Claremont School Board — March 18, 2026

The organisational meeting, eight days after the ballot. Two new members sworn, a new chair elected, a motion to replace the vice chair defeated three to three, every subcommittee reconstituted except the one choosing the superintendent, nine residents on that search, and the state form reporting what the voters actually appropriated signed at the only meeting available before its filing deadline. The petitioned budget cap did not pass; the operating budget did. Generated from the meeting's diarized transcript, the district's approved minutes, and the posted packet. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording.

Body
Claremont School Board (SAU 6) — organisational meeting under by-law 1.01, "the first meeting following the annual election", called to order by the superintendent
Date
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Start time
6:36 p.m. — stated aloud by the presiding officer at 0:00:13: "We're going to call the meeting to order officially at 636". The approved minutes record no start time. See flag 13.
End time
Minutes: nonpublic session 8:34 p.m. to 9:49 p.m.; "10:00 pm adjournment". The recording ends at the roll call into nonpublic; its total run time is 2:00:46. About twenty-eight minutes of the meeting are missing from it, of which eleven were in public session — see flag 4.
Location
Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center. A district email read into the record during citizens' comments adds the room: "the John Goodrich Community Room".
Board as constituted this night
Seven at-large seats, three-year terms (RSA 671:4; by-law 1.01). Candace Crawford, Chair (elected this meeting); Michael Petrin, Vice Chair (continuing — a motion to replace him with Heather Whitney failed 3–3); Heather Whitney (outgoing chair); William Madden; Loren Howard; Donald Lavalette (new); Brian Rapp (new). Noelle Kronberg, School Board Clerk, re-elected by the voters and sworn in by the outgoing chair immediately before the meeting. Frank Sprague and Arlene Hawkins did not return.
Attendance
Six members through the officer elections; William Madden arrived at 7:40 p.m., after both votes. The roll was called after the chair had been elected and the vice-chair motion decided — see flag 2.
Student members
Miles Sheehan and Lily Clark, named on the agenda masthead where the same heading stood empty a fortnight earlier; both absent, expected at the April 1 meeting. RSA 189:1-c requires at least one.
Central office
Five administrators on the masthead, all interim — superintendent, business administrator, human resources, student services and technology.
Recording
Cablecast show 17241 — "Claremont School Board - 3/18/26" (2:00:46). The show record was created on March 17, the day before the meeting, with an event date stamped to the same minute as its creation.
Minutes
3.18.26 Approved CSB Meeting Minutes

Participants

Board and staff names follow the agenda masthead; residents' names and wards follow the district's approved minutes, which identify at the podium what the recording does not. The dialogue file merges the two men's voices in several places and the minutes separate them; where they disagree the minutes are followed and the disagreement is disclosed — see the method note.
NameRoleParticipation
Candace CrawfordSchool Board Chair (elected at this meeting); Finance Subcommittee Chair; Superintendent Evaluation ChairTook the chair at 0:05 and presided for the rest of the meeting. Opened by thanking the voters and the two departing members; restated the comptroller's finance report in plain language and named the missing starting balance as the reason the audits matter; led the by-law review; proposed every subcommittee assignment; put the reconfiguration committee to a roll call.
Michael PetrinSchool Board Vice Chair (continuing); Capital Improvement member; SRVRTC ChairMoved to step aside as vice chair and nominate the outgoing chair in his place; the motion failed 3–3 with his own vote in favour. Asked why the graduation date is absent from the calendar and why one voting day is a professional-development day and the others are not; suggested the banking resolution be attached to the minutes verbatim "So the public can see it."
Heather WhitneySchool Board Member (outgoing Chair); Finance member; SREA Negotiations; Ad Hoc School Reconfiguration ExploratoryNominated Crawford for chair and spoke to the nomination; was nominated for vice chair and lost 3–3; supplied the NHSBA gloss on the by-laws' abstention rule; moved and carried the creation of the reconfiguration exploratory committee against the only vote opposing it; moved the SAFE grants and the banking resolution.
William "Bill" MaddenSchool Board Member; Capital Improvement Chair; Ad Hoc Leadership Search ChairArrived at 7:40 p.m., after the officer elections. Gave the only report on the superintendent search: eight applications, three interviewed by video conference, two withdrawals, one recommendation to be discussed in nonpublic session. Named the search committee as himself, Petrin and Frank Sprague.
Loren HowardSchool Board Member; Policy Subcommittee Chair; NHSBA Delegate; Ad Hoc Communication/EngagementAsked whether the search would be reported on and urged the public to stay for it; raised that the by-laws refer throughout to a superintendent while the board is recruiting an executive director; proposed a board meeting in July because "us not having a meeting, I think, really hurt us last year"; asked about the Masonic Temple time capsule; asked whether CCTV should be warned about the item after the nonpublic session.
Donald LavaletteSchool Board Member (sworn this meeting); Finance, Policy, Curriculum, Superintendent Evaluation, Ad Hoc School Reconfiguration Exploratory, Ad Hoc by-laws reviewNew. Per the approved minutes: raised that the by-laws must carry public presentations, citing rule 2.09; found the unexplained switching between SAU 6 and CSB and the unexpanded abbreviation; questioned the word ideally in the subcommittee rule; asked who had comprised the team that designed the reconfiguration; and said the exploratory committee could be the chance to put the question to bed. The dialogue file assigns these turns to the vice chair; see the method note.
Brian RappSchool Board Member (sworn this meeting, on the recording); Capital Improvement, Policy, Superintendent EvaluationNew, and a former member of this board. The only vote against the new chair and the only vote against the reconfiguration exploratory committee. Objected on the record when the business administrator answered a member of the public during citizens' comments; asked what can and cannot be discussed about the manifest; pressed on reconfiguration logistics — classroom placement, plumbing, busing — and on half-day professional development.
Noelle KronbergSchool Board Clerk (re-elected; sworn in before the meeting)Administered the oath of office; called both roll calls, in alphabetical order of surname with the chair last, as by-law 2.13 requires; advised that no vice-chair election was needed; read the banking resolution back to the board; noted that the by-laws ad hoc committee had been formed without a vote. Under Other Business, after the recording ends, she appointed a moderator pro tempore — see flag 3.
Kerry KennedyInterim Superintendent, SAU 6Convened the meeting and presided until a chair was elected, as by-law 1.01 provides; corrected the incoming chair on the record that a chair votes on every question; reported a 28 per cent turnout; accepted four retirements totalling 106 years of service; presented the reconfiguration of the two elementary schools and the 2026-27 calendar; explained the timing of the staff email read into the record.
Matt AngellSenior Comptroller / Interim Business AdministratorGave the cash and audit position and the MS-22; presented the SAFE grants, the banking resolution, the realtor request for qualifications and the health-insurance resolution. Twice interrupted citizens' comments to say that a board policy required the speaker to go to the superintendent, the second time to a person who is not a district employee — see flag 6.
Rod BeatonCitizens' comments — Ward 2Opened the comment period on the superintendent search: an ad hoc committee of two or three, no parents, no community members, no principals, finalists chosen, and "it seems like it has been a very opaque process". Unattributed in the dialogue file; named from the approved minutes.
Mimi RhinesCitizens' comments — Ward 1; district staff member; SREA building representative for Stevens High SchoolSpoke against the search process point by point: no names of finalists, no public forums, no school walkthroughs, no staff meetings, no surveys, and one building principal as the only person on the interview committee besides the board.
Rebecca MenardCitizens' comments — Ward 3; homeowner, taxpayer, district employeeTwice. Told the history of George Disnard — teacher, superintendent from 1949 to 1984, then state representative and state senator — as a study in what long-term local leadership looks like. Returned at the end of the period to read the district's board-employee communication email into the record.
Hope DamonCitizens' comments — state representativeThe state of two bills: SB 101, the Senate open-enrolment bill, passed and awaiting a House hearing; and HB 1815, which "defines what the state is or is not responsible for in public education" and which she describes as paralleling the litigation seeking to undo the Claremont cases.
Michelle Springer-BlakeCitizens' comments — Ward 2 (dialogue file: "Michelle Springer")On the search: why the sudden urgency after five months of an interim, and why a higher-paid post when the district cannot pay substitutes and paraprofessionals.
Cassandra EdwardsCitizens' comments — Ward 3; parentTwo superintendents and three or four curriculum directors since 2021: "We need we need a captain that's going to steer the ship and keep it on a one course." Asked why the website's update was the first she had heard of an educational leader in addition to an executive director.
Matt BeanCitizens' comments — Ward 1; former teacher and union representative in the districtAddressed the two new members directly: "what the people want, they want a real process." Raised the district's policies on staff communication as a First Amendment question.
Leslie PeabodyCitizens' comments — Ward 1; science teacher at Stevens High School; parentThree items of good news — the UNH mobile STEM van coming to Stevens, two student teams going to the New Hampshire Academy of Science symposium, and an environmental competition in May — then, as a parent, asked how many school transitions her fourth grader faces, and what is happening with the two vacant business-office posts.
Amanda BartonCitizens' comments — Ward 2; parent; a teacher in another districtThanked the board that staff heard the reconfiguration decision before the public, and asked that the practice continue; then set out the cost of repeated change: "if we have to change, let us grieve. Let us move on … But then don't ask us to change again and grieve again". The second speaker the business administrator interrupted.
Van HolderCitizens' comments — Ward 2; parent; a teacher in another districtAgainst moving children between buildings twice, and for phasing it a grade at a time; on busing costs, and on parking at school events: "I had to get there an hour early to get a parking spot." Also intervened to say the chair rather than staff should be answering.
Chelsea WeatherfordInterim Human Resources ManagerNamed on the agenda masthead; no remarks recorded.
Paige JarvisInterim Student Services DirectorNamed on the agenda masthead; no remarks recorded.
Jason BonnevilleInterim Technology DirectorNamed on the agenda masthead; no remarks recorded.
Frank SpragueFormer School Board Member; Ad Hoc Leadership Search memberOff the board as of this election. Thanked by both the new chair and the interim superintendent. Named by the search committee's chair as one of its three members, in the present tense on the recording and the past tense in the minutes; the committee was not reconstituted — see flag 7.
Arlene HawkinsFormer School Board Member; former Policy Subcommittee Chair; SAU 6 Board ChairOff the board as of this election. Thanked in the same breath as Sprague. The approved minutes' unexplained line about the SAU 6 chair, under Other Business, appears to follow from her departure — see flag 4.

