Claremont School Board — March 4, 2026 | The last meeting before the ballot

Participants

Board and staff names follow the agenda masthead; the resident's name and ward follow the approved minutes. Where the dialogue file and the minutes disagree about who spoke, both are given and neither is asserted — see the method note.
Name	Role	Participation
Heather Whitney	School Board Chair	Presided. Pressed the comptroller on the forensic and annual audits; questioned both principals at length on growth versus proficiency, on whether student data should inform teacher evaluation, and on retention policy; deferred the board retreat until the new board is seated; declined to assess policy EHAG and then voted to adopt it.
Michael Petrin	School Board Vice Chair	Recorded present. No row in the dialogue file is attributed to him by name — the second consecutive Claremont meeting for which that is true. The approved minutes credit him with the question about how homework is being used, which the dialogue file assigns to William Madden. See the method note.
Candace Crawford	School Board Member; Finance Subcommittee Chair; SRVRTC Chair	Asked for a budget-to-actual report through January and again through February; asked the comptroller to put a deadline on the forensic auditors; read the Maple Avenue reading data against itself and identified the widening gap; asked for the attendance rate; moved the Class of 1967 donation; reported for the technical centre.
William "Bill" Madden	School Board Member; Ad Hoc Leadership Search Chair	Asked at the outset whether there was a nonpublic session; criticised the printed handout and asked for a glossary of assessment terms; questioned why published benefit costs do not approach the hundred-per-cent rule of thumb; refused a further open-ended answer on the dress code and set a one-month deadline; asked to go into nonpublic on the leadership search.
Frank Sprague	School Board Member	His last regular meeting. Asked how much of the assessment result is content and how much is test-taking; drew the parallel to coverage versus mastery at the high school; moved the research motion and all three policies; and raised the Annual Report's salary figures, which is the substance of flag 1.
Loren Howard	School Board Member	Reported for the Policy Subcommittee in the chair's absence and presented all three policies; noted that the research project's linked document returned a permissions error; accepted the friendly amendment on the student-member term.
Arlene Hawkins	School Board Member; Policy Subcommittee Chair; SAU 6 Board Chair	Absent. Her subcommittee did not meet that day — "Sadly, Arlene did not make it. We didn't have policy committee today" — and two of the three policies it brought forward were adopted the same evening. Her last recorded meeting on the board; see flag 5.
Noelle Kronberg	School Board Clerk	Called the roll and the nonpublic roll call; presented the first of a series of written standard operating procedures for her own office, and told the board she would finish the rest whether or not she was re-elected.
Kerry Kennedy	Interim Superintendent, SAU 6	Moved the calendar item to the next meeting; introduced the two principals; presented the printed Annual Report and said copies would be at the polling places; brought a former Stevens student's National Science Foundation research proposal to the board; described the district's arrangements for the three voting days in the coming school year.
Matt Angell	Senior Comptroller / Interim Business Administrator	Gave the cash position and an assurance on payroll; reported the forensic audit still waiting on the auditors' conflict check and the annual audits waiting on him; disclosed that the payroll clerk has left and that payroll is being entered by hand; presented the donation; defended the Annual Report's salary basis; read the nonpublic motion aloud for a board member.
Melissa Lewis	Principal, Disnard Elementary School	Presented mid-year i-Ready and DIBELS reading and mathematics data, the domain and grade-level breakdowns, the intervention grid and the school's action plan — the longest single item of the evening.
Mark Blount	Principal, Maple Avenue Elementary School	Presented the same benchmarks for Maple Avenue, including the kindergarten cohort that arrived at high risk and was halved by mid-year, and the data-team planning documents behind it.
Wayne Hemingway	Citizens' comments — Ward 1; state representative; city councillor; parent	The only member of the public to speak. Raised the student-organised rally planned for the following Friday and asked whether it was permitted.
Chelsea Weatherford	Interim Human Resources Manager	Named on the agenda masthead; no remarks recorded. Credited by the interim superintendent for work on the Annual Report.
Paige Jarvis	Interim Student Services Director	Named on the agenda masthead; no remarks recorded.
Jason Bonneville	Interim Technology Director	Absent. Consulted on the research proposal and on policy EHAG; the interim superintendent relayed both.
Dr. Michael Herrington	Principal, Stevens High School	Not present. Named as the administrator who would support a student board member, and as having been consulted on the artificial-intelligence policy. Reported out of the building; the high-school visit could not be scheduled because of it.

Agenda

Items follow the agenda document in the packet folder; dispositions follow the approved minutes. The agenda's printed clock times are scheduled, not actual, and the meeting ran ahead of them throughout. The agenda contains no nonpublic-session item; the minutes insert one — see flag 2.
Taken up	Item	Agenda text / disposition
0:00:01	Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance	Agenda: "Call to Order & Pledge of Allegiance", timed 6:30 PM. The chair opens: "I'd like to call to order the March 4th, 2026 meeting of the Claremont School Board. All in attendance. Please rise and join Regents. I pledge allegiance."
0:00:39	Roll call	Agenda: "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members". In the approved minutes the Present line is blank and the Absent line reads Arlene Hawkins.
0:00:56	Consent agenda	Agenda: amendments and final approval of the board agenda; approval of the minutes of 2.18.26 and 2.21.26; "Approval of Manifest:". The interim superintendent asked to move the school-calendar item to the next meeting and the chair directed it there; the consent agenda then passed on no objection.
0:02:21	Citizens' comments	Agenda: "Citizens Comments- Please reference CSB Policy BEDH- Public Comment & Participation at Board Meetings." One speaker; the noticed period ran about ninety seconds and closed at 0:03:54. See flag 11.
0:04:07	Finance update	Agenda: "Finance Update (Report) Matt Angell, Senior Comptroller". Cash, the tax-anticipation borrowing, the walk-in cooler at Disnard, the forensic audit and three years of annual audits.
0:12:01	Follow-up items — mid-year data reports	Agenda: "Middle of Year, MOY, Data Reports, DES/MAES administration". The agenda carries no link to either presentation. The approved minutes carry links to both. See flag 7.
1:11:04	Superintendent report	Agenda: "Superintendent Report". Social Workers Appreciation Week; the printed Annual Report and its availability at the polls; a research participation request; voting-day arrangements; staffing timelines.
1:20:58	Acceptance of Class of 1967 / NHCF donation	Agenda: "Acceptance of Class of 1967/NHCF Donation- Anticipated $10,767.02 (Discussion/Vote)". Moved by Crawford, seconded by the chair, carried on a voice vote with no opposition and no abstentions.
1:22:57	Clerk standard operating procedures	Agenda: "Clerk Standard Operating Procedures (Discussion/Vote) Noelle Kronberg, School Board Clerk", linking the agendas procedure. Listed as a vote item; taken as a discussion, with no motion and no vote. The minutes record only that the board asked for future procedures one at a time.
1:33:14	Schedule school board retreat	Agenda: "Schedule School Board Retreat (Discussion)". Deferred: "We're going to have to wait to see what the board composition is going to be at our next meeting." Members were asked to email the chair their committee preferences.
1:35:42	Subcommittee reports	Agenda lists Capital Improvement (Chair Petrin, Crawford), Finance (Chair Crawford, Whitney), Policy (Chair Hawkins, Madden, Howard), Curriculum (Madden), SRVRTC (Chair Crawford, Petrin, Howard) and the Ad Hoc Leadership Search Subcommittee (Chair Madden, Petrin). Only the technical centre and the policy subcommittee reported.
1:36:54	Policy BBBF — Student School Board Members (first read)	Moved to adoption, then withdrawn and moved to a second read so the term start date could be settled. Carried on a voice vote.
1:43:19	Policy EHAG — Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (second read)	Moved to a second read, withdrawn, then moved to adoption with amendments to strike the highlighted alternatives and renumber. Adopted on a voice vote.
1:47:52	Policy JIH — Student Searches and Their Property (second read)	Adopted on a voice vote after discussion of parental notice and the administrator's authority to search on reasonable suspicion.
1:51:26	Other business	Agenda: "8:20 PM Other Business". The Annual Report's salary table; the ratio of benefits to salary; school visits, report cards and the dress code.
2:00:59	Nonpublic session — RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and (b)	Not on the agenda. The minutes insert the heading "Non-Public Session RSA 91-A:3 II(a, b)" and record entry at 8:32pm and return at 8:59pm, both on roll call. The recording ends during the entry roll call.
2:02:30	Future dates; adjournment	Agenda future dates: a requested discussion of preschool service delivery models, "Potentially a second meeting in March after the passage of the '27 budget"; a discussion of next year's meeting schedule; and "Voting Day March 10th, 2026." Minutes: "Consent adjournment at 9:00pm".

