were with school care."
0:11:52	What did we budget, what did we spend	Sprague: "I'm on the back page of the proposed budget, and I'm looking at the actual expenditures in the fiscal year 24. And, I'm wondering what the. And I don't have it with me. I haven't, but I don't have it with me. What did we actually budget for?" Henry: "So you budget for 24 was 2.3 million. 2,396,000." Sprague reads the spend back: "And we spent 2.3343." The exhibit's FY24 actual is $2,334,194.33. The September financial statement, printed 5 September 2024, gave the same year's spending as $2,333,830.40 — $363.93 less. Two district documents, ten weeks apart, on a closed fiscal year.
0:13:20	Three hundred thousand dollars that cannot go back to the taxpayer	"in speaking with our auditors, and just because I didn't say you before, there's usually surplus money left over and say you it doesn't go back to taxpayers. It stays within the say you to use how you see fit. Meaning a lot of times where I was we'd take an offset about bottom line budget or bring down a budget." Then the figure, with its own caveat: "Right now we have probably a little over $300,000 in there as your surplus that is sitting for whatever you want to do" — "because of course, we haven't been audited on the other three years that I have listed." Sprague draws the conclusion: "if we retained the end of year fund balance, we would essentially negate the or it would be a walk."	OBSERVATION
0:14:29	The 7.23 percent is already the net number	"So what I want to be clear with the public, what, no matter what we vote, is that it says here a total budget increase of 7.23%, which would put people into panic." The minutes attribute that sentence to Heather Whitney, the dialogue file to the business administrator's cluster; the two voices interleave here and the minutes govern. What neither the room nor the minutes says out loud is what the exhibit shows: the 7.23 percent is the increase after $125,000 of revenue has already been subtracted. Exhibit A's own arithmetic is $2,794,151.54 against $2,489,151.00, an increase of $305,000.54 — 12.25 percent — less $50,000 of contracted-services revenue and $75,000 of grant indirect costs, giving $180,000.54 and the 7.23 percent printed on the sheet.	OBSERVATION
0:15:16	Eight cents per thousand, and a ninety-ten split that is not the statute	"we're not looking at more than 2.5% increase as I was estimating in my head, actual increase considering revenues and retention of your fund balance. If you take the 180,000 and you figure that the that, you guys pay, 90% of that unity pays 10% of that. Unity is looking at what, 18,000? And when you're looking at the rest, and 100,000 is $0.08 per thousand, which works out to be on the tax rate." RSA 194-C:9, I apportions an SAU's expenses "based 1/2 on the average membership in attendance for the previous school year and 1/2 on the most recently available equalized valuation" — not on a ninety-ten split. The district's own September exhibit put Unity at 7.8 percent. See flag 13.	OBSERVATION
0:16:38	A December meeting, and a hearing date the minutes get wrong	"We need to have another meeting prior to the public hearing, which is the December 14th, I want to say. So I would suggest we plan a meeting for either the third, the 5th or the 10th of December to finalize what this looks like." The chair corrects herself thirteen minutes later — "the, the public hearing is the 12th" — and the minutes carry the uncorrected version, "prior to the public hearing on December 14th". The posted agenda gives 12/12/2024. December 14, 2024 was a Saturday.	OBSERVATION
0:18:06	The chair finds a five-hundred-dollar gap in the superintendent's stipend line	"It's my understanding that, there's a still cell phone stipend of $1,000. It. With the exception of the superintendent, I believe, who gets a little more than that. So within the superintendent's office, I believe it should be 2500. And I'm seeing 2000." Henry: "I will have to." — "Go back and look." — "We'll go back and look at his contract." Exhibit A bears the chair out to the dollar: the superintendent's office cell-phone line paid exactly $2,500.00 in FY23 and exactly $2,500.00 in FY24, was budgeted at $2,100.00 for FY25, and is proposed at $2,000.00 for FY26.	POSITIVE MEDIUM
0:18:45	A lump sum, or a receipt	The question the minutes credit to Michael Petrin: "I know in my world, reimbursement such as mileage and cell phones are based on actual numbers of turning in. This is how many miles I drove. This is my what I'm currently spending on the cell phone. Not just a chunk of a dollar amount." And: "I wouldn't think that your actual expenditure on mileage would be an exact 2500. It would be 2248, you know." He is reading the ledger correctly. Exhibit A's FY23 mileage column pays exactly $2,500.00 on the information-management line and exactly $2,500.00 on the special-education line; the FY24 column pays $0.00 on both. Sprague described that change in the minutes: "in the past, others were just getting the amount even if they didn't have the stipend- that is not the case now and there is a reimbursement process."	POSITIVE
0:20:04	What the contracts say, according to the people they cover	Pratt: "Yeah. It's my understanding that if for myself and Assistant Superintendent Kosky, that is that it's in the contract of that stipend, but everyone else, you know, turns in their mileage is because we traveled three times, four times as much as, others". The chair extends the list: "No, it is 2500 for the assistant superintendent, the director of technology and special ed, just those people." Pratt adds "And human resources." Henry disagrees: "But but the HR person doesn't get a blank mount. No no." Four people describe the terms of contracts that are in no public share, and they do not agree about who is covered. See flag 8.	MEDIUM
0:23:22	Why not just buy the phones	Simpson: "Why do we even have." — "The cell phone? Reimbursement." — "Why doesn't the say you have its own business plan?" Then the arithmetic, across two turns: "I mean, I can do some really quick math and I mean, it's pretty petty, but it was it was was the question, I pay $2,052 a year for four lines. You're paying 2501 0000000 mean." — "You're essentially paying for their entire cell phone service." The answer the minutes credit to Petrin is institutional memory: "And I was on the board in the past, it went that way because people said, you know, who wants to carry around two cell phones and my own personal cell phone and the work cell phone." The chair closed it: "I think this is an easy, clean way to provide them the opportunity to do that."
0:26:08	A member does the arithmetic out loud and it reconciles	Simpson: "just going over increases in salaries on these eight sheets or whatever, you have 166,000." Then: "Yeah, $166,460. Just in salaries increase with an additional $86,640 in just health insurance increases". And the total: "Salary increases its $253,100. That to me is huge. And that's without even giving them a raise." Every one of those numbers is in Exhibit A. The salary increases for the superintendent's office, special-education administration, the business office, human resources and maintenance sum to $166,460.62; the health-insurance increases for the superintendent's office, the business office and human resources sum to $86,641.17; together, $253,101.79. See flag 18.	POSITIVE
0:27:09	And the raises are still to come	The chair: "So the the raises have not been determined at this point. That was the motion that was going to come up tonight regarding that." Pratt: "So these will be adjusted when we decide on what the actual raises would be." Henry: "I would yes, yes, definitely." The proposed budget already carries a raise assumption: the information-management salary line moves from $151,337.01 to $155,877.11, which is 3.00 percent. The minutes say so — "the projected increases include a 3% raise placeholder".	HIGH
0:27:30	The board halves its own consultant line	"If you look under, the school board expenses on the first page of the proposed budget, there is a, a $10,000 proposed budget for contracted services. We did use contracted services in the past to help us develop our goals and action plans. I ask the board, do you believe that we need that much money". A member: "Some of that contracted services was to work with superintendent on evaluation." The chair: "That was the $5,000 that was in there. That amount has been doubled." Two members answer "I don't think we need." and "It, I don't either." Henry: "Yeah. You haven't used anything." The chair: "So I would suggest that we just leave it at five five." Exhibit A confirms the doubling exactly: School Board Contracted Services paid $5,000.00 in FY24 and is budgeted at $10,000.00 for FY25 and FY26.	POSITIVE
0:29:16	The board gives away the power the statute gives it	Ruggeri: "I'd like to make a motion." — "To give the superintendent the authority to give six staff, raise increases per his discretion for fiscal year 2526. Between the two and a half, 3% second." The chair: "Any discussion on the motion? All in favor?" — and there was none. The minutes: "Rocco Ruggeri made a motion to give the Superintendent authority to give SAU staff raise increases at his discretion to between 2.5%-3%, Heather Whitney seconded the motion; voice vote taken, all present voting in favor with the exception of Kelly Simpson who opposed; the motion passed." RSA 194-C:5, III: "The school board of each school administrative unit shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel." See flag 1.	HIGH