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. Two items the agenda does not carry — the oath of office and the election of a vice chair — were taken; one it does carry, the preschool service delivery model, was deferred.
Taken upItemAgenda text / disposition
0:00:13Call to Order and Pledge of AllegianceAgenda: "Call to Order & Pledge of Allegiance", timed 6:30 PM. Called to order by the interim superintendent, as by-law 1.01 provides for an organisational meeting, at a stated 6:36 p.m.
0:00:52Oath of officeNot on the agenda. The minutes add "Oath of office was administered" under the introduction of new members. Administered by the clerk, who had herself been sworn in by the outgoing chair minutes earlier.
0:03:15Introduction of new board members; student membersAgenda: "Introduction of New Board Members"; "Introduce Student Member". Both student members were absent for work commitments and were expected on April 1.
0:03:49Election of Board ChairAgenda: "Election of Board Chair". Whitney moved to elect Crawford and spoke to the nomination; carried on a voice vote with no count taken aloud. The minutes record four members in favour and one against, and do not record the mover as voting. See flag 2.
0:06:05Vice chairNot on the agenda. The clerk advised that no election was required because the by-laws set a two-year term. Petrin then moved to step aside and nominate Whitney; the motion failed 3–3 and he continues as vice chair.
0:11:50Roll callAgenda: "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members". Taken after the officer votes. Six present; the minutes add "William Madden arrived at 7:40pm".
0:12:05Consent agendaAgenda: amendments and final approval of the board agenda; approval of the 3.4.26 minutes; "Approval of Manifest:". The chair deferred the preschool service-delivery item; a member asked that the previous meeting's presentations be added to its minutes; the manifest drew questions about what may and may not be discussed. Taken by consent.
0:17:06Citizens' commentsAgenda: "Citizens Comments- Please reference CSB Policy BEDH- Public Comment & Participation at Board Meetings." Nine residents over twenty-six minutes, closed at 0:42:37. Eight of the nine spoke on the superintendent search or the reconfiguration.
0:44:35Finance updateAgenda: "Finance Update (Report) Matt Angell, Senior Comptroller", with "Budget v. Actual report through 1/31/26" and "Update on Walk-In Cooler Safety Compliance Options for Disnard". The report given was through February 28.
0:52:13Follow-up items — Superintendent's ReportThanks to outgoing members, the outgoing moderator, the re-elected clerk and the defeated candidate; the turnout; the student members; the legislative outlook; four retirements accepted and one rescinded.
0:56:44Approve CSB School Board By-LawsAgenda: "Approve CSB School Board By-Laws (Discussion/Vote) requires ⅔ Introduction Heather Whitney", linking the live by-laws document. Four members raised defects; the chair said the by-laws could not be approved that night and proposed an ad hoc committee. The approved minutes record "Board discussed and approved unanimously with voice vote." See flag 1.
1:09:21Reconfiguration of schools for 2026-27Agenda: "(Discussion) Kerry Kennedy, Interim Superintendent". Disnard to take pre-K through grade 2 with its current principal, Maple Avenue grades 3 to 5 with its current principal. Discussion only: "We have no vote. There's no vote."
1:21:33Approval of MS-22Agenda: "Approval of MS-22 Matt Angell, Senior Comproller", linking the form. Signed by the board at the table; due March 30. See flag 10.
1:22:17Appointment of subcommittee members and chairs, and of representativesAgenda: "Appointment of: (Assignments) Led by Chair and Superintendent" listing Finance, SRVRTC Visioning, Capital Improvement, Policy, Curriculum, NHSBA Delegate, SREA Negotiation Representatives, Superintendent Evaluation Committee and two ad hoc committees. All filled; the reconfiguration exploratory committee was created by motion and roll call.
1:31:39Review and approve the annual pre-populated agendaAgenda: "(Discussion/Vote) Introduction by Heather Whitney". Approved by consent after a request for a July meeting, which the chair accepted.
1:33:53Approval of the 2026-27 Claremont school calendarAgenda: "(Vote) Presented by Kerry Kennedy, Interim Superintendent". Three voting days next year; graduation left off pending the inclement-weather count. Moved by Rapp, seconded by Lavalette, carried.
1:42:21Donation of $7,000 to the Class of 2027Agenda: "Donated by the Jack & Dorothy Byrne Foundation". For the fiftieth junior prom at Stevens High School. Moved "with gratitude" by Rapp, seconded by Whitney, carried.
1:43:43Acceptance of multiple SAFE grantsAgenda: "(Discussion/Vote) Matt Angell, Interim Business Administrator", linking a shared folder of grant documents. Bollards, cameras, doors and access control; $11,000 to $17,000 per elementary building and over $60,000 at the technical centre; no match required. Carried, authorising the interim superintendent and the new chair to sign.
1:46:13Banking resolutionAgenda: "(Vote and Sign)". Adds the interim business administrator and the staff accountant to the district's signature authority after two departures, and gives the finance chair and the board chair view-only access to digital banking. Carried.
1:50:19Realtor request for qualificationsAgenda: "(Discussion only)". To find a commercial broker for the Bluff School and the Masonic Temple, subject to the charter schools' statutory right of first refusal. Left with the board for questions.
1:55:05SchoolCare resolution for continued health insuranceAgenda: "(Discussion/Vote) Matt Angell, interim Business Administrator", subtitled "Returning Dow Employees to SchoolCare coverage". A resolution is needed before SAU 6 staff transfer to the district; the vote was held over. See flag 9.
1:56:47Subcommittee reportsAgenda lists seven subcommittees with nothing under any of them. Only the Ad Hoc Leadership Search reported: eight applications, three interviews, two withdrawals, one recommendation for nonpublic session.
1:58:13Nonpublic sessionAgenda: "Non-Public Session 91-a:3 II(a) Requested by Kerry Kennedy", with the text of II(a) beneath it. The chair announced two items under two paragraphs of II. Minutes: in at 8:34pm, out at 9:49pm, minutes sealed for four weeks on roll call. See flag 5.
1:59:15Other business — appointment of moderatorAgenda: "8:20 PM Other Business: Appointment of Moderator". Taken after the board returned to public session at 9:49 p.m., and therefore not in the recording. The minutes record the clerk appointing April Woodman. See flags 3 and 4.

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.