Discussion timeline

Chronological topics with the moment each is taken up. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording. Snippets expand on hover or keyboard focus.

Time	Topic	What was said	Flags
0:00:56	The manifest, again with no number	The chair sets out the consent agenda: "Our first order of business is the approval of the items on our consent agenda. This evening we have four items. Number one is the any amendments request from the board or from the administration? Approval of the minutes from 21826 and 22126. And just acknowledgment that the board has to review and approve the manifest this evening as well." No amount is stated, and none appears in the agenda or in the minutes.	OBSERVATION
0:01:51	Is there a nonpublic session tonight?	Madden asks the question at the top of the meeting; the chair answers "Nothing else. But Mr. Madden can call non public at any time if you'd like. Within the, within the meeting if you would like to." Two hours later the board went into a nonpublic session on two statutory grounds. Nothing about it appears on the agenda.	OBSERVATION
0:02:21	The only public comment of the evening	A Ward 1 resident, state representative and city councillor raises a student-organised rally: "I see there's a rally for our schools that's going to happen this Friday" and "I applaud them for doing it." The interim superintendent had already called City Hall about permits. The period closed about ninety seconds later.	OBSERVATION
0:04:07	Cash, borrowing and an assurance about payroll	"We have just over $2 million in the bank, which is we're tracking exactly where our plan was from back in October. I do still anticipate borrowing from the loan by the end of the month. And I want to reiterate to the employees, we have enough money to make payroll." And: "Every time I say this, I get an email the next day asking whether we're going to make payroll. Yes, we are going to make payroll."
0:04:57	A request for the budget-to-actual report	Crawford: "So just to be compliant. We would like to see the budget to actual through the end of January or the end of February." She asks for her own copy even though the reports are posted, and books February's for the next meeting. At the following meeting she corrected herself on the record: the January figures had been in the packet all along.
0:06:16	The walk-in coolers, and a bridge at Disnard	The chair returns to the February authorisation: "we did do discuss whether we could do a bridge on one of the schools business or walk in. If it if we could not be complying, could not do a bridge, then the motion that was made at the last meeting authorized the administration to move forward to replace the one at Disney Art as well." The comptroller reports a letter about impervious surfaces that the district does not have, and thinks a stop-gap is possible at Disnard but not at the middle school.
0:08:10	The forensic audit has not moved	"So right now let's start with the forensic audit, because nothing's moved since the last meeting. I'm still waiting for them to do their their compliance checks. Basically, they're just taking a whole list of people. They're running it through all of their client. Yeah. They don't want any conflicts." Two weeks on from the February hearing, the position is unchanged.	MEDIUM
0:08:55	Pulling invoices back to fiscal 2023	"There's about 100 that they've asked, and. And it spans multiple years. Part of the problem is, is when you go back several years ago, trying to find the documentation because it wasn't scanned in." Crawford establishes the range: fiscal 2023 through the current year, with a cut-off test on 2026. Anything from 2025 is scanned, "Although I'm finding that it's spotty."	MEDIUM
0:09:49	The payroll clerk has gone and payroll is being keyed by hand	"And then but on top of that, our payroll person has left the district. Okay. And that process is manual. Even though the employees log in and do their time clock entry through an automated system. It's not imported into our accounting system." A week of the comptroller's effort has gone into automating it. Asked what is holding the annual audits: "The regular audit is me providing them with data … but but my priority is, is making sure payroll is, is is being paid."	MEDIUM
0:12:01	Mid-year data: the item that took the hour	The interim superintendent introduces both elementary principals. The decks were not linked in the agenda; a printed copy handed out at the table was cut off at the margins, and a second printing was distributed during the item.	OBSERVATION
0:14:37	Reading on grade level: 23% to 36%	"Ultimately you want then to look at those greens and you want to see green increasing. So you can see green. Green grade level went from 23% in the fall to 36% on our most recent." The counts behind it: "From 130 down to 115. We had 49 students at the beginning of the year who were two or more grade levels below on this assessment, down to 39 and from 40 to 28 for the lowest level. So headed in the right direction, but still absolutely not close to where it needs to be."	POSITIVE
0:19:57	First grade, from 3% to 21%	"You how very little we have kiddos who were early, mid or on right at the beginning of first grade now. Good news. You can see that. Good news. We'll celebrate that. Is it where we want. Not yet 3% to 21%."
0:20:22	Do parents see this, and are they told what to do about it?	Crawford asks three times in a row — whether the data is shared, whether parents know where their child stands, and whether teachers tell them how to help. The answer is that every student gets an individual report, that certain reports "will give those ideas of things that can be done as well", and that each pupil is given an annual growth target and a stretch target.
0:21:43	How much of this is content and how much is the test?	Sprague: "I'm wondering, from my own experience with older kids, how much of the how much of this is content and how much of it is the way they approach the test?" The answer adds a third category: "I was going to say it depends on the kiddo, but then I would add a third category and that is your technology skills. So for example, on a fifth grade reading passage you have to recognize that that's a scroll bar and scroll down to the no. There's more text coming."
0:23:27	The candid aside about the assessment itself	"And we've also, to be perfectly honest, we've done I ready for a long time. And I honestly think kids are sick of it, to be perfectly honest. Fifth graders are sick and tired of it. They're tired of it. They're tired of the format. I think they're ready for something new, to be honest."
0:24:39	The second reading benchmark	The DIBELS results, which the transcription renders variously and which the approved minutes name correctly. Kindergarten below or well below fell from 69% in the autumn to 39% by mid-year; in fifth grade the red band grew from 46% to 50%, and the explanation offered is that "The benchmark increases. The text gets more complex. The words per minute increases."
0:27:50	Mathematics: 14% to 27%, and geometry	"Our math scores are lower. We are in year two of implementing a new math curriculum program. So in the fall we had 14% who were on or above, and we have 27%." On the weakest domain: "Almost every math curriculum program that we've used or had in the past, geometry is one of the final units taught. And so if pacing wise, you do not get all the way through the program. You don't hit geometry. And if for a couple of years that happens to you, that's a big problem."
0:35:32	Attendance and behaviour named as the limits	"Ongoing classroom data and progress monitoring essential to knowing if we're meeting those targets, the impact, the impact of attendance concerns. So I'm going to raise some source spots, attendance concerns. We can't teach them if they're not there." And on classroom behaviour: "When you have a very disruptive student in the classroom, it's not just that student who's suffering the learning of all suffers." The district's attendance officer is credited by name in a sentence the approved minutes render only as the Truancy Officer: "in this area, Scott Maple is a gift."
0:40:14	The sentence a district under a budget cap campaign did not have to say	"And and we do not want to minimize that in any way and only look at proficiency. Overall proficiency is underwhelming when you look at our overall proficiency scores and it doesn't meet our goal or expectations. And so that's why we find it really important to look at both. Before we can have proficiency, we have to have progress."	POSITIVE
0:40:44	Is homework being targeted?	"Used to be my day a few years ago. Everybody got the same assignment. Is homework now being targeted towards where you're seeing areas of that kids need to make improvements?" The reply: "I need you to be practicing more of building your fluency. And I want you to try two division problems as opposed to getting a whole sheet of division problems … Gone. I will say gone are the days of one size fits all." The dialogue file attributes this question to William Madden; the approved minutes attribute it to Michael Petrin. See the method note.
0:41:51	Coverage versus mastery, from the high school	Sprague: "this isn't just applicable to elementary schools. What you're talking about, is very similar to my own lived experience at the high school. And you call it taught versus learned mindset. I used to call it the coverage versus mastery." He traces the same geometry problem upward: "you had another group of kids who were in stage two calculus who were not proficient in geometry because they had had it in a block schedule so long ago."
0:43:47	A glossary, a colour scheme and a printout	Madden: "I'm not familiar with what all the abbreviations were. So if you could have." And on the two assessments running their colour scales in opposite directions: "we were going in the other direction was good. And then we also had a color that you snuck in there." The reply concedes the point: parents get the same charts, and "I wish we had more than one parent teacher conference a year".
0:46:49	How does this compare with the previous two years?	The chair asks the question the budget debate turns on — "how do these benchmark scores compared with like the previous two years?" — expressly to see "the impact of the transition". The comparison had not been done; it was undertaken for a later meeting.
0:48:53	Should student data inform teacher evaluation?	"For me, that would tell me a lot about the educators, more than the benchmarks." Pressed further: "So do you use the scores themselves. And I'm not asking for a punitive but to be able to say, well, you know, you see year after year kids struggling in certain domains coming out of service." The answer is that it is not part of the formal evaluation, "was a large conversation about that years ago", and would have to be revisited when the evaluation tool is.
0:53:33	Retention, and the answer from a teacher who tried the alternative	"I've been reading a lot and watching a lot about the Mississippi Miracle and the southern surge, and the kind of rejection of social promotion now". The reply is first-hand: "I had a small group of fourth graders that in good conscience I couldn't send them to fourth grade. They weren't ready. But retention was not an option at that point. And so I agreed to do a multi age classroom." On retention itself: "I have seen one that I would consider successful."
0:55:25	Maple Avenue	The second principal, asked to keep it to ten minutes, cuts a longer deck: "we've made growth across all of the grade levels except one where it was, it remained there was no change." The unmoved grade level, he argues, hides real movement out of the two-and-three-year-below bands.
0:59:27	A kindergarten cohort halved	62% of Maple Avenue's kindergarteners arrived at high risk in reading. "I want to tell you, though, between the time they entered our doors to February, when we finished doing our benchmark test and the kindergarten team cut that number to nearly in half by mid-year."	POSITIVE
1:04:30	The board member who read the chart against itself	Crawford works down the grades and finds the pattern nobody had named: "All the grades. It it continues to go up. And that is a concern." Then: "It's that middle territory that gets deflated. And there's some excellent there's some excelling because, the green and the blue is increasing. But it's concerning that the red is increasing as well." The principal agrees and points to the adjustments made in grades three and five.