0:29:39	The superintendent's contract, deferred in one sentence	Straight after the vote: "And we have to schedule another meeting for us to meet to review budget. We will also need a nonpublic before that meeting as well. We also have to go over the superintendent's contract, which we did not have a chance to discuss tonight." The minutes carry it too. This is the whole of the contract's appearance on the November record, in the month when a December agenda item would be prepared — and the September packet's proposed pre-populated agenda had put "Review Superintendent Contract for renewal every 2 - 3 years(due next in 2025)" under December. Neither December agenda carries it. See flag 8.	MEDIUM
0:30:01	Choosing a date around Unity's calendar	"So we need a date. And I looked at the possibilities, trying to keep in mind Unity's meeting as well. December 3rd, 5th or 10th December." Henry: "December the 10th is Unity's right." Ruggeri: "So third of the fifth. Would a Thursday just be better for consistency purposes or Tuesday any better for anyone? I'm available both." The chair: "I prefer the third. Oh it's a Tuesday. But how does that work for the administration?" Pratt: "Make it work." The 3 December meeting was noticed and packeted, and then failed for want of a quorum; no minutes of it exist anywhere.
0:31:45	Spend the whole surplus, and lower the tax rate	Henry: "you guys didn't tell me how much on that fund balance, though. Were you looking at a certain amount or were you what? What would it be? The benefit if we can't give it back to the taxpayers?" The answer the minutes credit to Whitney: "It reduces the tax burden, right? I would retain at all if it's going to reduce the tax rate. Okay. That's what I would do." Pratt: "I agree." Henry: "So take the full 180 out of your surplus." The chair's safety net: "if we are in difficulty during the year, we still can come back and we can figure it out and we'll balance our budget." Consensus, no motion, no vote.
0:33:23	So the real number is not 180,000	Pratt: "So can I ask a clarifying question. So some of the money is coming from grants then the real number isn't really 180,000." Henry: "No it's 305 okay. Yeah but I can't I can't go in and reduce a salary line by 50,000 or some other line by 75, because it's not showing the actual budget, the expenditures, but the revenue side of it will offset it." The chair asked for something the packet had not contained: "maybe when you send some of the budget information to just give us a, a brief summary so that I can understand it, because I tend to need a lot of help and understanding the financial component of this." Henry undertook to send it by Friday 22 November.	OBSERVATION
0:35:19	Seven policies in one motion	The mover, whom the minutes name as Heather Whitney, reads the slate across seven short segments: "Motion to adopt the following." — "Policies as written say." — "Policies BED." — B. — "Policy HAC." — "Policy GBEAA policy GBEAB policy GBEB and policy k e." — "And finally policy." — K. — E b. The chair records the second: "As written. And Tanya seconded it and discussion on the motion. Rocco." The transcript loses the leading letters of two codes; the agenda's list is BEDB, EHAC, GBEAA, GBEAB, GBEB, KE and KEE.	MEDIUM
0:36:07	The one question that changed an outcome	Ruggeri: "The public complaint policy key. After reading the policy k e of the website availability, which I understand. References. A Ada law, a requirement. The KEE website availability has a timeline for response with a complaint or a concern that submitted to the superintendent of the saw. I'm just wondering if the public complaint policy should have a timeline for, responding, receipt of the complaint or follow up with that policy as well." He is right on the documents: KEE sets five working days to contact a complainant, fifteen to complete an investigation and five more to report; KE sets no timeline at all. Whitney amended her own motion: "I'd like to make a friendly amendment to my motion and to remove policy, K from the adoption and move policy." — "K e." — "To a second read with consideration of response timeline to public complaint."	POSITIVE
0:38:52	A policy adopted with both of its alternatives still in it	Ruggeri: "So policy GBEAB had in there to pick out an option." A member of the policy subcommittee answers: "The option was and this is the recommendation that the committee made. But we I couldn't find my notes maybe made orally and then supplemented with a written report within two business days. That was the option that the committee went with and I could not find it. I did ask the superintendent afterwards." The chair, per the minutes, "noted that the committee had two options and forgot to remove the second option (will be removed in the final copy)". The document the board then adopted still reads "CHOOSE EITHER" and prints both alternatives, and the choice exists only in the minutes.	MEDIUM
0:40:20	Six policies adopted, one voice vote, no count	"All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor of adopting the motion with the friendly amendment, say I, I opposed abstention. Thank you very much." The minutes: "Voice vote taken, all present voting in favor; policies included are adopted." Six policies at a single first reading, on one motion, in five minutes and one second of floor time.	MEDIUM
0:41:47	The seal review, thirteen months after the statute created it	"New item number four sealing unsealing previously sealed minutes. This is something we need to take a vote on. The board did review previously sealed minutes and has agreed to unseal the minutes from the following dates July 13th, 2018 June 14th, 2018. May 10th, 2018. July 17th, 2018." Then: "April 13th, 2023. May 11th, 2023. July 31st, 2023 I'll get you these dates if you don't have them. And August 17th at 2023." Eight sets: four from 2018, four from 2023, and nothing from 2024. Three of the 2023 dates are SAU 6 meetings this project has mapped; the fourth, 31 July 2023, is a meeting with a packet folder, no recording and no section in the map.	POSITIVE HIGH
0:42:17	Moved, seconded, and voted in public	"Do I have a motion? I would like to make a motion to unseal the minutes as itemized, per Arlene Hawkins." — the mover's third-person reference showing this is not the chair speaking; the minutes name Heather Whitney, with Candace Crawford seconding. "All in favor?" · "Aye." · "Opposed? Abstention." The vote was taken in public session, which is what RSA 91-A:3, II(m) requires — the exemption the board used for the deliberation ends "However, any vote on whether to disclose minutes shall take place in public session", and the draft minutes print that sentence in full.	POSITIVE
0:42:43	Seventy-two hours, and a name to do it	"These minutes will be posted within 72 hours on the website. So I'll talk to Chelsea." The minutes: "the minutes will be unsealed and posted on the website within 72 hours". That deadline is the board's own policy BEDG — "If the Board votes to disclose/unseal, the minutes shall be available for release to the public within 72 hours" — and it tracks RSA 91-A:3, III. None of the eight sets has been located in any district Drive share. See flag 6.	MEDIUM
0:44:20	Unity: the report is with the state, and the date is 2026	Ruggeri: "The Community Planning committee met on September 26th and included to submit the report to the state in favor of Unity's withdrawal from the SA six. Two weeks later, the report was sent to the state, I believe, October 8th." Then: "They had their board state board meeting today to review many items as well as our planning committee withdrawal report. So that's all I have at this time. The next step would be the state provides feedback and or approves." The chair: "So either way, we are continuing as an saw, working as a board, developing our budget and policies." And Ruggeri's closing sentence, which appears nowhere else in this corpus: "So if the if the town voted in favor, the unity would still be part of Siu six until July 1st, 2026."	OBSERVATION
0:45:46	Every board member is now on the emergency texts, by announcement	"There is a contact information system within the SA where the superintendent can send out, I believe it's texts in the event of an incident that may occur. We are now part of that contact information system so that every member of the board will be receiving a text, as the staff would." Two instructions follow: opt out through the central office, and "if you get a text about an incident, please contact either myself or either local chair for the local districts. Please do not contact the superintendent or anyone in that office because they will be very busy." Simpson pushed back twice, and Henry made the case for keeping Unity on it: "It may it may be though like the active shooter." — "It would affect unity students who go to Stevens High School. So just to consider it." No motion and no vote on any of it.
0:47:29	Adjournment, and then a second meeting nobody filmed	"Do I have a motion to adjourn any other future business? Other business? Without a motion to adjourn?" A second is audible before any motion is; the minutes name Whitney moving and Sprague seconding. The recording ends nineteen seconds later. The Claremont School Board's own draft minutes then record a separate meeting of that board, in the same room, called to order at 8:16 p.m., which went into nonpublic session at 8:19 and adjourned at 9:00. There is no recording of it, no packet folder, and no minutes of its nonpublic session. See flag 3.	HIGH

