| 0:02:46 | Straight into nonpublic, and Henry's report moved behind it | Koski, on the business administrator's availability: "I think it was going to be right after the nonpublic." Chair: "Would there be any objection to changing to have Mary give us a brief chat after the nonpublic. Okay. Seeing none. First item on our action and items list, our discussion and action items is a motion to move in to nonpublic for a 91 dash, a three comma Roman numeral A, A and C, and I have a second, please." The board thus reordered its own agenda so that the only financial report of the evening would follow a closed session. | MEDIUM POSITIVE |
| 0:03:16 | Roll call in — and 27 seconds later, the motion out | "Can we have a roll call? Vote for moving into nonpublic police? Yes. Yes. Yes." The recording captures five unattributed "Yes" responses in overlapping clusters. Twenty-seven seconds of recording later, at 0:03:43, the chair asks for a motion to come out — thirty minutes having passed on the meeting clock. On the way out a voice vote was called and then corrected on the floor: "I. No. Going to roll call. Roll call." | MEDIUM |
| 0:04:05 | No motion to seal | Chair: "I'd like to make a motion to do. We want to make a motion to seal the minutes." A member: "Is there any? I don't think there's any." Chair: "Reason to. No motion to seal the minutes." The approved minutes confirm: "Minutes not sealed." The nonpublic-session form is checked "Not Sealed" and is published in the district's Drive share alongside the approved minutes. | POSITIVE |
| 0:04:29 | Four and a half minutes of audio troubleshooting, on air | Henry, from home: "Can't hear you say I apologize to take you there in person. I went out and we can't hear you. Mayor. Can you hear me?" What follows is the board and administrators working the room's audio — "Hey, Mary, will you talk quick just so we can see if we see the little bubble?" — until 0:09:01: "All right. Thanks, Jim [Jeff]. My gosh, thank you so much." Roughly a third of the elapsed time between the return to public session and the start of her report is unusable audio. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:09:18 | "I know we're going to study in, in a deficit" | Henry: "I still want to say thank you for allowing me to be on tonight. I know I've been out for medical leave, and, it's never a good time to go out, but unfortunately, I had to for the benefit of my health. So, Anyways, I have been working remotely part of the time." Then, at 0:09:47: "At this point, I know we're going to study in, in a deficit, but I have not had an opportunity to go through all the purchase orders. Which is what I really need to do to see which ones are valid, which ones aren't. Because right now I have $2.3 million in encumbrances. I know some of those encumbrances are going to go away." She asked to review them "before I release any of your numbers". | OBSERVATION |
| 0:11:13 | What the Finance Committee gets on Monday | Whitney: "Miss Henry, could you tell us what we what the finance committee could expect on Monday? And if it were in a form that we can have out in the minutes? So every member of the board, since we're not going to be having another meeting to August, has an opportunity to review what those are." Henry undertakes to email the spreadsheet ahead and bring hard copies. Crawford, on health insurance: "Will we have a summary of the proposed changes or relative comparisons for health care plans?" Henry: "I have six total that we can look at, whether it be an HSA and HMO, you know, a PPO, things like that." Any change is FY27, not FY26 — "you've already signed an agreement with school care." | OBSERVATION POSITIVE |
| 0:13:59 | The FY22 audit, again | Crawford: "The third question I have, Mary, is I thought the 22 audit was complete." Henry: "It is almost three, but it's not quite complete yet. I know they're working on finishing it now." Crawford: "What's what's the holdup?" Henry: "I'm not sure. I haven't talked to my campus [Campo] as I went out, so I will have to touch base with them." Crawford: "I'll be in touch with Mike tomorrow." Henry: "I would like to make that phone call, Candice, because I'm." Six days earlier the SAU 6 board had been told Claremont's FY2022 audit "should have just gone out". | OBSERVATION |
| 0:17:55 | Handbooks deferred to August | "Next item on the agenda is we were going to have a complete review of the handbooks for the elementary, Stevens High School and CMS. But there have been some reconsideration on that. We have two new principals new to the district that should have an opportunity, to have a say and input on these handbooks." And: "Members also feel the quality of the handbooks do not accurately reflect reflect the district's commitment to high standards and a culture of excellence… A new copies or revised copies will be compiled by mid-July and presented to the board for approval or for request for revision at the first meeting in August." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:23:19 | "repetitive… redundant… punitive" — and the missing honor roll | Madden: "It's repetitive, it's redundant, it's punitive. It launches into, the disciplinary issues. If you just look at the definition of a handbook in Webster's, it's totally different… I don't think this is meant to be an encyclopedia." On academics: "There is one for the high school, but it's not implemented for the middle school. They explicitly says in boldface. No. Honorable [honor roll]." Koski: "It kind of goes against middle school philosophy to have an honorable… We can have a discussion about that." Whitney redirected a floor motion into policy: "if we as a board want to put our stamp on what we consider academic excellence is and how we would like it to be reflected within our schools, working with our leadership partners, then I think that the board and the leadership should work together to ensure that whatever honor roll system is put into the high school is something that we all agree with." Madden to report back at the first August meeting; Sprague and Madden authorized to ask how grading is configured in PowerSchool. | |
