| 0:00:00 | Cold open: where special-education salaries live | The recording begins with Whitney already mid-question about "the congruence or the integration of district wide special education salaries and positions into existing programs, for instance, like and related services to like pride program or the preschool program." Henry: related services — speech, guidance-adjacent and building-specific staff — sit on the district-wide line, not the building line. That distinction governs every building number discussed for the rest of the night. Nothing before this point — call to order, roll call, statement of the body — is in the record, and there are no minutes against which to check it. | MEDIUM OBSERVATION |
| 0:02:24 | PRIDE at Bluff; life-skills programs at Maple | McCosker: PRIDE is "a behavioral. Program program that was started in lieu of sending kids out of district." It is now one program, at Bluff, serving "Maybe 6 to 10" students, and it brought a student back this year from "a pretty costly out of district" placement. Whitney: "it was almost $1 million worth of special add [ed] cost" allocated to Bluff, a building with about 168 students. Blount: "there are three district wide life skills programs housed at Maple" — which, Whitney concludes, "just explains the 1.5 million to me." The buildings' apparent special-education costs are district-wide programs that happen to be housed there. | |
| 0:04:45 | "there are about seven iterations here" | Crawford: "can we all agree on the same copy to reference?" Henry: "that's what she's printing right now is version six." Crawford: "I don't print out 65 pages." Whitney is reading from a one-page summary Henry revised that day — "Because after Heather spoke to me, I went in and I made some changes" — so the two members are quoting different totals (490 vs. 628) for the first ten minutes. None of these iterations is in any public share. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:06:51 | The starting number: $490,062, a 2.82% increase | Whitney: "The total to be raised before CVA [CBA] agreements is 490,062" — "490062 for a 2.82% increase prior to all of the CBA. So that does not include any of the CBA." Crawford sets the frame for the rest of the meeting: "So the 490,000 is the increase. Let's talk about what is in and what is out of that number." | |
| 0:08:13 | CMS guidance: three budgeted, two agreed | Pratt: "we had talked originally about, keeping the guidance at two. And it's at, it's at three. So can we talk a little bit about that?" Romeo: "It's returning back to two… with other necessary adjustments." Henry later confirms the confusion is real: "In fiscal year 25 budget. There's two in fiscal year 26 there's three" while the actual staffing this year is three — a third counselor was removed from a prior budget, Pratt says, "without letting me know." | |
| 0:12:53 | The restructure proposal: student services coordinators out, social workers in | Whitney proposes replacing the three elementary student services coordinators with an embedded social worker in each school plus one "Director of in-house special programs, which would assume the bulk of the responsibilities that were found in the job description of the student service coordinators," funded by the salary difference. Pratt: "we all need the social workers" — but the student-services work is not the same work. Whitney's stated aim: "in a in a budget neutral way, what the board is trying to do is provide options for the principals to consider what will best serve their needs". | |
| 0:18:56 | Lewis: what a student services coordinator actually does | Lewis: "Now in my school it's me. So I am the point of contact for special education. My student service coordinator does all 504 plans, but I do all of the the anything connected with special ed." On the origin of the positions: "we built those positions to help deal with a significant amount of behavior concerns. So rightfully so, significant behavior comes with significant processes and and documentation… originally, that was the purpose of our student service coordinators that they pick up the lift on the discipline piece." | |
| 0:23:08 | "comparing apples to potatoes" | Lewis: "I appreciate the thought that goes into that because the social workers are key people. For me, you are comparing apples to potatoes. It's not even remotely similar to the responsibilities of the student services coordinator". Blount backs her: at Maple "we share the IEP roles… She does supervise and evaluate the para educators". His conclusion: "So I would echo Melissa, that's probably a, a a higher value in need than the Ms.." — his following segment completes the abbreviation, "W okay." (the M.S.W. social-work credential). | |
| 0:26:22 | Whitney's counter-point, and the proposal dropped | Whitney: "when you work out the days worked, their salary ends up rivalry [rivaling]. The principal salary. So that is that is that that is a okay… Just just noted. Right now if we're being told that the values there then." Crawford ends it: "these guys who are the pros here prefer the three then. And its revenue neutral. Then I I'd say move on." No vote is taken; the positions stay. | |