Items flagged for review

Flags are a reviewer's aid produced by comparing what happened at this meeting against state and federal law as it stood on 14 November 2024. They are not findings of violation, they are not legal advice, and they may be incomplete or wrong. Every rule-based flag names and links the provision it rests on; where no verified rule reaches a concern it is labelled an observation and says so. Positives are included because an evenhanded record is the point.

HIGH The board handed the superintendent the power to set next year's staff raises — a power RSA 194-C:5, III gives to this board, and to no one else

The motion came late in the budget item, unlisted on the agenda, and passed without a word of discussion. Rocco Ruggeri, at 0:29:16: "To give the superintendent the authority to give six staff, raise increases per his discretion for fiscal year 2526. Between the two and a half, 3% second." The draft minutes render it in cleaner terms and record the vote: "Rocco Ruggeri made a motion to give the Superintendent authority to give SAU staff raise increases at his discretion to between 2.5%-3%, Heather Whitney seconded the motion; voice vote taken, all present voting in favor with the exception of Kelly Simpson who opposed; the motion passed."

The statute puts that decision here. RSA 194-C:5, III: "The school board of each school administrative unit shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel, shall apportion the expense of the salaries and benefits among the several districts, and shall certify the apportionment to their respective treasurers and to the state board of education." The verb is shall, the subject is the board, and the object is all school administrative unit personnel. Nothing in chapter 194-C authorises the board to delegate it. The board knows where the power sits: on 12 September 2024, on Frank Sprague's motion, it amended its own policy BBBH-S so that its statement of its powers reads "Fix the salaries and benefits of all SAU personnel." Two months later it gave the discretion away.

Three things cut the other way and belong in the same paragraph. The band is narrow and the board set it: half a percentage point, from 2.5 to 3. The proposed budget already assumed the top of it — the information-management salary line moves from $151,337.01 to $155,877.11, exactly 3.00 percent, and the minutes say the projected increases "include a 3% raise placeholder" — so the delegation could only reduce the number the board was being asked to fund. And the board still had to adopt the budget that carried the result, which it did on 12 December; at that meeting the chair moved the superintendent's own increase as a separate motion of the board, so the delegation as executed did not reach the person exercising it. What the record does not contain is any of that as a limit. The motion as moved and as minuted says SAU staff with no exception, nobody asked whether it covered the mover's own delegate, and no member asked what the statute said.

Graded HIGH because this is a completed act rather than a proposal, because it disposes of the one statutory power that is unambiguously this board's alone, and because the record contains not one sentence of discussion — the chair asks "Any discussion on the motion?" and moves straight to the vote. The single No is Kelly Simpson's, recorded in the minutes and not audible as a count on the tape.

Sources: RSA 194-C:5, III — 1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996, never amended; 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes; Exhibit A — SAU FY26 Proposed Budget V1; Exhibit C — Revision BBBH-S (12 September 2024 packet); companion page SAU 6 Board — September 12, 2024.

HIGH The seal review the board's own policy requires left no public record of its own, the register that policy requires has never been published, and the one seal whose stated term had already expired was not on the list

This is the meeting at which the SAU 6 board became, so far as this corpus shows, the first public body in Claremont to carry out the review RSA 91-A:3, IV(a) contemplates. That is a real achievement and it is flag 17. What follows is the machinery around it, which does not hold up.

The reviewing body's own step has no public record. Policy BEDG, adopted at second read on 12 September 2024, makes the Policy Committee the "Reviewing Designee" and provides: "If the Reviewing Designee is a committee of more than one, then the initial review of sealed minutes shall be conducted in non-public session pursuant to RSA 91-A:3, II (m), but only in a duly noticed meeting in full compliance with RSA 91-A:2." The SAU 6 policy subcommittee seated on 11 April 2024 is three people — Candace Crawford, Kelly Simpson and the chair — so the condition is met. The chair announced it on the 12 September recording, three quarters of an hour into that meeting: "the policy committee has a meeting scheduled for October 2nd. And based on the new policy regarding meeting minutes, we are going to review the log of nonpublic minutes that have been sealed, and we will come forward to the full board with the recommendation of those minutes that have been sealed that we feel should be unsealed." No notice, agenda, minutes or recording of that meeting exists in any district share. A subcommittee is a public body in its own right — RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) reaches "any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof" — and RSA 91-A:2, II gives it five business days to make minutes available. Nothing said on 14 November names the date the review happened, and nothing says minutes of it exist elsewhere. Applying the severity rule this project uses, the unmitigated limb is the right one: either a public body met and left no trace, or the board's own procedure was not followed, and the record does not say which.

The register does not exist either. BEDG D.4 directs the superintendent to maintain a "Sealed Minutes List" for every nonpublic session after 1 July 2021, carrying eight specified fields including "The date, if any stated in the original motion or subsequently, on which the sealed minutes will be unsealed", and provides that "the updated List shall be made as soon as practicable for public disclosure." No such list has been located in the SAU 6 packets share, in the Claremont Meeting Minutes share, or in any packet. Without it, a member of the public cannot tell what remains sealed or when any of it comes up for review.

And the policy sets a deadline that had passed before the policy existed. BEDG D.5.a directs the compilation of a "Record of Minutes Sealed Before 10/3/2023" and provides that it "shall be completed no later than May 1, 2024." The policy's own history block records its first reading on 11 April 2024 and it was adopted at second read on 12 September 2024 — 134 days after the deadline it imposes. A duty that expired before it was enacted cannot be performed, and no version of the Record has been published.

The omission that matters. On 11 April 2024 this board sealed the minutes of its nonpublic session in these words, from its own draft minutes: "Arlene Hawkins made a motion to seal the minutes for six months to allow time for the negotiations to finish, Heather Whitney seconded; Roll call vote taken by Ben Nester, all present voting in favor." Six months from 11 April 2024 is 11 October 2024. The eight sets released on 14 November are dated 2018 and 2023; nothing from 2024 is on the list, and the 11 April minutes are not among them. On the board's own terms the seal had run out thirty-four days before this meeting, at a meeting whose whole fourth item was sealed minutes. Whether a term stated in the sealing motion lapses of itself, or needs a further vote to lift, is not settled by the text of RSA 91-A:3, III — which says only that information "may be withheld until, in the opinion of a majority of members, the aforesaid circumstances no longer apply". Either way, no vote extending it appears anywhere on this record, and the negotiations the seal was to protect had produced a superintendent the board had already recognised in September.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3 — II(m) (consideration of whether to disclose sealed minutes; any vote to disclose "shall take place in public session"), III (72-hour disclosure; sealing by recorded 2/3 vote taken in public session; withholding "until, in the opinion of a majority of members, the aforesaid circumstances no longer apply"), IV(a) (a body "may adopt procedures to review minutes of meetings held in nonpublic session and to determine by majority vote whether the circumstances that justified keeping meeting minutes from the public under RSA 91-A:3, III no longer apply") and IV(b) (the ten-year backstop) — ¶IV and II(m) added by 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023; RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); RSA 91-A:2, II; Policy BEDG: Meeting Minutes (12 September 2024 packet, second read); 4.11.24 draft SAU 6 minutes; the 12 September announcement is on show 16011 and on the companion page SAU 6 Board — April 11, 2024.

HIGH A second board meeting was held the same night in the same room — forty minutes of it in nonpublic session — with no recording, no packet, no map entry, and no minutes of the closed session anywhere

The Claremont School Board's own draft minutes for 14 November 2024 record a meeting at the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center that is not in this project's map, has no Cablecast show, and has no packet folder in the district's 2024 packets share. In full, the business it records is: call to order 8:16 p.m.; roll — Heather Whitney, Frank Sprague, Arlene Hawkins, Candace Crawford and Michael Petrin present, Bonnie Miles and Whitney Skillen absent; the agenda approved by consent; a motion into nonpublic session by Whitney, seconded by Sprague, roll call taken by the clerk; "Move into non-public at 8:19pm"; a motion out, again Whitney and Sprague; "Return to public meeting at 8:59pm"; and "Consent adjournment" at 9:00. Five of the seven people in that room had spent the previous two hours at the SAU 6 meeting on this page.

No motion to seal appears in those minutes. RSA 91-A:3, III then applies without qualification: "Minutes and decisions reached in nonpublic session shall be publicly disclosed within 72 hours of the meeting", unless sealed "by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session". No such vote is recorded and no minutes of the closed session exist in the Claremont packets share, the Claremont Meeting Minutes share or its Unsealed Minutes subtree. Forty minutes of a public body's business, conducted behind a closed door under exemptions the minutes themselves misletter, has left no record of what was decided.

The paperwork misletters its own exemption. The motion is minuted as being "under RSA 91-A: 3, II (a & d)". Beneath it the minutes print two texts, labelled (a) and (b). The second reads "Consideration of the acquisition, sale, or lease of real or personal property" — which is subparagraph (d). Subparagraph (b) is the hiring of a public employee. The (a) text is also garbled away from the statute, reading "or investigation or changes of a public employee" where RSA 91-A:3, II(a) reads "or the investigation of any charges against him or her". This is the same class of defect this project has tracked through this district's paperwork since December 2023.

There is no recording, and it is not an outage. Cablecast shows 16143 through 16154 — the whole run between this meeting's show and the 19 November finance meeting's — were retrieved individually and are other programming: White House Chronicle, Cinemaniacs, a Veterans Day programme, City Council 11/13/24, Democracy Now, church services, and a travelogue whose own event date is 14 November 2024. CCTV was operating that day. The district's 2024 packets share holds no folder for a 14 November Claremont meeting; the sequence runs 7. CSB 11.6.24 to 8. CSB 11.20.24, and the draft minutes were filed in the latter.

Graded HIGH on the unmitigated limb: a public body met, transacted forty minutes of closed business, took no vote to seal, and its record of that business exists nowhere. Nothing on any record explains the absence. It is another 2024 session outside this project's corpus, joining the seven already on that list: the 29 January working session, 3 April, 1 May, the 11 May retreat, 22 May, 7 August, and the meeting between 20 June and 7 August that failed for want of a quorum. The SAU 6 board's own retreat of 29 May 2024 is an eighth of the same kind.