1:07:14	Nine days	Asked for the school's attendance rate, the principal does not have it, and gives the research instead: "if you have, kids, particularly at k one and two that are missing more than nine days out of the year, that's going to directly correlate to how well they'll be able to read at grade three." Crawford converts it on the spot — "Nine, nine days. That's 5% of." — and asks for the data.
1:10:05	The handout	Madden: "there's two ways to do something. Do it right or do it again. And that goes for everybody. And you give us this and it's all cut off. And it's really doesn't look professional at all." The interim superintendent takes it: "What that's on me. Okay I was me I was just given the report. I just hit print."	OBSERVATION
1:11:20	The Annual Report, printed and going to the polls	"The annual report is printed. It's available. We will have it on voting day next Tuesday at the schools, the voting sites just to make sure." Fifty-two pages. "If anybody is looking for information, please take a look at it. And it may help more decision making come Tuesday for voting days. You're just again a reminder of voting day on Tuesday, March 10th."	OBSERVATION
1:12:31	A former Stevens student's research proposal	A 2015 graduate, now a professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, asks to include Claremont pupils aged 9 to 12 in a National Science Foundation study using a game platform to teach typing and basic technology skills. The interim superintendent brings it for a decision before engaging: "before we engage in this, I just want to make sure the board knows what's happening." The reason given for the approach is rural access: "Most of her research is that it's always more urban students that have access to that."
1:16:36	The motion, and a link that does not open	Sprague moves to support the project; Crawford seconds; Sprague discloses that the researcher is a former board member's daughter. Howard then reports the packet link is dead: "the this research embedded link is dead right now" and "You do not have access to this file." The permissions were fixed at the table and the motion carried with no opposition and no abstentions.	OBSERVATION
1:18:41	Voting day, and three of them next year	"We appreciate we want people to go vote. So we're trying to limit the access to of our staff at the buildings on the day for voting so that they're not, you know, tying up parking and things like that too." And, on the coming year: "there's three voting days next year and so that their understanding like that impacts our school day, too, because they're using it." This is the whole of what the meeting says about March 10.	OBSERVATION
1:19:37	How many teachers will still be here in September	The chair: "we've we've had some concern to have heard some concerns that we will lose a lot of educators. Right. And so it's a good idea for us to I would like to know where we are." Crawford: "It might be helpful after the election." The answer sets the timetable: contracts issued by April 15, "April 15th is when contractually we have to give it to them. It's not just tax day", and a few weeks after that for replies.
1:20:58	A library donation of $10,767.02	Accepted from the Class of 1967 library fund through the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, for American government, American history, United States geography, world geography and world history materials. The chair states the motion and seconds it herself: "Miss Crawford makes the motion to accept $10,767.02 from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and which was accepted by the class of 1967. And I second that."
1:22:57	The clerk writes down her own office	The first of a planned series of written standard operating procedures, built on a template the clerk adapted from a university's. She asks the board for feedback on whether it is clear and detailed enough, and commits to the rest regardless of the election result: "Even if I don't get reelected, I'll make sure that they're done for the next meeting, and then they can be added from there as needed."	POSITIVE
1:30:25	Twenty-four hours against a week	"And I did note that the RSA specifies 24 hours for a regular meeting, but past practice is a week for." She adds the longer rule for hearings: "if it has a public hearing, it has to be two weeks." The written procedure records both, and states the practice as the standard.	POSITIVE
1:32:17	Why the procedures matter	The chair: "I don't think people realize how critical this is because previous clerks have done we've had a real challenge with." And: "the clerk physician has a lot of responsibility and there's a lot of like legacy knowledge … in particular, there's no resources for the clerk." Sprague, of written procedures for the office: "It's never been done."	POSITIVE
1:33:14	Everything else waits for the new board	"Just to schedule the school board retreat. I think we really can't do that today. We're going to have to wait to see what the board composition is going to be at our next meeting." Members are asked to email their committee preferences in advance: "We're going to be electing officers and we're going to be assigning committees, and it would be very helpful if board members would just email me what committees they would be interested in".
1:33:56	The February self-evaluation, reported in two sentences	"We also just to let the public know we did have a self-evaluation in a previous Saturday." Two goals are given aloud: a board member in a school every month, and a structured quarterly training programme, possibly through a new ad hoc subcommittee. The written minutes of that meeting record considerably more, and were approved on this night's consent agenda without discussion.	MEDIUM
1:36:36	A request to go into nonpublic	Madden: "I wouldn't mind if we went nonpublic for a few minutes to go over the leadership search." The chair takes the policies first and puts it last.	OBSERVATION
1:36:54	The Policy Subcommittee did not meet	"Sadly, Arlene did not make it. We didn't have policy committee today. But we worked on a little write up just for working for you." Three policies were then presented and two of them adopted.	MEDIUM
1:37:18	The student board member the district does not have	"under HB 1381 from 20 2022, districts which has high schools are required to have at least one. Previously boards were permitted but not required. In the past we had had we have had two. I think the only language is that we've changed it to the one required is still room for two if we want one, but now it says required instead of permitted." The interim superintendent explains the seat has been paused since the previous August.	MEDIUM
1:40:04	The blank in the policy	Section B of the sample policy leaves the term start date as an underscore. Howard: "I think we had left a blank with the intention of reviewing it when there would actually be an election for it". Sprague offers October 1 as a friendly amendment, accepted; the chair then asks for a second read so the high school and its students can be consulted. Howard notes the absent subcommittee chair had preferred July 1.	MEDIUM
1:43:19	The generative artificial intelligence policy	Howard reports it was held for the technology director, who "said it looked okay", and proposes striking the sample's alternative sub-paragraphs and renumbering. A deadline is set for the implementation plan: "we set a deadline for the second meeting in June for, like an AI plan."
1:45:11	Adopted the same evening the chair said she could not assess it	"This was pretty it's a pretty dense policy. It is it's complicated. I didn't I didn't feel like I was going to make an assessment about it." Four minutes of procedural confusion follow over whether this was the first or second read; the mover withdraws his motion and moves adoption instead — "I am, and I'd like another motion to move it to adoption" — and the chair puts it: "All in favor of adopting policy e.g. a GEHAG with the amendments to remove the others and renumbering, say I." Adopted.	OBSERVATION
1:47:52	Student searches, and the version that was wrong	Howard: "the only thing is number four, you guys had gotten a version that was wrong last time that hadn't been updated. That was our fault." The corrected clause is the one that had sent the policy to a second read in February.
1:48:45	The substance of the search rule	Sprague: "the original one we got was a concern because it did not give the administrators the permission to at least give the parent the opportunity to commend and sort of if the parent can't come in, you can't do the search." He grounds the fix: "you don't need probable cause. You only need reasonable, reasonable suspicion to conduct a search. Your because of in loco parentis you. You have custody of that child." The chair records her disagreement — "I still don't like that parents aren't notified or don't give consent" — and the policy is adopted.
1:51:26	The salaries the district had just published to voters	Sprague: "what you're looking through, there are salaries in here that are vastly understated as to what they really are according to the budget. So I'm just wondering how that could happen." And: "This is a document, and people are going to look at it and they're going to say, that's what people make." The answer: "No, that's what they've earned for the calendar year." Six days before the ballot.	OBSERVATION
1:54:22	The first year the table has been published	"This is also the first time that it's been published in this report. Right? So feedback is is very important. And, and we can make adjustments and how the school board would like to see it next year." The comptroller also describes an earlier attempt: "I try to pull a report earlier in the year, and it was being picked apart for months and months and months, and it was sent to the attorney's office and it kept getting picked apart."	OBSERVATION
1:55:55	Benefits that do not reach the rule of thumb	Madden: "we talked about the markup is almost 100%, but that's not what it shows here" and "the numbers don't even come close to the the rule of thumb of 100." The comptroller: "I know because that's based upon the budget, which is." He offers to walk the spreadsheet through in his office; the interim superintendent asks that names be stripped first, and the comptroller answers that "the dollar amount is, not personally protected information."	OBSERVATION
1:58:55	School visits and report cards	The high-school visit cannot be dated because its principal is out. On blank report cards: Madden asks for them, is told they are student-specific and standards-based, and answers "I don't care what it looks like. I want to see whether I'm interested in rigor. I want to see attendance, effort, discipline."
1:59:56	A deadline instead of an answer	On the dress code: "this is a follow up to our last visit, where it didn't seem like anybody knew what the dress code policy was. Have you taken any action there?" Told the administration is discussing it: "I'm not going to let you I'm not going to accept such a vague answer anymore. I want to know what you're going to do and when you're going to do it, by." And: "No, no, I know the policy. I read the policy. I sent it back to everybody. When is it going to be implemented?" Sprague supplies the deadline — one month — and it is accepted.
2:00:59	The nonpublic motion, read out by the business administrator	The chair: "Mr. Madden, would you like to make your motion? Do you have the RSA number?" Madden: "If you would read it for me, I would appreciate it." Nobody at the table can find the citation; after half a minute the comptroller supplies it: "I have it if you don't, I can say it … So some to make a motion to go into nonpublic session. Per RSA 91, a colon, three Roman numeral two, section" — "A and B." The chair then declares "So moved. Mr. Sprague. Seconded." The approved minutes name the chair as the mover.	MEDIUM
2:02:20	The roll call, and the end of the recording	The clerk calls the roll on entry into nonpublic session. The recording ends twelve seconds later. The minutes give entry at 8:32pm, return at 8:59pm, and consent adjournment at 9:00pm, so about twenty-eight minutes of the meeting are not in the recording — of which the last minute was in public session.	OBSERVATION