| 0:30:59 | Enrollment and the 27% identification rate | Whitney reads the building counts — "168 at bluff, 262 at Maple. 257 at Disney [Disnard]. 335 at CMS", then a garbled Stevens figure ("or 79 at Stevens"), "and 23 identified preschool students and 20 typical" — roughly 1,500 students. Special-education identification: "Exact 27% of our student population." Pratt puts Disnard at "around 4 to 13 or 14%" and Bluff at "35% or something like that" a spread the room attributes to where the district-wide programs are housed rather than to the neighborhoods. | |
| 0:33:48 | "the 11th and a half hour of this budget process" | Crawford closes the staffing debate on the clock: "I think since we're on the 11th and a half hour of this budget process, I think that we need to move on… And we've got a brand that print up, you know, give this to the full school board tomorrow night. It's too late to be fiddling around with all this changes of the budget." The full board met the following evening, January 7. | |
| 0:35:00 | The arithmetic of the draft: $3 million in, $400,000 out | Crawford: "it shows a $2.6 million increase in this current budget"; special education in two schools up "1,000,005" and health insurance "1.5 million." Her conclusion: "This is $3 million and of two increases that are by law, we have to do… the budget is going up just those two items alone, $3 million that we had no control over… So to me it says somewhere we've made $400,000 of adjustments, adjustments down. We've we've cut stuff." | |
| 0:36:59 | What the $2.6 million does not include | Crawford runs the list and Henry confirms each: "the s IRA [SREA] wage increase is not there. Isn't that correct?" — "That is correct." "the parent [para] increases is not there." — "Correct." "the preschool. There is no money for preschool in this one." — "That is correct." Crawford: "And right now that involves 23 kids at risk kids". The three excluded items are the two collective-bargaining warrant articles and the eliminated pre-K program. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:37:38 | CMS tech education: reallocation, not restoration | Crawford asks whether the vanished tech-ed line was "a re configuration of where the dollars were or was a program cut?" Henry: "It went to regular editor [regular ed] because that's where they belonged." Romeo: "the tech yet as we know it shop class along with computers. Since that person retired from that position, we combine the two so that we can keep some of the elements of both. We do not plan on returning it." The kiln ventilation Crawford asks about is in the maintenance budget, not the school's. | |
| 0:39:42 | Verifying the SRVRTC teacher-education program on the page | Crawford: "I looked on Friday at the sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center. We talked about $100,000… I didn't see it on Friday." Henry finds it live in the book — "it's on page 40. And it's near the bottom. The account number is 135" — reading the line as "SRB TV teaching program salaries" [SRVRTC]. Michelle Herrington on space: "trying to move some things around would probably be upstairs." | |
| 0:41:34 | Stevens summer program: $30,000 halved on camera | Crawford: "Stephens high school summer program. On Friday. I saw $30,000." Henry: "It's not there now." Crawford: "do we need six people for six weeks and can we have some cost savings? And does it really cost $30,000 for summer school." The Stevens answer (dialogue file: Principal Herrington, cluster marked uncertain): "To run it the way that it used to be was a $30,000. Does it need to be that way? No." — asked for "a bare bones what would be the bare bones to get the job done", the figure came back at "probably around half that, like maybe 15,000" constrained by which certifications can award which credits. | |
| 0:48:27 | Crawford addresses the employees watching | "My point that I should have said at the beginning was, I'm sure that as people hear this, the the transcription of this meeting that employees might get panicked about, losing jobs because we are talking about lots of different shifting around. And that is not our intent at all at this point." Then, more carefully: "There's shifting, but we haven't necessarily cut positions. Is that fair to say?" Pratt's answer is not reassuring: at the middle school "Mr. Romeo did have to cut people." Asked whether attrition covers them, he said: "Not all of them. No, no." | POSITIVE |