TimeTopicWhat was saidFlags
0:00:13 Called to order at 6:36, by the superintendent "We're going to call the meeting to order officially at 636, please. Thank you for your patience as we're getting ready. Congratulations to all, Cronenberg. We were just getting her sworn in. Thank you to chair Whitney for swearing in Noelle into her position as the school board clerk." By-law 1.01 gives the organisational meeting's call to order to the superintendent. The stated start time appears nowhere in the minutes. MEDIUM
0:00:52 The oath of office The clerk reads the New Hampshire oath line by line and a new member repeats it: allegiance to the United States and the State of New Hampshire, support for the constitutions, and "All the duties incumbent on me as school board member. … One of the best of my abilities." Only one swearing-in is on the recording.
0:03:49 The outgoing chair nominates her successor "I'd like to make a motion to elect miss Candy Crawford to board chair. And I'd like to speak to her nomination." The case: "we need a chair who brings strong legacy knowledge and a clear understanding of the history behind our current situation. As we move through a critical transition phase, that context will be essential to steady, informed leadership in the months ahead." One sentence of the prepared statement is in the first person and reads as a description of the speaker rather than the nominee: "The role will also require a high level of availability during normal business hours, something that I'm able to consistently provide to the district." MEDIUM
0:04:53 Seconded, no discussion, no count The presiding officer: "Do we have a second? We have a second for Miss Crawford." then "Any discussion?" then "All in favor?" then "Any opposed?" then "The ayes have it." No count is taken aloud and no roll is called. The approved minutes record four members voting in favour and one against, and do not record the mover as voting at all. MEDIUM
0:06:05 The clerk says no vice-chair election is needed "You actually don't need an election for vice chair." The ground given: "In the bylaws, it was changed to be every two years, unless some two thirds majority wanted to change that. Okay. And it just worked out that the chair and vice chair on opposite yours." By-law 1.03 does set a two-year term — but it applies the same term to both offices. POSITIVE
0:06:36 Nobody in the room can say when the by-laws changed A new member asks the obvious question: "When would the bylaws change to make it a two year term?" The answers, in order, are "Two, three years ago", "In May. Right?", "Two years ago. 23.", "The date I saw was 25th May of 25", and "Voted on every single. Year, every May." The adopted by-laws of record in this corpus were passed on June 5, 2024, and their own rule 1.02 requires adoption at the organisational meeting, not in May. HIGH
0:07:15 The vice chair moves to step aside "Vice chair, I'd like to, consider stepping aside to nominate Heather as vice chair. Just for the consistency is of our new chair … I think having Heather continue to be involved at the vice chair level, would be appropriate at this point just to make a motion to step aside from the vice chair role and, nominate Heather Whitney for vice chair at this point." Seconded on the recording by a new member — "I'll second, because I don't want to torture Mike" — and in the minutes by Loren Howard.
0:08:21 The case against "I think that's a really bad move. I think people want to see a change in leadership and just shuffling a couple of people around there have been on the board for the past five years. Is not is not going to do it for me."
0:08:45 Does the chair vote? The count reaches 3–2 and the new chair asks: "So there are 3 to 2. My understanding of the rules of order is that the chair votes in a tie." The interim superintendent corrects her twice, in three words: "You vote every vote." That is exactly what the board's own by-law 4.01 says the chair shall do — "Vote on all questions. Maintains all board member privileges." The chair then votes, and the motion is tied. POSITIVE
0:09:30 Three to three, and the clerk supplies the rule "So I vote yes. So that's a three. Three. What happens in that?" The clerk answers: "We had the motion. I guess the motion doesn't pass. Have a majority to pass." By-law 2.11 requires "An affirmative vote of the majority of members present and voting". The vice chair stays. The approved minutes record all six votes by name, and they match the recording. MEDIUM
0:09:57 The new chair thanks the voters — and this is how the page knows how the ballot went "I want to start the meeting by thanking the voters of Claremont, who supported the the budget and the various warrant articles that we had on the ballot. I thought it was encouraging that the number of voters that turned out was heartwarming and encouraging, and the overwhelming support that many of the articles received." And: "I was particularly supporting, helping people would support the open enrollment, warrant article." OBSERVATION
0:10:37 Two departing members thanked in absentia "I thank Frank Sprague and Arlene Hawkins, and I feel it's unfortunate they're not here to be able to be properly thanked in person … They both served hard and long, and they were diligent board members. They were hard working. And a lot of you don't realize how much work gets done behind the scenes."
0:11:50 The roll call, after the officer votes Six members answer. The minutes add that the seventh arrived at 7:40 p.m.; a member notes he is in the room at 1:08:16. The board therefore elected its chair, and settled its vice chair on a tied vote, with a seat empty and before any roll had been taken. MEDIUM
0:13:38 A by-law invoked to get the presentations into the record "So there has to be a way we include those visual presentations that we saw last meeting as part of the official minutes. And if you look in our policy 2.09, it says there's just to have to be there." And: "Pretty explicit. Says they have to be in." The rule cited requires presentations to be "contained in the agenda"; the March 4 agenda did not carry them, and the approved March 4 minutes now do. POSITIVE
0:14:30 What may and may not be said about the manifest A new member asks whether the vouchers can be discussed at all. The answer separates two things: "You can discuss, like, things in general. So, like, say, for example, there's a you can the first one might have, electricity on there. So you can talk about electricity to your heart's content"; but the documents themselves cannot be released because of student names. And the practice is stated: "I try to get these manifests to the school board on the Friday before a meeting … And what I ask in return is that you ask the questions."
0:17:24 The superintendent search called opaque "from what I've seen so far, it seems like it has been a very opaque process. My understanding is that there was an ad hoc committee of people from the board that were interviewing." And: "There was no community involvement that I'm aware of, no parents, no community members, and no principals involved. The final candidates have been chosen, and then the board's going to interview those candidates, along with one principal from the district." He also questions the committee's remit: "My understanding was that that was to look into the idea of having an executive director instead of a superintendent." OBSERVATION
0:19:01 The union building representative "I'm speaking to you all today wearing three hats. Citizen staff member and the SRE union building rep for Stephens High School." Then the list: "Where are the names of the finalists to start with? Where are the forums for the public to come out and hear from the candidates? Where are the school walkthroughs so students and staff can meet this person who will basically be deciding our future. Where are the after school staff meetings? … Where are the Google surveys to ask the families and the public what they want to see in a leader for this district?" And on the interview panel: "The only person aside from you guys on the interview committee will be one building principal … that is a travesty." OBSERVATION
0:21:01 The business administrator interrupts "there's a school board policy that specifically talks about, the union and employees. Those if you have a complaint, you need to address the superintendent." The speaker had finished. Nobody in the chair intervened. OBSERVATION
0:21:20 A history lesson about a superintendent A Ward 3 resident tells the story of the man Disnard School is named for: a junior high teacher who worked his way up to superintendent, in the district from 1949 to 1984, then a state representative and state senator. "so this is a man who is rooted in community. That's the first lesson I want to teach you." And: "what he had was lasting long term leadership with long term vision. He was committed to our community. He lived on Broad Street. If it was snowy and he could get to school, you could get to school".
0:23:57 Two bills that would override what the voters just decided "SB 101, which is the Senate open enrollment bill, passed the Senate. It has a public hearing next Wednesday, the 25th, at 1:00 before the Education Policy Committee. I realized the community passed the open enrollment warrant article. If Senate Bill 101 does not make it all the way through the legislative process, then things stay the way the community voted for them to be here." And the second: "1815 defines what the state is or is not responsible for in public education. It is understood to parallel the Attorney General's court case that it is attempting to undo the Claremont cases that started in the 1990s." OBSERVATION
0:26:46 Why the rush "I'm trying to wrap my head around why there's such a rush all of a sudden when we have had an interim since October. And so there should have been somewhat of put together before now." And: "why we are going to go for a higher paying position when we already don't have enough to pay subs in special ed services and paraprofessionals that are needed". OBSERVATION
0:27:36 An educational leader, not only an executive director "I am perplexed by the update that was posted on the website. I was unaware, as I'm sure if I was unaware, having followed this very closely, others were to that. There was also going to be an educational leader on top of our executive director." And the reason: "I have been with this district since 2021. We have been through two superintendents, 3 or 4. I've lost track curriculum directors. We need we need a captain that's going to steer the ship and keep it on a one course." OBSERVATION
0:29:26 Addressed to the two new members "I need to make sure that it's clear what the community is want and how, and I'm going to look at our new newly elected board members right now, that it's clear that what the people want, they want a real process." A former teacher and union representative in the district, he adds the constitutional point: "we also need to change the culture to and of having policies like inhibiting people's First Amendment rights are part of those are part of those policies." OBSERVATION
0:30:34 Good news, from a teacher, for four minutes The University of New Hampshire's mobile STEM van is coming to Stevens: "when they come, the students are going to be representing DNA engineering in a lab called Vibrant Variations … they're going to be here all day at Stevens High School with going through all of the biology classes that we have." Two student teams are going to the New Hampshire Academy of Science symposium in April, having met every Friday after school since October, and an environmental team competes in May.
0:33:28 How many times will my daughter change school? "I have a fourth. Grader. Who was moved from the bluff closure to Disney … But I want to know now, is she now going to go to Maple and then her sixth grade year, she's going to go to the middle school. Like how many transitions do I need to prep her for?" The rumour she is working from turns out to be right: "I've heard Disney is going to be 3 to 5 and Maple is going to be K to two."
0:34:02 Thanks for telling the staff first, and a warning about doing it twice "I think it was nice to hear that the staff actually heard about some decisions before the public … to hear the staff was able to prepare themselves before they get blindsided at a meeting." Then the substance: "I have two children who are so excited. They're always been in the same school and they will not be in the same school … So if we have to change, let us grieve. Let us move on. Let there be some real good things that come from it. But then don't ask us to change again and grieve again".