Items flagged for review

These are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each rule-based flag names the provision it rests on and links to the primary source; where no verified rule applies, the item is labelled an observation. Verify against the recording and the primary sources before relying on any of it.

OBSERVATION Six days before the ballot, a board member said the salaries the district had published to voters do not match the budget — and the district had in fact published two salary documents on two different bases

The exchange begins at 1:51:26 and runs to the end of the meeting. Sprague, of the printed Annual Report on every board member's table and bound for the polling places: "what you're looking through, there are salaries in here that are vastly understated as to what they really are according to the budget. So I'm just wondering how that could happen." Told that the figures cover interns hired part-way through the year, he presses on the rest, and then puts the point that matters: "This is a document, and people are going to look at it and they're going to say, that's what people make." The answer is a definition, not a correction: "No, that's what they've earned for the calendar year." The comptroller adds, accurately, "This is also the first time that it's been published in this report."

Both men were right, because they were describing different documents. The Annual Report's table is calendar-year earnings drawn from payroll — a W-2 measure, which for anyone hired, promoted or departed mid-year is not their salary. Separately, and for the first time this year, RSA 189:76 required the district to publish a Mandatory Report to Voters on School Expenses whose table must give "the titles and current salaries of the 4 highest-paid administrators". The district produced it (flag 13), and it states four current salaries for 2025-26: Superintendent $145,834; Asst. Superintendent $140,778; Business Administrator $125,000; Asst. Dir. Of Student Svcs $92,700. Those are a third measure again — posts, not people. The agenda masthead for this very meeting names five central office administrators, every one of them interim, and none of them an assistant superintendent; an assistant superintendent was on the district's masthead as recently as October 2025.

Madden then found the same seam from the other side at 1:55:55: "we talked about the markup is almost 100%, but that's not what it shows here", and "the numbers don't even come close to the the rule of thumb of 100." The explanation offered — actual rather than budgeted cost, a blend of two fiscal years, employees moving between family and single plans — is a sound explanation of why an actual-cost table cannot be checked against a budget rule of thumb. It is also an explanation no voter reading the report at a polling place on March 10 would have.

No rule is engaged that this review can verify, which is why this is an observation: nothing requires the Annual Report's salary table to use any particular basis, and the table does say on its face that it covers a calendar year. What is recorded here is that on the last night the board sat before the vote, its own members could not reconcile the salary figures the district had published, and the reconciliation offered was a definition rather than a number.

Sources: RSA 189:76, V (table of the 4 highest-paid administrators' titles and current salaries; 2024, 332:3, eff. July 1, 2025); CSD - Mandatory Reporting.pdf (the four figures quoted); approved minutes, 3/4/26, which record the exchange in three bullets; 3.4.26 agenda masthead. The Annual Report itself is not in the packet folder.

OBSERVATION The agenda noticed no nonpublic session, the chair confirmed there was none, and the board held one on two statutory grounds

Ninety seconds into the meeting Madden asked "Do we have a non public for tonight?" and the chair answered "Nothing else. But Mr. Madden can call non public at any time if you'd like." Two hours later he asked for one, and at 2:00:59 the board went into a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and (b) — the minutes record 8:32 p.m. to 8:59 p.m., both transitions on roll call. The posted agenda contains no nonpublic-session item at all. The approved minutes insert one, with the heading and paragraph letters that the agenda lacks.

RSA 91-A:2, II reads, on the point: "Except in an emergency or when there is a meeting of a legislative committee, a notice of the time and place of each such meeting, including a nonpublic session, shall be posted in 2 appropriate places one of which may be the public body's Internet website, if such exists, or shall be printed in a newspaper of general circulation in the city or town at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings." Whether that clause requires separate notice of a nonpublic session convened during an already-noticed public meeting, or is satisfied by the notice of the meeting it sits inside, is not settled by the text, and this page does not assert a violation. RSA 91-A:3, I(b) — the paragraph that does govern the mechanics — was complied with: the motion was made in public session, it stated its exemptions on its face, and the vote was by roll call. The board's own by-law 2.14 says in terms that the board "may go into a non-public session at any time".

