| 0:00:00 | "the January 21st 25 special Claremont meeting" | The recording opens mid-room — "It is not just us. Oh, my kids here." — and the chair calls the meeting to order: "I would like to call to order the January 21st 25 special Claremont meeting of the Claremont School Board on attendance." The approved minutes carry no such designation: their heading is "CLAREMONT SCHOOL BOARD MEETING… January 21, 2025… 6:30 PM" with an ordinary numbered agenda, and the business taken up is ordinary board business. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:01:13 | NH Listens is asked to host a candidates' forum | Whitney: "I reached out to, New Hampshire, listens to see if they could host a school board candidate forum for upcoming election. They responded to me, and they normally. Or they used to run on a grant. Now they no longer have a grant. So they are requesting that we cough up some funds to make this happen. They estimate it anywhere between a little over $500 for travel expenses and possibly a hotel stay, depending on the time and date of the meeting. We could take that from our school board funds." She moved the item onto the agenda; Sprague seconded; no opposition. | |
| 0:02:28 | Hawkins asks for an exploratory committee | "I would like to add an agenda item to discuss an exploratory committee for, maximizing student opportunities. We've had a lot of discussion through the budget process and through all of the work that we've all been doing. That's transparent, and I'd like to discuss the opportunity to develop an exploratory committee." Whitney restated it for the motion as "an ad hoc subcommittee for enhancing student opportunities"; Sprague seconded; no opposition. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:39 | Citizens' comments: nobody | "Next item on the agenda is citizen comments per Clermont School board policy BEDH. Is there anyone in the public that would like to speak to non-agenda items? I see nobody stepping up to the podium or raising their hand for acknowledgment so citizens comments is closed." Six days after a budget hearing that drew four speakers to the podium, this meeting — at which the warrant articles were actually voted onto the ballot — drew none. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:04:16 | Into nonpublic session | Whitney: "Our first item on the agenda for discussion and action items is a nonpublic session per RSA 91. Dash a colon three. Can I have a motion to move into nonpublic please?" Hawkins: "We move into nonpublic session. The RSA 91-A colon three" — with Petrin's "second" captured at the tail of the same segment. Kronberg read the roll; the responses come through as "Yes. Yes yes yes." No paragraph II exemption is named aloud. The approved minutes supply it: exemption (c), reputation of a person other than a member of the body, with the statutory text printed in full. | MEDIUM POSITIVE |
| 0:05:25 | Out of nonpublic — and the missing 68 minutes | The recording resumes 37 seconds after the board voted to go in. The approved minutes date the two motions 6:34 p.m. and 7:42 p.m., so about 68 minutes of meeting time are absent from the file. The arithmetic closes exactly: 6:30 p.m. plus the 4:48 of recorded public business before the break puts the board out of the room at 6:34, and 7:42 p.m. plus the 36:23 recorded afterwards gives the 8:18 p.m. adjournment the minutes record. Miles moved to come out, Petrin seconded, Kronberg took the roll. | |
| 0:05:53 | Minutes sealed for seven years | Petrin: "Can I make a motion to seal the minutes for seven years?" Hawkins seconded; the roll was taken and all five present voted in favor. No reason is stated on the recording, and the approved minutes record the motion, the second and the roll call but no determination of why disclosure would be harmful. Whitney: "Thank you. Thank you. Mike. Appreciate that." | MEDIUM |
| 0:06:07 | $750 for the candidates' forum | Whitney framed the ask as "enabling the administrative team to access the school board funds once we've negotiated with New Hampshire. Listens… they recommended 500," adding that she had called Common Man's corporate office to try to get a room donated. Sprague moved, then raised the ceiling himself — "Well, I'm going to say, 750" — and Whitney restated it: "Release funds, up to 750 from the school board line to facilitate New Hampshire Listens forum for school board candidates for the upcoming election." Sprague recalled a similar forum at the Claremont Savings Bank Community Center: "we had a lot of people show up. A lot of people showed up and they broke o[ut]" into groups that wrote the candidates' questions. | |
