| 0:01:21 | Recognition: Michael F. Richmond | Broadrick, reading Dr. Herrington's words after a family emergency kept both Herringtons away: "I, I did not know Mike Richmond, obviously, and I apologize for that. And yet I respect anybody who devotes their professional life to to serving public schools and serving kids." The tribute describes a 1980 Stevens graduate, Cornell alumnus and Army veteran, American Legion leader and math teacher who "had an extraordinary gift for reaching the most reserved kids." | |
| 0:03:45 | Minutes corrections: name the forensic-audit firm | "Forensic audit signed in May. I'd like to have the name of the firm placed into the minutes where it says. It just says has not been cash[ed]." The same speaker asked that the finance director's name be corrected and offered to send the changes to the clerk. The chair accepted them and moved on without a recorded vote on the minutes. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:05:44 | Manifests: can the board see them before the checks go out? | Madden: "How will we see them before you [issue] the checks? Can we see them, or are we going to be doing this imminently, electronically?" Broadrick's answer: the goal is electronic manifests "by the end of September"; until then, "apparently the same way you have been for the last ten months" — the office calls around until two available members sign, "and you may never be aware of this happening because we need two signatures before the treasurer can come in and sign checks." Madden: "I don't remember the voucher being attached… I'd like to see these when we ask for two volunteers to run down there." | MEDIUM |
| 0:07:24 | Chair explains how signers were chosen | Crawford: "I'll take the responsibility. Doctor Broderick called me Monday… And said I need two people from the board… I think that Brian Rap[p] and Don Love[lette] were in town and available. So I called them because I got two. I stopped calling and didn't call everyone." A member added that under the previous business administrator vouchers were emailed the Friday before, "so we'd see them beforehand" — a practice Broadrick confirmed has "stopped happening." | MEDIUM |
| 0:09:19 | Treasurer's report: the mechanics | Diamond walked through the checking and sweep accounts ("each day the checking account closes at 50,000"), then: "Under deposits, I'm still not in the loop when it comes to deposits… the treasurer is actually supposed to be in the loop for that. And at the very least, I mean, I'm willing to walk them over to the bank, but I'm also I'd also be satisfied with just a list or being notified of paper checks and where they come from, because the treasurer is supposed to account for where all money comes from and where all it where it all goes." | POSITIVE |
| 0:11:23 | Outstanding checks and the July total | "Just because you know, the balance in your bank, it doesn't mean you have that available to spend." July payments total $2,977,682.46, tying to the month's payments line; items still in red are those "I do not yet have vouchers for," with a stack waiting at the district office. | |
| 0:14:14 | Direct deposits arriving as one lump sum | "The direct deposits are not being itemized. They're just showing as one big lump." Diamond wants each direct-deposit item on the manifest the board signs: "it doesn't make much sense to say, oh, I see $640,000. Okay. And you sign it." He noted the previous business administrator "was putting the payroll stuff on the manifest after the fact." | MEDIUM |
| 0:15:45 | Two August payments issued with no signature | "Two payments went in that were not signed. I found the vouchers. They were, but nobody signed them, so they were just put in." Under questioning from the chair, Diamond identified them as the school district payroll and the "Iris [IRS] USA tax payment" of August 6, marked in purple on his report as "Payment issued without board or treasurer" signature: "Neither of those were signed… by anyone. So anyway, that's that's kind of a practice that we're hoping to get away from. That was cited in, in our audit." | HIGH |
| 0:17:01 | Chair proposes monthly summaries instead | Crawford suggested a monthly summary "instead of doing this on a daily basis." Diamond agreed that is where he wants to get to, but explained why he is still itemizing: "There shouldn't be such entries. The treasurer should always sign for every payment that goes out… And so the fact that the reason I'm still itemizing them is because they're still there." He added that the detail is not otherwise "available to the public, and they should be." | HIGH POSITIVE |
| 0:19:04 | What is blocking a working system | Whitney: "What are the barriers that you see right now to getting a system in place? I know that we're very short staffed in the D[O], and my understanding is that you're communicating these concerns to Doctor Broderick… I don't have a business administrator." Diamond: "I think those probably are some of the biggest stumbling ba[locks]… Oh, yes. Things are definitely improving… everybody is on board now that this is how we should be doing it. Just we're not quite doing it yet." | |
