Participants
Board, administration and staff. Attendance and name spellings follow the approved minutes; the automatic transcript's rendering is given where it differs. No member of the public spoke — the chair opened citizens' comments and no one came to the podium.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Heather Whitney | School Board Chair | Presided (71 segments); moved the agenda change, moved to seal the nonpublic minutes, presented the donation, reported on the NH Listens forum |
| Frank Sprague | School Board Vice Chair; Finance Subcommittee Chair | Moved the agenda change and the motion to leave nonpublic; presented the communication matrix and moved its adoption (transcript: "Craig. Sprague", "Frank. Spray") |
| Candace Crawford | School Board Member; Capital Improvement Subcommittee Chair | Asked when the postponed audit report would be heard; proposed the amendment to the communication matrix; moved acceptance of the retiree list (transcript: "Kangas", "Bottoms and Stratford") |
| Michael Petrin | School Board Member; Ad Hoc Communications Committee | Moved acceptance of the $14,000 donation; seconded the communication-matrix motion and noted the ad hoc committee should now dissolve (transcript: "Mr. Patron", "Michael Dietrich") |
| Bonnie Miles | School Board Member; SRVRTC Committee | Moved to enter nonpublic session; seconded the donation; pressed hardest and longest on publicising the March 11 election |
| Whitney Skillen | School Board Member; Policy Subcommittee Chair | Absent per the approved minutes. The automatic transcript renders the attendance roll as "Skillet online here", which could be read as remote participation; the minutes list her absent and no roll-call vote in the minutes records her voting. Unresolved — see the method note. |
| Arlene Hawkins | School Board Member; Curriculum Committee representative | Absent per the approved minutes |
| Patrick O'Hearn | Human Resources Director, SAU 6 | Called the attendance roll and all three roll-call votes; presented the retiree notification list |
| Noelle Kronberg | School Board Clerk | Prepared and submitted the minutes; does not speak on the recording |
| Christopher Pratt | Superintendent of Schools, SAU 6 | Absent — at a conference per the chair; no superintendent's report given |
| Mary Henry | Business Administrator, SAU 6 | Absent — an unavoidable meeting per the chair; no finance report given |
| Miles Sheehan | Student Board Member | Absent; the student board member report was not given |
| Lilly Clark | Student Board Member | Absent; the student board member report was not given |
| Plodzik & Sanderson, P.A. | District auditors (scheduled to appear virtually) | Did not appear — the FY2021 audit results and FY2022/FY2023 progress update were postponed; the chair cited a family emergency for the presenter and said it would be taken up at the next meeting |
| Three retiring employees | District staff recognised on the retiree notification list | Named on the recording only, and unreliably: a teacher at Bluff of about 35 years, a Title I teacher at Bluff "here since 2017", and a teacher at Stevens. The approved minutes do not name them, so no spellings are asserted here. |
| "Chelsea" | SAU 6 staff (surname not stated in the record) | Named by the chair as the district's contact with NH Listens and as the keeper of the new-member handbook material |
Agenda
From the agenda reproduced at the head of the approved minutes (packet copy: CSB Agenda 2.5.25.pdf). Scheduled clock times are the agenda's; "Taken up" times are from the recording. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:05 | I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance (6:30 p.m.) | Whitney: "I would like to call to order the February 5th, 2025 meeting of the Claremont School Board on attendance. Please rise." Pledge led from the chair. |
| 0:00:34 | II. General Business — roll call of attendance (6:35 p.m.) | Called by Patrick O'Hearn. Present per the minutes: Michael Petrin, Bonnie Miles, Candace Crawford, Frank Sprague, Heather Whitney. Absent: Whitney Skillen, Arlene Hawkins. Five of seven — a quorum. |