| 0:36:31 | DMG's Special Education Opportunity Review | Gallagher: "this is not for you to vote on for consideration this evening… We are here obviously at the request of Superintendent Pratt." The review's four areas, per the minutes: systems, structures for staff efficacy, instructional practices, and aligning services to student needs; deliverables are a synthesized report, a prioritized list of opportunities, and a "guiding coalition" of district and school leaders. Methodology includes a one-week time study run on proprietary software: "for one week, staff logs and schedules around how much time they're spending with students… And then our technology takes all of that data, and it takes out back to us a bunch of, insights and perspectives on how that time is being used." Tied to a strategic-plan measure on outcomes for students with disabilities. A screen-share failure interrupted the opening minutes; Henry, still on the call, talked her through it. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:54:08 | "$100,000… the 50 mile rule" | Madden: "I do. I have a question. What is what is the cost of this?" Gallagher: "We sent a proposal to occur. Such typically for a district or size of the under $100,000, but around that Walmart." The minutes render it as "usually around, but under $100,000." Sprague at 0:54:47: "we already know pretty much what our issues are… Are we are we going to employ the 50 mile rule. Is that how where people will listen to somebody from 50 miles away that won't listen to our own administration?" And: "we can spend 100 grand and I'll bet you their recommendations with match pretty closely to what I just wrote down here with about a 90% reliability." Whitney: "[Un]fortunately, I wish Mr. Pratt was here this evening" — deferred to the first meeting in August. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:11:55 | Does professional development work? The LETRS answer | Whitney asked how the district knows its PD is "actually bearing" results. Koski: "letters [LETRS] is probably the first example that comes to mind. It's the third year of teachers taking this. We've been limited to about a dozen spots per year. But because of expense. But we're seeing our k one and two reading scores where we're now in the 80 to 90 eighth percentile, not percentile. 8,090% of our students are in grade level reading, which didn't exist two years ago." The figure as transcribed is garbled and is not corroborated in the minutes, which record only "a significant increase in student reading proficiency." Whitney: "If so, why are we limiting those spots?" — state seed funding ended; the district now pays from Title money. | |
| 1:21:23 | The LEA determination: "needs assistance" | McCosker: "basically an a [LEA] determination is the report card a district receives for how they do special education, pre-K through. Well, it'd be through 22", scored across results, assessment, compliance and additional factors. At 1:22:31: "if we don't do anything and we just provide a service only model, we will probably never move that. Ellie a [LEA] determination. What's the big deal if we don't ever move the a determination? It affects federal funding. If we stay there long enough, nobody can tell me how long, but we have to be able to move that needle." Per the minutes the district's grade is "needs assistance," driven primarily by PreK outcomes. | MEDIUM |
| 1:27:03 | State approval applied for, not yet granted | "I've applied to have a preschool special education approval for a self-contained preschool program with the State of New Hampshire Department of Education. Those processes typically take 2 or 3 weeks. Probably the first time I hear back from them, they'll say, you need to fix this. You need to change that." Design at 1:27:54: "We target 12 students. I'm. I'm struggling more with a three day in a two day split", restricted to students with an IEP presenting multiple disabilities or global developmental delay who will enter kindergarten in 2026-27. Staffing at 1:48:31: asked how many paraprofessionals are needed, "I don't know without until we know who the 12 students are… We're trying to build this plane as [we fly it]." | MEDIUM |
| 1:36:17 | How the preschool teacher is paid for: two third grades instead of three | McCosker: "We will be posting for a teacher. Patrick was working on that today. But that teacher will be net zero to the budget." Sprague: "How can it be net zero?" Lewis: "it's a net zero to the budget. Because I took a section of three of my third grades. I have three third grades. We're combining them into two slightly larger class size. Not necessarily ideal, but do very doable so that that money was available to fund the preschool teacher." New third-grade class sizes: "it'll be 19 and 19." Transportation: Henry, still on the line, confirmed at 1:36:01 that "I never touched the budget line for our transportation." | MEDIUM OBSERVATION |
| 1:40:55 | "this feels like an end run" | Sprague: "The formation of this pilot. To me, this feels like an end run that the administration is. Or whoever is saying to the board, we're going to do this even though you said no, that's what it feels like to me… It's under development. I don't know how how you determine how much staff you're going to need for this. I didn't get an explanation of that… I had asked for case loads for related service people a couple of times. Haven't seen that." | MEDIUM |
| 1:41:52 | "you took the funding away for those services" | McCosker: "y'all all y'all tasked me to do a job to provide services for children in this community that federal law says we have to provide… And then you took the funding away for those services. So we are trying to find a creative way to best provide services without it being. Uncontrolled costs to this district." On the alternative: "that papes [FAPE's] going to be us paying for them to go out of district somewhere… Our elementary. Self-contained numbers. We have 17 this year. Next year is going to be 29." The transcript then renders a cost figure as "Cost could be upwards of over $22 million" — a garble the minutes do not corroborate and this page does not adopt. Caseload: "The state special education database, 58 students, 3 to 5 year olds." | MEDIUM |