| 0:19:59 | The audit finding about back-signed vouchers is being deleted | Madden asked about the auditor's account of postdated vouchers. Broadrick: "I called Mike about that. I think that was in the fiscal 22 audit report… They were repeating something that they had been told from within the SA[U], not something that they had seen documented. So because that report is still draft, he's deleting the line… It doesn't mean it didn't happen. It means that that line in the audit report was based on what they had heard, as opposed to what they had seen and had evidence to support." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:20:48 | Forgery concern referred to the forensic auditors | Madden: "It's my understanding to a man and woman that no board members ever signed [vouchers] in the past until Matt Angel[l] came here. That's something that's got to be looked at." Whitney: "my concern was, is that there was fraudulent or forgery occurring… because it was cited in the audit that they were signed retroactively or after the check was issued. And I know… that nobody ever signed those vouchers. So that was my concern from a forensic audit position… because that's forgery. Of board members signatures." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:22:43 | New-staff orientation and the school calendar | Kennedy: over 35 new staff welcomed the next morning at Claremont Savings Bank, 24-plus mentors, a bus tour of the city led by driver Ray Peck. Convocation August 27; students return August 31; kindergarten September 9 because of the September 8 voting day. She read out every summer boost, extended-school-year, tutoring and credit-recovery staff member by name. | |
| 0:29:24 | Enrollment: 1,359 students | "We are right now at 1359 students total in the district. And that was as of two days ago." Asked how that compares with prior years, Kennedy said pre-K is up, Maple is down one student against a changed grade configuration, the middle school up three, the high school down one, and undertook to bring the multi-year baseline Whitney asked for to the next meeting. | |
| 0:31:05 | Curriculum time for new teachers; Great Minds costs unknown | Lavalette: "Where is the time for curriculum introduction and acclimation for new teachers? That's the thing that worries me about young teachers, and we tend to pack their days full." On the curriculum program's cost, Kennedy said the vendor (Great Minds) is still preparing quotes split between grant and district funding; pressed by Madden — "why would information from the vendor be affected by whether it's a grant or or budget" — she said the total is not known yet. | |
| 0:35:59 | Half a million in stale encumbrances closed | "It was almost half $1 million. So that's that's money that was encumbered in last year's budget but never actually spent… when you closed a school, there were some encumbrances associated with bluff that stayed in the budget until we just closed them." Broadrick expressly refused to treat the resulting figure as a surplus: "the number on your report is nearly $5 million of surplus. And that is not going to be our end of year position for fiscal 26," with a large payables run still to process — including two-thirds of an $800,000-plus SchoolCare assessment the former business administrator had paid only in part. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:39:34 | Why the audits still matter — "zero corrective actions" | Madden: "I don't understand why if we're at a point where we're getting so accurate, we're not going to close the the audits until November. I think we're spending a lot of time on this issue. I'd rather see it spent on improving the quality of the school rather than counting beans." Broadrick: FY24 must be finished before FY25, and FY25 before FY26; "as of right now, zero corrective actions have been adopted by the board, and zero corrective action work officially has been undertaken by the SA[U]." | HIGH |
| 0:43:10 | Board member questions the auditor's independence | Madden: "I have a problem with the guy who is here for nine years and didn't catch the 5 or $10 million bust, so I'm not sure we have the right consultant." He described a general pattern — "you want to find enough that you show you doing work, but you don't want to get to aggressive and spoil your relationship with the administration" — while saying "I didn't say him." Crawford: "An auditor is supposed to be an independent party." Whitney noted the firm has been engaged since 2019 and that turnover and missing records drew the work out. Lavalette: "short of indicting somebody for fraud, the auditors would be at the very bottom of my list." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:50:09 | Year-end reporting for two districts, from an uncertain starting point | Broadrick is working with the auditor and Unity's superintendent because the separation agreement makes Claremont responsible for both districts' FY25 filings. "We don't have a good starting point. We're not going to have 100% solid ending point. Because remember, fiscal 26 started with Matt Angel[l]'s best guess… typically we sign [an attestation] that these are accurate to the best of our knowledge. And in this case, we know these are our best guesses." | HIGH |