Sources: draft CSB Meeting Minutes 11.14.24.pdf, in the Claremont packet folder 8. CSB 11.20.24; RSA 91-A:3, II(a), II(b), II(d) and III; RSA 91-A:2, II; Cablecast show metadata for ids 16142–16155, retrieved 2026-08-29 from the CLAREMONT SCHOOLS gallery's API.

MEDIUM Six policies adopted on one motion at a single first reading, every one of them still carrying its publisher's instruction to delete the sample text before adoption, and two of them leaving the responsible officer as a blank

Policies BEDB, EHAC, GBEAA, GBEAB, GBEB and KEE were adopted at 0:40:20 on a single voice vote with no count, five minutes and one second after the motion was made. Each was listed on the agenda as a first read. The seventh, KE, was pulled to a second read on Rocco Ruggeri's question, which is flag 22.

Every one of the six is the New Hampshire School Boards Association's sample text with the sample scaffolding still attached. Each opens with an "ADOPTION/REVISION NOTES" block whose first line is: "Text between the highlighted lines '~ ~ ~', and highlights in this sample should be removed prior to adoption." Each ends with the NHSBA copyright disclaimer and its advice that districts "should consult with legal counsel and revise all sample policies and regulations to address local facts and circumstances prior to adoption." And each carries a "District Policy History" block whose two lines — "First reading:" and "Second reading/adopted:" — are blank, so the adopted documents record no date of adoption at all. GBEB adds a contradiction of its own: it is headed "Status: ADOPTED" while its history block is empty.

Two of the blanks are substantive, not cosmetic.

GBEAB, Mandatory Code of Conduct Reporting. The policy's purpose is a reporting channel that does not run through the superintendent when the superintendent is the subject. The adopted text: "If the person who is the subject of the alleged misconduct/violation is the Superintendent, then the Covered Individual shall report the suspected violation to the [_______Business Administrator/ Human Resources Director {note: the titled administrator should be the most senior level SAU administrator who is not the superintendent}]". Nobody is named. The same document also retains both of its alternative provisions under a heading reading "CHOOSE EITHER" and the drafting note "[OPTIONAL PROVISIONS – the Code of Conduct does not require the initial report to be in writing…]" — the defect Ruggeri raised at 0:38:52 and which the minutes dispose of with "Arlene Hawkins noted that the committee had two options and forgot to remove the second option (will be removed in the final copy)". The board's choice therefore exists only in the minutes; the adopted instrument states two rules.
KEE, Website Accessibility and Grievance. "The Board designates the [identify the person who shall be responsible for correct processing of complaints or grievances, e.g., the Superintendent, BA, HR head] as the Website Accessibility Compliance Coordinator." No coordinator is designated, and the policy then routes every complaint, every five-working-day contact and every fifteen-working-day investigation to that unfilled office. 28 CFR 35.107 has required a public entity with fifty or more employees to designate at least one ADA compliance coordinator and to "adopt and publish grievance procedures providing for prompt and equitable resolution" of complaints since 1991. The grievance procedure is here and it is a good one; the person is missing.

What this flag is not. It is not a claim that SAU 6 is out of compliance with the Department of Justice web-accessibility rule. That rule's compliance dates had not arrived in November 2024 and have not arrived yet — they were pushed to 2027 and 2028 by a 2026 amendment — so adopting KEE in 2024 puts this board ahead of the deadline, and the policy's own note says so. The flag is about the state of the documents the board voted into force.

Graded MEDIUM on the mitigating limb: the substance of all six is sound, they were in the packet six days ahead, two members read them closely enough to find real defects, and the chair undertook on the record that GBEAB's surplus option would come out of "the final copy". What is absent is any second reading at which that would be checked, and any record that the copies now in force differ from the copies in the packet.

Sources: packet exhibits B (BEDB), C (EHAC), D (GBEAA), E (GBEAB), F (GBEB), G (KE) and H (KEE); 28 CFR 35.107 (Order No. 1512-91, 56 FR 35716, July 26, 1991); 28 CFR 35.200 — published at 89 FR 31320, effective 24 April 2024, compliance dates amended by 91 FR 20912 (20 April 2026) to 26 April 2027 and 26 April 2028, so no compliance date had arrived on this meeting's date and none has arrived since; 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes.

MEDIUM The minutes reached the public on the nineteenth business day, and no SAU 6 minutes in any district share have ever been in approved form

RSA 91-A:2, II requires that minutes "shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting", and defines a business day as 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday excluding national and state holidays. The Drive createdTime of a file is the moment it became visible in the district's public share, and this page rests the finding on it.

This meeting. Fifth business day: 21 November 2024. The draft minutes reached the share on 12 December 2024 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern — the 19th business day, 28 calendar days, and about two and a half hours before the meeting that would approve them. The arithmetic excludes Thanksgiving, 28 November 2024, under RSA 288:1; the day after Thanksgiving is not a legal holiday in New Hampshire and is counted. The file's modifiedTime is 115 seconds after its createdTime, an upload artefact that rescues nothing.
The mechanism is structural, not accidental. The minutes were filed inside the packet folder for the next meeting, as every set of SAU 6 minutes in this corpus is. A clerk who finishes promptly still cannot publish until the following packet is assembled — and where two meetings are eight days apart, as 14 and 21 November were, both sets wait for December.
No approved-form SAU 6 minutes exist anywhere. Every SAU 6 minutes file located in either district share is a draft. These were approved on 12 December; the approved version has not been published.

Graded MEDIUM on the mitigating limb — the minutes exist, they are unusually complete, they name the mover and seconder of every motion as RSA 91-A:2, II requires, and they record a dissent and an abstention the recording does not preserve. The 2025 amendment adding start and end times to the required contents of minutes took effect 22 August 2025 and is not applied to this 2024 meeting.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II — mover/seconder clause 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019; current paragraph 2023, 188:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023; start-time and end-time additions 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025 and not applied here; RSA 288:1 (legal holidays); Drive file metadata for 11.14.24 DRAFT SAU6 minutes (1).pdf, retrieved 2026-08-29.

MEDIUM Nine sets of minutes were made public by this board's own votes on this night, and not one of them has been located

Two separate seventy-two-hour duties were engaged at this meeting, and both run from the same evening.

The nonpublic minutes the board declined to seal. Ruggeri moved a nine-year seal at 0:06:35, the room talked it down — "It's pretty. Generic to two sentences. Is that right?" — and the minutes record the outcome: "Mr. Ruggeri withdrew his motion, minutes were not sealed." RSA 91-A:3, III is then unconditional: "Minutes and decisions reached in nonpublic session shall be publicly disclosed within 72 hours of the meeting", the exception applying only where a recorded 2/3 vote taken in public session makes one of three findings. The board made none. The board's own policy BEDG says the same twice over: draft non-public minutes not sealed "must be available within 72 hours (3 calendar days) of the meeting", and "If the Board does not 'seal' the minutes of the non-public session, then such information must be disclosed to the public within 72 hours of the close of the meeting." The deadline was 17 November 2024. No minutes of this nonpublic session appear in the 21 November, 3 December or 12 December packet folders, in the Claremont Meeting Minutes share, or anywhere else located.

The eight sets the board voted to unseal. The chair, immediately after the vote: "These minutes will be posted within 72 hours on the website. So I'll talk to Chelsea." The minutes: "the minutes will be unsealed and posted on the website within 72 hours". BEDG: "If the Board votes to disclose/unseal, the minutes shall be available for release to the public within 72 hours." The eight are 13 July 2018, 14 June 2018, 10 May 2018, 17 July 2018, 13 April 2023, 11 May 2023, 31 July 2023 and 17 August 2023. None has been located.

Where the search went. The SAU 6 Schoolboard Packets share was enumerated at its root on 2026-08-29 — fourteen dated meeting folders and the 2022, 2023 and 2024 packet archives, with no folder for unsealed or nonpublic minutes of any kind. Drive API enumeration under-reports on these shared folders, and this project treats any negative drawn from it as provisional; the fourteen dated folders were separately inventoried folder by folder for this archive. The Claremont Meeting Minutes share holds no SAU 6 file of any kind; its Unsealed Minutes subtree contains three folders — 2025 Non-Public, 2026 Non-Public and 2027 Non-Public — with nothing for 2018, 2023 or 2024, and the subtree itself was not created until 13 January 2025, two months after this vote. The honest limit: the destination the chair named is the SAU 6 website, and the site as it stood in 2024 cannot be inspected from here. So this is not published where this project can reach it, and not recoverable rather than never posted.

Graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH on that limit, and because on the unsealed eight the board's act was one of disclosure rather than concealment. The unmitigated part is the nonpublic minutes of this very meeting: the board expressly chose not to seal them, which under the statute makes them public documents, and they exist nowhere the public can see.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III (72-hour disclosure; sealing only "by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session") — 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023; Policy BEDG, paragraphs C.3, D.2 and D.3; 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes.

MEDIUM The nonpublic session occupies forty-six seconds of a recording with no gap in it, and the room's next meeting began fifty-seven minutes after the recording ends

The chair's last words before the door closed and her first words after it opened are 46 seconds apart: "Motion passes. And for those. Thank you. Watching the public. The public meeting will continue after the non public session. Thank you. Okay. We're going to retire" at 0:04:59, and "So do we have a motion to return to public session Mr. Sprague" at 0:05:45. The dialogue file contains no gap longer than two seconds anywhere in the recording, so there is no silence to locate a longer session in. The posted agenda had scheduled the session from 6:40 to 7:00 p.m.

Two readings are open, and the recording does not choose between them.

The session really was about a minute long. Two things on the tape fit this. The seal discussion describes the resulting minutes as "pretty. Generic to two sentences", which is a short session's product. And at 0:29:39 the chair says the board "also have to go over the superintendent's contract, which we did not have a chance to discuss tonight" — so at least one of the two noticed subjects was not reached.
The broadcast is spliced and the true length is unrecoverable. The board went in under RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and (m) — compensation of a public employee, and whether to disclose eight sets of sealed minutes going back to 2018. Forty-six seconds is not enough time to do the second of those at all. And there is a district-side clock reference: the Claremont School Board's own minutes put its meeting, in this same room, at 8:16 p.m. The SAU 6 chair opens with "Good evening at 630", the Cablecast API gives this show a run time of 2,920 seconds, and 6:30 p.m. plus 48 minutes 40 seconds is about 7:19 p.m. That leaves fifty-seven minutes between the end of this recording and the call to order of the next meeting in the same room — almost exactly the length by which a spliced nonpublic session would have to be short.

What this page does not do is decide it. This project has established that frame-difference analysis cannot distinguish a splice from a multi-camera cut on these recordings, and that a continuous transcript across a closed session is evidence of an edit rather than of a continuous feed — the same pattern appears on the 7 December 2023 SAU 6 recording, where the chair announces a ten-minute recess and the board is back forty-five recording-seconds later. The consequences either way are real and worth stating: after the return to public session at 0:05:45, recording position is not a clock time, so nothing on this page infers an adjournment hour from the tape, and the true duration of a closed session of this public body is not recoverable from any public record. What would settle it is the raw CCTV log for 14 November 2024, or a district-side clock reference for the SAU 6 adjournment — which the minutes do not supply, because they give no times at all.

Sources: Output/Dialogue/16142 SAU6111424.mp4.CSV (434 rows; maximum inter-row gap under two seconds, computed 2026-08-29); Cablecast show 16142 total run time 2,920 s, from the gallery's own API; SAU#6 School Board Agenda 11.14.24; draft CSB Meeting Minutes 11.14.24 (8:16 p.m. call to order); RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and II(m).

MEDIUM Four people described the terms of the superintendent's contract; the contract is in no public share; and the review the board's own planning document set for December was deferred and then never scheduled

Christopher Pratt was appointed interim superintendent on 11 January 2024 with the terms of his contract left to the chair and counsel to settle later, made permanent in May and formally recognised by this board on 12 September 2024 by announcement rather than by vote. No executed employment contract, and no vote approving one, has been located in any of the SAU 6 packet folders. This meeting is the first at which the contract's contents are discussed in public, and they are discussed as settled facts by people who have not produced the document.

The superintendent, at 0:20:04: "for myself and Assistant Superintendent Kosky, that is that it's in the contract of that stipend, but everyone else, you know, turns in their mileage".
The chair, disagreeing about the scope: "No, it is 2500 for the assistant superintendent, the director of technology and special ed, just those people." The superintendent adds "And human resources." The business administrator contradicts him: "But but the HR person doesn't get a blank mount. No no."
The business administrator, at 0:18:06, on the chair's $500 discrepancy: "We'll go back and look at his contract."
The chair, at 0:29:39: "We also have to go over the superintendent's contract, which we did not have a chance to discuss tonight."

The December that was supposed to take it up did not. Exhibit G of the 12 September packet — the proposed pre-populated agenda, received but never read aloud — lists under December: "Review Superintendent Contract for renewal every 2 - 3 years(due next in 2025)". That is still the only document in this corpus implying an executed contract with a term. November is the month a December item is prepared, and what November produced was the one deferring sentence above. Neither December agenda carries a contract item: the 3 December agenda runs call to order, general business, a nonpublic session under (a), budget discussion, future dates, other business, adjournment; the 12 December budget-hearing agenda runs the hearing, the budget approval and the second read of policy KE. The 3 December meeting then failed for want of a quorum and left no minutes at all.

Graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH: nothing here is concealed, the discussion happened in open session, the chair herself flagged the gap and put the contract on the December list out loud, and RSA 91-A:5, IV permits (it does not require) a public body to withhold personnel records. What the record lacks is the instrument. A board that fixes salaries under RSA 194-C:5, III, and that on this night delegated the fixing of everyone else's, is working from a document its own members describe inconsistently and the public has never seen.

Sources: Exhibit G — SAU 6 School Board Agenda Proposed Recurring items 8.25.24; SAU#6 School Board Agenda 12.3.24; SAU6 Budget Public Hearing agenda 12.12.24; RSA 194-C:5, III; RSA 91-A:5, IV (permissive, not prohibitory; 2022, 122:3, eff. May 27, 2022); companion page SAU 6 Board — September 12, 2024.

MEDIUM The posted agenda noticed one nonpublic exemption and the board used two different ones — and the meeting's most consequential item was added to the agenda after the public had stopped reading it

The exemption. The agenda posted to the district's public share on 8 November heads item III "6:40 PM Non-Public Meeting Session 91-A:3" and then quotes, in full and accurately, subparagraph (c): "Matters which, if discussed in public, would likely affect adversely the reputation of any person, other than a member of the public body itself…". The motion the chair actually made, at 0:03:59, was "under RSA 91. Dash a colon 3.2 A and M", and the minutes head the item with the texts of II(a) and II(m). Those are different grounds reaching different subjects: (c) protects a third party's reputation, (a) covers the compensation of a public employee, and (m) is the consideration of whether to disclose sealed minutes. A citizen reading the notice would have had no reason to attend, and no way to know that the board proposed to decide the fate of eight sets of sealed minutes.

RSA 91-A:2, II does not require an agenda — it requires notice of the time and place — so this is not a statutory notice violation, and the page does not treat it as one. Two things nonetheless bear on it. The board's own policy BEDB, adopted later the same evening, contemplates exactly this practice: "This shall not preclude the Board from giving notice of its intent to hold or enter into a non-public session and the statutory reason for doing such." And the agenda continues this board's long habit of citing the exemption without the paragraph it lives in: all thirteen live grounds are in RSA 91-A:3, II, and the agenda prints 91-A:3 and then a bare (c). Three SAU 6 agendas in 2023–24 cited a chapter that does not exist at all, and the 11 April 2024 agenda got the paragraph right.

What the board did right. RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires that the motion "state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II" and that "The vote on any such motion shall be by roll call". Both were done: the chair named the two subparagraphs in the motion, the superintendent called the roll, and the minutes record it.

The agenda additions. Both items the chair added at 0:01:27 — the sealed-minutes vote and the contact information system — were absent from the posted agenda, and one of them is the reason this meeting matters. BEDB, again adopted later the same evening, expressly permits it: "Items of business not on the agenda may be discussed and acted upon if a majority of the Board agrees to consider them", subject to a carve-out for revising or adopting Board policies. A majority did agree, by voice vote. The observation stands anyway: the public's six days of notice covered an agenda that did not contain the vote.

Sources: SAU#6 School Board Agenda 11.14.24; RSA 91-A:3 — I(b), II(a), II(c), II(m); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice of time and place, at least 24 hours excluding Sundays and legal holidays); Policy BEDB; 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes.

OBSERVATION The same year-to-date review was missing for the second meeting running, and the audit timeline the board had asked for was missing too

On 12 September the agenda item "Global review of actual to budgeted 24-25 budget" was listed and not delivered; the business administrator said so at the table. At 0:02:19 on 14 November the chair amended the September minutes to record the failure: "to include that the board did not actually receive the global review of actual to budgeted 2425 budget as listed in that agenda." Five minutes later she found it missing again, along with a second document: "I had requested that be part of the packet last week, along with the timeline for a presentation of audits. So those are not in the packet?" The answer: "No. The audits I can talk about, but I didn't put something together for it."