| 0:50:13 | Romeo: a middle school already four teachers short | "we are now operating down one science, one social studies, one English, one math. We've had to rearrange our schedule to accommodate that. If there are additional cuts that need to be made and we are running close to empty as it is, that we're going to have to change our schedule, and that's going to mean some additional positions." His priority: "I will the best I can to save teacher positions. That's my number one goal. Absolutely." Enrollment context: CMS "done from 400 to 338." On what deeper cuts would force: "if I have to go back to half your science and socialism [social studies], I don't want to do right." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:57:28 | Sprague on the minimum-standards floor | "the United are United Arts, PE, health and such. They are all subject to minimum standards as well. At least they used to be. So they are it is required to have those available to kids." Romeo agrees, adding that new assessment requirements pull creative writing into the required core. The exchange is the only point in the meeting where anyone tests a proposed cut against the state's minimum-standards rules. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:03:41 | The CMS counselor position is eliminated — the person is kept | Romeo: "Take away the position. That's a cost savings of taking away the position. And we have convinced her to stay in district because she is good." Asked how that is done: "Should be rift [RIF'd]. So technically it should be rift." It is then posted as an opening. Whitney's summary: "Keeping the person we're limiting [eliminating] the position." A separate PE vacancy at CMS will not be filled: "If we adjust our schedule we're not filling it." | |
| 1:05:09 | What pre-K really costs — and a line nobody can find | Sprague: "I'm trying to find out what pre-K costs. That's really all I want to know is what does that program cost." The answer requires separating the classroom program from related services the district must provide anyway. The district-wide contracted-services line — about twenty contracted speech-language pathologists, BCBAs, CODAs and others per McCosker — cannot be located in the book; McCosker: "But the number got zeroed. I'm not. We're not sure why." Sprague: "Where was I couldn't find contracted services under district wide." Working figure for the program itself: about $500,000. | OBSERVATION OBSERVATION |
| 1:15:23 | Will the related-services staff still be busy? | Sprague's test of the savings claim: "the supposition that we're going to need all of these people to service pre-K are all of these people that are currently not working with pre-K fully" — do they carry full caseloads? McCosker: "the people working with pre not with pre-K, have full case law [caseloads]. Yes." His own caution: "That would be my assumption okay. I don't know that assuming is safe… Assumptions are very dangerous. But my assumption is is no, these people will still be busy because we're either going to have to bring have kids come into a space in district or send them out to whatever space those kids are at to provide services." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:19:15 | The whole number, assembled out loud | Henry walks it: "we have the 2.6 million. That's the actual increase. But then we take away 2.1 million in additional revenues that were receiving… Gets us down to that $490,000. So then I add the 515 on" — the ratified teachers' agreement — reaching "1,005,062, which is a 5.78%, change increase." Tax impact: "the total amount per 100,000 assessed value would be $81.47 per 100,000. So the increase on the rate would be $0.81." Two further warrant articles (paraprofessionals and administrators) were not yet ratified and are not in that figure. | |
| 1:22:47 | Pratt: "is this committee asking the administration to cut another $150,000?" | Pratt puts the question directly after Sprague works through what a further fraction of a percent would mean. Crawford: "I am not." Sprague: "Not yet." Sprague's own arithmetic wobbles and he says so — "Frank was an English major" / "Yeah. It was not a math major for sure" — but no further cut is directed. | |
| 1:23:20 | The default budget costs more than the proposed budget | Henry, having run it the night before: "the default is 90,000 more than the general budget right now" — "90,000 more, which is roughly another $0.08." Crawford draws the conclusion for voters: "if they didn't pass the budget, it would cost them more and they wouldn't get the increase for the teachers". Whitney's strategy: "making it a wash between the default and all the Warren [warrant] articles… I want all the warrant articles to go." Henry's counter-view, stated on the record: "I honestly like to have a difference in default compared to budget because it gives people a choice." | |
| 1:26:03 | The size of the cut, and the last change of the night | Henry: "we've cut over 1.5 million already out of this budget." Whitney: does the $1 million figure already include removing the CMS counselor? Henry: "No, I haven't taken that out yet. That's probably another 100,000… because we just had that discussion." Crawford confirms it is the only remaining change: "we're putting in. And that's the only change in the bottom line, correct?" | OBSERVATION |
