SAU 6 Board — April 9, 2026 | The reorganization meeting, eighty-three days before the separation

Participants

Board and staff names follow the agenda masthead. There are no minutes for this meeting, so nothing corroborates the recording on attendance or on who spoke; where the dialogue file cannot fix a voice to a name, the role is described and no name is printed. Five of the twelve seated members are never anchored to a voice.
Name	Role	Participation
Rocco Ruggeri	SAU 6 Board Chair (presiding); Unity-side member. The agenda masthead prints his title as Vice Chair.	Presided; opened the reorganization and put his own re-election as chair; nominated the vice chair; announced that the two noticed votes were not needed; walked the board through the three contracts one by one; reported Unity’s progress toward SAU 109 and the hiring of a superintendent.
Candace Crawford	Chair, Claremont School Board; SAU 6 board member — elected SAU 6 vice chair at this meeting	Nominated the chair; accepted nomination as vice chair; pressed on the consultant’s billing, on why the human-resources mentoring had not begun, and on the scope of the operational review, and undertook to find out and report back.
Heather Whitney	School Board Member, Claremont; SAU 6 board member	Asked under what circumstances a stipend comes to the board; put the case that the operational review is bigger than the audits and that the public deserves a third-party analysis; asked for the sealed nonpublic minutes item and volunteered to review them.
Brian Rapp	School Board Member, Claremont; SAU 6 board member (introduced as new)	Pressed Unity repeatedly on why the receiving unit was not doing its own build-out, and asked whether anyone had asked Cornish how its earlier departure was handled.
Atonya Hart	SAU 6 board member, Unity	Declined a nomination for vice chair.
Shannon Popescu	SAU 6 board member, Unity	Volunteered to review the sealed nonpublic minutes for Unity.
Kerry Kennedy	Interim Superintendent, SAU 6	Described the consultant’s four workstreams and her own weekly mentoring; introduced the technology and student-services directors; proposed a rate-back arrangement in the separation agreement; covered records, archives and the human-resources handover.
Matt Angell	Interim Senior Comptroller / Interim Business Administrator, SAU 6	Gave the SAU 6 finance update; explained the payroll and accounts-payable staffing and the $58,000 replacement; described the human-resources agreement he signed; set out the DOE-25 and audit hand-off and the retiree benefit that runs past June 30.
Jason Bonneville	Interim Director of Informational Services and Instructional Technology, SAU 6	Gave the technology separation plan in detail — internet and E-Rate cutover, domain and Google migration, phones, wireless, device management, and the student-information-system move.
Darlene Ayotte, Kelly Simpson (Unity); William Madden, Loren Howard, Michael Petrin (Claremont)	Named on the agenda masthead	No row in the dialogue file is attributed to any of them by name. Two of the five are called in the audible part of the roll. Nothing in the record establishes which of them were present.
Don Lavalette	School Board Member, Claremont; SAU 6 board member (introduced as new)	Announced absent by the chair at 0:01:06.
Unidentified Unity-side board member	Voice not identified in the dialogue file	Made the transparency objection to the fourth contract at 0:29:27; asked the technology-timeline questions from 0:58:04.
Unidentified SAU 6 recording secretary	Called the roll at the chair’s request; reported the outstanding minutes	Read the roll at 0:00:52; told the board at 0:04:55 that minutes remain to be approved. The agenda names Noelle Kronberg as SAU 6 board clerk; the recording does not establish that this is the same person, and no name is printed here.
Paige Jarvis	Interim Director of Student Services, SAU 6	Introduced by the interim superintendent at 0:41:38; no attributed remarks.
Chelsea Weatherford	Interim Human Resources Director, SAU 6	Named on the masthead; the interim superintendent reports she was unable to attend.

Agenda

Items follow the agenda document in the packet folder. There are no minutes, so the disposition column is drawn from the recording alone. The agenda’s own numbering is defective: its roman numerals run I, II, III, then **II again**, then IV, V, VI; the second block numbered II is timed 6:05 PM, the same clock time as the first; and the consent agenda’s minutes and manifests lines are headings with nothing after them.
Taken up	Item	Agenda text / what happened
0:00:12	I — Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance	Agenda: “6:00 PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance”, then “Turn off cell phones and electronic devices” and “Secretary Roll Call of Attendance of Board Members”. The chair opens: “Call the meeting to order. Start with the Pledge of Allegiance.”
0:00:48	Roll call; quorum	The chair asks the secretary to call the roll. The machine transcription recovers only part of it. The chair then declares “Excellent. Having a quorum. We will continue”. No count is stated and no attendance list exists.
0:01:06	II — Organization of the Board: introduction of new members	Agenda: “6:05 PM Organization of the Board, Kerry Kennedy, Interim Superintendent”, item 1 “Introduction of New Board Members”. The chair, not the interim superintendent, does it, and names three.
0:01:32	Election of Board Chair for remainder of SY26	Agenda item 2. The incumbent explains he became chair “by default” and wanted it formalised. Nominated, seconded, put to a voice vote by himself, carried without a count.
0:02:44	Election of Board Vice Chair for remainder of SY26	Agenda item 3. The first nominee declines. The chair nominates Candace Crawford; seconded; voice vote, no count. The agenda’s organization block contains no election of a secretary and no election of a treasurer — see flag 2.
0:03:51	III — Consent agenda: agenda amendments and final approval	Agenda: “6:10 PM General Business”, “Consent Agenda”, “Agenda Amendments and Final Approval”. No amendments offered; motion and second captured as one transcript segment; voice vote.
0:04:36	Approval of Minutes; Approval of Manifests	Both agenda lines end in a colon with nothing after them. The chair: “There are no minutes provided and no manifests. I thought I saw there’s a book of manifest.” The manifests are to be signed after the meeting; the minutes are tabled. See flags 3 and 8.
0:05:02	Citizens Comments	Agenda item. Called and closed in one sentence: “Citizens. Comments. Seeing no citizens. We’ll move through that one.” See flag 9.
0:05:41	Finance Update — Review SAU SY26 Budget to date	Agenda: “Finance Update (Report) Matt Angell, Senior Comptroller” with the sub-item “Review SAU SY26 Budget to date”. Delivered orally from a screen; no finance exhibit is in the packet folder. See flag 7.
0:07:34	Follow-Up Items	Agenda item. Disposed of in one sentence: “There’s anything specifically to follow up outside of what we have on the agenda already. So we’ll move forward from there.”
0:07:55	II (again) — 1. Vote on Stipend; 2. Vote on AP/payroll	Agenda: “6:05 PM Discussion/Action Items”, item 1 “Vote on Stipend [need updated cost and duration]”, item 2 “Vote on AP/payroll [need update and plan with forecast on duration/cost]”. Neither vote was taken. See flag 4.
0:12:32	3. TMS update, cost/performance to date, and the “how this happened” part of the contract	Agenda item 3, with the signed-contracts PDF linked beneath it. Forty minutes of the meeting. Outcome: the vice chair to establish the operational review’s scope and report back; the other three services to continue. No motion, no vote. See flags 5, 6 and 10.
0:34:21	4. Discussion on making non-public meeting minutes public	Agenda item 4. The chair had skipped past it and returned. Two members volunteered by consensus to review the sealed minutes; no motion and no vote. See flag 8.
0:38:10	5. Discussion with Legal regarding separation expectations	Agenda item 5. Counsel’s advice relayed by the chair: a memorandum of understanding between the two boards, drafted before the separation. See flag 1.
0:42:37	7. SAU6 IT plan to support Unity separation prior to and after 6/30/26	Agenda item 7, taken before item 6. Twenty minutes on the technology separation, and the sharpest exchange of the evening about who should be doing the work.
1:01:33	9. Unity update — student services, data management, records	Agenda item 9 and its starred sub-items. Student-services records to transfer cleanly; paper archives may not be complete by July 1.
1:03:31	6. SAU6 BA plan to support Unity separation prior to and after 6/30/26	Agenda item 6, taken last of the separation items. Tax-rate filings, the DOE-25 due September 1, the June 2026 audit hand-off, payroll continuity, and the retiree benefit that runs three years past June 30. See flag 7.
1:07:29	8. MOU regarding SAU 109 needs and what it looks like with SAU #6	Agenda item 8. Unity has agreed a contract to offer superintendent services for the new unit; a staff and public meet-and-greet was being scheduled for the following week.
1:12:29	IV — Other Business	Agenda: “9:20 PM Other Business”. None offered.
1:12:49	V — Future Dates / Agenda Items	Agenda lists the Claremont board meetings of April 15, May 6 and May 20 and an SAU 6 meeting on May 14, and one future agenda item: “Audit Reports”. The board fixes the May 14 start time at six o’clock on the recording.
1:13:49	VI — Adjournment	Agenda: “9:30 PM Adjournment”. The chair entertains a motion, takes an intervening request, then says “Any other business discussion. Oh, second. All those in favor?” The mover is not audible and there are no minutes to supply the name. See flag 3.

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. There are no minutes for this meeting, so every quotation below is from the dialogue file unless it is attributed to the agenda or to a packet document.