The draft minutes are unusually candid about it. They add two sub-items the posted agenda does not carry — "b. YTD 24-25" and "c. Timeline for presentation of SAU audits" — and give each the same one-line disposition: "Not included in the Board packet." The audit timeline had been a standing future agenda item since 12 September, where the September minutes record it as "Timeline for Audit reporting by auditors - Nov." It became a future agenda item again on 14 November.

Labelled an observation because no located rule requires an SAU board's packet to contain any particular document. It is recorded because it is the second consecutive meeting at which this board asked for a mid-year financial picture and did not get one, and because the meeting that was to fix it — 3 December — never achieved a quorum.

Sources: 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes; 9.12.24 draft SAU 6 minutes; SAU#6 School Board Agenda 11.14.24.

OBSERVATION The figure the room called a 7.23 percent increase is the increase after revenue; the increase in spending is 12.25 percent

Exhibit A's own bottom block, printed on the last page:

Budget Totals — FY23 actual $1,771,416.90; FY24 actual $2,334,194.33; FY25 budget $2,489,151.00; FY26 proposed $2,794,151.54; increase $305,000.54.
Then: "Additional Revenue from Contracted Services -($50,000.00)"; "Indirect Costs -($75,000.00)"; "-($125,000.00)".
Then: "Total Budget Increase $180,000.54"; "Total Budget % Increase 7.23%".

$180,000.54 on $2,489,151.00 is 7.23 percent, so the sheet's own arithmetic is right. But the line is labelled Total Budget % Increase and it is not the increase in the budget — $305,000.54 on $2,489,151.00 is 12.25 percent, and that is what the board is being asked to appropriate. The two revenue lines are printed, so nothing is concealed; what is missing is the second percentage. The room worked with the smaller one throughout — "it says here a total budget increase of 7.23%, which would put people into panic", and then a further reduction — "we're not looking at more than 2.5% increase" — once the fund balance is applied — and the superintendent had to ask the question that surfaces the gap: "So some of the money is coming from grants then the real number isn't really 180,000." The answer, at 0:33:23: "No it's 305 okay."

Labelled an observation because RSA 194-C:9 prescribes no budget form and RSA 32:5's gross-basis and comparative-column requirements run to towns, districts and village districts — RSA 32:1 does not name school administrative units. The exhibit in fact does what RSA 32:5, III and IV would ask of a district budget: it shows two years of actuals, the current appropriation and the proposal side by side. The label on one line is the whole of the point.

Sources: Exhibit A — SAU FY26 Proposed Budget V1; RSA 194-C:9; RSA 32:1 and RSA 32:5, III and IV.

OBSERVATION Three fiscal years remain unaudited, the audit line has spent nothing in two consecutive closed years, and the surplus the board voted to spend is therefore unverified

At 0:13:20 the business administrator gave the board its surplus figure with a qualification attached: "Right now we have probably a little over $300,000 in there as your surplus that is sitting for whatever you want to do… because of course, we haven't been audited on the other three years that I have listed." Twenty minutes later the board resolved to apply $180,000 of it against the FY26 budget — by consensus, with no motion and no vote.

Exhibit A shows what the audit line has done. Business Office Auditors: FY23 actual $0.00; FY24 actual $0.00; FY25 budget $10,000.00; FY26 proposed $10,000.00. Two consecutive closed fiscal years in which nothing was spent on an audit. On the 12 September recording the board had been told the $10,000 was being carried as an encumbrance "because obviously that's something we're going to spend. I just don't know when." The timeline for presenting the audits was a future agenda item on 12 September, was requested for this packet, was not in it, and became a future agenda item again.

Labelled an observation and not a violation, deliberately. No located New Hampshire statute requires a school administrative unit to be audited. RSA 21-J:19 is permissive — it says a municipality may hire an auditor — and it names towns, school districts and village districts, not school administrative units; RSA 197:25 is a district fallback. The only located SAU audit duty is RSA 194-C:4, II(a), which lists audits among the services each SAU must provide. So this is a control weakness, and a material one where a board is spending an unaudited balance, rather than a missed statutory deadline.

Sources: Exhibit A — SAU FY26 Proposed Budget V1; RSA 21-J:19 (1985, 204:1; 2008, 174:1, eff. Aug. 10, 2008); RSA 197:25; RSA 194-C:4, II(a) (1996, 298:3; 2010, 5:2, eff. June 18, 2010).

OBSERVATION The apportionment between the two districts was described three different ways in ten weeks, and none of the three is the statutory formula

RSA 194-C:9, I is explicit: an SAU's expenses are apportioned "based 1/2 on the average membership in attendance for the previous school year and 1/2 on the most recently available equalized valuation". The number that follows determines what Unity and Claremont each pay, and it is the subject of Unity's withdrawal study.

4 September 2024. The Claremont board's Exhibit D told Unity "Current percentages are based on student population per district" — half the statutory formula, missing the valuation half. The business administrator corrected it aloud; the document was not changed and the minutes did not record the correction.
12 September 2024. Unity's share was given as 7.8 percent, about $193,000, down from 9.6–9.8 percent because Claremont's revaluation completed first — an account that at least depends on valuation.
14 November 2024, at 0:15:16: "If you take the 180,000 and you figure that the that, you guys pay, 90% of that unity pays 10% of that. Unity is looking at what, 18,000?"

The 90/10 is offered as a working estimate in the middle of a tax-rate calculation, and nothing turns on it directly — no vote was taken on apportionment at this meeting. It is recorded because the difference between 7.8 and 10 percent of a $2.79 million budget is about $61,000 a year to a town of Unity's size, because the same board is being asked to certify an apportionment to each district's board chairperson before 15 January, and because the withdrawal study now before the state turns on exactly this arithmetic.

Sources: RSA 194-C:9, I — apportionment formula and the certification "Prior to January 15 in each year… to the chairperson of the school board of each constituent school district"; 1996, 298:3; 2003, 279:1, eff. Sept. 16, 2003. That certification is a different duty from the one in RSA 194-C:5, III, which runs to the district treasurers and the state board of education. Two duties, two sets of recipients, two deadlines.

OBSERVATION The minutes give the budget public hearing a date the chair corrected on the tape thirteen minutes later — and it is a Saturday

At 0:16:38 the chair said "We need to have another meeting prior to the public hearing, which is the December 14th, I want to say" — the hedge is hers. At 0:30:01, working out the December date, the superintendent asked "The public hearing is when." and she answered: "the, the public hearing is the 12th." The draft minutes record only the first version: "Arlene Hawkins said there would be another meeting prior to the public hearing on December 14th."

The posted agenda's own Future Dates list gives "SAU#6 FY26 Budget Public Hearing/Meeting- 12/12/2024", the packet's September budget timeline gave 12 December, and the hearing was held on 12 December. December 14, 2024 was a Saturday. An observation rather than a flagged defect, but it belongs on the record because the corrected date is on the same recording the clerk was working from, and because this is the second document defect of the night that a reader of the minutes alone could not detect — the first being the two-option policy at flag 4.

Sources: 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes; SAU#6 School Board Agenda 11.14.24; SAU6 Budget Public Hearing agenda 12.12.24.

OBSERVATION A new statutory route to a different apportionment opened six weeks before this meeting, in the middle of the withdrawal study, and nobody mentioned it

RSA 194-C:9 acquired a fourth paragraph on 1 October 2024, by 2024, 329:1. Before that date the section ran to three paragraphs and the ½ average-membership, ½ equalized-valuation formula in ¶I was the only method available. ¶IV now provides that "the school administrative unit board may consider other methods" of apportionment, that "Any method of apportionment to be used shall have been approved by the constituent school districts", and that "the proposed method of apportionment shall be adopted only if there is a majority affirmative vote in each school district" — each, not overall, so neither district can be outvoted.

This board had before it, on the same evening, a budget whose apportionment was described three different ways (flag 13) and a Unity withdrawal report at the state board whose whole subject is whether Unity is getting value for its share. The new paragraph is not raised by anyone, and it is not in the packet. That is not a defect — a body is not obliged to use a permissive power, and six weeks is a short time for a statutory change to reach a volunteer board — but a reader of this record in later years should know the option existed from 1 October 2024 and that the March 2025 town vote proceeded without it having been discussed on this board's public record.

Sources: RSA 194-C:9, ¶IV — added by 2024, 329:1, eff. Oct. 1, 2024; the 2023 codification of the section, which has three paragraphs, is at Justia.

OBSERVATION Public comment opened and closed inside one sentence, with nobody in the room

At 0:03:59: "All right. Are there any citizens comments? Not seeing any citizens in the audience." The minutes: "Citizens Comments- none." The item is on the agenda, it was reached, and nobody was turned away or cut off.