| 0:00:48 | II.a.1. Amendments and final approval of the board agenda (vote) | Whitney: "The the audit for 21, 22 and 23. The progression update is not going to happen tonight. Unfortunately, the presenter had a family emergency that had to be attended to. So, I'm asking for the board to make a motion to move the Nonpublic, which was the fifth item on the agenda, to go to the first item on the agenda." Sprague moved, Crawford seconded; voice vote, all present in favor. Crawford then asked when the audit report would be rescheduled — Whitney: "Next meeting." |
| 0:01:56 | II.a.2. Minutes approval — 1.15.25 & 1.21.25 | Consent approval. Whitney also announced that the student board member report would not be given and that "our superintendent and Mary are not here. The superintendent Pratt, is at a conference, and Mary has an unavoidable, meeting that she has to attend." Both draft minute sets were in the packet. |
| 0:02:22 | II.b. Citizens' comments (Policy BEDH) | Whitney: "Citizens comments. Or is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak? Podium. Seeing no one coming to the podium, we'll move forward to the first item on the agenda, which is the nonpublic." No member of the public spoke at this meeting. |
| 0:02:42 | III.1. Nonpublic session — RSA 91-A:3, II(c) | Agenda cites the exemption in full: "Matters which, if discussed in public, would likely adversely affect the reputation of any person, other than a member of the public body itself…" Miles moved, Sprague seconded; roll call by O'Hearn, all present voting yes; entered nonpublic 6:33 p.m. Out at 7:28 p.m. on Sprague's motion, seconded by Miles, roll call, all yes. Whitney then moved to seal the minutes for five years, Petrin seconded; roll call, all yes. |
| — | III.2. Results of FY 2021 Audit and FY 2022, FY 2023 Audit Progress Update (discussion) — Plodzik & Sanderson, P.A. (virtual) | Not taken up. Removed at the top of the meeting; rescheduled to the next board meeting (March 5, 2025). Nothing on the FY21 audit results reaches the record at this meeting. |
| 0:05:04 | III.3. Retiree Notification List (vote) | O'Hearn presented three retirees — "which is, fewer than most" — with a "big shout out" to a Bluff teacher of some 35 years who also served on the negotiating committee, a Title I teacher at Bluff since 2017, and a teacher at Stevens. Crawford moved to accept, Whitney seconded; voice vote, all present in favor. The minutes record the board's gratitude but do not name the retirees. |
| 0:06:30 | III.4. Donation to Claremont Middle School for the Boston field trip — $14,000, Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation (discussion/vote) (Exhibit A) | Whitney presented it; Sprague raised a point of order — "Isn't that a public hearing?" — and the board established the amount was below the threshold. Petrin moved to "accept the $14,000 donation for the eighth grade field trip from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation", Miles seconded; voice vote, all present in favor. The thank-you letter goes from the group that requested the gift, not the board. |
| 0:07:33 | III.5.f. Sub-committees — Ad Hoc Communications Committee: presentation of the Communication Matrix (Exhibit B) | Presented by Sprague on Petrin's handoff. Crawford's amendment — change the "d" (district) owner marking to "b" (board) for subcommittee work — was accepted into the motion. Sprague moved adoption "with the correction that Miss Crawford made"; Petrin seconded; voice vote, all present in favor. Petrin noted the ad hoc committee dissolves on delivery. Subcommittee chairs a.–e. (Capital Improvement, Finance, Policy, Curriculum, SRVRTC) gave no reports. |
| 0:17:01 | IV. Other Business (8:20 p.m. on the agenda) | Miles on election publicity — banners, a school bus parked in front of the high school, the police department's message board, the Eagle Times; costs and who has to be asked. Whitney's NH Listens update: candidates' forum March 4 at 6 p.m. in the Tech Center community room, not filmable because of the breakout format, with CCTV one-on-one candidate interviews suggested alongside. Three candidates so far. |
| 0:24:42 | V. Future dates / VI. Adjournment (8:25 / 8:30 p.m. on the agenda) | Future dates on the agenda: Claremont board February 19; SAU 6 board February 13; Claremont board March 5; voting day March 11. Whitney: "If there's no objection, I'd like to adjourn." Consent adjournment. |
Discussion timeline
Times are from the dialogue transcript (Output/Dialogue/16322 School Board 020525.mp4.CSV). Quotations reproduce the automatic transcript verbatim, garbles included, with corrections in square brackets.
