| 0:00:42 | How the hearing will run | Whitney: "Here present is everyone from the public who is taking time out of their evening to come to this public hearing and share your thoughts on the topic, which is, the budget for fiscal year 2526." Order of business: Sprague, then Henry and the administrative team, then the rest of the finance committee, then the podium. "This evening it is a one topic agenda. So please limit your comments to the budget. Every citizen will have three minutes to provide their comment." She also offered a solidarity option for anyone unwilling to speak: "you can simply come up and say, I'm with her or I'm with him and I agree." | POSITIVE POSITIVE |
| 0:02:24 | Default budget: $42,772,778 | Henry read the definition of a default budget aloud — "the amount of the same appropriations as contained and the operating budget authorized for the previous year reduced and increased as the case may be, by debt services, contracts, and other obligations previously incurred or mandated by law and reduced by one time expenditures" — then walked the arithmetic from the $39,962,266 approved FY25 budget. "So the default budget is $42,772,778. That's the projected default. So but their proposed budget is $42,000,933 and 560 $0.04, which makes the proposed budget $160,786 more than our default." The spoken figure is garbled; the packet Budget Summary and the minutes both give $42,933,564, and $42,933,564 − $42,772,778 = $160,786. | |
| 0:04:49 | Sprague: how the budget was cut down | "I'm Frank Sprague. I'm the chair of the finance committee. I'm also vice chair of the board of the school board." Process began October 2024. "The initial budget presented to the Finance Committee of the school board reflected a $4.2 million increase, roughly an 11% increase" before the three negotiated contracts — driven by roughly $1.5 million in health insurance, the SREA teachers' contract at $514,000, and increases of $1.5 million at CMS and $1.8 million at Stevens, "to a great degree… driven by out of district placements at those two schools." Committee goal: "to limit the tax impact of the budget to a 5% increase," while supporting hiring, tier-one classroom instruction, social-emotional supports, in-district programming and competitive collective-bargaining pay. Left unaddressed, budget plus contracts "would irresponsibly place an unreasonable burden on taxpayers, it would be 12 or 13%." | |
| 0:08:02 | The preschool program is suspended | Sprague, for the finance subcommittee: board data showed the preschool program "has not helped identified students integrate into kindergarten, and even model students underperformed compared to their peers who attend private preschool, Head Start or no program at all," while acknowledging "a quality program… yields at least temporary benefits." Claremont's "will require a complete rebuilding to meet the definition of quality, objectives, selection process, procedures, highly qualified staff, and a rich and appropriate curriculum." His conclusion: "The board has requested and the administration has reluctantly agreed to suspend the preschool classroom until critical work at the elementary schools is completed." He framed it as avoiding "the too many irons in the fire effect." | |
| 0:13:40 | Pratt ties the budget to the strategic plan | After playing the district's new recruitment video (produced "since, October"), Pratt read a prepared statement: "A budget is not merely a financial document, it is a strategic tool that reflects our values and priorities." Key areas named: student well-being, family and community engagement, district office cohesion. On the cuts: "This includes not allowing resources to support programs that are not delivering the outcomes our students deserve. Sometimes this requires pausing and carefully reevaluating the structure in effectiveness of programs." | |
| 0:16:52 | What drove the increase | Henry: health insurance up 15%, dental 10% — "a total of $1.2 million to the bottom line of our budget… This is out of our control." Out-of-district placement up $1.4 million; special education $87,000. "This is a total increase just with these items of 2.7 million… the overall budget increase was 2.9 million or 7.44%." Revenues up $2.1 million, adequacy aid up $1.9 million on the extraordinary-needs grant, investment income up $175,000 after moving from a savings account to a sweep account ("We were making $20,000 a year. Now we're making over 200,000"), vocational tuition up $15,000, statewide education tax down. Net: "after revenues, the total increase is $845,952, which is 2.1% before other Warren [warrant] articles." | |