RSA 189:74 requires a school board to "provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters at a meeting of the school board held under RSA 91-A:2" and provides that "The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes." Two questions the text does not answer keep this an observation rather than a flag. Whether the thirty minutes is a floor on elapsed time or on the opportunity offered is unsettled; and whether a section addressed to "the school board" reaches the joint board of a school administrative unit — a body RSA 194-C:5 calls "the school board of each school administrative unit" but which governs no schools — is a question no located authority answers. On the facts, no member of the public was present at any point in the recording.

Sources: RSA 189:74 (2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022); RSA 194-C:5, I.

POSITIVE This board did the sealed-minutes review the 2023 statute invited, released eight sets of nonpublic minutes, and took the vote in public where the statute requires it

RSA 91-A:3, IV(a) — new law as of 3 October 2023 — provides that "A public body or agency may adopt procedures to review minutes of meetings held in nonpublic session and to determine by majority vote whether the circumstances that justified keeping meeting minutes from the public under RSA 91-A:3, III no longer apply", and IV(b) sets a ten-year backstop after which unreviewed pre-existing minutes become "subject to public disclosure without further action of the public body". The word in IV(a) is may. A body that does nothing at all until October 2033 breaks no rule. This board adopted a procedure in September 2024 and used it in November 2024.

What it produced: eight sets of nonpublic minutes released — four from 2018 and four from 2023 — of which the oldest, 10 May 2018, had been sealed for six and a half years. The board deliberated in nonpublic under RSA 91-A:3, II(m), which is what that exemption is for, and then voted in public, which is what the same subparagraph requires: "However, any vote on whether to disclose minutes shall take place in public session." The draft minutes print that sentence in full at the head of the item, which means the clerk, at least, had read it. The chair then named a person and a deadline for publication.

Two of the released dates matter to this project directly: 13 April 2023 and 11 May 2023 are SAU 6 meetings with recordings and pages in this archive, and 17 August 2023 is another. A fourth, 31 July 2023, is a meeting with a packet folder in the district's own share, no recording, and no section in this project's map — a session whose nonpublic minutes are now public and whose public record is otherwise nearly nothing.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, II(m) and IV(a)–(b), added by 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023 (not 2023, 188:1, which amended RSA 91-A:2 on the same date); 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes; Policy BEDG, paragraph D.5.

POSITIVE A member did the budget arithmetic out loud at the table, and it reconciles to the exhibit within two dollars

Kelly Simpson, at 0:26:08, working from the eight-page exhibit in front of her: "$166,460. Just in salaries increase with an additional $86,640 in just health insurance increases", and then "Salary increases its $253,100. That to me is huge. And that's without even giving them a raise."

Exhibit A's Increase-Decrease column checks every figure. Salary increases for the superintendent's office ($53,292.66), special-education administration ($27,150.82), the business office ($17,332.74), human resources ($68,688.68) and maintenance (−$4.28) sum to $166,460.62. Health-insurance increases for the superintendent's office ($49,943.58), the business office ($24,911.32) and human resources ($11,786.27) sum to $86,641.17. Together, $253,101.79. Her three figures are the exhibit's three figures rounded down.

This is what reading a packet looks like, and it is worth recording for two reasons. It is the only quantitative challenge anyone put to the FY26 budget at this meeting; and the member who made it is the member the minutes record voting No on the raise delegation twenty minutes later — the same person, following the same number to its conclusion.

Sources: Exhibit A — SAU FY26 Proposed Budget V1, Increase-Decrease column; 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes.

POSITIVE A nine-year seal was moved and the board talked itself out of it

The motion at 0:06:35 was "to seal the minutes from the non public meeting for nine years", and it drew immediate resistance: "I don't I don't think we need to know." · "I don't think so." · "It's pretty. Generic to two sentences. Is that right?" · "Okay. No need to see the minutes." The minutes record the outcome the tape leaves ambiguous: "Mr. Ruggeri withdrew his motion, minutes were not sealed."

Under RSA 91-A:3, III a seal is the exception and disclosure is the rule: minutes go public within 72 hours "unless, by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session, it is determined that divulgence of the information likely would affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself, or render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism". No ground was stated in the motion, and rather than voting one through the board declined to seal at all. That is the statute working as designed — and on the same night as a review that unsealed eight older sets, it is a consistent position. Note too that nine years sits inside the ceiling the board's own policy asks for: BEDG D.4.i, "Every effort shall be made to limit the recommended duration of sealed minutes to less than ten years."

The corollary is flag 6: minutes not sealed are minutes that must be published, and these have not been.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III; Policy BEDG, D.2 and D.4; 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes.

POSITIVE Two controls this board asked for in earlier meetings are visible in this year's ledger

Stipends became reimbursements, and the ledger shows the year it happened. The question at 0:18:45 was whether mileage is paid against receipts or as a lump sum. Exhibit A answers it. In FY23 the information-management mileage line paid exactly $2,500.00 and the special-education administration mileage line paid exactly $2,500.00 — the budgeted figure, to the cent, which is what a stipend looks like. In FY24 both paid $0.00. The minutes carry the explanation: "Frank Sprague added that in the past, others were just getting the amount even if they didn't have the stipend- that is not the case now and there is a reimbursement process." The business administrator described her own practice the same way: "if you look at my last year's expenditures, it was 2065 because we put in for mileage in any travel we had to do for conferences" — and Exhibit A's business-office travel line for FY24 is $2,065.73.

A line a member found in September is gone. On 12 September Michael Petrin found a maintenance telephone line budgeted at $4,000 with nothing spent against it. In this exhibit, Maintenance Telephone reads $0.00 in every column, FY23 actual through FY26 proposed. The question produced the correction.

And the chair caught a live discrepancy that the ledger confirms. At 0:18:06: "within the superintendent's office, I believe it should be 2500. And I'm seeing 2000." The superintendent's office cell-phone line paid $2,500.00 in FY23 and $2,500.00 in FY24 and is proposed at $2,000.00 for FY26. She was reading it right, and the business administrator undertook to check it against the contract.

Sources: Exhibit A — SAU FY26 Proposed Budget V1; 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes; companion page SAU 6 Board — September 12, 2024.

POSITIVE The board cut its own budget line in half, on its own initiative, before anyone asked it to

At 0:27:30 the chair turned the board on its own expenses: "there is a, a $10,000 proposed budget for contracted services. We did use contracted services in the past to help us develop our goals and action plans. I ask the board, do you believe that we need that much money, or do you think that that's appropriate". A member supplied the history — "Some of that contracted services was to work with superintendent on evaluation" — and the chair the arithmetic: "That was the $5,000 that was in there. That amount has been doubled." Two members answered "I don't think we need." and "It, I don't either.", the business administrator confirmed "You haven't used anything", and the chair took the consensus: "So I would suggest that we just leave it at five five."

Exhibit A confirms the doubling she described exactly: School Board Contracted Services, FY23 actual $0.00, FY24 actual $5,000.00, FY25 budget $10,000.00, FY26 proposed $10,000.00. The minutes record the outcome as "a Board consensus to leave it at $5,000". It is a small sum on a $2.79 million budget, and it is the only reduction anyone proposed all evening — proposed by the chair, against her own committee's line, in a meeting whose other money decisions all ran the other way.

Sources: Exhibit A — SAU FY26 Proposed Budget V1; 11.14.24 draft SAU 6 minutes.

POSITIVE One member read two policies against each other and pulled one of them back — and the packet had been public for six days so that he could

Rocco Ruggeri, at 0:36:07: "The KEE website availability has a timeline for response with a complaint or a concern that submitted to the superintendent of the saw. I'm just wondering if the public complaint policy should have a timeline for, responding, receipt of the complaint or follow up with that policy as well." The comparison is exact. KEE gives a complainant a contact within five working days, an investigation completed within fifteen, and a written report within five more. KE, adopted from the same publisher's sample, routes a complaint through teacher, principal, superintendent and board and attaches no time to any step. Heather Whitney amended her own motion on the spot and sent KE to a second read "with consideration of response timeline to public complaint"; policy KE duly appears on the 12 December agenda as a second read.

The notice made it possible. The agenda and all nine other packet documents were created in the district's public Drive share at about 3:35 p.m. on Friday 8 November 2024 — six days before the 6:30 p.m. call to order, where RSA 91-A:2, II asks for twenty-four hours excluding Sundays and legal holidays. The board's own policy BEDB, adopted that same evening, sets seven days as its internal standard; the agenda's own file was last modified on 7 November, seven days out.

Sources: Exhibit G — Policy KE and Exhibit H — Policy KEE; RSA 91-A:2, II; Drive metadata for the packet folder 2. SAU6 11.14.24 and its files, retrieved 2026-08-29; SAU6 Budget Public Hearing agenda 12.12.24.