| Time | Topic | What was said (leading text; hover/focus for more) | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:48 | The audit update comes off the agenda | First business of the night: "The the audit for 21, 22 and 23. The progression update is not going to happen tonight. Unfortunately, the presenter had a family emergency that had to be attended to." Crawford: "I would really like to know when the report audit report is going to be rescheduled." Whitney: "Next meeting." The item was the results of the FY2021 audit plus progress on FY2022 and FY2023 — three fiscal years still open in February 2025. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:02:22 | Citizens' comments: nobody | "Citizens comments. Or is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak? Podium. Seeing no one coming to the podium, we'll move forward…" Four days after the deliberative session and five weeks before the ballot, no resident addressed the board. This is the last regular meeting before the February 11 lockdown at Stevens High School; nothing on this recording anticipates it. | |
| 0:02:42 | Into nonpublic session, 6:33 p.m. | Miles: "I can make a motion to move into nonpublic." Sprague: "I'll second that." Whitney: "Can I have a roll call, Michael?" — O'Hearn called it and all five present voted yes. The agenda and minutes both state the exemption on its face: RSA 91-A:3, II(c), reputation of a person other than a member of the body. | POSITIVE |
| 0:03:30 | The recording resumes before the board leaves nonpublic | The transcript's own Role column marks a splice here. When audio returns, about 55 seconds of board conversation is captured before any motion — and the subject is not the reputation of any person, it is the scheduling and turnout of the deliberative session: an unidentified member, "Still talking and started at 630"; Whitney, "Usually hours are nightmares. Yeah. So we've done something wrong"; Crawford, "Well, I think we need to alternate Saturday morning versus evening" and "I've heard lots of pushback for Saturday"; Whitney, "Whole problem was we we had so much pushback during the week"; and on the CCTV audience, "You're on the air the whole time? Yeah, they were watching." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:04:27 | Out at 7:28 p.m.; minutes sealed five years | Sprague: "I'd like to make a motion to come out of. Not in public." Whitney: "I have to roll call that we're out of nonpublic at 728. A roll call, please." All yes. Then Whitney: "And I would like to make a motion to seal the minutes for five years." Petrin seconded; roll call, all yes. Neither the recording nor the approved minutes records any statutory finding stated in support of sealing. | MEDIUM |
| 0:05:11 | Three retirements | O'Hearn: "That I have three retirees to present, which is, fewer than most back and forth." He singled out a long-serving Bluff teacher — "I'd like to do a big shout out to Miss Jones at Bluff and here for about 35 some the negotiating committee" — then "Title one teacher a bluff. It's been here since 2017. And then Miss Skinner, our teacher Stevens, who's been here for a couple of years." The names are as the automatic transcript renders them and are not corroborated: the approved minutes record only that three retirees were presented and that the board expressed its gratitude. Crawford moved acceptance; carried on a voice vote. | |
| 0:06:58 | "Isn't that a public hearing?" | Sprague's point of order on the $14,000 Byrne Foundation gift. Crawford: "The 20,000." Petrin: "Is it under 20,000 now for 20." Whitney: "We changed the amount for a policy committee… 20 or 25? Yes. So we just need to vote. What a public. We did pump it way up to prevent a lot of public hearings." The minutes put it more precisely: "the policy committee recently adjusted the amount for donations that need to go to public hearing (under $20,000)." The gift was accepted on Petrin's motion, Miles seconding, all present in favor. | POSITIVE |
| 0:08:20 | The communication matrix | Sprague: the point is to "Really kind of brighten [brightly draw] the lines between what's district communication and what's board communication. If you go and do research on the types of communication that take place, most of the communication really comes from from the school district itself. And that's not the board's responsibility. So it took some effort to sort of parse down to, what actually is exclusively board communication." The matrix records means, target audience, purpose, frequency and whether the communication is internal or external. | |
| 0:10:45 | Crawford's amendment: who owns subcommittee information | Crawford, on student achievement data and then on committee work: "But the committee work, the owner of the the information is not the school district. It's the school board that does." Sprague: "Yeah. I mean, we could simply just change the D under owner to B. That's what I think… And I can fix that." Crawford: "I just don't think it's the school district has to." Sprague: "I know I agree with you 100%." | |