0:36:46 The second interruption, to someone who is not an employee "In the future, if you have a concern, there's a school board policy that requires you to go to the superintendent." The chair says she is not; the speaker says so herself: "Not a teacher in a different district. I'm just a parent." The reply: "I apologize. Thank you." OBSERVATION
0:37:09 A board member puts the correction on the record "I think it's important for the the board to weigh in on the board policies. So if the chair, if someone needs to speak up, it should be the chair." And, when the chair answers with the sequence of the comment period: "I understand that I'm talking about Mr. Angel piping in. If someone needs to pipe in, it should be you, the chair doing it." A resident then says the same thing from the floor: "That's why he's asking you to follow the rules." OBSERVATION
0:38:16 Busing, parking, and what community schools are for "I've heard about their realignment, and honestly, a handful of, educators here because I've heard they were not told to come to talk because you've heard enough from them." The argument is for phasing: "The smart way would probably be slow roll this. Every kindergartner is going to Disney." And on the practical cost: "Winter concert. I had to get there an hour early to get a parking spot. Stood outside for an hour because the doors weren't open and they were parents still coming in because they were parking at the bowling alley, walking up to the school."
0:41:34 The email read into the record "here's the email we got today. Friendly reminder board, employee communication … I've attached the Claremont School Board policy BCC below. In this policy, the Claremont School Board emphasizes that the primary line of communication between staff and the school board is through the superintendent." The speaker's question: "I think we're all just kind of confused about what this email means and who it's intended for, because it kind of feels like, collective punishment." OBSERVATION
0:44:35 Cash, the loan, and the fraud auditor's engagement letter "today's cash balance is $897,000. The loan balance currently is zero. However … we anticipate drawing down the loan another $300,000. And this amount is going to be paid off when we receive our fourth quarter adequacy grant payment. I do not anticipate having to borrow against the loan thereafter." On the forensic audit: "Our attorney has reviewed the engagement letter with the fraud auditor and has suggested some changes. I anticipate having it signed by Friday." The signatory remains the outgoing chair: "Currently, board member Heather Whitney is authorized to sign the engagement letter, which I hope the board continues to, have her authorize it."
0:45:06 The February figures Revenues to February 28 of about $28,735,000 with $10,980,000 to collect, 27.65% remaining; expenditures the transcription renders as "22,000,242 zero"; encumbrances "13,454,000"; "The remaining appropriation is 4,018,000 or 10.12%." The packet's own report settles the garbled figure: against a general fund budget of $39,714,564, expenditures to date are $22,242,030.84, encumbrances $13,454,263.09 and the remaining balance $4,018,270.07 — 10.12%, to the printed decimal.
0:46:12 The annual audits move for the first time "I've sent off the trial balance for 2023 to the auditors, and we're going to view that shortly. I hope to have 2024 to them by Monday. And 25 will be simple for me, as I use that year to figure out the deficit. All I need to do is just to adjust the beginning balance and move forward." A fortnight earlier the answer had been that the documentation was still being pulled. POSITIVE
0:46:39 The walk-in coolers, resolved At Disnard an impervious surface glued to the walls, the wooden shelving removed and metal units brought over from the closed Bluff School, with the city's health inspector to sign it off: "we're going to have the city's health inspector make sure that because we don't want this coming back." At the middle school the unit is replaced after July 1. A new member's addition: get the product approved for the use before it goes down.
0:48:10 The chair translates the finance report "To reiterate some of the things he said, because he talks fast and he gave a lot of information … he had a balance of a little over $4 million differential. And some of you might say, well, what are we doing with $4 million?" The answer is the reason the audits matter: "we don't have a good balance number to start the year. And if you're thinking of it, for me, it's the easiest ways to think of a checking account. You know how much you spend this month and you know how much you had come in, but you didn't know what you're starting balance was." POSITIVE
0:48:58 A date for an audited starting balance "I have talked to my Campbell, who is the lead auditor, just to confirm where he is on that … he and Mr. Angel have confirmed that we will have a a good starting balance, a balance of for June 30th, 2025. And we'll have that by July so that we will know where how what's a real honest audited number when we started the year." The approved minutes spell the auditor's surname differently.
0:50:32 Why the forensic audit needed a second law firm "we are going to do the fine the the the forensic audit, and we've had to get a different, attorney to help us with that because our current attorney is part of the investigation." And the chair corrects herself in public on the previous meeting's exchange: "at the last meeting, I questioned Mr. Angel if the, January 31st numbers had been in the packet, and that was my error. They were there." POSITIVE
0:52:57 Turnout, and the clerk's re-election "congratulating Noelle on her appointment for school board clerk … we had a large turnout. There was 28% of the Claremont voters, having recently been some other meetings that was actually unprecedented in many areas of New Hampshire." The approved minutes describe the same person as the "reelected clerk"; the recording says appointment. OBSERVATION
0:54:12 Four retirements, 106 years "March is the end of the time where folks are giving their retirement notice. So it is with regrets that we do officially accept the following resignations from Claremont Public Schools." Five gave notice in December and one rescinded; the four accepted are read out with 25, 24, 22 and 35 years of service. The teacher who rescinded has 41 years. The approved minutes record the list without naming anybody, so the names exist on this page only as the machine transcription rendered them and are not reproduced.
0:56:44 The by-laws, and the rule that says they cannot be changed tonight "The next item is the approval of the c SB school board bylaws … I know I've reviewed them, and I have some questions about them. Some changes that I'm suggesting. And according to the bylaws, if we are making changes, we can't verify them on the same night as we make the changes." She is right: by-law 2.11(b) provides that amending or suspending the by-laws "shall occur, by motion, and voted upon at the next regularly scheduled CSB meeting", and 2.11(a) requires two-thirds. HIGH
0:57:49 The two-year term she wants shortened "It has that the chair and vice chair shall hold respective positions for two years, unless the term is interrupted by election results. And I'm recommending we have that a one year term." The words she reads are verbatim rule 1.03 of the live document, which she cites as 1.02; rule 1.02 is the one requiring the by-laws to be adopted at this very meeting. HIGH
0:58:35 Who appoints committees "on section 1.08, it says that the vice chair shall appoint all special committees and designate their chairs, unless otherwise ordered by a simple maturity. And that is in conflict with section 4.01. See on page ten that says that the chair will make the appointments." The two rules in fact divide the work — 1.04 and 4.01 give the chair the standing committees, 1.08 and 4.02 give the vice chair the special ones — and it is 1.08 that governs what happened later that evening. OBSERVATION
0:59:12 Abstentions "I would encourage all, of all the board members to look at the reference for, when we make abstentions … it says a member must abstain when a member, family member or domestic partner stands to benefit personally or financially. But and then it goes on to say that otherwise abstention should not be done." And: "over the past year or two, we've had some times when there's been an abstention with not with no reason given for the abstention." The outgoing chair supplies the rest of the rule: "if the person who would like to abstain feels that they don't have enough information, that they are not informed enough, then they should vote no". POSITIVE
1:01:04 The clerk's duties still point at an office that is being dissolved "Under section 4.03, the duties of the clerk, section b, d e there's reference made to the executive assistant at the saw. And that has evolved over this past year. It's the clerk." The clerk agrees: "that whole section needs to be." Three of the clerk's eight numbered duties — posting notices, posting agenda materials, keeping the indexed rules and policies — are delegated in the text to an SAU 6 employee, in a year in which SAU 6 is to be wound up. MEDIUM
1:02:01 The by-laws describe an office the board may not be recruiting "Until we hear from the committee about what the executive director is going to look like within these bylaws … There's multiple references to superintendent here. So if it's as simple as switching the words. But then also, I think part of the original discussion about having an executive director was more freedom about, staffing". And: "There's a lot of references to superintendents, so much so that I was not able to mark every time that we would need to change something." MEDIUM
1:02:57 The new member's line edits "It's got SA6 board and CSB in any manner, and then it references. SO6 board and CSB. So that just needs to be cleaned up a little bit." And on the unexpanded abbreviation: "The CSB, we should spell that out the first time and then CSB and in parentheses." With the reason: "So we're going to model for the kids of what we should do." On rule 1.05's exclusion of public comment from subcommittee meetings, he proposes plainer words: "How about if we just said the public may attend and there is no public comment allowed".
1:04:01 The word ideally "It says the policy Committee shall hold at least one regular monthly meeting and ideally consist of three CSB. I mean, ideally, I'd be a millionaire. So just what do we mean by ideally." The answer is the sentence that decides this whole item. HIGH
1:04:17 The chair says the board has not complied with its own by-laws "I was hoping that the board members would read this because I was all the references to committees. I think that we have not complied with our own bylaws this past year. And and so, again, that's one of the reasons I want to take a look at this and really evaluate it before we agree to it, so that once we agree to it, we know what we're holding ourselves accountable to." HIGH
1:04:44 An ad hoc committee instead of a vote "I would suggest, that that three of us form a committee, an ad hoc committee to look over these over the next two weeks and make, proposals to the full board members of what the changes should be." The settlement reached: "what we're saying is we'd like to have the ability as a group to make the committee assignments and go forward with the rest of the meeting. Understanding that the current bylaws are in place until we adopt a revised version at the next meeting. Is everyone in agreement with that?" No motion, no second, no vote. HIGH
1:07:56 Three named, and the three-member cap observed "So I've got and we can't have more than three. So, Heather, Dawn and Candy will meet over the next two weeks, preferably over the next week. So we can send the revised version with the board packet next Wednesday." By-law 1.05(1) is the cap she is applying. The clerk had already done the formatting: "I went through and made just formatting changes. There was just some cleanup that needed to happen with like spacing and fonts and all that jazz." OBSERVATION
1:09:21 The two elementary schools, split by grade "we're still looking at. Disney Elementary would serve pre-K, kindergarten first and second, and Melissa Lewis would be the administrator." Maple Avenue takes grades three to five with its own principal. Staff were surveyed on where they would prefer to work and told the day before the meeting; specialised programmes move so that pupils stay with their grade-level peers.