Time	Topic	What was said	Flags
0:00:12	Call to order	The whole opening is one sentence: “Call the meeting to order. Start with the Pledge of Allegiance.” No date, no body name and no location are stated aloud.
0:01:06	Quorum declared; three new members introduced, one absent	The chair: “Excellent. Having a quorum. We will continue moving on. So I’d like to introduce some of the new board members. Ryan Rapp, who is here in attendance. Don Lavallée, who is not able to make it tonight, and Kelly Simpson. I want to thank them for their commitment to helping out here.” The first name is the transcription’s standing garble for Brian Rapp; the agenda masthead spells the second Don Lavalette.	HIGH
0:01:32	The chair explains he holds the office by default and wants it formalised	A candid account of how the unit’s chairmanship came to be occupied: “And election of board chair. So I want to thank Arlene, for her her time and commitment and dedication as the board chair prior. By default, that allowed or, made me the board chair, but I thought it was good to formalize that with a vote at a meeting. And also, well, to formalize who the board chair would be, and then also to elect who the vice chair will be.” The predecessor named left the Claremont board on 18 March 2026; the agenda masthead still prints this chair’s title as vice chair.	HIGH
0:02:13	The chair is nominated, and puts his own election	Crawford: “I nominate Rocco to be the chair.” A second is audible but the voice is not identified. The chair then puts the question himself at 0:02:25: “Seeing none will make a vote. All those in favor of myself continuing as board chair for Sussex? I thank you, everybody that go to confidence there.” No count of the ayes, no call for nays until afterwards, and no weighted vote demanded — RSA 194-C:8 makes a weighted vote available on the demand of a majority of members present and voting, and none was made.	HIGH
0:02:44	A vice-chair nomination declined, then accepted	Whitney nominates a Unity member, who answers “Can I say no?” and then “To say no. Okay. I’ll not. It’s not personal. I just got lot going on. Okay.” The chair responds “Sure. No, I respect that. I’ll nominate Candice.” Crawford accepts with a joke that dates the board’s remaining life: “It’s three months, right? That’s it. Thank you.” The chair agrees — “It’s a pretty short stay here, so. Yeah. Right, right to the finish line.”	HIGH HIGH
0:03:30	The organization item closes with two offices unfilled	The chair: “Any nays? Nos. Okay. I don’t think I asked that last. All right. Moving on. Great. Thank you. General business.” No nomination for secretary and no nomination for treasurer was made or called for, and neither office appears on the agenda. RSA 194-C:5, I requires the board to organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer; vice chair is not one of the three.	HIGH
0:04:36	No minutes and no manifests	The chair: “Any posed. Very good. We have an agenda. There are no minutes provided and no manifests. I thought I saw there’s a book of manifest.” He adds at 0:04:49: “So we’ll get those signed, before everyone leaves tonight. And I didn’t see any minutes.”	HIGH HIGH
0:04:55	The recording secretary says minutes are outstanding; they are tabled	The secretary: “There are minutes that need to be approved. But they were from when I was still out tonight.” The chair: “So we’ll we’ll table that for the next opportunity. No, that’s not a problem at all.” This is the only thing in the record that explains the gap, and it explains it only for the earlier meetings, not for this one.	HIGH
0:05:02	Citizens’ comments, called and closed in the same breath	In one continuous segment the chair moves from tabling the minutes straight through the public’s item: “Citizens. Comments. Seeing no citizens. We’ll move through that one. Okay. Moving right along here. Finance update from Mr. Angel, please.” Members of the public were in the room and would speak later in the evening.	OBSERVATION
0:05:41	The finance update, delivered from a screen with no exhibit	The comptroller: “So these are numbers through the end of February. Revenues to date are 1 million. I can’t see it so small. $655,172. Saw six. Only received several different revenue sources. So mainly, $1.4 million from Claremont and 178,000 from unity expenditures to date for, say you six. Let’s see. There are $1,578,471. Encumbrances are $663,000.” Then at 0:06:25: “Remaining balance of the operating budget is 356,000. Or or just just shy of 14%. For now, most of the expenditures that are related to, say, six relate to just payroll. Thanks.”	MEDIUM
0:06:48	The vice chair asks for the year’s opening figure and is told it does not exist yet	Crawford: “May I? Do you have a starting number for this fiscal year for the say, you.” The answer at 0:06:54: “Know, no, I have to do the trial balances for say you six next and push those off. So for an update for the auditors, the the auditors have all the trial balances for unity and for Claremont. Yes.” Eight weeks earlier the same officer had told the Claremont board that SAU 6 would be taken up after Claremont’s three open years.	MEDIUM
0:07:55	The two noticed votes are announced as not needed	The agenda’s first two action items are headed “Vote on Stipend” and “Vote on AP/payroll”. The chair explains the background — a payroll post vacated, a stipend offered to the remaining clerk, that clerk leaving too, and a temporary hire — then rules at 0:09:07: “But it it’s my understanding that that was, those positions were, expressed for transparency and don’t require a vote if I understand that correctly, where it’s just a executive function of hiring and providing services. Does that make sense? Okay, so, I don’t believe there’s a vote needed if we’re all in agreement and understanding there, but I will leave it for discussion if anybody has any questions or clarification needed.”	MEDIUM
0:09:51	What the two posts actually cost	The comptroller: “So we okay. Originally we had two employees one for payroll and one for AP. Okay. The payroll person left. And what we try to do is give the remaining person a stipend to assume the payroll duties. Okay. And then they decided to leave. Okay. In the in the meantime, we hired attempt to assist us to make sure that we can get payroll out in a timely basis.” Then at 0:10:18: “And then we were able to find a an employee of the school district who had worked, over a decade ago. And, and she’s kind of slid into the position for $58,000. So pretty much.” The stipend is put at 0:11:12 as “There was 3000 offered. For the, for the duration of the rest of the year. But it was only a short amount of service, so the full amount wasn’t really such a short turnaround.”	MEDIUM
0:11:39	A board member asks when a stipend does come to the board, and nobody can answer	Whitney: “Under what circumstances would a stipend come before the board for approval?” The comptroller: “That’s a great question.” And at 0:11:46: “I don’t have an answer for you on that. That’s either a legal question or that’s a a board decided question.” The interim superintendent adds “A policy question.” The chair closes it at 0:11:59 on the ground that it was “within the budgeted line item amounts or something along those lines”. RSA 194-C:5, III places the fixing of the salaries of all SAU personnel in this board.	MEDIUM
0:12:45	The consultant item opens on the “how this happened” question	The chair sets the item up: “The toward the end of last year to assist with kind of keeping all the pieces together. So I think it, it would be great for the board to get an update on, where we are with the services they’ve provided. And if we know any charges or balances or amounts that, they’ve built us for. And then one item that was specifically requested to get an update on was the, how this happened section of the contract, where they were going to do a bit of an analysis to get an understanding of how we got into the financial, concern that we found ourselves in and give a high level explanation of it.”	MEDIUM
0:13:49	The interim superintendent lists four workstreams — one more than the packet contains	She names communications, her own mentoring, and “we also have them for our HR managers. There’s a contract there for the mentoring for that person.” Then at 0:14:15: “And then the final one was looking at just services across the board. And so I know there was some discussions with a variety of folks. And so I don’t think we have a full digging into its how it’s happened answer yet. Good.” The packet’s signed-contract PDF contains three contracts, not four.	HIGH MEDIUM
0:14:36	What has been paid, and on what terms	Crawford: “Do we have a total amount that. I know that the, Andy Brown is only getting paid for the work. It’s the work he does. Not on a contingency basis. So I don’t know how much he’s been paid so far. And how does the, the mentoring. Is that a flat monthly fee? Yes. And and, are there contracted hours that that monthly fee covers?” The signed communications contract is hourly, at $155 an hour billed monthly; the mentorship contract is a flat $1,500 a month.	OBSERVATION
0:15:10	The mentoring cadence, as described from the chair’s table	The interim superintendent: “Correct. They have it. And so I meet weekly with my mentor. And so and then the human resources managers just starting that contract for that person to and so there’s a list of hours that’s, you know, contained when we have a zoom meeting and things. And so there’s a, receipt for that. Do you want to share the specifics?” The signed mentorship contract in the packet requires the mentor to “Meet with the interim superintendent a minimum of twice per week”.	OBSERVATION
0:15:33	Why the human-resources mentoring had not started	Crawford: “Why has it been so late that the HR mentoring is kicked in? Were you agreed to six months ago?” The comptroller: “I only seen the agreement come across my desk in the last couple of weeks.” And at 0:15:49: “And the only thing I stopped it for was, in the last couple of weeks was I felt that the person that they provided wasn’t a good fit and that they needed more of an HR person, which they then found one and provided it. And I think that took them a couple of days to find someone.” Then “And then I signed the agreement.”	HIGH
0:16:40	Two audits, and a proposal to drop the operational review	Crawford: “It was it was I, I would like to offer that we discontinued how this this happened. But I, I think that when we contracted with them, we didn’t know what was going on and we didn’t at that point, we hadn’t said we were going to have a friends audit. Subsequently, we’ve agreed to have a forensic audit. And I think unity as and say you and Claremont.” And at 0:17:17: “I sort of think that that audit should take the place of how this happens work. But that’s just my opinion. I don’t know anybody else thinks.”	MEDIUM
0:18:00	Seven months after signature, the review has produced nothing	Crawford: “Correct. And I don’t believe they’ve done any work on the how this happened part yet.” And at 0:18:07: “Yeah. I mean my understanding is they haven’t done any work at all yet on that. Okay. But I but I need to have that verified.” The signed contract is dated by its DocuSign filename to 12 September 2025 — two hundred and nine days earlier.	MEDIUM