| 0:13:50 | Where institutional memory should live | Whitney: "What is your recommendation for where this should go? So if, when we all. Good question. When we all go away. Where should this be found?" And: "What we found to have found as a board is that there wasn't a foundation or a scaffold for us to really function on, and every new member that comes on, unless they have some kind of experience elsewhere kind of struggles, I think, on how to navigate, what it's like to be a board member." Crawford: "This should be in the School Board handbook." Sprague suggested the beginning-of-term retreat as well. With two members leaving at the March election, the question was not hypothetical. | |
| 0:16:10 | Matrix adopted; ad hoc committee dissolves | Petrin: "This is, you know, again, we're going to move this forward. Unfortunately, I think that ends the ad hoc subcommittee for communication." Sprague: "I would like to make a motion that we accept this communication matrix with the correction that Miss Crawford made." Crawford: "First suggestion." Petrin: "I will I'll second that… How's that for self-serving?" Carried on a voice vote, all present in favor. | |
| 0:17:08 | Getting the word out about March 11 | Miles: "I wanted to talk more about really getting the word out, on voting day, because I don't think we're doing enough… Front of the schools is great. But, you know, if you drive up here and you put it on a school bus, it's like, in your face, you can't miss it." From her ten years working the polls: "so many times people would come in and say, oh, I just saw a sign… I didn't know we had to do this today." Sprague: it is "the second Tuesday in March" every year; Miles: "I know, but they don't remember." Petrin: "I think we've done our duty to get the word out there. It's not a hidden secret, right? … You can lead a horse to water." Whitney listed the school calendar, social media and district robocalls to parents. | |
| 0:21:50 | NH Listens candidates' forum, March 4 | Whitney: "I did speak to Chelsea today. She has been in communication with New Hampshire. Listens. The date that they are tossing around, which works for New Hampshire, listens? Not really tossing around. It's going to be March 4th, at 6 p.m.. It's going to be in this room." CCTV coverage was floated and declined because of small-group breakouts; instead Whitney proposed CCTV's one-on-one candidate interviews, "everybody got the same questions and got to plead their case." The board would cover refreshments and advertising. Whitney on the format: "New Hampshire listens, generates the questions, the forum, the discussion. We don't play a part in that." | |
| 0:24:29 | Three candidates for two seats | Whitney: "We currently have three candidates. I think it's William Madden. Correct? Yep. Lauren [Loren] Howard and Emily sand blade [Sandblade]." At the March 11 ballot Madden and Howard were elected; the board then meeting for the last time in this configuration adjourned by consent moments later. | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing what happened against current state and federal law. They are not findings of violation, and nothing here is legal advice. Each flag cites the rule it rests on; where no verified rule applies, the item is labelled an observation.
MEDIUM Nonpublic minutes sealed for five years with no statutory finding on the record
RSA 91-A:3, III makes minutes of a nonpublic session public within 72 hours unless, "by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present," it is determined that divulging them would likely affect adversely the reputation of a person other than a member of the body, or render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism. The vote here satisfies the recorded-2/3 half: at 0:04:47 Whitney moved "to seal the minutes for five years," Petrin seconded, and O'Hearn took a roll call with all five members present voting yes. What is missing is the other half — the determination. Neither the motion as spoken nor the approved minutes ("Heather Whitney made a motion to seal the minutes for 5 years… roll call vote taken by Patrick O'Hearn, all present voting yes") states any of the three statutory grounds, and no discussion of the grounds appears on the recording. The session itself was properly noticed under II(c), so the ground was probably the reputational one and may simply have gone unrecorded; the point of the flag is that a resident reading the public record five years later cannot tell why these minutes are sealed or when the seal should lift. The same sealing motion, with the same silence on the finding, recurs across this board's meetings.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III (72-hour disclosure unless sealed by recorded 2/3 vote with a statutory determination); 2.5.25 approved minutes.