| 1:44:40 | The sharpest exchange of the quarter | McCosker: "After you've given me a task to do and you've given me nothing to do it with. I find it very insulting and very degrading and very demeaning. And I'm just going to shut up now because I'm going to get myself in trouble." Sprague: "we know we're giving out services kids don't need." McCosker: "You were just making stuff up with that. Kids do not get services unless a professional team says they need those services. They're professionals that are making those calls, and I find that so insulting as a professional." Sprague: "I said in hundreds of IEP meetings, Mike, I know." Whitney closed it at 1:53:26 by naming the underlying grievance — that a prior program was supposed to produce something and "it and it failed to do so." | MEDIUM |
| 1:51:26 | "about 32 policies to do" | Whitney: "We're pushing on 9:00 now and we have about 32 policies to do." Crawford: "We can't… Do that." Whitney: "We're going to have to do them tonight so they can be put into the handbook. Okay. Unfortunately." Everything that follows — six withdrawals, three adoptions without a second read, three adoptions, one second-read adoption, nine items moved to second read and two returned to committee — happens in the next half hour. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:58:25 | Six policies withdrawn in one motion | Whitney: "First withdrawing the withdrawals such as a DBEGA. So that is drug free schools e.g. A is responsible tech use GBED is the tobacco policy. These are all just being withdrawn and being replaced or revised." Hawkins moved: "We withdraw adb e.g. a GBEDJI see I b, JICG and j I see k a" — ADB, EGA, GBED, JICIB, JICG, JICKA — "All of these policies have already other policies have been adopted. Which which which are more current than these policies. That's the reason for the withdrawal. That's one motion for all of them." Voice vote, all present in favor. | |
| 2:00:30 | Three policies adopted without a second read | "the grouping would be a motion to adopt. Not even going to second read" The list opened as ACE, EHAB, JLDBB and JLCF; Hawkins pulled JLCF — "I would move that we not discuss j LCF tonight… Because there's a lot of work that has to be done on that one with the administration" — leaving ACE (procedural safeguards / nondiscrimination on the basis of disability), EHAB (data governance and security) and JLDBB (suicide prevention and response plan). Howard seconded "the motion as amended"; adopted on a voice vote. | OBSERVATION |
| 2:06:37 | Policy DGA — an annual report of who signs on the district's bank accounts | Crawford, reading the Finance Subcommittee's addition: "DGA we added to it. An annual report will be given to the school board listing designated signees for all district bank accounts. Any changes during the year will be reported to the board as part of the subsequent monthly VA report, given at the second meeting of each month." Other finance-policy changes read into the record: DEA gains "hearings and board votes will be conducted as part of the acceptance process"; DFA's item three changed "To annually"; DI adds a paragraph and a results provision; DK drops provisional language; a definition corrected from "building principal" to "building administrator" at Koski's prompt. | POSITIVE |
| 2:10:33 | An adoption motion withdrawn in favor of a second read | Sprague: "I'll make a motion to move these to adoptions policy DADBDEADFADGADIE. DK. And then the procedures under daff [DAF]." Whitney: "The only question that I have, I wasn't at the last meeting before we make this policy was was it okay with the administrative team." Crawford: "And there was no administrative team at the meeting, so I have no idea." Whitney: "Should we make it first read then?" Sprague: "Withdraw my motion and change it to move to second read okay." Adopted as a friendly amendment — the board declined to adopt eight fiscal policies, including the signature and manifest policies, until administration had seen them. | POSITIVE |
| 2:15:59 | A drafting error caught before adoption: policy JIC | Hawkins: "There's a correction from the copy that you received in your packet. It's under d, perceived pursuant to an say [RSA] it's parental notification of simple assaults… Currently says requiring parents and then goes on it should say requiring notification to parents. That little phrase was inadvertently left out." And: "I've already spoken to New Hampshire School Board Association and they said yes, it was an error. So we caught the error." The corrected language, as read at 2:16:43: "under D parental notification of simple assaults. Pursuant to RSA 193, the superintendent is directed to adopt and implement procedures requiring notification to parents, guardians". Adopted as amended, Howard seconding. | POSITIVE |
| 2:21:14 | "which is a structural deficit" | Whitney, closing the policy docket: "a lot of the policies that were addressed. A target or address, board oversight to help prevent what we have, which is a structural deficit from ever happening again. We provided real clarity in those policies. So to, allay the community's fears that we have done all that we can from our perspective to ensure moving forward, that future boards will have the guidance, guidance that passports [past boards] did not have on what their duty was for oversight." This is the second time in the evening a district official used the word "deficit" about Claremont's finances in open session — in June 2025, two months before the shortfall became public. | OBSERVATION |
| 2:23:16 | Subcommittee minutes "within 48 hours" | Whitney: "We will ensure that the minutes from the last meeting have been posted. Correct?" — "Those minutes will be posted within 48 hours." With no full board meeting until August 6, the Finance Subcommittee meeting the following Monday, June 23, becomes the only public forum for the year-end numbers; the chair also asked that the material arrive in a form that could go "out in the minutes." | POSITIVE OBSERVATION |