| 0:09:43 | Only if there is a contest | Petrin: "if there's no more than two candidates, I don't see a reason to to do it for… We have we have two seats open. So if we if we don't if we have two candidates, I don't really see." Sprague: "Yeah, that's a really good point." Whitney set the condition on the record: filing "closes what on the 31st I think," and "I will communicate with them and let them know that we're waiting to see how many candidates set a tentative date. If we only have two candidates, I will cancel." Three candidates ultimately appeared on the March 11 ballot for the two seats — William Madden, Loren Howard and Emily Sandblade — so the cancellation condition was not met; this quarter's minutes do not record whether the forum was held. Voice vote: all in favor. | |
| 0:11:17 | A committee to look at the whole district | Hawkins: "I would like the board to approve the creation of an exploratory committee. Purely exploratory for maximum student opportunities. And this came about as a result of a conversation regarding all the stuff that's happening with budget constraints and resource constraints, and how much the state does not properly fund education." The substance is building capacity: "right now we have schools that don't have room for programs. We heard that from the superintendent. Other buildings have room." She wanted it "beyond just board" — community members too — and to "obtain the data and look at different options and then bring it to the community." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:13:07 | Or route it through the Superintendent's Advisory Council | Pratt: "I recently formed the Superintendent's Advisory Council. If we had a few board members, we can have those discussions there in that time with the seven community members and stuff like that." He offered two members' seats and to "pose that question to them and bring it back to the subcommittee of the board." Sprague pushed on the wording — "I'm looking for a better word than opportunities… Isn't it? Access isn't what we're talking about." Asked whether the two bodies duplicate each other, Pratt said they would "work in tandem"; Hawkins agreed: "that's how I would see it." | |
| 0:16:38 | Reconfiguration, unnamed | Petrin named what the committee would inevitably reach: "if your kid attends one school, they may get the opportunity for an overnight field trip to somewhere. If you attend this school, the kids in fourth grade, you know each school don't get the same opportunities. Maybe looking at those, how do we fix that? How do we make room for free school [pre-school] somewhere… I hate to say because it was a sore spot, but I think it also brings back the reconfiguration. That was discussed several years ago." Hawkins: "There was a lot of frustration with that idea because people voiced that. They felt it was being brought up, put on to them. And this is an opportunity to be transparent." | |
| 0:18:33 | Petrin's objection: subcommittee load | "My only concern is that, yes, we have to do these things, but the more we subcommittee, subcommittee, subcommittee, the more work we end up putting on an administration where it seems like a lot sometimes recently, a lot of the subcommittees are trying to get information directly from administration… we want to be mindful of putting extra work on the administration." He asked whether to "wait till after the election to start this." Whitney's compromise: "We can approve this tonight and then revisit at the time" once the two committees' mission statements can be compared. Voice vote: all in favor. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:21:07 | Two seats, not three | Working from paper handed round the table, Hawkins caught an error in Article 1: "Three school board members was the third… Who's the board? Three school board members. I thought it was two." Whitney: "It's only two." Henry took responsibility: "It's only two. Okay, sorry about that. I copied it over from. Oh, okay. That's my bad." After some back-and-forth the board settled on "Two for three years." The corrected article reads, in the chair's words, "to elect a moderator, district clerk, and district treasurer for a one year term. Two school board members for three year term." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:22:54 | Finding the numbers on the page | Whitney: "And what's the default again. Just so we know. Oh it's on the one article. Oh it is it's 4200 42,000,770 778." Sprague read the proposed figure off the sheet — "Says 42933" — and Hawkins conceded she had missed it: "No I see I missed a number. I didn't see the 42933. I apologize, I didn't see that. That's what happens when you read quickly." A moment later Whitney could not find the default at all: "So do I see 42,772,000 is the default. But where is it on here." Petrin: "But it's a different page." Whitney: "Oh it's on a different page. That's why I don't have it." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:24:36 | A stray question mark, and the DRA | Sprague: "So what are we voting on tonight. Just just the main budget or the article as well to." Petrin: "Move this to the deliberative." Whitney: "Move all of these articles as written to the deliberative." Sprague then found a sentence punctuated as a question: "The second the should should line. That is a statement." Whitney agreed to delete the first question mark and keep the one after the parenthetical. Henry: "When I was looking at these two question marks, I've got to ask the Dr. A [DRA] if." The wording was not hers to change. | |