OBSERVATION Board conversation captured on the broadcast during the nonpublic period, on a subject outside the cited exemption
A nonpublic session is confined to the exemption its motion names — here RSA 91-A:3, II(c), matters that would likely adversely affect the reputation of a person other than a member of the body. The board entered nonpublic at 6:33 p.m. and did not move to leave until 7:28 p.m. The recording is spliced across that hour (the dialogue file's own Role column flags the splice), and when audio returns at 0:03:30 — before any motion to come out — roughly 55 seconds of board conversation is on the broadcast about something else entirely: whether the deliberative session should be held Saturday morning or in the evening, the pushback each option drew, and how many people were watching on CCTV. The motion to leave nonpublic follows at 0:04:27. This is graded an observation rather than a probable violation because the record cannot establish what it needs to: a spliced recording does not show whether the board had in substance finished and returned to the room before the formal motion, whether the public had been readmitted, or whether members considered themselves still in session. The subject matter, though, is plainly not II(c) material, and it is the kind of business — meeting scheduling — that belongs in open session.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) and II(c) (motion must state the specific exemption; nonpublic session confined to it); RSA 91-A:2 (definition of "meeting").
OBSERVATION The FY2021 audit results were still unheard in February 2025, and came off the agenda again
Agenda item III.2 was "Results of FY 2021 Audit and FY 2022, FY 2023 Audit Progress Update (Discussion) Plodzik & Sanderson, P.A. (Virtual)." It was struck at 0:00:48 because the presenter had a family emergency, and Crawford immediately asked when it would be rescheduled; the chair said the next meeting, and the auditor did present on March 5, 2025. Nothing about that postponement is improper. What the agenda item documents is the state of the backlog: as of February 2025 the district was hearing results for FY2021 and only progress on FY2022 and FY2023 — three fiscal years open at once. RSA 21-J:19 requires an annual audit by independent public accountants, and the district's federal expenditure levels also carry an annual single-audit obligation whose report is due nine months after each period ends. This page notes the state of the record on February 5, 2025 and draws no conclusion beyond it; the substance belongs to the March 5 meeting, where the auditor speaks at length.
Sources: RSA 21-J:19 (audits by independent public accountants); 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1) (single-audit reporting package due nine months after the audit period); 2.5.25 approved minutes (agenda item III.2).
POSITIVE A point of order stopped the donation vote until the public-hearing threshold was checked
RSA 198:20-b governs a school board's acceptance of unanticipated funds and requires a prior public hearing, with 7 days' published notice, for amounts of $20,000 or more. Before the board voted on the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation's $14,000 gift for the Claremont Middle School eighth-grade Boston field trip, Sprague raised the question unprompted at 0:06:58: "Isn't that a public hearing?" The board worked it out on the record — Crawford naming the $20,000 figure, Petrin confirming, Whitney explaining the policy committee's recent alignment — and only then took the motion. The gift is below the threshold, so no hearing was owed and none was skipped. Two small notes for accuracy: the threshold is fixed by statute, not by the district's policy committee, and Whitney's stated reason for the change — "We did pump it way up to prevent a lot of public hearings" — describes a local policy that had been stricter than the statute, not a relaxation of it; and the board did not state on the record whether it holds the district-meeting authorisation RSA 198:20-b contemplates for accepting such funds. Neither point disturbs the outcome. Raising a statutory threshold as a point of order before a routine unanimous vote is the behaviour these pages should record when it happens.
Sources: RSA 198:20-b (acceptance of unanticipated funds; public hearing at $20,000 or more with 7 days' notice); 2.5.25 approved minutes (item III.4).
POSITIVE The nonpublic session was noticed, moved and voted the way the statute prescribes
RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires that the motion to enter nonpublic session state on its face the specific RSA 91-A:3, II exemption relied on, and that the vote be taken by roll call. The posted agenda for this meeting printed item III.1 as "Non-public meeting session 91-A: 3" with the full text of exemption (c) reproduced beneath it, so the public knew the ground before the meeting began; the motion at 0:02:42 was made by Miles and seconded by Sprague under that exemption; O'Hearn took a roll call; and the return at 7:28 p.m. was likewise moved, seconded and roll-called. The approved minutes name the mover and seconder of every motion of the night, record each vote, and give the clock times for entering and leaving nonpublic — the level of detail RSA 91-A:2, II asks of minutes. The whole public portion of the meeting was broadcast on CCTV Channel 8 and remains retrievable through Cablecast.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(c) (motion states the exemption; roll-call vote); RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes recorded and open to inspection within 5 business days).
Appendix — source files
Official and public sources
Packet documents (exact Drive names)
Project files (relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/)
Laws and rules cited on this page