| 0:51:32 | Tuition agreements missing; rate frozen since FY23 | "It's difficult to find those written documents. My best luck has come by asking other school districts to send them to me. The initial evidence I have is that the base tuition rate hasn't been increased to reflect inflation or any other budget increases since 2223." He also reported that five years of special-education aid data required tracking down submissions by three different employees — "finding one of them took a lot of running around in the basement." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:52:49 | Four weeks to close the year | Receivables still open include tuition invoices, Medicaid reimbursement and special-education aid: "we need that data in order to close out the year… so we've got about four weeks." FY27 adequacy numbers exist but are embargoed until September 1, and the first FY28 estimate arrives around November — the year Whitney warned about, after the former business administrator predicted a seven-figure aid loss heading into collective bargaining. | HIGH |
| 1:02:37 | Free and reduced lunch forms drive differentiated aid | Crawford: the applications "hav[e] a direct impact on how much we receive in differentiated aid." Broadrick added that a higher federal income threshold this year excludes some families who previously qualified, which "reduces differentiated aid" as well as raising what families pay. Madden asked whether the district feeds children whose parents never file; told it does — "Every kid gets it. We don't turn any kid away for food." | |
| 1:07:13 | Procurement corrective action: three thresholds, and a purchase order first | The proposal "establishes three standards for procurement" — up to $5,000, $5,001 to $20,000, and above $20,000 for the business office only — and makes the purchase-order system the mechanism of permission: "I've just seen too many examples in a very short period of time of I bought this, now I need a PO. That's backwards." Broadrick called it "the first and most important corrective action we will ever adopt." Lavalette moved, Whitney seconded, and it carried unanimously. | POSITIVE |
| 1:12:30 | Petty cash, principals' checking accounts, proprietary bids | Rapp: "The city did away with petty cash because of audit report discussing how it's difficult to keep track." Broadrick said each principal holds a checking account — "I don't like it, but I like the principals" — and asked for a year to work it out. Lavalette pressed on replenishment limits. Rapp then raised proprietary systems: a low bid on a fire-alarm system locks the district into that vendor's maintenance, "$1,800, $2,000 just to get them out, plus the hourly rate plus parts." Broadrick undertook to write bid-specification best practices as later corrective actions. | POSITIVE |
| 1:23:31 | Bus replacement — and the board waives its two-minute-old rule | The bus totalled by a tree had a fair market value of $127,500 per the insurer; replacement is expected between $100,000 and $150,000. "Two minutes ago, you adopted new requirements that would make me go out to bid. You also have the ability to waive those requirements. Let us get two quotes as fast as we can and buy a bus." Whitney moved to authorize two bids with a report back; carried unanimously. Broadrick then "plant[ed] a seed": ten buses with a ten-year life should mean a bus in every operating budget. | POSITIVE |
| 1:26:59 | Facilities: nine of 27 summer projects unfinished | "There were I think 27 items. And as of a few days ago, nine of them are not complete yet." Broadrick flagged "an internal tradition of trying to do these jobs ourselves" — water-supply valves in the Maple Avenue art wing among them: "I would hire a plumber tomorrow if I could get that job done." The board told him to get the work done. On capital planning he proposed staff complete a self-assessment workbook for four buildings rather than pay roughly $35,000 per building for engineering assessments; Howard said a recent assessment of the tech center already exists. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:35:41 | Grants moving again; Medicaid reimbursement down | Grant reports are being submitted and approved "pretty quickly, and that means that there is money coming in," with Katie Bullock newly in the grant-bookkeeper role. Medicaid reimbursements "not too long ago were a lot higher than the last couple of years"; the FY26 total is not expected from HHS until late September. Broadrick named the administrative assistant who does the work and said what is missing is a certified administrator to direct it — a consultant is being brought in to examine the Medicaid-to-schools program. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:39:28 | Special education aid: 13 students, $2.6 million | Lavalette, "just for the folks at home": "the 13 children cost us over 2.6 million. That is correct." Broadrick clarified that more than 13 students are educated outside the district, but only these 13 crossed the reimbursement threshold — which he described as "three times the previous year's average per pupil cost. Statewide, roughly $70,000 for fiscal 26," leaving the first roughly $900,000 with the district. On proration: "if the amount of money in the state budget is 90% of the amount district's claim, we each get 90% of what we're entitled to reimbursed. It has gone as low as about two thirds." Madden replied that a recent bill means "it can't be prorated less than 90%." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:46:55 | Placements the district did not make | "at least six students who are placed out of district from Claremont. Our IEP teams did not place… Department of Health and Human Services employees and judges, family court judges placed them out of district and in some cases out of state. We still get these bills." Broadrick contrasted the comfort of the $70,000 cap in a district with one such student against Claremont's exposure: "If it's ten kids, that's $700,000 in tax bills." Crawford: "it is not our staff that's making those judgments… these placements are out of our control." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:50:18 | Two teachers lost; a 1999 lease found | "We've lost two teachers in the last week," one of them the teacher for a program that would have used the CCTV room — which prompted Jason Bonneville to find "the 1999 lease agreement between the Claremont School District and the CCTV board of directors to lease this room for CTV's use during certain hours for consideration of $1." Hiring: three certified special educators on the night's nomination report, a fourth interviewing, and "I would hire six people tomorrow if I could." | |
| 1:53:59 | Middle-school staffing at the minimum | Principal Boynton: "math three science, three social studies and three E[LA]" plus unified arts. Broadrick: "with three certified educators in each of those content areas, we can function and be a school… we're not pretending that we can do it, but four would be better." Whitney restated the charge to the superintendent — open safely and provide state-mandated education — "and that's not the ideal." Lavalette reported searching that day: over 50 BCBA openings statewide and over 300 special-education postings. | MEDIUM |
| 1:58:37 | Dress code: what prompted it | Madden: "I would characterize it as a very extreme and odd interpretation to dress code. That, coupled with a visit to the schools by school board members… we found a good proportion, I would say 10 to 20% of the students wearing hats." He described a student in a hood and earbuds facing the back of the room, with the principal and interim superintendent present and "nobody seemed to have any issue with it." Asked whether the proposal fixed his concern: "No it doesn't." | |
| 2:02:45 | Whitney's line-by-line rewrite on legal grounds | "The word hostile has legally it is attached to like a, an expectation of violence. Whereas I think in some times in the school environment, people internalize hostile as uncomfortable… we're very careful about our dress codes in public spaces is because there are constitutional protections for free speech that's related to expression." She proposed replacement language throughout — headphones during instructional time, head coverings with religious, medical, safety and IEP exceptions, coverage "as reasonably intended by the garment," hems that "drag on the floor creating a tripping hazard," and required footwear for PE and laboratories. | POSITIVE |
| 2:06:24 | Howard's example, and the superintendent's one contribution | Howard offered himself as the test case for vague terms, describing a slogan he wrote on his shoe in high school, and argued the word "hostile" is too subjective — better to name "messages that promote illegal acts, substances." Broadrick intervened once: "nobody has unreviewed discretion. Disciplinary decision by a principal may be appealed by a parent or guardian and student to me, and my decision may then be appealed to a school board." | POSITIVE |
| 2:20:12 | Dress code fails 2–4 | After Rapp moved adoption and Lavalette seconded, the chair counted "two yeses" and "four against." Crawford: "I would vote in favor, but it's a moot point… this failed and the administration needs to go back and rework it." Whitney's stated reason was the pattern of late documents and deadline pressure: "we've got this deadline, and if we don't whip this out… then the kids are going to go without or we're not going to get the handbook to print." Broadrick confirmed no deadline forced the vote: the handbooks come to the board on September 2 anyway. | POSITIVE |