What makes the omission worth recording is that the district's practice at the meetings on either side of this one was the opposite. The February 18 agenda noticed the session and reproduced the whole text of RSA 91-A:3, II(a) beneath it; so did the March 18 agenda a fortnight later. On March 4 it did neither, on the one item — the search for a permanent superintendent — that a resident might most want notice of. The subject was not concealed: the Ad Hoc Leadership Search Subcommittee is on the agenda's subcommittee list, and the request was made aloud at 1:36:36.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (notice of the time and place of each meeting, including a nonpublic session, 24 hours excluding Sundays and legal holidays; 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025); RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (motion in public session stating the specific exemption; roll call), II(a) and II(b); 3.4.26 agenda against the approved minutes; Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 2.14. Labelled an observation because the reach of the notice clause is genuinely unsettled.

MEDIUM The minutes record no start time, leave the list of members present blank, and name a different mover for the nonpublic motion than the recording supports

RSA 91-A:2, II was amended by 2025, 112:1, effective August 22, 2025, to require minutes to include the start time and end time of the meeting and the name of the person who produced them, alongside the existing duties to name the members present, describe the subject matter and final decisions, and record who made and seconded each motion. Two of the additions are satisfied: the minutes close "Consent adjournment at 9:00pm" and are signed "Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, School Board Clerk".

The start time is not recorded — the second consecutive Claremont meeting for which that is true. What the minutes carry are the agenda's scheduled headings (6:30 PM, 6:55 PM, 8:20 PM, 8:25 PM, 8:30 PM), and the meeting demonstrably outran all of them: the agenda times other business at 8:20 p.m. and the recording reaches it at 1:51:26. The true time is recoverable, and two independent anchors agree: carrying back the minutes' 8:32 p.m. entry into nonpublic from the roll call at 2:02:20 gives a call to order at about 6:29 p.m., and Google Drive records the minutes document itself as created at 6:30 p.m. on the meeting date.

The list of members present is blank. The minutes reproduce the agenda's roll-call heading and then print "Present:" with nothing after it, followed by "Absent: Arlene Hawkins". The defect is mitigated by the document itself: its masthead names all seven members, so the six present are derivable by subtraction — but the statute asks the minutes to include the names, not to make them inferable.

The mover of the nonpublic motion is in dispute between the two records. The minutes read "Heather Whitney made a motion to move into non-public session under RSA 91-A:3 II(a,b), Frank Sprague seconded the motion." On the recording the chair turns to another member — "Mr. Madden, would you like to make your motion? Do you have the RSA number?" — Madden answers "If you would read it for me, I would appreciate it", the comptroller reads the motion aloud, Madden says "Thank you sir", Sprague says "I'll second", and the chair then declares "So moved. Mr. Sprague. Seconded." Both readings survive: the chair may have adopted the motion as her own after the reading, or the minutes may have recorded the voice that declared it rather than the member who asked for it. The seconder is not in doubt.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb. The record is not absent: the end time, the minute-taker, the absentee, the entry and exit times and every motion's mover and seconder are all there, and the start time is recoverable two ways. What is missing is small, easily cured, and has now recurred.

One methodological note, because it bears on how this page tests timeliness and how future pages should. This project has previously used a document's Google Drive createdTime as a proxy for when the public could first see it. That proxy does not hold for these minutes. The 3.4.26 minutes document was created at 6:30 p.m. on March 4, the 3.18.26 minutes at 6:30 p.m. on March 18, and the 2.21.26 self-evaluation minutes at 10:16 a.m. on February 21 — in each case within minutes of the call to order, because the clerk drafts in the document live. The stamp dates the drafting, not the publication, so it cannot be used to test the five-business-day rule in RSA 91-A:2, II. Both 2026 minutes documents also carry a modifiedTime in April, weeks after the board approved them.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (names of members present; movers and seconders; start and end time and the person who produced the minutes — 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025; minutes open to inspection within 5 business days); approved minutes, 3/4/26; Google Drive file metadata for the three minutes documents.

MEDIUM The board has been sitting without the student member state law requires, and the policy that would fix it went to a second read with the term date still blank

RSA 189:1-c provides that "In addition to the school board members authorized in RSA 671:4, the school board shall have at least one nonvoting student member from each public high school maintained by the local school board within its district." That is not a recommendation and it is not new: the word shall arrived with 2022, 195:1, effective January 1, 2023. RSA 194:23-f supplies the powers, duties and one-year term. The board's own by-law 2.16 restates it: student members "shall have all the rights of a regular school board member regarding school board business except the right to vote."

The agenda masthead for this meeting carries a Student Board Members heading with nothing under it. So does the masthead for the February 18 hearing and meeting a fortnight earlier. Howard, presenting the policy at 1:37:18, described the position accurately: "under HB 1381 from 20 2022, districts which has high schools are required to have at least one. Previously boards were permitted but not required. In the past we had had we have had two." The interim superintendent explained why the seat is empty — a recruitment that started and stopped — and added a second reason for the delay: "there were a lot of meaty political things going on for the voting and things. So we felt that it was a lot of late night meetings that we didn't want to have the students come in for just yet."

The policy that would regularise it, BBBF, is the NHSBA sample. Its section B leaves the term start date as an underscore, and that blank is what stopped its adoption: Sprague offered October 1 as a friendly amendment and it was accepted, then the chair asked for a second read so the high school and its student government could settle both the date and the election procedure. That is a defensible decision. The consequence is that the policy was not adopted on March 4 either.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb. A student had been identified and paused rather than never sought; the board is actively working the policy rather than ignoring the duty; and the position is filled shortly afterwards — the March 18 masthead names two student members. What the record shows is a statutory seat left empty for most of a school year, through the district's budget crisis and the whole of the warrant-article season, with the students who would have occupied it kept away partly because the meetings were long and contentious.

Sources: RSA 189:1-c (at least one nonvoting student member from each public high school; 2022, 195:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2023); RSA 194:23-f (powers, duties and one-year term of a student member); policy BBBF as presented (NHSBA sample, revised 30 September 2024; its own District Policy History block is blank); Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 2.16; agenda mastheads for 3.4.26 and 3.18.26.

MEDIUM Three policies came to the board from a subcommittee that did not meet, whose chair was absent, and whose minutes are not published where the by-laws send them

Howard opened the policy item at 1:36:54 with the position stated plainly: "Sadly, Arlene did not make it. We didn't have policy committee today. But we worked on a little write up just for working for you." Three policies followed. Two of them — EHAG and JIH — were adopted that evening.

The board's own by-laws are specific about this subcommittee. Rule 1.05 provides that "The Policy Committee shall hold at least one regular monthly meeting and ideally consist of three CSB members and an administrative advisor, selected by the Superintendent", and that it "Shall report to the full Board monthly". The same rule sets the record-keeping: subcommittee meetings "are meetings open to the public and are subject to New Hampshire's Right to Know Law"; notice "must be posted at least 24 hours in advance on the SAU 6 website"; and "Minutes must be recorded and available for public inspection on the SAU 6 website within 5 days of the meeting", with the subcommittee chair responsible for getting them there. RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) puts the subcommittee inside the Right-to-Know Law in terms, reaching "any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto".

Nothing has been found at the destination the by-laws name. The SAU 6 site links five Claremont subcommittee Drive folders and this project enumerated them on 2026-08-29; the folder the site offers for Policy holds nothing. Two title searches of Drive return policy-subcommittee minutes for 2022 and 2023 and none later, and every one of those documents sits in the project maintainer's own Drive rather than in a district share — which is a fact about this project's own collection, not about the district's. A search-based negative in this corpus is unsafe on its own, so the honest statement is not found rather than does not exist: no policy-subcommittee agenda or set of minutes for any month of this school year has been located in any district share this project can read. What the public record does contain, for the work that produced two adopted policies, is one sentence spoken by a member reporting for an absent chair.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb, and the mitigation is substantial. Nothing was hidden: the subcommittee's non-meeting was announced, the substance of each policy was gone through on camera at length, the version history of JIH was explained including the subcommittee's own error, and the board declined to adopt the one policy that was not ready. The recording is doing the work the subcommittee's minutes would have done. It is graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH for exactly that reason — the corpus reserves HIGH for an absence nothing on the record explains — and it is graded rather than passed over because the by-law makes the monthly meeting and the posted minutes duties of the subcommittee, and a reader who wants to know what was changed between the February version of JIH and this one has nowhere to look.

Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 1.05 (monthly meeting; notice 24 hours ahead on the SAU 6 website; minutes posted within 5 days) — quoted from the live by-laws document, last modified 23 March 2026; RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (a subcommittee of a public body is a public body); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice; minutes within 5 business days); the folder the SAU 6 Claremont board page offers for the Policy subcommittee, Drive folder [Documents posted to web}, created 2026-02-04. Maintainer disclosure: the only policy-subcommittee minutes this project can locate anywhere in Drive are from 2022 and 2023 and are owned by Kevin Tyson, who maintains this project.

MEDIUM Three fiscal years of annual audits are still open, the forensic audit has not moved in a fortnight, and the officer responsible has absorbed payroll by hand

Every element of this was already on the record at the February 18 hearing. What March 4 adds is a fortnight of no movement and one new obstacle. On the forensic audit: "nothing's moved since the last meeting. I'm still waiting for them to do their their compliance checks … So they're doing a conflict check right now." Bernstein Shur remains engaged to represent the district. Crawford asked for a deadline to be imposed: "Is there any way that you can follow up with the forensic audit folks to give them a kind of a deadline for doing their." — and, on the record, "Just let them know that the board is on your neck, that we want to get going on this."

On the annual audits the range is fiscal 2023 through the current year, with a cut-off test on 2026: about a hundred invoice requests spanning multiple years, and "when you go back several years ago, trying to find the documentation because it wasn't scanned in." Even the recent years are imperfect: "anything starting in 2025 has been scanned in. That's easy. Okay. Although I'm finding that it's spotty."

The new fact is the payroll clerk. "our payroll person has left the district. Okay. And that process is manual. Even though the employees log in and do their time clock entry through an automated system. It's not imported into our accounting system." A week of the comptroller's time has gone into automating the import, and he cannot test it on Claremont until the weekend. Asked what is holding the annual audits, he answers himself: "The regular audit is me providing them with data … but but my priority is, is making sure payroll is, is is being paid." The vacancy was raised as an open post at the February meeting; a fortnight later it is the binding constraint on the audits.

RSA 197:25 assumes an examination of the treasurer's and the board's accounts "at the close of each fiscal year". Claremont uses an engaged audit firm rather than elected auditors, so the section's locally-elected mechanism is not the operative one and this page asserts no breach of it; what the section supplies is the yardstick. Against that yardstick the district is three cycles behind, on the eve of a vote that determines next year's staffing, and the officer carrying the work is simultaneously the interim business administrator, the payroll department and the district's point of contact for the forensic auditors.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb, on the same reasoning the February 18 page applied to the same facts: the item is on the agenda by standing practice, the account given is candid and specific, the board pressed for a date and got a refusal to give a false one, and the constraint was named rather than left to be inferred.

Sources: RSA 197:25 (examination of the treasurer's and school board's accounts at the close of each fiscal year); RSA 197:23-a (treasurer's custody; payment only on orders of the school board); approved minutes, 3/4/26; the February 18, 2026 page, flag 3, for the same items a fortnight earlier.

OBSERVATION Three of the evening's documents were not where the by-laws require them: two presentations unlinked, one link that returned a permissions error, and a procedure posted the night before

The board's by-laws carry a rule on this, and it is the second of the two rules that share the number 2.09: "Any and all presentations by the administration to the board or any committee shall be contained in the agenda and made available to the public in its original format online so the public may download or access the information prior to or during board meetings." Rule 1.09 requires supporting documentation for committee business to be submitted "with the agenda … no later than the Wednesday prior to the regular scheduled meeting", and rule 4.03(4) makes posting agenda materials a duty of the clerk's office.

The two mid-year data presentations are not linked in the agenda. The agenda's follow-up block names the item and stops. Both decks are linked in the approved minutes — which is to say, they reached the public after the meeting they were presented at. A viewer watching live had only a printed handout that Madden described as "all cut off", and a second, unstapled printing distributed during the item.
The research proposal's linked document returned a permissions screen. Howard, at 1:16:36: "the this research embedded link is dead right now", and reading the screen aloud, "You do not have access to this file." The clerk's own written procedure, presented forty minutes later at the same meeting, has the cure in it: "Ensure the sharing permissions on all documents are 'anyone with the link' and 'viewer'." A resident reported the identical failure in citizens' comments at the February 18 meeting.
The procedure that was the agenda item reached the packet the night before. The packet folder was created on February 25, a week ahead. The Clerk Agendas SOP document was created at 8:11 p.m. on March 3 and placed in it. The clerk said as much at the table — "I did I did drop this into" the agenda — and her own written rule is "at least one week prior to any non-emergency meeting".

No statutory rule is engaged, which is why this is an observation: RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of the time and place of the meeting, not the publication of its exhibits, and the district's practice of posting a full packet a week ahead already exceeds the statutory 24 hours. The three items are grouped because they are one problem — the board's own rules about supporting documents are the rules being missed — and because the meeting contains its own remedy: a clerk writing those rules down, at that meeting, for the first time in the district's history.

Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 1.09, 2.09 (the agenda-itemisation rule; the number is shared with rule 2.09 "(Amendments)") and 4.03(4); Clerk Agendas SOP and its Drive creation stamp; 3.4.26 agenda against the approved minutes.

MEDIUM The minutes of the board's self-evaluation, approved on this night's consent agenda, record no start time and name nobody as their author — and one of the goals in them is a standing quarterly non-meeting to discuss personnel

The consent agenda approved two sets of minutes, 2.18.26 and 2.21.26. The second is a Claremont School Board Self Evaluation Meeting held on Saturday, February 21 at 10:00 a.m. — a meeting of a public body with an agenda, a roll call, two hours of substantive discussion and a set of goals, and no recording anywhere in this corpus. The chair summarised two of its outcomes aloud at 1:33:56. It was approved without discussion.

The document fails two of the three requirements added to RSA 91-A:2, II by 2025, 112:1 in force since August 22, 2025. It records no start time — only the agenda's scheduled 10:00 AM heading, with the roll noting "Loren Howard (10:30)" as a late arrival. And, alone among the Claremont minutes this project has read for 2026, it carries no "Respectfully submitted by" line: nobody is named as the person who produced it. The end time is there ("12:05 adjournment") and the roll is complete, naming five members present, one late arrival, one absentee and the clerk.

The board's own timetable was also missed, by three days. By-law 2.01 records that "Per CBS policy BAA the Board shall evaluate its own performance in terms of generally accepted principles of successful board operations and in relation to its annual goals and objectives no later than the 2nd meeting in February." The board's regular meetings fall on the first and third Wednesdays; the second February meeting was February 18. The self-evaluation was held on February 21.

The item that most deserves a reader's attention is a goal, not a defect. Under Board goals the minutes record: "Quarterly non-meeting/non-public to discuss personnel"; and under the debrief, "In the future: have non-meetings with legal counsel to share collective concerns/conversations and get legal advice". The second is squarely within RSA 91-A:2, I(b), which excludes "Consultation with legal counsel" from the definition of a meeting. The first is not. RSA 91-A:2, I lists what is not a meeting and personnel discussion is not among the exclusions; discussion of a named employee's dismissal, promotion, compensation or discipline is a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a) — which requires a noticed meeting, a motion stating the exemption on its face, a roll-call vote, and minutes. A standing quarterly slot described as a "non-meeting/non-public" for personnel elides two different things, and the elision matters because only one of them leaves a public record.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb. The meeting was noticed on the February 18 agenda's future dates, its minutes exist, they are unusually frank, and they were put to the board in public. The goal is a stated intention, not a session held; nothing here says the board has done it. What is flagged is that the intention, as written, does not distinguish the one lawful route from the one that needs a meeting.

Sources: 2.21.26 Approved CSB Self Evaluation Meeting Minutes; RSA 91-A:2, I (what is not a meeting: I(b) consultation with legal counsel) and II (start time, end time, person who produced the minutes; 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025); RSA 91-A:3, II(a) (nonpublic session for the dismissal, promotion, compensation or discipline of a public employee); Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 2.01, and policy BAA.