0:18:29	The case for the review, put by a Claremont member	Whitney: “My concern really was, is that we’ve had members of the board leave the board, and I think that the how it happened piece is bigger than just the audits. And that for us to learn as a board and for us to create policies and structures that will ensure that we can tell the community we had an external person evaluate our processes, how we conducted ourselves so we can be accountable ourselves for the improvement that needs to happen.” Then at 0:18:57: “I’m very frustrated that this piece hasn’t happened, and I don’t think it requires a forensic audit to have started the process. I think a lot of interviews should have been done right out of the gate. I think all the board members should have been interviewed. This process could have started happening when things were fresh in people’s minds.”	MEDIUM
0:20:13	What the public is owed	Whitney: “I mean, there should be a scope of the work that they should be doing and a timeline. Because I think the public deserves a third party analysis of this because all, all we can do is, is say what we think happened. And I don’t think there’s any level of trust that the public has either Unity or Claremont.” And at 0:20:34: “And, there’s a feeling that, you know, we’re going to hide whatever our problems were as a board. And I want a thorough analysis. I want to be interviewed. I want everybody to be grilled, to find out, like, what we could have done better and to have a real analysis of that. But that’s just.”	MEDIUM
0:20:57	The chair checks the signed envelope and finds three sections, not four	The chair: “I just want to point out, because I was a little confused with this HR mentorship services, not recalling it. When I go back to the confirmation email from September 15th that these documents have been signed. There’s only three sections, and I remember when we discussed them specifically, there was three sections.” And at 0:21:30: “This HR section was not part of the original, so I don’t know where that came from or how that came into play, but it was not part of the original agreement that we discussed with TMS related to the services they were going to provide. It was the operational review, the superintendent services and the communication services. So, well, this was signed on 32726.”	HIGH
0:21:58	The date on the fourth agreement	The chair: “So that was just signed a couple of weeks ago. The first three pages, digital signatures. There’s no date on it, but I have the email confirmation from 915 with these three pages signed as they’re presented here today. So I just want to point that out. I don’t know where the HR section, of these services came from.” The packet PDF’s three contracts do each end “Signed, Accepted by,” with the date fields blank, as he describes.	HIGH
0:23:25	The board’s own life, and who pays after it ends	The chair: “Sure, Mike. So one problem I see is the problem with what happened is that we’ve got three months left as an Siu six board. So who’s footing the bill at that point? Once unity is gone, their own direction, Claremont, their own direction. That Bill’s going to come to, that bill is going to come after the s a you this SO6 is dissolved.” He corrects that last word himself twenty-eight minutes later — see 0:35:20.	HIGH
0:23:51	Where the liability sits on 1 July	Crawford: “Well, I think work done while the s a year is in place gets paid by the. But any any work after July June 30th would be Claremont if we so greed to continue. I would think that the contract would be known after July 1st because.” The chair, reading the instruments at 0:24:11: “It’s not. There’s no end date. So. Well actually there there is so services. The contract will continue through June 30th, 2026, June 30th, 2026, June 30th, 2026. And.” He separates them at 0:24:32: the mentorship, superintendent and human-resources services all end at the school year, and “The operational, does not have an end date.” The packet confirms it: three contracts run “through June 30, 2026”; the operational review states no term at all.	HIGH MEDIUM
0:26:31	How the fourth contract reached the comptroller’s desk	The chair asks directly: “So so I’m going to ask a question directly. How did it. How did this HR contract come about? I mean you said you signed it sign on the 27th. So I guess I’d kind of like to know how it got to you.” The answer given is a case for mentoring rather than a chronology — “And I think it’s important that new people in positions have a mentor. Okay. And it’s especially important in this particular situation where we don’t have experienced people at the top that’s mentoring the younger people, okay. We’re asking these people to do jobs that frankly, they don’t really have experience doing.”	HIGH
0:28:13	The rate, and what the document does and does not say	The chair: “And what is the dollar amount? It’s $1,500 a month, for.” And at 0:28:25: “Yeah. Just says monthly rate of 1530 day termination doesn’t give an an hour monthly hour amount. So the the saw, when did the s a request the human resources mentorship services. Because I don’t recall that conversation.” The fused figure is a monthly rate of $1,500 and a thirty-day termination clause, the same two terms the packet’s superintendent-mentorship contract carries. He concludes at 0:29:16: “Okay. I don’t recall any conversation adding a contract with TMS for human Resources.”	HIGH
0:29:27	A Unity member objects that a contract was added without the board	The speaker is a Unity-side member whose voice the dialogue file cannot identify: “I think one of the apprehensive things for me is that this is kind of bringing me full circle with things that were not transparent back in the beginning. And so, you know, as a small school, and not being in the loop when certain things like this happen. Yeah, it’s $1,500 a month, but that adds up, right? We pay a percentage.” And at 0:29:47: “I get that she’s new and I get she needed this. I think full transparency would have been great for us to know, so that we could have had a nice conversation about it and had a vote on it. Maybe we don’t need to vote on it, but at least some courtesy to let us know.”	HIGH
0:30:18	The comptroller apologises	“Well, I’m sorry that. So that it’s not if we didn’t know. No, but but on a professional basis if I didn’t communicate. Because transparency is extremely important to me. And if I fail in communicating that information to you, then I, I apologize.” Asked at 0:30:38 whether it is within budget, he answers: “Right now, since we’re under budget for all line items, right. Especially when we are, I think down 4 to 5 people within the district. It’s not it’s not going to move the needle.”	HIGH POSITIVE
0:31:44	The item closes with a task, not a vote	The chair: “We’re gonna Candice, offer to follow up on the operational review, and we’re going to continue with the other three.” Crawford: “So let me find out more information. That’s, that’s that’s all I’m trying to do is find out more information.” A member adds at 0:33:09: “I’d love to find out why they haven’t started. Right. Me too. And I would I would echo what Heather said. Regardless of the audit, somebody should be looking at what broke down. What checks, what balances weren’t being met, were they? There were people not following them. What I think it’s important for even even after this board sort of breaks apart, our individual board should sort of understand this going forward.”	MEDIUM
0:34:21	The sealed nonpublic minutes come back onto the agenda	The chair had gone past the item and returns to it: “For number four? Oh, sorry. Skipped right by it. Discussion on making nonpublic meeting minutes public. Right. So this was brought up and asked to be put on the agenda for discussion. So say you six has a a number of nonpublic meeting minutes that are still, sealed. I believe that’s the discussion is to go ahead.”	MEDIUM
0:34:47	Why a member asked for the item	Whitney: “I asked Rocco to put it on the agenda. Because the saw is dissolving and as an see, we need to decide which nonpublic meeting minutes are opened. And I know there’s again for for transparency and, respect to public. We should try our best to go through that as soon as we can and determine what, you know with our legal counsel, what can be released and made open.” And at 0:35:15: “Even if they’re redacted on some level. Whatever we can do is what we should do.”	HIGH MEDIUM
0:35:20	The chair corrects the record: SAU 6 is not dissolving	This is the single most consequential sentence of the evening for anyone reading the corpus. The chair: “It’s not. It’s not dissolving. Just to clarify.” Whitney: “I mean, we’re we’re not going to have a board anymore, right?” The chair at 0:35:27: “It would just be the Claremont board at that point, but it would still be the same. Six.” Whitney accepts it: “Right. It would be what this board voted on to seal.” What ends on 1 July 2026 is Unity’s membership of the unit, not the unit.	HIGH
0:35:39	The ten-year review rule, described from memory	Crawford: “There’s also the, I think there’s the ten year rule that anything over ten years has to be reviewed, reviewed. And I remember last year I did that with somebody else I can’t remember who. For the Claremont board. We went through a whole bunch of minutes and just said, you know, release, release, release. And there was one that we didn’t release.” And at 0:36:03: “But you have to go through the mechanics of the review.” The mechanics she describes are RSA 91-A:3, IV.	MEDIUM
0:36:20	Two members are assigned by consensus, with no motion and no vote	Crawford: “I think you get one volunteer from each board to just sit down, and if you spend an hour, I think you can get the work done.” Whitney volunteers; a Unity member answers at 0:36:35: “I can do it from unity. Thank you. Shannon.” The chair records it at 0:36:35: “Great. Thank you. All right, so Heather and Shannon will go through all the sealed saw six nonpublic meeting minutes.” No motion, no second, no vote.	MEDIUM
0:36:46	Ninety-nine-year seals	The interim superintendent: “So if I. I did ask a little bit about this. And I know there were some that were supposedly sealed for like 99 years or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So it was just to clarify the length of sealing too. So we were just asked to clarify. So we’re gonna.” Whitney completes it — “We’re gonna open them.” — and the answer is “All up. Yeah. That’s fine.”	MEDIUM
0:37:15	A member asks to inspect sealed minutes privately	A member whose voice the dialogue file cannot identify: “Oh, it’s not about unsealing them but I there were a couple of sealed minutes nonpublic that I’d like to swing by and get a look at at some point.” The chair: “Yeah. I don’t know how that works but. Sure.” The interim superintendent describes the sign-in kiosk at the SAU office at 0:37:51.	MEDIUM
0:38:10	Counsel’s advice on the separation: an MOU between the two boards	The chair frames the remaining agenda as one subject and reports what counsel told him: “this was put on there to, just get some clarification from legal on, what the standard typical expectations would be for the Unity School District and the Claremont School District to work together after the separation, because there are going to be a number of items that will not be completed prior to the separation.”	HIGH
0:39:05	What the memorandum is meant to cover	The chair: “So I did talk with Jim O’Shaughnessy, our legal counsel, and he made it very simple and clear. And that’s why the rest of the the agenda kind of wraps up into the the one topic here. So he said typically what would happen is an MOU would be created. By the Saw board. So the two school boards in advance or prior to the separation outlining, how to manage almost everything and anything from liabilities, assets, support, resources, whatever it is, just to get everything outlined, kind of the list that continues.”	HIGH