1:11:21 The chain of command, explained after the fact "anything else you want programmatically, then that should come through me as a superintendent and then I can bring that to the board … Actually, I didn't realize when I put it out today, I see where the question came in on the timing of it, but had nothing to do with necessarily this board meeting." And: "if you disagree with what I say, you have every right that goes to the board … it's it's just it's overstepping a chain of command." OBSERVATION
1:12:44 Who designed it Asked whether teacher teams were involved, the answer is that this stage was arithmetic: "specifically for this right now is the administrative team. So this is Miss Lewis and Mr. Blunt we're looking at … We literally had to go numerically is how many rooms do we need for each grade level. And we had to go back and forth. And full disclosure, we were trying to we almost had to swap buildings to make sure." Class sizes: no more than 18 targeted at the youngest grades, "about 21 or so for second grades".
1:15:53 The logistics nobody has published "I'm looking more logistics. I'd like to see where the classes are going to be. Kindergarten, first grade. Need to be on a certain level … What are we doing for bussing?" And the plumbing: "one is urinals sinks out where they are in their wings. They're going to have to get things changed out. Has that been has that been budgeted for." The chair answers that the questions were asked and answered "in the finance committee meetings, which were public".
1:18:02 Why the planning waited for the ballot — and the confirmation that the cap failed "come on, we all know if the default budget default budget was higher. So we knew what what the money was going to be around. I think there could have been some planning before the budget was actually passed." The answer supplies the ballot result in a subordinate clause: "there was also a question about the tax cap. We did hear from some staff. If the tax cap had gone through, some staff may have decided to leave the district and that would have affected this current year. So even though the tax cap wouldn't go into effect the following year, some staff are saying I'm not sticking around." OBSERVATION
1:19:44 One drop-off "As it relates to transportation and the start time. We were talking, we're we been committing to have a bus go back and forth between the two elementary schools so the parents can have one drop off." Staggered start times remain under consideration, and the district undertakes to coordinate evening events so that families with children in both buildings are not asked to be in two places at once.
1:21:33 The MS-22 signed at the table The chair introduces it as "a state document, and it's based on the results of the vote". The comptroller: "this is actually the first document that sets the tax rate for this fall. And it's due by March 30th. So this is the only board meeting I have before the due date. So if you could please sign this document." RSA 21-J:34, II requires it within 20 days of the close of the meeting; March 10 plus 20 days is March 30. OBSERVATION
1:22:17 Every subcommittee constituted, in one pass "the capital improvements Committee Bill, Madam Chair, Mike patron and Brian Rapp on that committee, finance Candace Crawford, chair, Heather Whitney and Dawn Laviolette on finance policy, Lauren Howard, chair Don lava and Brian wraps on the committee." Then curriculum, the technical centre, the school boards association delegate, the negotiating team and the superintendent evaluation committee. Every standing subcommittee has exactly three members, as by-law 1.05(1) requires.
1:24:43 A new ad hoc committee on reconfiguration "I wanted to invite Mr.. To join me to start a school reconfiguration, reconfiguration exploratory committee just to assess feasibility." The purpose: "there's been a lot of concern about how fast things happen. Not enough data, not enough input from staff, not enough input from leadership. And so just initially, just to see what the feasibility is and if there is a kill shot, there's a kill shot". OBSERVATION
1:26:50 The only vote against "I think we need to focus on some stabilization and progress with the with the district and having having this floating around with closing out of the school or whatever is not something we need as a district, and I am firmly against it." Later: "I see it as a curtain horse because the next step after that will be cutting those educators". And: "we need to stabilize the district. We need to focus on education, get out of this hell year, and try to build on something without the idea of closing another school and reconfiguring hanging over everyone's head because the teachers don't want to deal with it."
1:27:14 The case for looking "I think the purpose is to actually be responsive to concerns and complaints from the community. I don't see it as a push. It would be just a feasibility study. I think there was a lot of frustration from the community that when it was brought up, it was kind of shot down and that we didn't even have an opportunity to discuss it." And on the substance: "There are true academic benefits aligned with it, and tremendous financial benefits that could take money and reallocate it to our students … our ability to increase the number of certified educators in the district". A third member offers the middle position: it "Might be a chance to put it to bed. We could be two weeks on this and throw it in a garbage."
1:30:26 Roll call, six to one The chair calls for a roll call; the minutes record that the sole opponent requested it. Howard, Lavalette, Madden, Petrin, Whitney and Crawford in favour; Rapp opposed. The clerk calls it in alphabetical order of surname with the chair last, as by-law 2.13 requires. POSITIVE
1:31:20 The clerk points out that the other committee was never voted on "I'm sorry, did you there was a discussion before about a bylaws ad hoc subcommittee. Was that." Told it was, she is explicit: "No, you needed to vote on it there." The answer from the outgoing chair: "And I think it was a consensus" and "It was bored consensus." Nothing further is done. HIGH
1:32:27 A meeting in July "I'd just like to start some discussion about maybe having one meeting in July, which I know sounds like torture. But, us not having a meeting, I think, really hurt us last year." The chair agrees at once and says meetings will be added as needed. The board's February self-evaluation had reached the same conclusion in writing: meeting in the summer "could have caught it sooner". POSITIVE
1:34:34 Three voting days, and the schools are the polling places A new school voting day on September 8, a November 3 election and a March 9 election. The chair states the constraint: "our schools are the polling places. And the, the need for parking and the transportation with the children in the schools prevents both things happening at once. And so we have no school on voting days when our schools are used as precincts." The district raised the calendar collision with the city and was told it was too late for this year.
1:38:16 Half days for professional development "I know they're contracted. Has there been discussion on changing changing that with the SRE? It doesn't. I've heard this for years. Half days for the kids. Half the time the parents aren't even sending them." The answer is that the calendar complies with the collective bargaining agreement and that a memorandum of understanding, rather than a reopening, would be the route to change it.
1:42:21 Seven thousand dollars for a prom "We are appreciative to the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation … It's the 50th anniversary of the prom for the junior prom at Stevens High School. But due to the budget constraints and everything else, there is a need." Moved "Approve with gratitude". The same foundation's correspondence in this corpus goes back to 2023.
1:43:43 Safety grants, applied for in December "back in December, we applied for several different grants to improve the safety in our elementary schools. Some of the grants range between 11,000 to 17 000 per building. And this building is over $60,000 … What you're going to see most often in the buildings is putting bollards in front of the the doors and the bollards is to prevent vehicles from driving through the doors." No match is required; the total was not to hand.
1:46:13 Signature authority after two departures "we need authorization from the school board to change the signatures on on our bank accounts. Okay. Right now, I'm not a signature on the bank account, but since in the absence of, we've had two employees leave, and they were, my primary go to people." The safeguard is stated for the room: "No one person has the power to move money." The finance chair and board chair get inquiry access only. A member asks that the resolution itself go into the minutes "So the public can see it." POSITIVE
1:50:19 Selling the Bluff School and the Masonic Temple "we want to go and try to find the most qualified realtor, commercial realtor to sell bluff and the Masonic Temple. Okay. Now, I've just created this, since this is such a significant, decision, I would like the board to sit on this RFQ." Discussion only; questions to be sent in. A member asks whether the Masonic Temple's time capsule has ever been found, and it emerges that a search with local Masons was abandoned when "everything happened".
1:52:27 Charter schools get first refusal "per statute, the charter schools have the first rate of refusal to purchase the building. So even if we were to find a buyer for, for either building, a charter school could step in and, and take it away from them all the way up to the point, that we signed the, the deed." The statute is RSA 194:61. The district has already notified the state: "I've reached out to the person who is in charge of charter schools at the Department of Education … he's given notice to all the other, charter schools in the state." And the warrant carried it too: "It's actually, in the warrant article that was approved by the voters to give them notice at that time as well." OBSERVATION
1:55:05 SAU 6's employees are being merged into the district "By statute. We have to vote to be part of a state pool. I need to get a resolution from the school board." Then the reason: "the problem is that with saw six, they moved everything to health trust. They didn't get a resolution from the school board. And so really, what I need to do is check that box off before. Saw six employees get merged to the school district." MEDIUM
1:56:11 Unity is leaving, and the SAU becomes the district The chair states it as settled fact, in one sentence, with no document behind it in any packet: "So this is part of the, unity does leaving the saw. And it only the saw and the Claremont School District will be one in the same." The vote on the resolution is held over to a future meeting. MEDIUM
1:56:47 The only report on the superintendent search "We are discussing it in nonpublic. We have made a recommendation and we have to decide how to go forward … We advertise. We got, I think, eight resumes. The committee went through them. We sifted out what we believed were three very strong potential candidates. We conducted interviews via video conferences, and unfortunately two of the candidates have withdrawn." And: "The third candidate is a very, very strong candidate, and that will be discussed this evening." MEDIUM
1:57:52 Who is on the committee A new member asks. The answer names three people, one of whom left the board eight days earlier: "Myself, Mike and Frank Sprague." The clerk's audible reaction is on the tape. The approved minutes render it "himself, Mr. Petrin, and Frank Sprague was". The search committee is the only one on the agenda that was not reconstituted at the organisational meeting. MEDIUM
1:58:13 Two grounds announced, one noticed, one never identified "we're going to move on to the nonpublic session. We need a motion. Roll calls to go into nonpublic. We have two items under the nonpublic, 91-A colon. Three, part two a as requested by Miss Kennedy, and 91 a colon three subset two for the school board." The second paragraph letter is never spoken. The agenda notices only II(a); so do the minutes. The motion, the second and the roll call follow. MEDIUM
1:59:15 What happens after the tape stops A new member asks whether anything follows the nonpublic session. "It's just a point that it's just a discussion of moderator and that's a very small item." Another member asks the question that decides the public record: "Should we warn CCTV that that like, do we think there's enough of a conversation about the moderator or." The recording ends twelve seconds later; the board returned to public session at 9:49 p.m. and appointed a moderator pro tempore. 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.