| 0:21:15 | Adequacy aid and the hold-harmless step-down | FY25 adequacy aid $14,283,440 rising to about $16 million, the change "in that extraordinary grant… they change that from being 8500 to 11,500," driven by free-and-reduced counts and property values — even though "we're down on student count for the estimated." The hold-harmless grant replaced an older stabilization grant and now steps down: "they're going to start taking away 20% every two years… It's going to decrease by $329,386. Until this number is gone." | |
| 0:22:07 | The four warrant articles | Article 1, election of district officials: "two school board member openings for three year terms, the moderator, the district clerk and the district treasurer for one year terms." Article 2, the budget: general fund $39,468,564 plus a $3,465,000 grant and food-service budget that "washes." Henry misstated the total and Pratt corrected her from the floor — "393. 43." — "Oh, I'm sorry. 42. My bad. I got a calculation wrong on there… what you're going to see on your warrant is 42,000,933 564." Tax impact: 27 cents (1.9%) for the budget, 42 cents (2.9%) for the first year of the teachers' contract. "I want to make sure people understand that is the tax rate increase, not the increase on the budget itself." | |
| 0:25:23 | Two social workers moved onto grant funding | Henry: "We did remove two social worker positions from the budget, but they will be funded by grants." Pratt: the grant runs four school years at "between 125 and $175,000 a year… we weren't sure if the federal government's the money to the state. But just yesterday morning we got the good news that we're going to be getting that." The published Budget Summary shows the Social Worker line (2113) falling from $302,466 to $113,602, a 62.4% reduction. | |
| 0:26:14 | Reallocation between cost centers | Henry moved technology staff into regular education and split out psychology and speech-and-language "because that's where they belong for our state DOH [DOE] that we file every year, it's broken down by categories and they were not in the right categories, so we had to move them… When we filed to the state of New Hampshire so they know our actual costs." The Budget Summary shows the effect: Speech Pathology (2150) from $103,105 to $376,198 and C.O.T.A (2160) from $331,411 to $562,648, with Related Services (1230) zeroed out. | |
| 0:30:28 | O'Hearn on staffing capacity | "Thanks mayor" — an ASR garble of "Thanks, Mary," following Henry's introduction; the dialogue file flags it. Ten current vacancies across teaching, paraprofessional and counselor positions. "we hire, just about 30 to 40 staff members annually, 22 teachers last year, 18 paraprofessionals and a counselor." His argument: "I think we need to use attrition as an opportunity" — vacancies and normal turnover can absorb budgetary changes without layoffs, with transition support for staff moving roles. Pratt: turnover is "Still significantly less than you saw in 23 and 24… going from 39 to 10." | |
| 0:35:36 | Articles 3 and 4 — paras and administrators | Article 3, a three-year paraprofessional contract: "for fiscal year 2526 the increase would be 168,000 2627 139 2728 137… the tax impact for the first year of the contract is 0.97%, or $0.14 on the tax rate." Article 4, a one-year administrators' contract: "78,045% or $0.06 on the tax rate," deliberately one year "because we're trying to get our contracts to alternate, because right now we have three contracts in one year." All in: "It would be $0.89 to the tax rate… it's literally $1 million extra." Pratt: negotiating three large contracts in one year "should never happen. But that's where they landed." | |
| 0:39:50 | The ESSER cliff | Henry: "we had used Esser for about $600,000 in 24 for out of district placement costs. That is now being burdened by us now. So that's also a big reason why there's such a spike." Pratt put the figure higher: "$660,000 out of s[ESSER] or before we no longer have. That means now we have to deal with it here and now, right? So just full disclosure." The two figures were not reconciled on the record. | |
| 0:41:02 | Whitney: what the board found | "We discovered that we did not have a functioning curriculum. It wasn't aggressively evaluated. We had no curriculum, a director of curriculum or instruction to help implement our curriculum… And at the administrative level, we had no strategic plan.… That's that, to me, was probably one of the most shocking things." Also "very weak systems in place for staff" and "insufficient professional development." Her framing of the choice: "We're only receiving 67% reimbursement for our special education costs, so we had to take money somewhere else in the budget… Anything related to special education is utterly fixed. It's like a sacred cow. We cannot touch it." On preschool, the cost argument: "$17,000 per student per year at the preschool, with roughly a total of $50,000 that is expended from Claremont taxpayers on a child that goes for three years." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:49:49 | Crawford: the history and the scale | Three drivers: the end of three years of ESSER ("There were lots of things that were paid for with that, that are no longer"); years of uncompetitive pay, "because the best way to reduce costs is reduce turnover"; and curriculum, which "has been nonexistence for a few years." She pointed viewers to the finance committee's own recordings on CCTV. Scale, for context on the $42 million: 1,500 students, "approximately 27%… have I[EPs]… that compares to about 18% statewide"; about 80 paraprofessionals, all but one or two tied directly to IEP service delivery; 327 full-time and about 75 part-time employees; five bargaining units; six buildings. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:57:27 | Collective bargaining credit | Whitney thanked the teachers' union for accepting "a very modest proposal" so the board could raise paraprofessional pay: "For the first time in many, many years, our teachers salaries are competitive. We had been well below the 50% tile for a long, long time… And actually, Kearsarge was pointing to us and our salaries. So that's as a model." Crawford negotiated the paraprofessional contract, Hawkins the administrators': "That's the front line. That's you walk into a building, that's the person who's leading that building forward." Henry added that the contract figures include Social Security, Medicare and NH Retirement, "not all strictly wages." | |
| 1:00:55 | Matt Bean, Ward 1 — reform, don't remove | "Full disclosure I am the kindergarten first grade, special ed, self-contained teacher at Maple Avenue School, but I'll be making my comments right now as a citizen, as a taxpayer, and as a human services professional… For me, preschool should be considered a human right." He credited the process — "I understand that this decision did not come without an educated decision making process" — and named the state's role: "we are in a budget crunch again, due to the lack of commitment from the state to fund our public education." His ask: "I would like to see the course of action to be reformed our preschool program, not remove our preschool program," adding that any tax saving "would not provide any type of tax cut that would make a difference in my life. And even if it did, I would still be up here." | POSITIVE |
| 1:02:45 | Charlene Lovett, Ward 2 — early intervention, and a $209,178 line | "Good evening. I'm Charlene Lovett, Ward two. I just want to say thank you for the presentation. Because it is much different than when I was on the school board, and I think it's an improvement." Her substantive point: "I know of nothing that I've read about education… of why eliminating a preschool program would be in our best interest… And how much money are we going to spend if we don't do these early interventions? And then the issues are even magnified as the student ages through the public education system." She asked for a "suspense date" to reintroduce a program, and then queried a line she had not seen before: "this line item on school board… That's for $209,178. So I don't know what that is for." The answer given from the table was legal fees — the dialogue file attributes it to Whitney but flags the attribution as uncertain, and the approved minutes credit the answer to Mary Henry. The published Budget Summary confirms line 2310 School Board at $209,178, up $5,000 on FY25. | |
| 1:05:09 | Gary Merchant, Ward 2 — the state budget, and who preschool serves | "Gary Marchant [Merchant], Ward two I'm here as a citizen… I have never seen so much transparency by the school board in a long, long time, if any time." His warning: "I do have a concern about the state budget and the impact it's going to have on the school district, all comes down to taxpayer. I'm concerned about the reduction on special ed from 95% to 67%… Revenues are down. Safes [the State] been known to downshift things. They downshift pension programs onto us." Then the arithmetic question: with 43 children enrolled aged three to five, "what percentage of our population that's three through five does that account for?" | OBSERVATION |
| 1:07:04 | 43 enrolled, 23 served | Petrin estimated the district's three-to-five population at roughly 300. Whitney: "the 43 kids, are the total number of students that are enrolled in the program, but only 23 of them. That program exists for 23 students. So for each child, the state requires that we admit a typical student… although it's a total of 43, it serves 23." She added the district was struggling to recruit those peer students "because of the hours of the program are not very worker family friendly." Merchant's follow-up: "if there's 100 or 300 students out there between the ages of three and five, we're only tapping into 43 of them. What are we doing about the other students?" Whitney: the program was opened "to serve special, special needs students to reduce special education costs… which were not realized." | |