0:40:33	Whether the memorandum will even be voted on is not known	The chair: “He would facilitate some of the conversation and the structure of the MOU to make sure things aren’t missed, and that they’re addressed properly in the best interest of, of, both districts. And then I believe that would come to vote. I think it would come to vote. I don’t really know. But the agreement will be created that way when unity is no longer part of six, will be two very separate entities with no overlap that will have an agreement in place so that we can work together to just close everything out.”	HIGH
0:41:38	Two interim directors introduced to the board for the first time	The interim superintendent: “I want to do some introductions if you’re okay. Just so we did bring Jason Bonneville, who? Our director of informational services and instructional technology. And then Paige Jarvis is here is our director of student services. So I know people have heard names and things like that. Chelsea Weatherford I know that everybody pretty much knows her already. So she was unable to make it tonight, but just to put faces in names.”
0:42:39	The technology separation, in detail	The technology director: “IT perspective, it’s definitely a lift. I’m not going to it’s that is definitely going to be a lift. You know, you guys are physically wired to the high school. So, we’ll be working with the internet service provider to get you guys cut away from us.” He runs through the firewall, the domain and Google migration, cloud phones, wireless access points and device management, then names the hard part at 0:43:51: “That’s going to be the move to alma. The issue with that is that power school, they essentially just hand you your data and say, here you go.”	HIGH
0:45:22	Almost none of it can happen before the year ends	“Lot of conversations. The biggest piece that is tricky is just that there’s a lot that needs to happen, and almost none of it can happen yet. It’s going to be basically right as the school year ends up. And wait. Exactly. That’s exactly it’s going to be hurry up and wait and then go 9000 miles an hour. Right.”	HIGH
0:46:30	A Claremont member asks why Claremont is building Unity’s systems	Rapp: “So who’s going to be taking over Unity’s. Yeah. Shouldn’t they be doing that. Not us.” The interim superintendent answers “That’s why we’re here tonight.” The chair at 0:46:40: “Yeah that’s a good question. I don’t know the specifics on building anything out that’s above me.” And at 0:46:53: “I think the essay is responsible for, separation supporting the separation. But I think, you know, a lot of the questions that, like what you’re asking now is what we need to answer through that, separation agreement. Right. Because we we understand that there’ll be, you know, residual costs.”	HIGH
0:47:30	No clear timeline, twelve weeks out	Rapp asks whether Unity has met to decide who is providing its services. The chair: “So to answer your question, it’s difficult to secure those services when we don’t we don’t have a clear timeline on when we will be standalone. Because that’s been, kind of.” Crawford interjects at 0:48:08 — “That, that won’t be delayed one.” and “So that won’t be July 1st.” The chair: “Know that. That’s my understanding. So the IT part, if I don’t want to over speak because I don’t know a lot of the specifics.”	HIGH
0:49:15	The only date the record gives for the decision	Rapp presses that the work should already be under way. The chair answers: “It was okay. A lot of it was when when we voted back in March last year. Correct. Everybody at the saw was given the green light. And then there’s been a lot of, staffing shortages that have caused a lot of delay and progress and that this is where we’re at.” This is the only reference anywhere in this meeting to the vote that authorised the withdrawal, and it names neither the body, the article nor the majority.	HIGH
0:51:03	The objection restated	Rapp: “I think it’s more than that. It sounds like Jason’s doing a lot more build out for you guys after July 1st, and I don’t think that should be happening.” The interim superintendent proposes the compromise at 0:51:13: “So if I may. Is it possible to and I think that was part of the Mo is whether there’s like a rate of something that still would come back to Claremont SO6 that unity would be paying. Right. And maybe that’s the compromise in the middle. So it’s not saying it’s all for free, but it’s to be able to separate the two entities.”	HIGH
0:51:38	The knowledge gap nobody has planned for	Whitney: “What I think, Brian, and correct me if I’m wrong, because I kind of was thinking somewhat on the lines that you were is that there’s got to be an informational exchange, too. And if you don’t have somebody like working with Claremont, like simultaneously as this uncoupling occurs, there’s going to be a huge like knowledge gap to in a transition lag.” And at 0:52:29: “Claremont. And my gut feeling is per usual you’re going to be second in line, right? Like I’m just being honest with you.”	HIGH
0:55:38	Has anyone asked Cornish how it was done	Rapp: “And this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Cornish left, and I may be oblivious to everything that happened, but it didn’t seem very complicated, so I’m not sure what the difference is now. Has anyone reached out to Cornish to see how that was handled?” The technology director explains at 0:55:57 that Cornish had no servers and partnered with Windsor, so the hand-off was not comparable, and that he was only starting as the transition wrapped up.	HIGH
1:00:21	One deadline in the whole evening is hard, and it is a federal one	The technology director: “Yeah. I mean, I think realistically, I can tell you from an internet perspective because that’s done through E-Rate. We don’t have a choice. July 1st, you have to be cut over for internet by July 1st because it’s done through E-Rate, and you will no longer be part of Sussex, so that we have to have that connection severed and cut over for you guys 100% by July 1st.” Everything else, he says at 1:00:42, “we may stretch into July a little bit”.	HIGH
1:01:33	Student records, paper archives and what may not be ready	The interim superintendent on the paper side at 1:02:17: “We’ve talked about like we talked a little bit last night about the archival part of it. There could be things there that we would make sure in our parts that it may not be right away. So just full disclosure, because there’s, a large scale of files, and then think that anybody right now is sitting there every Saturday going through and pulling out, I know there’s some things.” She declines a suggestion to use student volunteers at 1:02:53: “I would not recommend that right now because a, its first of all, it’s, like protected information. Students and parents, you know, adults, I should say things like that.” And at 1:03:11: “So that might happen after July 1st just as a foreshadowing.”	HIGH POSITIVE
1:03:31	The financial hand-off, and the DOE-25	The comptroller: “Let’s see. I’m going to be for Unity’s tax information for setting the tax rate. Almost everything is on file for Claremont. Everything is all caught up to date.” And at 1:03:55: “And then so I’ll be handing that to the school board. I usually get mine done by say, the end of August. So I really plan on trying to get these things done before the beginning of September. Okay. They’re due September 1st for both districts. But once that Doe 25 is done, all the information starting July 1st is on your new bay.” September 1 is the RSA 198:4-d filing date.
1:04:46	A payroll system that is not yet standing up	The comptroller: “The concern that I have is, is, I haven’t seen unity get their accounting system up and running for July 1st so you can make payroll. I’ve heard that you want to do ADP for July 1st. I don’t have any information on how that’s going to fall. Okay. Worst case scenario, I have everything all set up.” And “I could probably run a payroll and emergency, but,”. The chair answers that a different vendor is being formalised by the incoming superintendent.	HIGH
1:06:00	A retiree health benefit that runs three years past the separation, and never came to the board	The comptroller: “I know I’ve mentioned it to some of the school board members, but I’m only aware of one particular employee contract that has, benefits that go beyond June 30th. Okay. So in your MOU agreement, you’re going to have to come up with some sort of mechanism to actually pay for it. So a couple of years ago, the SA gave health insurance benefits to an employee upon retirement.” And at 1:06:50: “All right. And so it’s three years worth of expenditures.” The chair asks at 1:07:03 whether it came through the board, and is told “Well, no, I communicated that.”; the chair replies at 1:07:12: “That’s right. I know you you mentioned that you would have given some folks a heads up, but when when that agreement was made, that’s not anything the board was made aware of.”	MEDIUM
1:07:29	Unity has agreed terms with a superintendent for the new unit	The chair: “Yep. And that will all be part of the MOU the separation agreement there. And yeah. So to continue on closing up some some gaps here from our end. Last night, we’ve agreed on a contract to offer to, for superintendent services to force. Excuse me. Forrest Ransdell is currently the Newport superintendent. He will not be with them next year.” And at 1:08:51: “we’re scheduling a meet and greet next week with the staff. And then in the evening, for the public. And then after that, he’ll formally be in place to move forward and, you know, start executing, hiring folks, be a IT services, special education, student director services, all the missing pieces that, you know, the Unity board just doesn’t have answers to right now”.	HIGH
1:08:29	The chair says plainly that he does not know how to do this	“And speaking for myself, I know nothing of the process on how to execute and implement. So it’s been a trial by error and some things that, you know, come easy to others that could have, should have been addressed are now being discussed. So one way or another we will work through it. We have no choice but two.”	HIGH POSITIVE
1:11:52	One officer will be part-time superintendent and part-time human resources	The chair: “So yeah, I’m glad you brought up HR. Slipped my mind. So, Mr. Ransdell, the superintendent is also going to be a part time superintendent, part time HR. So he’s he’s filling both those roles there for us.”	HIGH
1:12:49	Future dates; the May meeting is set for six o’clock	The chair: “No. All right. We’ve got some future dates there. Claremont school board meetings. And we do have a tentative saw six meeting for May 14th. I’d like to leave that on the calendar. I’d also like to just confirm the time. 6 or 630.” Rapp: “I’ll go with six.” The chair fixes it and adds at 1:13:12: “Six. It is then. Just want to make sure everyone’s got notice.” He then says the audits will not be finished before the separation: “The, the audits won’t be done until after the separation, if I understand correctly. So there won’t be any, group board discussions in regards to the audit.”	HIGH
1:13:51	A last request before the gavel: check the employment law before opening the minutes	Whitney, after the motion to adjourn has been entertained: “I’d like to. Would you kindly, let Sarah Freeman know that either Shannon or myself will be contacting her to help us make sure that we’re not violating any employment.” And at 1:14:04: “So just let her know that we’ll be contacting.” The chair: “Can do.”	MEDIUM POSITIVE
1:14:17	Adjournment	The chair: “Any other business discussion. Oh, second. All those in favor?” A chorus of ayes, then “Thank you everybody.” No adjournment time is stated, no minutes record one, and the mover of the motion is not audible.	HIGH