| 2:24:33 | Forensic audit: the firm was sold and never cashed the check | "I'm waiting to hear back from [Bernstein Shur] about what's happening with CBI[Z], the firm that was engaged to do the forensic audit that has since been acquired… And remember, they haven't cashed the check… you sent them a $10,000 check as a deposit toward the forensic audit. If they had cashed it and then sold the company, I'd actually feel better." Madden said he may not support continuing: "I don't think there's going to be any criminal action… The the records were just too bad." Crawford recounted that local police referred the matter to the State Police, whose advice was to finish the annual audits first, then commission the forensic work. Howard urged looking beyond the acquiring firm; Rapp: "the public was pretty clear that they wanted this looked into." | MEDIUM |
| 2:35:08 | "I work for you" | On reviving a Superintendents Advisory Committee: "I have not done anything about that since July 1st and before someone has a chance to ask me to, I work for you. If I start meeting with another group to get marching orders and they conflict with what you tell me… I'm going to do what you say." He proposed a survey instead of a standing committee, after Madden's account of an earlier advisory group whose meetings were "canceled at the last minute" and where "nothing happened." | |
| 2:43:46 | A caseload of 75, and the reorganization it prompted | "One of the teachers in the district, I heard about this in June, kind of choked on my coffee for a second. Had a case load I think of 75… If a special education teacher is running meetings, writing IEPs, and providing services for 75 kids, something did not happen. That has to happen. There's just no way." The plan splits evaluation, case management and instruction into separate teams; two full-time case managers already worked remotely last year and a third has been added. Broadrick was blunt about the leadership gap: "the idea that I am the special ed director for the coming year should scare the hell out of you." | MEDIUM |
| 2:50:37 | Department of Education due diligence review | "Whether the board has been aware of it or not, the district has been responding to a due diligence review by the [Bureau of] Special Education, for several months." It began with the former Academy program and widened: "In September of 2024, Claremont had 11 special ed programs in its schools approved by the Department of Education… so they were never approved last year." A consultant drafted the action plan, which the department has accepted; program approvals were to be filed by the end of the following week. Whitney raised the history of housing high-school special-education programs at the tech center; the answer, texted by Dr. Herrington mid-meeting, was that the programs will sit at Stevens and may share space. | MEDIUM |
| 3:03:28 | Personnel: nominations, a resignation, two vacancies | Nominations carried unanimously. Madden asked to review HR procedures and see paperwork in advance — "You heard my comment about the island of Misfit Toys" and "connections were paramount in hiring some people." Broadrick: "I don't know any of these people," principals recommend them, and "we will have problems in the future" as any district does. The org chart shows the business administrator and special education director posts open — "These are the two hardest positions to fill in the central office after a superintendent. But it's two. It's not five." | POSITIVE |
| 3:09:22 | Job descriptions: coach evaluations in writing | Lavalette on the draft athletics job description: "evaluate all coaches in writing annually. Did you have a time frame where you wanted that done? So it's not all like I'm [evaluating] the football coach and I'll just turn them in at the end of the year?" Broadrick: within a reasonable interval of weeks after each season. He added that the last dated athletic handbook he could find was from 2017-18 and the copy on the website is undated, "which tells me that it's hard to determine if there have been annual reviews." | |
| 3:13:33 | Policies missed the agenda | Howard: "I had sent [four] policies a week ago, but I think they flew under the radar because they are not in our agenda tonight… I think for nine two will be bringing six policies, possibly seven." He reported 11 policies passed since March that still need updating on the website. The chair took responsibility: "We are in a transition period. I will take responsibility for not getting those on the agenda for tonight." | OBSERVATION |
| 3:16:15 | Nonpublic session | "I would entertain a motion to go into nonpublic under RSA 91 a three part two A, C and E summary." A second followed and a roll call was taken; the recording captures seven affirmative responses and then ends. The agenda's stated purposes were "Personnel" and "Negotiations Planning - SREA, Custodians, Secretaries, CAA." | MEDIUM |