| 1:09:14 | Crawford and Hawkins on what continues | Crawford's clarification: "although the preschool has been cut from the budget, the preschool actual, the the two, the 2 to 3 hour, two days a week that's been cut. However, the services that must be delivered to that preschool population are still in the budget." Hawkins, who "spoke in opposition to the preschool being eliminated" when the budget came to the full board: "I came away from that feeling much better about it because we talked about the need for preschool for all children… we don't have a choice.… We really do not have a choice. And we need to make it better. We need to have some time to do some research, to get community involvement, to do a needs assessment." | |
| 1:11:49 | Pratt on space, not just money | "we're not going to get to universal pre-K all the way… right now the problem is, is that we don't have the space to have pre-K in all elementary schools." Asked whether it was funding, he answered: "Yes in the funding because but you know you can't fund for something if you have no place to put it right." He argued a pause allows the district to "back up a little bit, retrace our steps" and return a program run "with fidelity." | |
| 1:14:50 | Merchant's second turn — equity | The chair recognised him under the second-turn rule: "That's your second second time, Mr. Merchant. Go ahead." His point: "My concern is that with special ed or with preschool, if it's not universal, it's not equitable… if we have only some students that have access to it, then we're picking and choosing." Whitney agreed the existing program's "lack of equity and the lack of access" was itself one of the board's objections, "and the fact that it was solely funded by Claremont Dollars and not all Claremont children could attend." Petrin, to Merchant: "when you started to say that, you may have seen me whisper to chair Whitney and I said, where have we heard that before?" | POSITIVE |
| 1:17:12 | Hearing closed; deliberative session announced | "Public hearing is closed." Pratt thanked those who came: "It really helps when regards to, getting the view from the public and what we're doing to make sure we're moving in the direction or not." Whitney then announced the next statutory step in one line: "Deliberative session is February 1st." | POSITIVE OBSERVATION |
| 1:18:56 | Rob Lovett — Recovery Friendly Workplace | "My name is Rob Lovett, Ward two. I'm actually coming to you tonight as a representative of the TRC [TLC] Resource Center, as well as the Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative." The designation is "100% free to all employers"; statewide lost productivity from absenteeism and substance-related issues he put at "about 2.4 billion annually." He addressed the district as an employer: "The SA [SAU] is one of the largest employers in the area." | |
| 1:21:13 | Merchant — school funding presentation | "there is going to be a presentation by the New Hampshire School Funding Fairness Project in Newport tomorrow night at 6:00… if you have any interest in understanding how education is funded by the state and the impact the budget may have on funding, I would encourage yourself here or anyone in the audience at home to take the time to go over there." Crawford asked whether it was nonpartisan; Merchant: "this is Nonpartizan. This is educational only." | |
| 1:23:49 | Make it legible to a lay reader | Skillen: "I feel like for the future, our presentation could be made a little bit more… Public friendly, lay person. Friendly person who can't read charts. Friendly. Like, I, I thought your your spreadsheets and your charts were beautiful, but I understand spreadsheets." Hawkins: "When you say tax impact or $0.06 increase on the tax rate, I, I find that confusing… Present it so that it's I as a taxpayer completely understand what that means for me and my taxes." Whitney proposed showing a real tax bill with the address redacted; Skillen suggested a sample valuation; Henry said she had done exactly that at the previous deliberative session and would do it again. Hawkins: "So use me as your as your mental audience. Okay. How can I say it so Arlene will understand it?" | POSITIVE |
| 1:27:20 | The vote is deferred to January 21 | Petrin: "Do we need a vote to move this? To deliver?" Whitney: "No. We're going to do the vote next Tuesday… We want to give people time to think and reflect. And so there is no emotional voting. And we will be back here on the 21st." The warrant articles were moved to the deliberative session six days later, at the January 21 meeting, at the same dollar figure. | POSITIVE |