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 Unity leaves the unit in eighty-three days, and not one of the steps RSA 194-C:2, IV prescribes has been located anywhere

First, the thing this meeting settles that the rest of the corpus gets wrong. Two officials told the Claremont board on 18 February 2026 that SAU 6 would end on 1 July 2026, and it is repeated as settled background elsewhere. The chair of this board says otherwise, on this recording, correcting a member in the middle of the sealed-minutes item at 0:35:20: “It’s not. It’s not dissolving. Just to clarify.” — and, asked whether there will still be a board: “It would just be the Claremont board at that point, but it would still be the same. Six.” The Claremont board’s own approved minutes six days later say the same thing: Unity is withdrawing, “and it will only be Claremont in the SAU as of July 1, 2026”. SAU 6 is not being dissolved. One of its two districts is withdrawing from it, and the unit continues with one district in it. The chair himself uses the looser word twice, at 0:23:25 and again in this item, and then corrects it; the loose usage is how the error propagated.

Second, the machinery this requires, and what the record contains. Withdrawal from a school administrative unit is governed by RSA 194-C:2, IV, and it is a long sequence: a planning committee studies the advisability of the withdrawal of a specific district; estimates construction and operating costs; prepares “an educational and fiscal analysis of the impact of the withdrawing district on any school districts remaining”; prepares “a proposed plan for the disposition of any school administrative unit assets and liabilities”; prepares a plan for organization or reorganization that must include the provision of superintendent services and “a transition plan and timeline”; holds “at least one public hearing no less than 14 days prior to submission to the state board”; the state board of education then reviews the proposed plan within 60 days; the plan goes to the voters under the paragraph I procedure; passage requires 3/5 of the votes cast on the question in the withdrawing district; and the withdrawal takes effect on the date the state board issues its certificate, not on a date the parties choose.

The whole reference to any of that on this recording is one clause. Pressed by a Claremont member on why the work was not further along, the chair answers at 0:49:15: “It was okay. A lot of it was when when we voted back in March last year. Correct. Everybody at the saw was given the green light.” It names no body, no article, no majority and no approval. Nobody at either meeting mentions the state board of education at all.

Third, what is not there. This project has not located, in the SAU 6 packets share, the Claremont packet and minutes shares, or the meeting-to-documents map: any notice, agenda, membership list or set of minutes for an SAU 6 planning committee; any fiscal analysis; any plan for the disposition of the unit’s assets and liabilities; any record of the 14-day public hearing; or any state board decision or certificate. RSA 194-C:2, I requires that “A notice of all meetings of the planning committee shall be posted in all school districts in the existing school administrative unit” and that “All meetings shall allow time for public comment” — so Claremont’s own share should carry them, and it does not. A planning committee of an SAU is a public body in its own right: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) reaches “Any legislative body, governing body, board, commission, committee, agency, or authority of any county, town, municipal corporation, school district, school administrative unit, chartered public school, or other political subdivision, or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto.”

What the record does contain is the improvisation. Counsel’s advice, relayed at 0:39:05, is that the two boards should write a memorandum of understanding covering “liabilities, assets, support, resources”. The chair does not know whether it will even be voted on: “And then I believe that would come to vote. I think it would come to vote. I don’t really know.” Asked when Unity will be standalone he answers “it’s difficult to secure those services when we don’t we don’t have a clear timeline on when we will be standalone.” He says of himself at 1:08:29: “And speaking for myself, I know nothing of the process on how to execute and implement. So it’s been a trial by error”. The one hard date in the evening is federal, not state: E-Rate forces the internet cutover by 1 July. A retiree health benefit runs three years past the separation (flag 12); the audits will not be finished before it (1:13:12); and the paper archives “might happen after July 1st just as a foreshadowing.”

Graded HIGH on the unmitigated limb. A statutory sequence with a 60-day state review in it is eighty-three days from its stated effect and nothing on the record shows any of it done, or names the body that would have done it. The honest limit on this finding: it is a negative. The Drive search interface used here demonstrably under-reports — an enumeration of the Claremont FY2025-2026 archive during this build returned thirty folders and silently omitted four that the project’s map records — so the correct statement is not located by the routes named above, not does not exist. What would settle it is the New Hampshire state board of education’s own file on the Unity withdrawal, or the warrant and result of the March 2025 Unity district meeting.

Sources: RSA 194-C:2, I (planning committee created by warrant article; notice posted in all districts in the unit; public comment at all meetings) and IV (advisability, fiscal analysis, disposition of assets and liabilities, transition plan and timeline, 14-day public hearing, state board review within 60 days, 3/5 of votes cast in the withdrawing district, effect on issuance of the certificate) — source note now ends 2024, 250:1, 2, eff. July 1, 2024, so the text served today governs; RSA 194-C:1 (units are corporations with power to make necessary contracts; 1996, 298:3); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); 4.9.26 SAU6 Board Agenda (six of its ten action items are separation items); 4.15.26 Approved CSB Meeting Minutes; the April 15, 2026 Claremont page.

HIGH The annual organizational meeting elected a chair and a vice chair. The statute names a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer — and vice chair is not one of them

RSA 194-C:5, I is short and it is mandatory: “The school board of each school administrative unit shall meet between April 1 and June 1 in each year, at a time and place fixed by the chairpersons of the several boards, and shall organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer.” It has not been amended since 1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996.

The timing is right and that should be said first. 9 April falls inside the April 1 – June 1 window, this is the meeting that discharges it, and the agenda is explicitly headed “Organization of the Board”. What the agenda then lists is: “Introduction of New Board Members”, “Election of Board Chair for remainder of SY26”, “Election of Board Vice Chair for remainder of SY26”. The defect is on the face of the notice: two of the three statutory offices are missing from it, and an office the statute does not create has been put in their place. The recording matches the agenda — a chair elected at 0:02:25, a vice chair at 0:03:09, and the item closed at 0:03:30 with “All right. Moving on. Great. Thank you.”

This is the third year in a row, and the corpus can date each one. On 11 April 2024 this board elected only a chair and a vice chair, leaving the treasurer’s office vacant. It stayed vacant through 2024-25 until the district’s auditor raised it: the approved 10 April 2025 minutes record that the SAU board had no treasurer, and Candace Crawford was elected treasurer that day, with two voucher signers. By 6 October 2025 the corpus records her in that office. On 9 April 2026 the same person was elected vice chair, no election of a treasurer was held or called for, and nothing on the record addresses whether the 2025 treasurership continues. A statute that directs an annual choosing was answered in 2026 with no choosing at all.

The secretary’s office is in the same position. A recording secretary functions — the chair asks her to call the roll at 0:00:36 and she reports the outstanding minutes at 0:04:55 — but she is not an officer elected by this board, and the agenda names Noelle Kronberg, the Claremont board’s clerk, as “SAU#6 School Board Clerk”. Clerk is not the statutory word either.

Two further points a reader should have. The chair explains how he came to the office at 0:01:32: his predecessor left, “By default, that allowed or, made me the board chair, but I thought it was good to formalize that with a vote at a meeting.” The predecessor he thanks chaired this board as recently as 6 October 2025 and left the Claremont board on 18 March 2026 — and the agenda masthead prepared for this very meeting still prints the presiding officer’s title as vice chair. Separately, RSA 194-C:8 entitles each district to one vote per sixteen pupils in all votes on unit affairs “including the organization of such unit’s school board and selection of officers”, but weighted votes “shall only be used upon the demand of a majority of the members of any board present and voting.” No demand was made, so the uncounted voice votes are not irregular — but with no minutes there is no record of who voted at all.