| 0:26:38 | Articles 1–4 move to the deliberative session | Petrin: "So I'd like to make a motion to move. Article won [one] the election of school district officials to the session as amended. So it reads two school board members." Then: "And move. Article two the main budget. Article three. The association contract. And article four the Claremont Administration Association contract. To the delivered recession [deliberative session]." Sprague's second is captured at the tail of the same segment. Whitney: "All in favor of accepting the motion as Mr. Patron [Petrin] presented. Say I." Then: "Seeing none opposed. Motion passes to move art warrant articles one, two, three and four to the deliberative session, which is going to be, Claremont Stevens High School. 9 a.m." The budget figure was unchanged from the January 15 public hearing. | POSITIVE |
| 0:28:56 | Everything on the website one week ahead | Whitney, relaying the moderator: "she wants to make sure that all of the documentation is out, that that is going to be presented at the deliberative session, has to be on the website and available for public one week before, which is so soon." Sprague: "Be by this Friday." Whitney: "Correct. And actually, we need to make available the entire budget." Henry had not been able to file with the Department of Revenue Administration until the board finished with the warrant that night — "I couldn't do that until tonight. It's all in ready to go… Then you guys need to sign those documents as soon as they come back" — but said she could post the budget in advance of the signatures. | POSITIVE |
| 0:32:09 | Deliberative-session assignments | Miles leads the Pledge ("That's easy"); Petrin presents Article 1; Sprague Article 2; Crawford Article 3, agreed by phone in her absence; Hawkins Article 4. Skillen — also absent — is assigned to move restricting reconsideration of Articles 1 and 2, with Miles seconding, and Petrin the same for Articles 3 and 4. Miles confirmed her part: "So when he's [Whitney's] going to do the motion and I'll do the second." Board arrives 8:15 for a dry run; presenters get five minutes on their article and three more as ordinary voters, and the moderator asks to be told in advance who does not wish to speak. | |
| 0:35:20 | Childcare at the deliberative session | Petrin: "in the past, we also had students that volunteered to for child care, to free up parents to come and have their kids." Whitney: "I don't know who we would even ask to do that." Sprague could not recall who had organised it. Whitney: "One of the one of the… Moved it to Saturdays was to eliminate, those kind of conflicts." Sprague closed it out: "So we're getting late in the game here." No childcare was arranged. | |
| 0:38:18 | Playgrounds, a roof, and "the trust" | Miles, from the Capital Improvements committee: the Stevens High School roof replacement, which "Mr. Holt said that can hold off for a year"; a dust collector, dropped; and "the playground structures at Bluff and Dessner [Disnard]… I know bluff was the worst," with Holt getting estimates for both. Her argument: "they're just getting worse all the time. And the more we hold it off, the more money it's going to cost. So let's get it done and not worry about it. And so but there is money for that. You said that can be taken from the trust." Henry put the balance at "50 or 1, I think. No, excuse me, 160 because of the interest." Whitney: "So we don't have enough to finish the Stevens High School roof." Henry: "No we don't. But again, we could look at that at the end of the year. If we do have surplus, we could do that again." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:40:29 | "Is there a list somewhere that we could just see?" | Hawkins: "I, I'm just wondering if there's a list somewhere of what? What?… From the subcommittee. You have a list of all of the Mary just mentioned tables, and I didn't know what… Is there a list somewhere that we could just see?" Whitney asked whether it was "possible for this to be compiled and presented," then softened it — "But just maybe minutes of this was a meeting. Minutes meeting or something. Just just so we can look at stuff, that's all." Sprague: "Have it ready for next meeting." A sitting board member asking, at a public meeting, whether the capital subcommittee's list of needs exists in writing anywhere is the clearest illustration on this page of what the missing packet costs. | OBSERVATION OBSERVATION |