HIGH The approved minutes record a unanimous voice vote approving the by-laws. There was no motion, no second and no vote of any kind — the board expressly decided it could not approve them

The agenda item reads "Approve CSB School Board By-Laws (Discussion/Vote) requires ⅔". The board's own rule 1.02 makes this the meeting at which it must happen: "The board shall adopt The Claremont School By-Laws (CSBL) at the organizational meeting. The organization meeting is the first meeting following Board elections."

What the recording contains, between 0:56:44 and 1:08:38, is the opposite of an approval. The new chair opens with "I know I've reviewed them, and I have some questions about them. Some changes that I'm suggesting. And according to the bylaws, if we are making changes, we can't verify them on the same night as we make the changes" — and she is right, because rule 2.11(b) provides that amending or suspending the by-laws "shall occur, by motion, and voted upon at the next regularly scheduled CSB meeting, unless deemed otherwise by a ⅔ vote by Board members." Four members then work through the document for eleven minutes, the chair says "I think that we have not complied with our own bylaws this past year", and the meeting settles on this: "what we're saying is we'd like to have the ability as a group to make the committee assignments and go forward with the rest of the meeting. Understanding that the current bylaws are in place until we adopt a revised version at the next meeting. Is everyone in agreement with that?" Three members are named to an ad hoc committee to bring changes back. No motion is made. No second is given. No vote is taken. The words all in favour are not spoken.

The approved minutes' last line under that item reads: "Board discussed and approved unanimously with voice vote."

Two readings survive and this page does not choose between them. The clerk may have been recording the board's consensus — to leave the existing by-laws in force and refer revisions out — in the vocabulary of a vote. Or the line may record the item as the agenda framed it, an approval of the by-laws requiring two-thirds. On either reading the minutes do not record what the board decided, and the difference between the two is the difference between the board having adopted its governing document for the year and having deferred it. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to include "a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions" and "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion". There is no mover and no seconder to name, because there was no motion.

The clerk herself caught the same gap twenty-two minutes later, about the other committee formed the same way: "there was a discussion before about a bylaws ad hoc subcommittee. Was that." — "No, you needed to vote on it there." The answer was "And I think it was a consensus", and nothing further was done.

Graded HIGH. The corpus reserves HIGH for a record defect that nothing on the record mitigates. This is not an omission that a reader can work around: the public document affirmatively reports a unanimous vote on the board's governing instrument, at the meeting the instrument itself designates for its adoption, and the recording of the same item contains no vote. It is compounded by three facts about the document the minutes link. It is the live Google Doc rather than the adopted copy; Drive records it as last modified on March 23, five days after this meeting; and its owner is a Google account belonging to the superintendent whose contract this SAU terminated in January 2024. A reader clicking the link in the approved minutes is not reading what the board read.

Nor could the board say what it was amending. Asked "When would the bylaws change to make it a two year term?", the room produced five different answers in ninety seconds, none of which matches the adopted text of record — passed on June 5, 2024 — and one of which ("Voted on every single. Year, every May") contradicts rule 1.02. The corpus has established that two versions of these by-laws exist and differ in both numbering and wording; the chair's own citation this evening is an instance, since the two-year term she read aloud is rule 1.03 of the live document and she cited it as 1.02.

Sources: the live Claremont School Board By-Laws document linked from the agenda and the minutes, rules 1.02, 1.03 and 2.11 Drive: created 2023-03-18, owner mtempesta@sau6.org, last modified 2026-03-23; RSA 91-A:2, II (subject matter, final decisions, movers and seconders); approved minutes, 3/18/26; 3.18.26 agenda.

MEDIUM The board elected its chair and settled its vice chair before it took the roll, with a seat still empty — and the minutes' tally for the chair records five of the six members present

The order of business is set by the agenda and the minutes follow it: "Organization of the Board" — introductions, the oath, the election of a chair — and only then "General Business", beginning with the "Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members". On the recording the chair is elected at 0:03:49, the vice-chair motion is put and lost at 0:08:45, and the roll is called at 0:11:50. The minutes add that the seventh member "arrived at 7:40pm", about an hour later. Claremont's school board chose its presiding officer for the year with six of seven seats occupied and no roll on the record.

The chair vote itself was taken without a count. The presiding officer asked for a second, asked for discussion, said "All in favor?", then "Any opposed?", then "The ayes have it." Nothing was counted aloud and no roll was called. By-law 1.03 permits exactly that — the chair and vice chair are elected "by open ballot, voice vote or general consensus" — so the method is within the rules. What does not follow from the recording is the tally the minutes print: "Voting in favor: Candace Crawford, Loren Howard, Donald Lavalette, Michel Petrin / Voting against: Brian Rapp". That is five votes from six members present, and the member missing from it is Heather Whitney, who moved the nomination. The minutes also name Petrin as the seconder where the audible second on the recording comes from Rapp; both may have seconded, and this page does not choose.

The vice-chair vote is the counter-example, and it is done properly. Every one of the six votes is recorded by name in the minutes — Whitney, Petrin and Crawford in favour; Rapp, Howard and Lavalette opposed — and it matches the recording exactly, including the chair's own realisation that she had to vote: "So there are 3 to 2. My understanding of the rules of order is that the chair votes in a tie", corrected on the spot with "You vote every vote." That correction is right and the board's own by-law 4.01 says so: the chair shall "Vote on all questions. Maintains all board member privileges." The clerk then supplied the arithmetic: "I guess the motion doesn't pass. Have a majority to pass", which is by-law 2.11's "affirmative vote of the majority of members present and voting".

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb. The outcome is not in doubt, the method is permitted by the by-laws, the second and more contested vote is minuted name by name, and the roll follows within four minutes. What is flagged is that the public record of the chair's election accounts for five of six members, and that a board which knew a seventh member was coming took both officer votes without him.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (names of members present; final decisions; movers and seconders); approved minutes, 3/18/26; Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 1.01, 1.03, 2.11, 2.12 and 4.01.

POSITIVE A moderator vacancy was filled by the one route New Hampshire law leaves open — and it closes a defect this corpus has carried since 2024

Under Other Business the approved minutes record two sentences: "Ms. Kronberg explained that the RSAs allow the clerk to act as moderator and appoint a moderator pro tempore until the next election if there is a vacancy", and "Ms. Kronberg is appointing April Woodman as the runner up with write in votes, Ms. Pope's endorsement, and Ms. Woodman's qualifications."

That is the law, stated correctly, and it is the branch that matters. RSA 197:26 provides that "The school board shall fill vacancies occurring on the board, and in other district offices, except that of moderator, until the next annual meeting of the district" — the moderator is the one district office a school board may not fill. RSA 671:33, III supplies what happens instead: "Vacancies in the office of moderator shall be filled by vote at a school meeting or election, provided that, until a replacement is chosen, the school district clerk shall serve as moderator or shall appoint a moderator pro tempore." RSA 197:20 says the same from the clerk's side: the clerk "shall act as moderator of any meeting until a moderator pro tempore shall be chosen, if the moderator is absent or the office has become vacant". The clerk acted under her own statutory power; the board did not vote on it, and on this record was not asked to. The same section is the authority for what she had already done at the top of the meeting: RSA 197:20 gives the clerk "the same power to administer oaths which the moderator has", and it was she who swore in the new members.

This closes a standing negative anchor in this project's files. On February 3, 2024 Claremont's deliberative session was presided over by someone the agenda, the Rules of Procedure sheet and both sets of minutes all called an "interim moderator" — an office New Hampshire law does not create — with neither statutory branch anywhere in the record. Two years later the same district's clerk names the correct mechanism and uses it.

Three limits, none of which changes the grade. A moderator pro tempore is not a term of office: RSA 671:33, III makes the appointment last only "until a replacement is chosen" by vote at a school meeting or election, so the minutes' phrase "until the next election" states the effect rather than a grant. The reasons given are not statutory criteria — being runner-up on write-ins, the outgoing moderator's endorsement and the appointee's qualifications are sensible grounds, but RSA 671:33, III supplies none, and the appointee had announced her write-in candidacy from the floor of the February 18 meeting. And this page cannot verify that a vacancy existed: the return for Article 1, Election of School District Officials, is the city clerk's record and is not in any district share this project can read. What the district's own documents show is that the interim superintendent thanked an "outgoing moderator" the same evening.

The appointment is not in the recording. It was taken after the board returned from nonpublic session at 9:49 p.m., and the tape had stopped — see flag 4.

Sources: RSA 197:26 (the school board fills district-office vacancies except that of moderator); RSA 671:33, III (moderator vacancies; the clerk serves or appoints a moderator pro tempore; source note ends 2021, 91:318, eff. July 1, 2021); RSA 197:20 (the clerk acts as moderator until a moderator pro tempore is chosen); RSA 197:19 (the district moderator has the powers of a town moderator); approved minutes, 3/18/26; the February 18, 2026 page for the write-in candidacy announced from the floor.

OBSERVATION The last hour and eleven minutes of the meeting are not recorded, and eleven of those minutes were public business — including the appointment of the district's presiding officer

The recording runs continuously and its clock can be checked: the call to order is stated aloud as 6:36 p.m., the roll call into nonpublic session falls at 1:58:13, and 6:36 p.m. plus that position gives about 8:35 p.m. against the minutes' 8:34 p.m. There is no splice and no excision; the recording simply stops when the board goes into nonpublic session.

The board came back into public session at 9:49 p.m. and adjourned at 10:00 p.m. In those eleven minutes it took Other Business — and Other Business, on this agenda, was "Appointment of Moderator". The public record of the appointment of the officer who presides over Claremont's annual meeting is three lines of minutes. The same eleven minutes produced two further entries the minutes give without explanation (flag 13).

No rule was broken. A public body is not required to be recorded, the nonpublic session is properly absent, and the item was noticed on the agenda so anyone in the room could stay — several residents did. What makes it worth recording is that the board discussed on camera whether it was worth recording. A member asked "Should we warn CCTV that that like, do we think there's enough of a conversation about the moderator or", and the chair had already answered the question before it was put: "It's just a point that it's just a discussion of moderator and that's a very small item." It turned out to be the appointment of a district officer under a statute that keeps the office out of the board's own hands.