OBSERVATION The manifest is again a heading with no number — and the district has now written down, for the first time, why

The consent agenda's third item reads, in the agenda and again in the approved minutes, "Approval of Manifest:" and stops. No amount follows it in either document. The chair told the room only that "the board has to review and approve the manifest this evening as well", and the consent agenda then passed on no objection with no separate treatment of it. RSA 197:23-a makes the manifest the instrument by which money leaves the district: the treasurer "shall pay out the same only upon orders of the school board or upon orders of the 2 or more members of the school board empowered by the school board as a whole to authorize payments."

This page grades the same facts more lightly than the February 18 page did, and says so deliberately. That page graded the identical omission MEDIUM. What has changed in a fortnight is that the district has produced a written reason, in a document in this meeting's own packet: the clerk's standard operating procedure states that the material uploaded with an agenda "will likely not include vouchers/manifests as those often include information protected by FERPA". That is a real reason, it is now the district's stated policy rather than an unexplained practice, and it is consistent with RSA 91-A:5, IV, which permits withholding records whose disclosure would invade privacy. It is not a reason to withhold the total, which contains no student's name, and the board has still not disclosed one; but a documented practice with a stated basis is a materially better record than a blank line, and the corpus's grading should follow that.

Sources: RSA 197:23-a (payment only on orders of the school board or of empowered members); RSA 91-A:5, IV (permissive exemption for records whose disclosure would constitute invasion of privacy); Clerk Agendas SOP; the February 18, 2026 page, flag 5.

POSITIVE Six days before a vote on a budget cap, the district put an hour of its worst numbers on television and did not spin them

An hour and a half of this two-hour meeting is two elementary principals walking a school board through mid-year assessment data, in public, on the eve of a ballot on whether to cap the district's spending. There was every incentive to present the growth and skip the level, and they did not.

The growth is real and was given first: reading on grade level at Disnard from 23% to 36%, mathematics from 14% to 27%, first grade from 3% to 21%, and at Maple Avenue a kindergarten cohort of which 62% arrived at high risk cut "to nearly in half by mid-year". So were the counts underneath: "From 130 down to 115. We had 49 students at the beginning of the year who were two or more grade levels below on this assessment, down to 39".

Then the level was given, unprompted, in the presenter's own summary slide: "we do not want to minimize that in any way and only look at proficiency. Overall proficiency is underwhelming when you look at our overall proficiency scores and it doesn't meet our goal or expectations." And the growth was qualified twice: "still not where we want to be", "we're moving in the right direction, not at a pace or intensity that we would love to see."

Three other things belong in this flag. The limits were named as limits rather than excuses: attendance — "We can't teach them if they're not there" — classroom behaviour, and "Lack of team meeting time this year", which is a resource the budget controls. The assessment instrument itself was criticised by the person administering it: "we've done I ready for a long time. And I honestly think kids are sick of it". And a board member found something in the charts that neither presenter had named — Crawford, working down the Maple Avenue grades: "It's that middle territory that gets deflated. And there's some excellent there's some excelling because, the green and the blue is increasing. But it's concerning that the red is increasing as well." That is a board reading its own exhibits rather than receiving them.

Sources: the recording at the timestamps above; Data Driven Instruction and Intervention at Disnard and Shortened Presentation MOY Data MAES, both linked from the approved minutes rather than the agenda; approved minutes, 3/4/26.

OBSERVATION On the last night the board sat before the vote, the warrant articles appear on the agenda, in the minutes and on the recording only as a date

March 10, 2026 carried an operating budget of $42,957,713 against a default of $44,449,704, a petitioned budget cap the district's own counsel had advised was unenforceable as drafted, an open-enrolment article, and two articles authorising the sale of school property. The board's own comptroller had costed the cap at a $9.1 million reduction at the February 18 hearing. This is the last meeting before the ballot.

Neither the budget nor the cap is on the agenda. Neither is in the approved minutes. Neither is spoken on the recording. The whole of what the meeting says about March 10 is three sentences from the interim superintendent: that the printed Annual Report "may help more decision making come Tuesday for voting days", a reminder of "voting day on Tuesday, March 10th", and the arrangements for staff parking at the polling places. The agenda's future-dates block lists "Voting Day March 10th, 2026" among three items. At the February 18 hearing the interim superintendent had undertaken that an informative one-page explainer on the articles would be out within forty-eight hours; no report of it appears here.

The noticed citizens' comment period is the other half of the picture. It opened at 0:02:21, one resident spoke — on a student rally, not on the ballot — and the chair closed it at 0:03:54, about ninety seconds later, after asking whether anyone else wished to speak. Three weeks earlier the same board had sat through eighty-five minutes of hearing and eighteen residents. RSA 189:74, I requires a school board to "provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters" and provides that "The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes"; policy BEDH requires comment at all board meetings, "a minimum of thirty minutes in total", and a vocal invitation from the chair. Whether the thirty minutes is a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time is not settled by the text, and this page follows the corpus in not asserting a violation from it. Nobody was refused the floor or cut off, and the chair issued the invitation twice.

No rule requires a board to discuss a warrant article at a meeting between the hearing and the ballot, which is why this is an observation. Its weight comes from the contrast with the meeting on either side: on February 18 the board held the statutory hearing and heard the town for ninety minutes; on March 18 it opened by thanking the voters and signing the form that reports what they decided. In between, on the last available night, the public record of Claremont's most consequential vote in a generation is a date in a list.

Sources: 3.4.26 agenda and approved minutes, neither of which mentions any warrant article; RSA 189:74 (public comment; 30-minute period; only two exceptions — 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022); policy BEDH; the February 18, 2026 page for the hearing, the $9.1 million costing and the undertaking, and the February 7 deliberative session page for the article texts and figures.

POSITIVE The clerk delivered the first written procedure her office has ever had, and committed to finishing the rest whether or not the voters returned her

Half an hour of the February 18 meeting was this clerk walking the board through the statutes that govern her own office. Thirteen days later she brought the first written procedure produced from that review: a numbered standard operating procedure for building, posting and sharing the board's agenda, on a template she adapted from a university's, with a purpose statement, the steps in order, a responsibilities section splitting the duty between board members, administration and the clerk, a related-statutes section, an owner, an approver and a version history.

Two things in it are worth a reader's attention. It records the gap between the law and the practice accurately and keeps the stricter one: "the RSA specifies 24 hours for a regular meeting, but past practice is a week", with two weeks for a meeting including a public hearing. And it fixes, in writing, the permissions failure that had embarrassed the district twice in three weeks: "Ensure the sharing permissions on all documents are 'anyone with the link' and 'viewer'."

The chair put the reason for it on the record: "I don't think people realize how critical this is because previous clerks have done we've had a real challenge with", and "the clerk physician has a lot of responsibility and there's a lot of like legacy knowledge … in particular, there's no resources for the clerk … They have to figure it out." Sprague, in three words: "It's never been done." And the clerk, six days before an election in which her own seat was on the ballot: "Even if I don't get reelected, I'll make sure that they're done for the next meeting, and then they can be added from there as needed."

Two caveats, neither of which changes the grade. The agenda listed the item as a vote and no vote was taken, so the procedure's own effective date remains "Pending Approval". And the packet contains a second document titled as the minutes procedure whose body is the agenda procedure, unrevised — a work in progress posted early rather than a defect in the finished one, and the clerk said at the table that the minutes procedure was the next thing she was writing.

Sources: Clerk Agendas SOP; Clerk Minutes SOP; RSA 91-A:2, II (24 hours' notice, excluding Sundays and legal holidays); the February 18, 2026 page, flag 9.

POSITIVE The Mandatory Report to Voters, required for the first time at this year's annual meeting, was produced — and no page in this corpus had established that

RSA 189:76 is new law reaching Claremont for the first time this cycle. It provides that "Before any meeting at which any school district adopts a school budget … a mandatory report to voters must be posted at least 7 days, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to the meeting", in "at least 3 appropriate places, 2 of which must be places of business or other public locations, and one of which shall be the local newspaper or, if a local newspaper is not available, the district's website". Paragraph II requires it to be "prominently titled 'Mandatory Report to Voters on School Expenses'" and to contain three line graphs and one table; paragraphs III and IV prescribe the graphs (Average Cost Per Pupil, Average Teacher Salary, Administrator Salaries); paragraph V prescribes the table, "Top Administrator Salaries", listing "the titles and current salaries of the 4 highest-paid administrators"; and paragraph VI forbids "additional commentary or other text not described in this subdivision". In force from 2024, 332:3, effective July 1, 2025 — so March 10, 2026 is the first Claremont ballot it touches.