Sources: RSA 194-C:5, I (meet between April 1 and June 1; organize by choosing a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer) and III (fix the salaries of all SAU personnel; apportion the expense of salaries and benefits; certify the apportionment to their respective treasurers and to the state board of education; authority to remove superintendents and other administrators) — 1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996, never amended; RSA 194-C:8 (weighted voting on the demand of a majority present and voting); 4.9.26 SAU6 Board Agenda; companion pages SAU 6, April 11, 2024 and SAU 6, October 6, 2025.

HIGH No minutes — for this meeting, and for the three before it. The last SAU 6 minutes published anywhere are the 4 September 2025 draft

RSA 91-A:2, II requires that minutes “shall be promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting”, a business day being “the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday, excluding national and state holidays.” Since 22 August 2025 the same paragraph requires the minutes to include “the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions, the start time and end time of the meeting, and name of the person who produced the minutes”, and since 1 January 2019 that “The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes.” Every one of those clauses was in force on 9 April 2026, and none of them has anything to attach to.

The search was two-stage, as this project’s method requires, because the SAU 6 share files a meeting’s minutes with a later meeting’s packet. Opened: this meeting’s own folder, 13. SAU6 4.9.26, which holds three documents — the agenda, a public notice and the signed-contracts PDF; the only later SAU 6 folder, 14. SAU6 5.28.26; the SAU 6 packets share as a whole, which enumerates as folders 1 to 14 plus the 2023 and 2024 year folders; and the Claremont 2026 minutes share, which has never held an SAU 6 file. The project’s meeting-to-documents map records the same negative, verified 28 August 2026.

The run: the newest SAU 6 minutes anywhere are the draft minutes of 4 September 2025, filed twice, in the 9.11.25 and 11.13.25 folders. Nothing has been published for 11 September 2025, 6 October 2025, 13 November 2025 or 9 April 2026. That is 217 days and four meetings of a public body, with one draft between them.

What the absence costs, concretely, on this page. The roll was called at 0:00:48 and the machine transcription recovers only part of it; five of the twelve members named on the masthead are never anchored to a voice; so the attendance of a twelve-member public body on the night it reorganised itself cannot be established. The chair declared a quorum without a count. The mover of the motion to adjourn is not audible and no minutes supply the name. No start time and no adjournment time exist. And the manifests — the instrument by which the unit’s money moves — were, on the chair’s own account at 0:04:49, to be “signed, before everyone leaves tonight”, with no amount stated aloud, nothing on the agenda line after the colon, and no minutes to record what was authorised or by whom. The unit has no treasurer of record from this meeting (flag 2), and RSA 194-C:5, III makes it this board’s duty to certify the apportionment of salaries and benefits “to their respective treasurers and to the state board of education.”

Graded HIGH, on the unmitigated limb, and here is why the mitigation does not reach it. The record does explain part of the backlog: the recording secretary says at 0:04:55 that “There are minutes that need to be approved. But they were from when I was still out tonight”, and the chair tables them. That is a real explanation for the earlier meetings and this page credits it. It is not an explanation for this one. Four months after 9 April 2026 no minutes for this meeting exist in any share, nothing on the record says any are being written, and the statutory deadline for them expired on 16 April 2026. As with flag 1, the negative is a not located: the Drive search interface under-reports, so the folders opened are named above rather than a count being asserted.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes contents including start and end time and the person who produced them — 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025; movers and seconders — 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019; five business days; the definition of a business day); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (a school administrative unit is a public body); RSA 194-C:5, III (certification to the treasurers and to the state board of education); packet folder 13. SAU6 4.9.26; MAP.md sections 91, 93, 96a, 99 and 116.

MEDIUM The agenda noticed two votes. Neither was taken, and nobody could say when a stipend does come to this board

The first two items under Discussion/Action Items are headed, in the posted agenda, “Vote on Stipend [need updated cost and duration]” and “Vote on AP/payroll [need update and plan with forecast on duration/cost]”. Both are noticed as votes; the square brackets in those headings are the agenda’s own, and both say the board is waiting on numbers. Neither vote happened. The chair ruled at 0:09:07: “But it it’s my understanding that that was, those positions were, expressed for transparency and don’t require a vote if I understand that correctly, where it’s just a executive function of hiring and providing services.”

The ruling is defensible as far as the act of hiring goes, and not as far as the money. Nothing located in RSA chapter 194-C requires an SAU board to approve an individual appointment. But RSA 194-C:5, III places one thing squarely in this board: it “shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel, shall apportion the expense of the salaries and benefits among the several districts, and shall certify the apportionment to their respective treasurers and to the state board of education.” The two items disposed of without a vote are a $3,000 stipend and a replacement post at $58,000, both stated on the recording — “And then we were able to find a an employee of the school district who had worked, over a decade ago. And, and she’s kind of slid into the position for $58,000” at 0:10:18; “There was 3000 offered. For the, for the duration of the rest of the year” at 0:11:12.

The board asked the right question and got no answer. Whitney at 0:11:39: “Under what circumstances would a stipend come before the board for approval?” The comptroller: “That’s a great question.” Then: “I don’t have an answer for you on that. That’s either a legal question or that’s a a board decided question.” The interim superintendent: “A policy question.” It was left there. The chair closed it on a budget rationale rather than an authority one — that it was “within the budgeted line item amounts or something along those lines” producing “a net savings I should say not a game.”

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb. Both items were noticed, the facts and both figures were given in public, the chair invited discussion before ruling, and a board member’s challenge is on the record. What makes it reviewable is that a noticed vote is a representation to the public that a decision will be made in the open, and that the question of where the line runs between an executive act and a board act was asked at the table by a sitting member and could not be answered by anyone present.

Sources: RSA 194-C:5, III (the SAU board fixes the salaries of all SAU personnel); RSA 194-C:4, II (the eighteen services an SAU provides, (a)–(r); 1996, 298:3; 2010, 5:2, eff. June 18, 2010); 4.9.26 SAU6 Board Agenda, Discussion/Action items 1 and 2.

MEDIUM A fourth consultant agreement at $1,500 a month, signed on 27 March 2026 by an officer, is in no packet and no board record — and the chair says it was never discussed

The packet document settles this and it is worth reading against the tape. The one contract exhibit in the folder, Complete_with_Docusign_20250912-Claremont-CO.pdf, contains three contracts under a single DocuSign envelope: Contract for Superintendent Mentorship Services SAU #6 at “a monthly rate of one-thousand-five-hundred dollars ($1500)” through 30 June 2026; Contract for Communication Services SAU #6 at “an hourly rate of one-hundred-fifty-five dollars per hour ($155/hour), billed monthly” through 30 June 2026; and Contract for Operational Review Services SAU #6 at “an hourly rate of one-hundred-seventy-five dollars per hour ($175/hour) up to a maximum of twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000)”. Each ends “Signed, Accepted by,” with the date fields blank. There is no human-resources contract in it.

The chair reached the same conclusion live, at 0:20:57: “When I go back to the confirmation email from September 15th that these documents have been signed. There’s only three sections, and I remember when we discussed them specifically, there was three sections.” And at 0:21:30: “This HR section was not part of the original, so I don’t know where that came from or how that came into play… It was the operational review, the superintendent services and the communication services. So, well, this was signed on 32726.” He concludes at 0:29:16: “Okay. I don’t recall any conversation adding a contract with TMS for human Resources.”

The officer who signed it describes the sequence at 0:15:49: “And the only thing I stopped it for was, in the last couple of weeks was I felt that the person that they provided wasn’t a good fit and that they needed more of an HR person, which they then found one and provided it.” Then: “And then I signed the agreement.” Asked directly at 0:26:31 how the contract came about, the answer given is a case for mentoring rather than a chronology. Asked when it was internally discussed, the answer at 0:28:51 is “I think internally we were talking about it maybe the end of December, beginning of January”.

A Unity-side member put the objection at 0:29:27: “I think one of the apprehensive things for me is that this is kind of bringing me full circle with things that were not transparent back in the beginning… Yeah, it’s $1,500 a month, but that adds up, right? We pay a percentage.” And: “I think full transparency would have been great for us to know, so that we could have had a nice conversation about it and had a vote on it.”

What the law does and does not say. RSA 194-C:1 makes a school administrative unit a corporation with power “to make necessary contracts in relation to any function of the corporation”, and RSA 194-C:5 is where the unit’s board and its powers sit. Nothing located in chapter 194-C expressly requires a board vote before an administrator executes a service contract, and RSA chapter 32’s limitation on expenditures does not reach an SAU — RSA 32:1 names towns, districts, school districts and village districts, not school administrative units. So this flag rests on the record, not on a prohibition, and the rule it does engage is the records rule: because there are no minutes (flag 3), the board’s discussion of a recurring obligation on the unit is preserved nowhere but in this recording.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb, and the mitigation is genuine: the agreement was disclosed at the board table, the signing officer gave the date, the rate and the termination clause were read into the record, the chair pressed until he had a clear answer, and the officer apologised at 0:30:18 — “Because transparency is extremely important to me. And if I fail in communicating that information to you, then I, I apologize.” It is flagged because of the pattern it sits in: this corpus already holds a superintendent’s contract voted off-agenda in December 2024 with no executed instrument ever found, and a strategic-planning engagement announced as settled with no contract, purchase order or cost figure anywhere.