Sources: approved minutes, 3/18/26 (8:34 p.m., 9:49 p.m., 10:00 p.m.); 3.18.26 agenda; Cablecast API for show 17241 (total run time 7,246 seconds). No rule is engaged; labelled an observation. Maintainer disclosure: Kevin Tyson maintains this project and has served on the board of Claremont Community Television, whose operations are the subject of the exchange quoted above; CCTV is the source of every recording in this corpus.

MEDIUM The motion into nonpublic session named two statutory grounds, the agenda and the minutes record one, and the second was never identified; the minutes were then sealed for four weeks with no determination on the record

RSA 91-A:3, I(b) requires the motion to be "made in public session, and shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II which is relied upon as foundation for the nonpublic session." The chair's motion at 1:58:13 does not: "We have two items under the nonpublic, 91-A colon. Three, part two a as requested by Miss Kennedy, and 91 a colon three subset two for the school board." The first ground is stated — II(a), the dismissal, promotion, compensation or discipline of a public employee, which the agenda notices and reproduces in full. The second is given as a paragraph number with no letter after it, and no letter is supplied anywhere. The agenda notices one ground; the approved minutes record one ground; two were used. On the evening's own facts the obvious candidate is II(b), the hiring of a public employee, which is the ground the same board noticed a fortnight earlier for the same search — but the record does not say so, and this page does not supply it.

The seal has the same shape of defect as the last one. RSA 91-A:3, III makes disclosure the default: minutes of a nonpublic session "shall be publicly disclosed within 72 hours of the meeting" unless two-thirds of the members present determine, by recorded vote in public session, that disclosure would "affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself, or render the proposed action ineffective", or concerns emergency-functions preparation. The minutes record the motion, the second, a roll call and "All present voting in favor", which satisfies the two-thirds threshold. They do not record which of the statutory grounds the board found, or that it found any.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb, and two things distinguish it from the neighbouring page's version of the same finding. The seal is four weeks, against six months on February 18 and ten years elsewhere in this corpus — a term short enough that the ordinary course of the search will overtake it. And the subject was reported to the public in unusual detail before the doors closed: the number of applications, the number interviewed, the withdrawals and the existence of a recommendation were all stated aloud. What a reader still cannot do is test the seal against the statute, because the finding that would have to be tested was never stated, or check the second exemption, because it was never identified.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) (the specific exemption on the face of the motion; roll call), II(a) and II(b), III (72-hour disclosure; the two-thirds determination and its grounds); 3.18.26 agenda; approved minutes, 3/18/26; the February 18, 2026 page, flag 8, and the March 4, 2026 page, flag 2.

OBSERVATION A district officer twice told members of the public at the noticed comment period that their concerns belonged with the superintendent — the second time to someone who is not a district employee

The comment period ran twenty-six minutes and nine residents spoke. Twice, immediately after a speaker finished, the business administrator addressed her from the table. The first: "there's a school board policy that specifically talks about, the union and employees. Those if you have a complaint, you need to address the superintendent." The second, nineteen minutes later: "In the future, if you have a concern, there's a school board policy that requires you to go to the superintendent." The speaker was not an employee. She said so — "Not a teacher in a different district. I'm just a parent" — and the answer was "I apologize. Thank you."

A board member then put the correction on the record and repeated it when the chair answered a different question: "I think it's important for the the board to weigh in on the board policies. So if the chair, if someone needs to speak up, it should be the chair", and "I understand that I'm talking about Mr. Angel piping in. If someone needs to pipe in, it should be you, the chair doing it." A resident said the same thing from the floor before giving his own comment: "That's why he's asking you to follow the rules."

The policy invoked is BCC, and the room already had it: the last speaker of the evening read the district's email of that afternoon into the record — "In this policy, the Claremont School Board emphasizes that the primary line of communication between staff and the school board is through the superintendent" — and asked the question a reader will want answered: "I think we're all just kind of confused about what this email means and who it's intended for, because it kind of feels like, collective punishment." The interim superintendent's explanation is on the record and is a real one: the email concerned programme questions arising from the reconfiguration, not this meeting, and its timing was accidental — "I didn't realize when I put it out today, I see where the question came in on the timing of it, but had nothing to do with necessarily this board meeting … I should have there was a board meeting tonight." She also stated the limit of the policy plainly: "you're always welcome as community members, if you're a community member to speak up as a community member", and "if you disagree with what I say, you have every right that goes to the board."

No verified rule was breached, which is why this is an observation. RSA 189:74, I requires a school board to "provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters", and both speakers had finished before they were addressed; nobody was cut off, refused the floor or held to a clock, and nine residents spoke without limit. What is recorded is that the board's own policy BEDH and by-law 4.01 put the conduct of the comment period in the chair's hands, that it was not the chair who spoke, that a member had to say so twice, and that the effect on a resident hearing it is to be told at a public meeting that a public meeting is not where this belongs. One of the speakers had already framed the policy itself as a constitutional question: "we also need to change the culture to and of having policies like inhibiting people's First Amendment rights are part of those are part of those policies."

Sources: RSA 189:74 (the opportunity for public comment; 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022); policy BEDH — Public Comment & Participation at Board Meetings, hyperlinked from the agenda; Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 2.03 (decorum; the presiding officer preserves order) and 4.01 (duties of the chair); approved minutes, 3/18/26, which record all nine speakers by name and ward. Policy BCC itself is not in this packet.

MEDIUM The one committee not reconstituted at the organisational meeting is the one choosing the superintendent, and a third of it left the board eight days earlier

The agenda's appointment block lists Finance, SRVRTC Visioning, Capital Improvement, Policy, Curriculum, the school boards association delegate, the negotiating representatives, the superintendent evaluation committee and two ad hoc committees. All of them were filled at 1:22:17. The Ad Hoc Leadership Search Subcommittee appears on the agenda only under Subcommittee Reports, and it was not appointed, confirmed or re-named. Asked directly who is on it, its chair answered: "Myself, Mike and Frank Sprague." Frank Sprague had ceased to be a member of the board on March 10. The approved minutes record the same answer with one word added: "himself, Mr. Petrin, and Frank Sprague was".

By-law 1.08 governs it: "All special committees or ad hoc committees shall be created at the direction of the CSB and consist of three (3) members, unless a different number is ordered by the CSB." Three members is the prescribed size, and one of the three no longer holds a seat. Nothing in the record shows the board addressing that, and its own new member had asked the question that would have surfaced it.

The consequences reach the substance. This committee advertised the post, screened eight applications, selected three candidates, conducted video interviews and brought a recommendation to a sealed nonpublic session on the same night — the only report on any of it being the sixty seconds at 1:56:47. Nine residents had spoken on that process an hour earlier and every one of them asked for the same thing. And the by-law review immediately before had established that the board does not yet know what post it is recruiting for: "Until we hear from the committee about what the executive director is going to look like within these bylaws … There's multiple references to superintendent here."

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb. The chair of the committee gave a full and unprompted public account of the process and its results; the recommendation went into a properly moved and roll-called nonpublic session rather than being taken privately; and the search's next stage — a board interview of the remaining candidate — is a public body's business that will have to be noticed. What is flagged is that at the meeting whose whole purpose is to constitute the board's committees for the year, the committee carrying the district's most consequential appointment was left as it stood on March 9.

Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rule 1.08 (special and ad hoc committees created at the direction of the board, three members) and rule 1.05 (subcommittees advisory; the board makes all final decisions); 3.18.26 agenda; approved minutes, 3/18/26. Which body appoints a superintendent for a single-district administrative unit after July 1 is a question this page does not settle.

OBSERVATION Both ad hoc committees created this evening depart from the by-law that governs them — one in its size, the other in having no vote at all

By-law 1.08: "All special committees or ad hoc committees shall be created at the direction of the CSB and consist of three (3) members, unless a different number is ordered by the CSB. The vice-chair shall appoint all special committees and shall designate their chairs, unless otherwise ordered by the CSB by a simple majority." By-law 4.02 repeats the duty on the vice chair's side: "Appoint special committees, pursuant to Rule 1.08 unless otherwise directed by the CSB."

No statute is engaged, which is why this is an observation, and the by-law itself supplies the cure: the board may order otherwise by simple majority. What it did not do is order it. The three-member cap in rule 1.05(1) was observed everywhere else, and the chair applied it aloud — "we can't have more than three" — which is why the departure in the other direction is worth recording.

Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 1.04, 1.05(1), 1.08, 4.01 and 4.02, quoted from the live document linked from the agenda; approved minutes, 3/18/26.

MEDIUM The dissolution of SAU 6 is now being executed item by item, and no authorising record for it is in any packet this project can read

On February 18 the winding up of SAU 6 on July 1 appeared once, in a single aside during an audit discussion, and the page for that meeting recorded it as an observation because the underlying decision lay outside the record. On March 18 it is transacted business, three times over.

The machinery this requires is RSA 194-C:2, IV, and none of it is in the record. Withdrawal from a school administrative unit runs through a planning committee whose membership RSA 194-C:2, I(a) prescribes — two local school board members, a member of the body with statutory authority over school budgets, four public members appointed by the school district moderator, and the superintendent as a non-voting member. That committee must study the advisability of the change and prepare a fiscal analysis; if it recommends withdrawal it must prepare a plan; the state board of education reviews it within 60 days; and passage requires three-fifths of the votes cast in the withdrawing district. No planning committee, no fiscal analysis and no state board action appears in any Claremont packet, agenda or set of minutes this project holds. The three-fifths vote is Unity's to take, not Claremont's, and Unity's warrant is not in this corpus — but the Claremont articles this page can account for are the operating budget, the administrators' agreement, two property articles and open enrolment, so nothing on Claremont's own ballot bears on it either.