Appendix — source files

Official and public sources

Remote video: SAU 6 Board Meeting - 11/14/24 (Cablecast show 16142), in the Claremont Community TV gallery CLAREMONT SCHOOLS. The Cablecast API reports a total run time of 2,920 seconds. There is one nonpublic session and no gap anywhere in the recording; see flag 7 for what that does and does not establish.
Packet folder: 2. SAU6 11.14.24 — 10 documents, in the separate SAU 6 Schoolboard Packets share, not the Claremont School Board packet share. The folder was created in the public share at 3:35 p.m. Eastern on 8 November 2024 and its files followed within about forty seconds. The agenda's own modifiedTime is 7 November 2024, a day earlier, so that document existed before it was posted; every other file's modifiedTime sits seconds before the folder's creation and is an upload artefact that establishes nothing.
Minutes (draft, and the only version located): 11.14.24 DRAFT SAU6 minutes (1).pdf, filed in the SAU 6 packet folder 5. SAU6 12.12.24. The search for these minutes was two-stage, as this board's filing habit requires: this meeting's own packet folder, which carries the September minutes instead, and then every later SAU 6 folder by filename date, where they were found two folders on. The Claremont Meeting Minutes share holds no SAU 6 file of any kind.
The other meeting of 14 November 2024: draft CSB Meeting Minutes 11.14.24.pdf, filed in the Claremont packet folder 8. CSB 11.20.24. See flag 3.
Explicit negatives, and how each was searched. No approved-form minutes of this meeting exist in any district public share, and none exists for any SAU 6 meeting — every SAU 6 minutes file located in either share is a draft. No minutes of this meeting's nonpublic session exist anywhere, although the board voted not to seal them. None of the eight sets of minutes unsealed at this meeting has been located: the SAU 6 packets share was enumerated at its root on 2026-08-29 (fourteen dated meeting folders plus the 2022, 2023 and 2024 archives, and no folder for unsealed or nonpublic minutes); the Claremont Meeting Minutes share's Unsealed Minutes subtree holds only 2025 Non-Public, 2026 Non-Public and 2027 Non-Public, and was not created until 13 January 2025. No Sealed Minutes List, and no "Record of Minutes Sealed Before 10/3/2023", of the kinds policy BEDG requires, has been located. No notice, agenda, minutes or recording exists for the SAU 6 policy subcommittee meeting announced for 2 October 2024. No executed superintendent's employment contract, and no vote approving one, appears in any SAU 6 packet folder. No recording, packet folder or map section exists for the Claremont School Board meeting of 14 November 2024; Cablecast shows 16143 through 16154 were each retrieved individually on 2026-08-29 and are other programming, one of them recorded on 14 November itself. The honest limit on all of these: the destination the chair named for the unsealed minutes is the SAU 6 website, and the site as it stood in 2024 cannot be inspected from here.

Packet documents (exact Drive file names, district typographical errors included)

SAU#6 School Board Agenda 11.14.24.docx (1).pdf — the posted agenda used throughout this page; notices the nonpublic session under subparagraph (c), see flag 9
9.12.24 DRAFT SAU6 meeting minutes.pdf — approved at this meeting with two corrections from the chair
Exhibit A- SAU FY26 Proposed Budget V1.pdf — the FY26 proposed budget, version 1; every budget figure on this page is checked against it. See flag 11, flag 12, flag 18, flag 20 and flag 21
Exhibit B- First Read-- BEDB_ Agenda Preparation and Dissemination - Google Docs (1).pdf — adopted at first read; see flag 4 and flag 9
Exhibit C- First Read-- EHAC_ Electronic_Digital Records and Signatures - Google Docs.pdf — adopted at first read; see flag 4
Exhibit D-First Read--GBEAA_ Confidential Student Information - Google Docs.pdf — adopted at first read; see flag 4
Exhibit E-First Read--GBEAB_ Mandatory Code of Conduct Reporting - All Employees - Google Docs.pdf — adopted at first read with both of its alternative provisions still in the text and the reporting officer left blank; see flag 4
Exhibit F- First Read--Policy GBEB_ Staff Conduct - Google Docs.pdf — adopted at first read; headed "Status: ADOPTED" with an empty district history block. See flag 4
Exhibit G- First Read--Policy KE_ Public Complaints - Google Docs.pdf — withdrawn from the slate and sent to a second read; see flag 22
Exhibit H- First Read--Policy KEE_ Website Accessibility and Grievance - Google Docs.pdf — adopted at first read with no compliance coordinator designated; see flag 4

Project files (relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/)

Dialogue transcript: Output/Dialogue/16142 SAU6111424.mp4.CSV — 434 rows, about 6,700 words, 7 named speakers, 105 rows left Unidentified (24.2%)
Diarized transcript: Input/Transcripts/16142 SAU6111424.mp4.json
Video: Input/Videos/16142 SAU6111424.mp4
Meeting/document map: Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md (§57)
Companion pages: SAU 6 Board — September 12, 2024, which adopted the policy this meeting executed and set the 2 October review; SAU 6 Board — April 11, 2024, whose six-month seal is the one missing from the unsealing list; and Claremont School Board Finance Committee — November 19, 2024, five days later

Laws and rules cited on this page

School administrative units: RSA 194-C:5 — I (annual organization between April 1 and June 1), II(a) (superintendent services per RSA 194-C:4), III (the board "shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel", apportions the expense of salaries and benefits, certifies to the district treasurers and the state board of education, and has "the authority to remove superintendents and other administrators") — 1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996, never amended; RSA 194-C:9 — I (budget adopted "At a meeting held before January 1"; apportionment ½ average membership in attendance and ½ equalized valuation; certification "Prior to January 15 in each year… to the chairperson of the school board of each constituent school district"; no public hearing is required by this section) and IV (alternative apportionment, added by 2024, 329:1, eff. Oct. 1, 2024 and therefore in force on this meeting's date); RSA 194-C:4, II(a) (audits among the services each SAU must provide); RSA 194-C:8 (weighted voting only on the demand of a majority present and voting — not demanded at this meeting)
New Hampshire Right-to-Know Law: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) ("public body" expressly includes a school administrative unit "or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto"); RSA 91-A:2 — I (definition of a meeting), II (24 hours' notice excluding Sundays and legal holidays; minutes contents including the names of members who made or seconded each motion; open to public inspection within 5 business days) — mover/seconder clause 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019; current paragraph 2023, 188:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023; the start-time and end-time additions are 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025 and are not applied to this 2024 meeting; RSA 91-A:3 — I(b) (the motion must state the specific exemption under paragraph II; roll-call vote), II(a) (compensation of a public employee), II(c) (reputation of a person other than a member of the body), II(d) (acquisition, sale or lease of property), II(m) (whether to disclose sealed minutes; "any vote on whether to disclose minutes shall take place in public session"), III (72-hour disclosure; sealing only by recorded 2/3 vote taken in public session on one of three grounds; withholding "until, in the opinion of a majority of members, the aforesaid circumstances no longer apply"), IV(a)–(b) (review procedures; the ten-year backstop) — II(m) and IV added by 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023; RSA 91-A:5, IV (permits, and does not require, withholding personnel records; 2022, 122:3, eff. May 27, 2022)
School boards, budgets and audits: RSA 189:74 (public comment period of no less than 30 minutes; 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022); RSA 21-J:19 (permissive municipal audit; does not name school administrative units; 1985, 204:1; 2008, 174:1, eff. Aug. 10, 2008); RSA 197:25 (district fallback where no auditor is hired under RSA 21-J:19); RSA 32:1 and RSA 32:5, III and IV (gross basis; comparative columns — chapter 32 applies to towns, districts, school districts and village districts, and does not name school administrative units); RSA 288:1 (legal holidays, used for the business-day arithmetic; the arithmetic here excludes Thanksgiving, 28 November 2024, and counts the day after it, which is not a legal holiday in New Hampshire)
Federal: 28 CFR 35.107 — a public entity with fifty or more employees must designate at least one ADA compliance coordinator and "adopt and publish grievance procedures providing for prompt and equitable resolution" of complaints (Order No. 1512-91, 56 FR 35716, July 26, 1991), the provision policy KEE leaves an unfilled blank against. Not cited against the district: 28 CFR 35.200, the ADA Title II web-accessibility rule published at 89 FR 31320 and effective 24 April 2024. Its compliance dates were amended by 91 FR 20912 on 20 April 2026 to 26 April 2027 and 26 April 2028, so no compliance date had arrived on this meeting's date and none has arrived since. Adopting policy KEE in November 2024 put this board ahead of the deadline, not behind it.
Administrative rules, cited as the policies themselves cite them and not independently verified here: Ed 302.02(j), which policy BEDG names for keeping minutes at the superintendent's office, and Ed 510.01–510.05, the Code of Conduct for New Hampshire Educators, which policy GBEAB exists to implement. The Ed 300 rules were readopted by Document #14150 effective 12-13-24, after this meeting; the pre-readoption text of Ed 302.02(j) has not been recovered by this project, so nothing on this page turns on it.