| 1:29:10 | Pratt on what the public expects | "the public has to, you know, hopefully understand. And they're watching this I think we've, we've done this process right down to the 12th hour… they think that education is immune to the rise of costs in everything. And education is not immune to that… if you look at from 2001 to 2019, education spending went from 2.3 billion to 3.3 billion… It's like we would like to fill our gas tanks like we used to for $10, but we just can't anymore." | |
| 1:30:42 | Crawford: New Hampshire is 50th | "if we got help from the state of New Hampshire, we would not have the impact to the property tax owner that we are having, and we would not have nearly this discussion if New Hampshire is 50th in all states for, support for education, and if they double the amount that they spent on education, doubled it, they would still be 50th in all of the states." She repeated the same figures to the full board the next night. This page reports the claim as she made it; it is a speaker's characterization, not a verified statistic. | |
| 1:32:18 | Whitney: "the median household income in Claremont is $55,000" | "I personally remember being I voted no, no no no, no and everything because I needed snow tires, that there was a time in my life where a $300 increase in my tax bill meant that I didn't get snow tires." Then: "And the median household income in Claremont is $55,000. So when I look at the budget and I think about making sure it passes and our pairs [paras] get the increase that they really need… my desire to keep the budget as tight as it can is to give people who are making $55,000 a year for their whole household feeling like they can pull the lever." | |
| 1:32:53 | Sprague asks for evidence on out-of-district placements | "assurances that I would like to be able to give taxpayers when I encounter them in Hannaford… is that, you know, we characterize out of district placements as a cost we can't control." He asks for "a presentation on the protocols. And how does a kid get placed out of district? This is very foreign to me. When I when I worked in the public schools for almost 30 years… I have never in that experience scene [seen] where dozens of kids are being placed out of district." Pratt: "it's foreign to most. It's foreign to me, to Frank." No date is set for such a presentation. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:35:42 | Romeo: cutting pre-K contradicts the Title I plan | "I agree with the title one funding. We've talked about what we need to do. I think not having a pre K contradicts that. Like that's where it begins. And that's an unfortunate thing and I understand what we're working towards. But I see that as a huge gap if we don't have." Crawford answers that she cannot justify $500,000 "given even without spending that it's going up 5.78%" for "a program that hasn't delivered in improving the quality education for the elementary school". | OBSERVATION |
| 1:37:43 | Whitney's case against restoring pre-K | "the literature also shows that the benefits that children receive in preschool fade if they do not go into a high quality elementary school environment. So for me, it is the cart before the horse and a waste of money." And on the district's own tracking: "we absolutely have evidence that the preschool program that we have in place right now fail to show gains at the elementary school level", with "our typical students that attended the preschool, when tracked through, scored lower" than non-attenders. Sprague adds that the comparison group is Head Start or no program, which is why he discounts poverty as the explanation. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:41:30 | "I will not support it unless we can do it. Universal." | Whitney closes the door on a quick return: "I just want to disabuse the idea that this is something we're going to be revisiting next year, bringing back the preschool for the special education students… I will not support it unless we can do it. Universal." Her objection is access: as run, "it's literally a lottery system. Who gets in? That's not special education students. And that is so unbelievably unfair." Her figure for a universal program: "between 4 and 6 million a year." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:42:21 | Closing: "break the bone and start getting into the marrow" | Whitney: "is there any way we could have a printout of actually what was eliminated?" Henry: "Actually, yes, I'm working on it… I will have that done as well this evening." Pratt: "I just want to thank the principals because this was no easy task to go through and take $1.5 million out of the budget… We're now going to break the bone and start getting into the marrow. And that's not repairable." Crawford thanks the principals "for you to hear the discussion in in face to face, in real time and to hear your pushback when it's appropriate." Adjourned at 1:43:53 — Whitney: "We're all good. Thank you. Adjourned. Frank." Sprague: "Yes. Adjourned." No minutes of any of this were ever posted. | HIGH POSITIVE |