Graded MEDIUM, and the divergence from the February 18 page's grading is deliberate. That page had a passing remark and correctly declined to make a finding of it. This meeting has an item of business that exists because SAU 6 acted without a governing-board resolution, a chair stating the withdrawal as accomplished, and a governing document being rewritten to remove an office that will not exist. The decision itself is still outside this record and this page asserts nothing about its lawfulness. What is flagged is the asymmetry: a change that moves every administrator on this agenda's masthead onto a different employer — the business administrator's own words are that “Saw six employees get merged to the school district” — is being implemented in public, at a properly noticed meeting, with no public document behind it that a resident could read.

What would settle it is the SAU 6 board's own record — the planning committee's report and fiscal analysis, and the State Board of Education's action — together with the Unity School District's warrant. The SAU 6 board met on April 9, 2026; its minutes are the nearest place to look.

Sources: RSA 194-C:2 (formation and alteration of school administrative units): ¶I(a) the planning committee's membership; ¶IV withdrawal — study, fiscal analysis, plan, state board review within 60 days, three-fifths of votes cast (note ends 2010, 5:1, eff. June 18, 2010); RSA 5-B:5 (standards of organization and operation for pooled risk management programs) the chapter the officer's "by statute" refers to; ¶5-B:5 sets standards for the programme rather than a resolution duty on the participating district, and this page reports the statement as made without verifying the duty; Banking Resolution; approved minutes, 3/18/26; the February 18, 2026 page, flag 12.

OBSERVATION How this page knows what the voters decided — and the two dollars between the article they passed and the form the board signed

No election return is in any district share this project can read; the official result belongs to the city clerk. What this meeting supplies is a chain of statements and one document, and together they settle it.

The MS-22 was filed on time, and that is not trivial. RSA 21-J:34, II requires the governing body to certify the appropriations voted and file the report "within 20 days of the close of the meeting". March 10 plus twenty days is March 30, and the comptroller said so: "it's due by March 30th. So this is the only board meeting I have before the due date." The form itself prints "Form Due Date: 20 Days after the Annual Meeting". It was generated on March 12 and signed at the table on March 18.

And it does not match the article. The warrant read at the February 7 deliberative session, in words and figures, put the operating budget at "FORTY-TWO MILLION NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SEVEN THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN … ($42,957,713)". The MS-22 reports $42,957,715. The difference is two dollars; the form's own subtotals add to its figure exactly, so the discrepancy is against the warrant rather than internal. The certification the board signed reads: "This is to certify that the information contained in this form, appropriations actually voted by the school district meeting, was taken from official records and is complete to the best of our knowledge and belief. Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined the information contained in this form and to the best of my belief it is true, correct and complete."

Two dollars changes nothing about the tax rate and this page does not suggest it does — which is why this is an observation rather than a flag of substance. It is recorded because the MS-22 is the document that sets the tax rate, because it is certified under penalties of perjury, because a reader comparing it to the warrant will find the gap, and because the copy posted in the public packet carries a blank signature block for a superintendent, a school district clerk and twelve school board members, so nothing in the public record shows who signed it.

Sources: MS22.pdf as posted in the packet generated 3/12/2026; certification page unsigned in the posted copy; RSA 21-J:34, II (certify the appropriations voted; file within 20 days of the close of the meeting; 2007, 182:2, eff. Apr. 1, 2007) and RSA 198:4-a, the two authorities the form cites; RSA 40:13, VII (second session on the second Tuesday in March); the February 7, 2026 deliberative session page for the article texts and the $42,957,713 and $44,449,704 figures; the February 18, 2026 page for the budget cap and its costing. The official return is the city clerk's record and is not in the district's shares.

OBSERVATION Nine residents spoke and eight of them asked for one thing: a public process for choosing whoever runs the district next

The requests do not overlap by accident; they are a list. Publish the finalists' names. Hold public forums. Let candidates walk the schools so students and staff can meet them. Hold after-school staff meetings for questions. Survey families and the public on what they want in a leader. Put somebody other than the board and one principal on the interview panel. And, from three separate speakers, slow down.

The arguments behind them differ. One resident's is procedural: an ad hoc committee of two or three people, no parents, no community members, no principals, finalists already chosen, and a remit he understood to be about the shape of the job rather than the choice of person. One is about trust as an asset the next appointee will need: "They'll be coming in and facing a massive uphill battle of having to earn our trust and respect, because the group of people who probably have the least amount of trust has appointed them." One is about the substance of the post — that an executive director is not an educational leader, and that after "two superintendents, 3 or 4. I've lost track curriculum directors" since 2021, "We need we need a captain that's going to steer the ship and keep it on a one course." One is about cost: "why we are going to go for a higher paying position when we already don't have enough to pay subs in special ed services and paraprofessionals". And one is addressed to the two members sworn in forty minutes earlier: "I'm going to look at our new newly elected board members right now, that it's clear that what the people want, they want a real process."

No rule requires a district to run a public superintendent search, and the parts of it that concern named candidates are precisely what RSA 91-A:3, II(b) permits a body to take in nonpublic session. That is why this is an observation. What the record shows is the board's answer: a member asked whether there would be a report and was told yes; the search committee's chair gave the numbers; and the recommendation went behind closed doors the same night, with the minutes sealed for four weeks. Not one of the nine requests was answered on the recording, and the approved minutes record no response to any of them.

One request was answered, and it was not about the search. Asked about the two vacant business-office posts, the comptroller reported: "we've posted a position for accounts payable and payroll clerk. And and we've actually, fielded two candidates that we interviewed today, and I'm I'm very hopeful."

Sources: the recording at the timestamps in the timeline; approved minutes, 3/18/26, which name all nine speakers by ward and summarise each; RSA 91-A:3, II(b) (the hiring of any person as a public employee); RSA 189:74 (public comment).

POSITIVE A board that read its own rules out loud, in public, and found real defects in them

Eleven minutes of this meeting are four members and a clerk going through the board's governing document line by line, on camera, at the first meeting of a new board. Every defect they identified is real, and this page has checked each against the document the agenda links.

Three things elsewhere in the meeting belong in the same flag. The chair corrected her own error in public about the previous meeting's packet: "at the last meeting, I questioned Mr. Angel if the, January 31st numbers had been in the packet, and that was my error. They were there." She translated the finance report for the room rather than letting it pass — "because he talks fast and he gave a lot of information" — and named the reason the audits matter in language anybody can follow: "it's the easiest ways to think of a checking account. You know how much you spend this month and you know how much you had come in, but you didn't know what you're starting balance was." And a member asked that the banking resolution go into the minutes verbatim: "So the public can see it."

Two more. The clerk called both roll calls in alphabetical order of surname with the chair last, which is exactly what rule 2.13 prescribes. And the board accepted, without argument, a member's proposal to meet in July because "us not having a meeting, I think, really hurt us last year" — the same conclusion its own February self-evaluation had reached in writing.

Sources: Claremont School Board By-Laws, rules 1.03, 1.05, 2.07, 2.13, 4.01, 4.02 and 4.03; Banking Resolution; 2.21.26 self-evaluation minutes; approved minutes, 3/18/26.

MEDIUM The minutes record no start time although the presiding officer announced one aloud, and they end with two lines of raw notes, one of which names a person who appears nowhere else in the document

RSA 91-A:2, II has required minutes to state the start time and end time of the meeting and the name of the person who produced them since August 22, 2025. Two of the three are here: "10:00 pm adjournment", and "Respectfully submitted by Noelle Kronberg, school board clerk". The start time is not — the third consecutive Claremont meeting for which that is true, and the clearest of the three, because on this occasion the presiding officer stated it into the microphone in the first sentence of the meeting: "We're going to call the meeting to order officially at 636, please."

Three entries read as raw notes rather than minutes. Under the consent agenda, "Candace Crawford requested" — and stops; the request was to defer the preschool item. Under Other Business, after the moderator appointment, two unattached lines: "Rocco taking on the role of chair until a vote can be taken for a new chair" and "Kerry will send out survey that teachers and paras received". Nothing in the agenda, the recording or the rest of the minutes explains the first. It is the only occurrence of that name in the document, and it names nobody on this board.

A reading that fits, offered as a reading and not as a finding. Rocco Ruggeri is the Unity representative who was elected vice chair of the SAU 6 board on April 11, 2024, at the reorganisation that elected Arlene Hawkins its chair. Hawkins left the Claremont school board at this election, and an SAU board is composed of the members of its constituent school boards. On that reading the line records the chair of SAU 6 passing to its Unity vice chair, pending an election — three and a half months before the SAU is to be wound up and Unity to leave it. This page asserts none of that; it is a reading of an unexplained sentence, and the district's own documents do not connect the pieces. What would settle it is the SAU 6 board's record of its April 9, 2026 meeting.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb. The minutes are otherwise substantial and unusually good on the votes that mattered: the vice-chair division is recorded name by name and matches the recording exactly, the reconfiguration roll call is complete, all nine public speakers are named with their wards, and every motion carries a mover and a seconder. The defects are the missing start time and a handful of lines that were plainly never finished — and one of those lines is the only public record of a change in who chairs the administrative unit.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (start time, end time and the person who produced the minutes; 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025); approved minutes, 3/18/26; RSA 194-C:2 (school administrative units); Scripts/briefing.md for the SAU 6 reorganisation of 11 April 2024.

Appendix — source files

Official and public sources

Project files

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Laws and rules cited on this page