Sources: Complete_with_Docusign_20250912-Claremont-CO.pdf (the three signed contracts, in the packet folder); RSA 194-C:1 (units are corporations; power to make necessary contracts); RSA 194-C:5; RSA 32:1 (the chapter’s application — it does not name school administrative units); RSA 91-A:2, II.

MEDIUM The “how this happened” review was signed 209 days earlier, has an open-ended term and a $25,000 ceiling, and has produced nothing

The contract in the packet is not vague about what was bought. It says the goal “is, in summary, to identify what happened, what went wrong, and how to prevent it from ever happening again”; that the vendor “will research and review the systemic problems that resulted in financial mismanagement, the errors made by leadership, the lack of tight controls, and the failure of oversight”; that it will examine “hiring practices that led to putting unqualified and under-qualified individuals in positions of power”; and that it will deliver “new job descriptions, a new processes and procedure manual for leadership and the SAU board, and a systems and policies manual”. The price is $175 an hour to a $25,000 ceiling. Alone among the three, it states no term at all — which the chair works out live at 0:24:11: the other services “end at the end of the school year… The operational, does not have an end date.”

Its status on 9 April 2026, on the board’s own account: the interim superintendent at 0:14:15, “I don’t think we have a full digging into its how it’s happened answer yet”; the vice chair at 0:18:00, “I don’t believe they’ve done any work on the how this happened part yet” and “my understanding is they haven’t done any work at all yet on that… But I but I need to have that verified.” The DocuSign filename dates the completed envelope to 12 September 2025; the chair puts the confirmation email at 15 September. Either way it is two hundred and nine days.

Two competing accounts of why were left standing and neither was resolved. The vice chair’s, at 0:19:40: “It was it was my understanding that that wasn’t going to begin until much later… I thought that it couldn’t start until after we had the audits” — and the audits are not done. Whitney’s, at 0:18:57: “I’m very frustrated that this piece hasn’t happened, and I don’t think it requires a forensic audit to have started the process. I think a lot of interviews should have been done right out of the gate.” She adds at 0:20:13: “there should be a scope of the work that they should be doing and a timeline. Because I think the public deserves a third party analysis of this”.

The board did not decide anything. The item closed at 0:31:44 with a task: “We’re gonna Candice, offer to follow up on the operational review, and we’re going to continue with the other three.” No motion, no second, no vote — and no minutes, so the disposition of a $25,000 engagement with no end date exists only on this tape. Each contract carries a thirty-day termination right the board is now inside the last ninety days of the unit’s two-district life to exercise.

Sources: Complete_with_Docusign_20250912-Claremont-CO.pdf, Contract for Operational Review Services; RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes must record final decisions); RSA 194-C:4, II(a) (“audits” among the services an SAU provides — note that no located New Hampshire statute requires an SAU annual audit: RSA 21-J:19 is permissive and names towns, school districts and village districts, not units).

MEDIUM The finance update had no exhibit, and the figures read aloud do not add up to the totals read aloud

The packet folder holds three documents and none of them is a financial statement. The whole finance item is an officer reading a screen he says he can barely see. Taking the numbers exactly as spoken at 0:05:41 and 0:06:25:

Revenue. “Revenues to date are 1 million. I can’t see it so small. $655,172” — read as $1,655,172. The components given in the next breath are “$1.4 million from Claremont and 178,000 from unity”, which is $1,578,000. The stated components fall about $77,000 short of the stated total.
Expenditure. Expenditures to date “$1,578,471”, encumbrances “$663,000”, remaining balance “356,000. Or or just just shy of 14%.” Those three sum to $2,597,471, and $356,000 is 13.7 per cent of it — so the arithmetic is internally consistent and implies an SAU 6 appropriation of about $2,597,000 for the year.

That implied figure is the interesting one. This corpus records that the SAU 6 FY26 budget adopted at the hearing of 12 December 2024 was moved and carried at $2,755,723, a figure the business administrator produced orally and that appears in none of the eight packet documents from that night; the sheet the board had in front of it that evening footed to $2,597,521.45. The three numbers read to this board in April 2026 foot to within about fifty dollars of that sheet, and about $158,000 below the figure that was moved. This page asserts nothing from that. The spoken figures are rounded, they come from a screen with no exhibit behind them, and a single rounding could move the sum. It is recorded because it is checkable and because nobody in the room checked it: the one question asked was the vice chair’s at 0:06:48, “Do you have a starting number for this fiscal year for the say, you.”, and the answer was that the trial balances for the unit had not been done.

Graded MEDIUM. No statute compels an SAU to publish a monthly financial exhibit; what makes this reviewable is the combination — an oral-only report, in a unit ninety days from splitting its assets and liabilities, whose stated components do not reconcile to its stated totals, with no minutes to record what the board was told and no document in the folder against which any of it can be checked. The same officer told the Claremont board eight weeks earlier that three fiscal years of annual audits were still open and that SAU 6 would be taken up after them.

Sources: the recording at the timestamps above; packet folder 13. SAU6 4.9.26 (three documents, no financial exhibit); RSA 194-C:9 (SAU budget adopted at a meeting held before January 1; apportionment one-half on average membership and one-half on equalized valuation, certified to the chairperson of each district school board prior to January 15; ¶IV’s alternative methods require a majority affirmative vote in each district — 2024, 329:1, eff. Oct. 1, 2024); companion page SAU 6 budget hearing, December 12, 2024.

MEDIUM Sealed nonpublic minutes, some said to run 99 years, handed to two volunteers by consensus rather than by the vote the statute describes

RSA 91-A:3, IV, added by 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023, gives a public body two routes for sealed minutes: adopt a review procedure, or “review and vote by majority whether the circumstances… still apply”, and that review “shall occur no more than 10 years from the last time the public body voted to prevent the minutes from being subject to public disclosure.” Minutes sealed before the effective date and not reviewed within ten years of it become “subject to public disclosure without further action of the public body”. RSA 91-A:3, II(m) — consideration of whether to disclose nonpublic minutes on a change of circumstances — arrived in the same act.

The board’s vice chair described the mechanism accurately from memory at 0:35:39: “There’s also the, I think there’s the ten year rule that anything over ten years has to be reviewed, reviewed… But you have to go through the mechanics of the review.” The interim superintendent reported at 0:36:46 that “there were some that were supposedly sealed for like 99 years or something like that.”

What was then done is not the mechanics she described. Whitney volunteered; a Unity member said “I can do it from unity. Thank you. Shannon.”; and the chair recorded it at 0:36:35 as “Heather and Shannon will go through all the sealed saw six nonpublic meeting minutes.” There was no motion, no second and no vote, and there are no minutes to record even the consensus. Two further consequences a reader should see. First, a two-member group of an SAU board appointed to review sealed records is itself a public body: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) reaches “any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof”, so its own meetings carry notice and minutes duties, and none has been located. Second, the timing: the members will do this work in the last weeks in which a Unity member sits on this board at all, and any determination that survives to 1 July will be a determination about a body whose composition has changed.

Graded MEDIUM, on the mitigated limb. This is a board putting a long-neglected records problem on a public agenda on a member’s request, saying out loud that some seals are absurd, and asking counsel before opening anything — Whitney’s last words before the gavel, at 1:13:51, are that she will contact the district’s employment lawyer “to help us make sure that we’re not violating any employment.” That is the right instinct and the page credits it. What is missing is the vote RSA 91-A:3, IV(a) contemplates, and any record of any of it.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, III (72-hour disclosure; sealing by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session), IV(a)–(b) (review procedure or majority vote; the 10-year limit; pre-existing minutes disclosable without further action) and II(m) — 2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023; RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d).

OBSERVATION Citizens’ comments were called and closed inside a single sentence, in a room where the public was sitting

The agenda notices “Citizens Comments” as its own item under General Business. On the recording it is four words inside a longer sentence, at 0:05:02: the chair moves from tabling the minutes to “Citizens. Comments. Seeing no citizens. We’ll move through that one. Okay. Moving right along here. Finance update from Mr. Angel, please.” There is no pause and no invitation left open for anyone to answer. Members of the public were present — at least one non-board voice speaks later in the meeting.

RSA 189:74 requires a school board to “provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters at a meeting of the school board held under RSA 91-A:2” and says “The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes”, with only two exceptions: emergency meetings, and meetings whose sole purpose is a nonpublic session. Neither applies here. Two things keep this an observation rather than a flag. Whether the thirty minutes is a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time is not settled by the text, and this project does not assert a violation from it where nobody was turned away — and nobody was. And whether RSA 189:74’s “school board” reaches the board of a school administrative unit is genuinely open: RSA 194-C:5 calls this body “The school board of each school administrative unit”, which points one way, while RSA 189:74 sits in the chapter governing school districts. What is not open is the board’s own practice: it notices the item on every agenda in this share, and on this night it gave the item less than a breath.

Sources: RSA 189:74 (2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022; never amended); RSA 194-C:5, I (“The school board of each school administrative unit”); 4.9.26 SAU6 Board Agenda.