The document exists. CSD - Mandatory Reporting.pdf is headed "Claremont School District Mandatory Report to Voters on School Expenses", carries the paragraph V table under the heading "Top Administrator Salaries (2025-2026)" with four rows, and has been in the district's Drive share since January 13, 2026. Counting back seven days from March 10 and skipping Sunday March 8 puts the statutory posting deadline at about March 2 — two days before this meeting, and nearly seven weeks after the file was made.

Three honest limits on this finding. A Drive folder is not one of the three places the statute names, so the file's existence and date evidence production, not posting; this project cannot inspect the district's physical posting places or the newspaper as they stood in March 2026. The three line graphs are images in the PDF and a text extraction cannot confirm them, so this page verifies the title and the table and not the graphs. And the report is not linked from the March 4 agenda or the minutes, nor from any packet in this corpus, so a voter would have had to know it existed.

Sources: RSA 189:76 (Mandatory Report to Voters; 2024, 332:3, eff. July 1, 2025); CSD - Mandatory Reporting.pdf, Drive creation date 13 January 2026; RSA 189:75, I (cost-per-pupil, the lowest of three figures; 2024, 332:3, eff. July 1, 2025) for the measure the first graph rests on.

OBSERVATION A policy the chair said she could not assess was adopted the same evening, after four minutes of confusion about which reading it was

Policy EHAG governs the use of generative artificial intelligence across the district. It reached the March 4 agenda under Second Read, having been held since the autumn for the technology director's review. The sequence on the recording runs: a motion "that we move to second read"; a question about who owns the resulting procedures; the chair's own assessment — "This was pretty it's a pretty dense policy. It is it's complicated. I didn't I didn't feel like I was going to make an assessment about it"; a member's realisation that this was the second read; the motion withdrawn; a fresh motion "to move it to adoption"; a friendly amendment to strike the sample's alternative sub-paragraphs and renumber, which the chair waved through with "We don't need to be too formal about that"; and adoption on a voice vote with no opposition and no abstentions.

Nothing here breaches a rule, which is why it is an observation. A second read is where a policy is adopted; a mover may withdraw and re-move; a friendly amendment accepted by the mover is provided for in by-law 2.09; and the board had held this policy for months precisely so it could be reviewed. What is recorded is the shape of the decision: the presiding officer said aloud that she had not been able to form a view on a policy governing how artificial intelligence may be used with children's work, and then voted to adopt it, in a sequence in which no member could say with confidence which reading was in progress.

The board's own by-laws speak to the situation directly, in the abstention passage of rule 2.07, which the incoming chair would single out for attention a fortnight later: "The NHSBA recommends voting 'No' if members do not have enough knowledge or resources to support a motion rather than abstain." Neither course was taken. There is also a detail the record supplies without comment: the reason the policy had sat so long is that the subcommittee received "a giant email about it was an AI review of the AI policy."

Sources: policy EHAG as presented; Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 2.07 (Motions and Voting) and 2.09 (Amendments); approved minutes, 3/4/26, which record the withdrawal and the re-moved motion.

Appendix — source files

Official and public sources

Recording: Claremont Community TV, Cablecast show 17201 — "Claremont School Board - 3/4/26" show record hand-entered 2026-03-03, the day before the meeting, with a midnight placeholder event date; total run time 7,392 seconds
Packet folder: 21. 3.4.26 CSB Meeting Agenda — 9 documents folder created 2026-02-25, seven days ahead
Agenda: 3.4.26 CSB Meeting Agenda
Minutes: 3.4.26 Approved CSB Meeting Minutes document created at the call to order on 2026-03-04; last modified 2026-04-09, three weeks after the board approved it
Minutes approved on the consent agenda: 2.18.26; 2.21.26 Self Evaluation Meeting the self-evaluation meeting has no recording; see flag 8
Clerk procedures: Clerk Agendas SOP created 8:11 p.m. on 2026-03-03; Clerk Minutes SOP headed as the minutes procedure; its body is the agenda procedure, issue date 3 March 2026, effective date "Pending Approval"
Mid-year data presentations: Data Driven Instruction and Intervention at Disnard; Shortened Presentation MOY Data MAES linked from the approved minutes, not from the agenda
Policies before the board: BBBF — Student School Board Members moved to a second read; EHAG — Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence adopted as amended; JIH — Student Searches and Their Property adopted
Donation: Class of 1967 Donation.pdf
Statutory report to voters, not in this packet: CSD - Mandatory Reporting.pdf RSA 189:76; in the district's Drive share since 2026-01-13
Governing documents: Claremont School Board By-Laws the live copy, last modified 2026-03-23; the corpus also holds an adopted PDF of 5 June 2024 whose numbering and wording differ — quote the text, not the number; policy BEDH — Public Comment & Participation at Board Meetings, hyperlinked at the foot of every Claremont agenda
Companion pages: February 18, 2026 — public hearing and meeting; the Article 8 excerpt, show 17168; February 7, 2026 deliberative session (the article texts and the budget figures); March 18, 2026 — the organisational meeting after the vote

Project files

Relative links work when this page is opened from Output/HTML/.

Output/Dialogue/17201 SchoolBoard030426.mp4.CSV — speaker-attributed dialogue, 836 rows
Input/Transcripts/17201 SchoolBoard030426.mp4.json — diarized transcript
Input/Videos/17201 SchoolBoard030426.mp4 — local copy of the recording
Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md — meeting-to-documents map, section 112

Laws and rules cited on this page

RSA 91-A:2 — ¶I the four exclusions from the definition of a meeting, I(b) consultation with legal counsel; ¶II minutes content, movers and seconders, start and end time and the person who produced them, five business days, and 24 hours' notice of each meeting "including a nonpublic session" (2025, 112:1, eff. 8/22/2025)
RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) — a public body includes "any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto"
RSA 91-A:3 — nonpublic sessions: ¶I(b) the exemption on the face of the motion and the roll call; ¶II(a) and II(b) the grounds used here (2023, 189:1, eff. 10/3/2023)
RSA 91-A:5, IV — permissive exemption for records whose disclosure would constitute invasion of privacy
RSA 189:1-c — at least one nonvoting student member from each public high school (2022, 195:1, eff. 1/1/2023)
RSA 194:23-f — High School Student as School Board Member; one-year term (2022, 195:2, eff. 1/1/2023; 2024, 69:1, eff. 8/13/2024)
RSA 189:76 — Mandatory Report to Voters on School Expenses: posted 7 days excluding Sundays and legal holidays before the meeting, in 3 places, with 3 line graphs and the top-administrator salary table (2024, 332:3, eff. 7/1/2025)
RSA 189:75, I — cost-per-pupil, defined as the lowest of three figures (2024, 332:3, eff. 7/1/2025)
RSA 189:74 — school board public comment period; only two exceptions (2022, 333:1, eff. 9/6/2022)
RSA 197:23-a — treasurer's custody; payment only on orders of the school board
RSA 197:25 — examination of the treasurer's and school board's accounts at the close of each fiscal year (2010, 262:4, eff. 9/4/2010)
RSA 671:4 — school board of 3, 5, 7 or 9 members; three-year terms (1979, 321:1)
RSA 40:13, VII — the second session of the annual meeting on the second Tuesday in March (2019, 192:2, eff. 7/10/2019)
Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 1.05 (subcommittees), 1.09 (supporting documentation), 2.01 (regular meetings; the self-evaluation deadline), 2.07 (motions, voting and abstention), 2.09 (both of them — amendments, and the agenda-itemisation rule that requires presentations to be in the agenda), 2.14 (nonpublic session), 2.16 (student members) and 4.03 (duties of the clerk) rule 4.03 heads the clerk's duties "per RSA 671:20 and RSA 671:25"; both are ballot-preparation provisions and say nothing about minutes or notice