OBSERVATION The mentorship contract buys two meetings a week. The interim superintendent describes one, from a mentor who is not yet certified in New Hampshire

The signed contract in the packet is specific about what $1,500 a month buys. The mentor will “Meet with the interim superintendent a minimum of twice per week”, “Be available via email and phone for counsel about challenges and situations as the come up”, “Provide leadership advice on day-to-day needs”, “Provide mentorship on creating action plans for longer term challenges” and “Guide the interim superintendent through crisis situations”.

Asked at 0:15:07 whether the contracted hours have been used, the interim superintendent answers at 0:15:10: “Correct. They have it. And so I meet weekly with my mentor.” Asked at 0:25:55 whether she finds it helpful she says yes, and adds at 0:25:58: “We discussed before. So the person that I have is not is getting the Hampshire certification things. And ideally, you know, looking back, it would have been better to have somebody from New Hampshire just to make sure all the New Hampshire pieces are in their place. But overall, in the arching piece of it, that that’s been helpful. Very helpful.”

No rule is engaged — a mentor is not a certificated position and nothing requires an SAU to buy mentoring at all. It is recorded because the divergence between the instrument and the service is visible from the two documents on this page, because no member noticed it at the table, and because the vice chair’s question at 0:14:36 — whether there are contracted hours and whether they have been used — is exactly the question the contract answers and nobody read it out.

Sources: Complete_with_Docusign_20250912-Claremont-CO.pdf, Contract for Superintendent Mentorship Services; the recording at the timestamps above.

POSITIVE Everything above happened in the open, and the chair corrected the record rather than letting a convenient error stand

This meeting has no nonpublic session, no excision in the recording and nothing withheld. A board with three months to live took up, in public: a consultant contract it could not account for, a review it had paid for and not received, a records backlog, sealed minutes going back years, and the division of a public corporation. Four things deserve saying plainly.

The correction at 0:35:20. A member said the unit was dissolving; the chair, whose own district is the one leaving, said “It’s not. It’s not dissolving. Just to clarify” and explained what actually happens. He had used the looser word himself an hour earlier. Correcting your own shorthand in front of a camera is a small thing that keeps a public record accurate, and this corpus records the opposite far more often.

The objection, and the answer. A Unity member said a contract had been added without the smaller district being told; the officer who signed it apologised without qualification at 0:30:18. Another member closed the subject at 0:30:57 with “Perfect. I appreciate that. I think, I think this is a small thing to have happen. I would prefer we get our people mentors to make sure another mistake doesn’t happen. So I would thank you for that.”

Student records were protected. Asked whether students could volunteer to sort the archive, the interim superintendent refused at 1:02:53: “I would not recommend that right now because a, its first of all, it’s, like protected information. Students and parents, you know, adults, I should say things like that.”

The notice was given. The packet folder was created and the agenda posted on the morning of 8 April for a 6:00 p.m. meeting on 9 April — about thirty-two hours, against the twenty-four hours RSA 91-A:2, II requires, excluding Sundays and legal holidays. The chair also fixed the next meeting’s start time on camera at 1:13:10 and said why: “Six. It is then. Just want to make sure everyone’s got notice.”

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (24 hours’ notice in 2 appropriate places, one of which may be the body’s website); Google Drive metadata for the packet folder and the agenda document (created 8 April 2026); the recording at the timestamps above.

MEDIUM A retiree health-insurance benefit runs three years past the separation, and the board was never told it existed

Working through what will still be owed after 30 June, the comptroller said at 1:06:24: “I know I’ve mentioned it to some of the school board members, but I’m only aware of one particular employee contract that has, benefits that go beyond June 30th. Okay. So in your MOU agreement, you’re going to have to come up with some sort of mechanism to actually pay for it. So a couple of years ago, the SA gave health insurance benefits to an employee upon retirement.” And at 1:06:50: “All right. And so it’s three years worth of expenditures.”

The chair asked the obvious question at 1:07:03 — whether it came through the board — and was told “Well, no, I communicated that.” He was precise about the distinction at 1:07:12: “That’s right. I know you you mentioned that you would have given some folks a heads up, but when when that agreement was made, that’s not anything the board was made aware of.” No amount was stated. No instrument is in any share.

RSA 194-C:5, III is the provision this engages, and it engages it twice: the board “shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel” and “shall apportion the expense of the salaries and benefits among the several districts, and shall certify the apportionment to their respective treasurers and to the state board of education.” A multi-year post-retirement benefit is an expense of benefits; apportioning it is this board’s duty; and it is one of the liabilities RSA 194-C:2, IV would have required a planning committee to identify in a plan for the disposition of the unit’s assets and liabilities (flag 1).

Graded MEDIUM. The officer volunteered it rather than being caught with it, named it as an MOU problem, and gave the board eighty-three days’ notice. What keeps it on the page is that a continuing obligation of a public corporation about to be reorganised surfaced for the first time in an oral aside, with no figure, no document and no minutes.

Sources: RSA 194-C:5, III; RSA 194-C:2, IV (a proposed plan for the disposition of any school administrative unit assets and liabilities); the recording at the timestamps above.

Appendix — source files

Official and public sources

Recording: Claremont Community TV, Cablecast show 17307 — “SAU 6 Board Meeting - 4/9/26” total run time 4,490 seconds; the show record’s event stamp reads 8:18 in the morning of 9 April with the record created forty-three seconds later, which dates the record and not the meeting — the meeting was noticed for 6:00 p.m.
Packet folder: 13. SAU6 4.9.26 — three documents, in the SAU 6 School Board Packets share folder created 8 April 2026
Agenda: 4.9.26 SAU6 Board Agenda created and last modified 8 April 2026, about thirty-two hours before the meeting
Notice: SAU Public Notice 4.9.26 a Google Drawing; its content is not machine-readable through the interfaces used here
Contracts: Complete_with_Docusign_20250912-Claremont-CO.pdf — three signed contracts under one DocuSign envelope: superintendent mentorship, communication services, and operational review the fourth agreement discussed at length on this recording is not in it
Minutes: none. A two-stage search opened this meeting’s own folder, the only later SAU 6 folder (14. SAU6 5.28.26), the SAU 6 packets share as a whole and the Claremont 2026 Meeting Minutes share, which has never held an SAU 6 file. The newest SAU 6 minutes anywhere are the 4 September 2025 draft.
Companion pages: Claremont School Board, April 15, 2026 (the Unity withdrawal item six days later); SAU 6 Board, October 6, 2025 (the previous chair presiding; Candace Crawford recorded as SAU 6 treasurer); SAU 6 Board, April 11, 2024 (the reorganization that elected only a chair and a vice chair); SAU 6 budget hearing, December 12, 2024 (the FY26 appropriation).

Project files

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

Output/Dialogue/17307 SAU6040926.mp4.CSV — speaker-attributed dialogue, 402 rows
Input/Transcripts/17307 SAU6040926.mp4.json — diarized transcript
Input/Videos/17307 SAU6040926.mp4 — local copy of the recording
Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md — meeting-to-documents map, section 116

Laws and rules cited on this page

RSA 194-C:1 — existing units continue; units are corporations with power to make necessary contracts (1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996)
RSA 194-C:2 — formation and alteration of units: ¶I the planning committee and its notice and public-comment duties, ¶III reorganization, ¶IV withdrawal, ¶V merger the source note now ends 2024, 250:1, 2, eff. July 1, 2024 — not 2010, 5:1 as this project’s notes previously recorded; ¶V, the merger paragraph with its $200-per-pupil grant and a 1 July 2030 deadline, is new
RSA 194-C:4, II — the eighteen services a unit must provide, (a) to (r), (a) being audits (1996, 298:3; 2010, 5:2, eff. June 18, 2010)
RSA 194-C:5 — ¶I the April 1 to June 1 organizational meeting and the choosing of a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer; ¶III fixing salaries, apportioning salaries and benefits, certifying to the treasurers and the state board of education, and the power to remove administrators (1996, 298:3, eff. Aug. 9, 1996; never amended)
RSA 194-C:8 — weighted voting on the demand of a majority of members present and voting
RSA 194-C:9 — the unit budget: adopted before January 1; one-half average membership and one-half equalized valuation; certified to each district board chairperson prior to January 15; ¶IV alternative methods need a majority affirmative vote in each district (2024, 329:1, eff. Oct. 1, 2024)
RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) — “public body” expressly includes a school administrative unit “or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto”
RSA 91-A:2, II — minutes contents, movers and seconders, five business days, and 24 hours’ notice (2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019; 2023, 188:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023; 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025)
RSA 91-A:3 — nonpublic sessions: ¶III sealing and the 72-hour rule, ¶IV the review duty and the ten-year limit, ¶II(m) (2023, 189:1, eff. Oct. 3, 2023)
RSA 189:74 — school board public comment period, no less than 30 minutes, two exceptions (2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022)
RSA 32:1 — the Municipal Budget Law’s application: towns, districts, school districts and village districts it does not name school administrative units, which is why RSA 32:8’s limitation on expenditures is not cited against this board
RSA 21-J:19 — permissive; it names towns, school districts and village districts no located New Hampshire statute requires an annual audit of a school administrative unit
RSA 198:4-d — the annual financial report (DOE-25), September 1 filing date (2025, 141:401, eff. July 1, 2025)