About the Navigator
The Claremont School Board Meeting Navigator (CSBMN) is an experimental service of the Claremont Community Media Center (CCMC), which operates Claremont's public-access television channels and video-on-demand service. CSBMN gives each covered public meeting of the Claremont School Board and its Finance Committee, the SAU 6 Board, and the joint, deliberative and special sessions that go with them a single page that brings together the meeting video, the agenda, the board's document packet, and, when the district posts them, the minutes.
Each meeting page lists who took part, reproduces the posted agenda, and follows the discussion topic by topic. Timestamps on the page link to that moment in the recording, so a summary can be checked against what was actually said. Discussion that appears to touch a requirement of state or federal law, such as a filing deadline, a notice rule, or an audit obligation, is flagged with a citation to the specific statute or regulation. An appendix on every page links the source documents.
The video comes from CCMC's video-on-demand service, which carries the district's meeting recordings. The documents come from the public Google Drive folders where the district posts its board packets and meeting minutes. No non-public material is used. Coverage begins with the School Board meeting of January 21, 2015, and further meetings are added as they are processed.
AI does most of the assembly: transcribing the recording, matching voices to named speakers, summarizing the discussion, and flagging items that may deserve review. It makes mistakes, such as a misheard name or a remark credited to the wrong speaker, which is why every page — this one included — carries the standing notice printed at its foot. These pages are a finding aid, not a record. The district's approved minutes, posted at sau6.org and in the Drive folders above, are the official account of any meeting. Before relying on anything here, follow the timestamp or the document link and confirm it at the source.
New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law (RSA 91-A) makes these meetings and records public. Public is not the same as convenient: a meeting recording can take a full evening to watch, and the documents behind it sit in folders most residents never open. CSBMN tries to shorten the distance between a resident's question and the moment in the meeting that answers it.
What is wrong with the record, and with these pages. An archive built from public records inherits the quality of those records, and the work of building it introduced defects of its own. The Data Quality Report catalogues all of it — 392 issues in the district’s own records, in this project’s transcripts and speaker attributions, in this project’s own analysis, and in the limits of the methods used to check all three. It is published in full, including the errors this project made and corrected.
Corrections and suggestions are welcome through the Claremont Community Media Center.
Meeting pages
| Date | Meeting | On the page | Flagged items |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 — 25 meetings | |||
| September 16, 2026 | Claremont School Board | Regular meeting. $680,447.22 in federal grant reimbursements drawn down since July, against an estimate of about $2 million, with 2024–25 claims closing September 30. A $3,000 grant accepted; the elementary grade realignment put to a vote so the Department of Education has a record of it; policies JF, JKAA and GBGA adopted with one member opposed; the forensic-audit scope taken into nonpublic session. Draft minutes filed in the packet folder. | 5 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| September 2, 2026 | Claremont School Board Athletics handbook excerpt |
Regular meeting, recorded only in part: the 22-minute Cablecast show covers the athletics handbooks for players and coaches, which the board declined to approve as drafted. The rest of the four-hour meeting, including a $146,342 bus purchase, is known from the draft public and nonpublic minutes. The superintendent disclosed an athletics checking account holding over $20,000 outside the treasurer. | 3 MEDIUM 1 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 19, 2026 | Claremont School Board | Regular meeting. The treasurer reported two August payments — the district payroll and a federal tax payment — issued with no board or treasurer signature. The board adopted its first audit corrective action, setting $5,000 and $20,000 procurement thresholds and requiring a purchase order before a purchase, unanimously; a joint high-school and middle-school dress code failed 2–4. The packet folder held only the draft agenda; no minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| August 12, 2026 | Claremont School Board Finance Finance Subcommittee |
Finance Subcommittee work session. FY26 close-out and the September 1 state filings (DOE-25/MS-25) landing on unreliable opening balances; an $868,000 unbudgeted insurance assessment two-thirds unpaid; business-office staffing; audit corrective actions; negotiations logistics. No packet or minutes posted for this meeting. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 5, 2026 | Claremont School Board | Regular meeting. The auditor's public Q&A on the FY22/FY23 draft audits, and the treasurer's reconciliation report on unauthorized, backdated, and mis-signed checks; about $2 million in federal grant reimbursements still unclaimed ahead of the September 30 cutoff. Packet (7 documents) and draft minutes posted. | 3 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| July 29, 2026 | Claremont School Board, Goal Setting Meeting | Annual goal-setting work session built around the superintendent's nine-domain "Foundation" framework — post-it brainstorming, then a domain-by-domain review. Flags include the plan to finish all audits by July 2027, now running against a statutory funding clock, and the absence of a functioning teacher-evaluation system. Agenda and draft minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| July 21, 2026 | Claremont School Board | Regular meeting. The FY22 and FY23 draft audits arrive with disclaimers of opinion, an unreliable general ledger, and tax rates set on overstated fund balance; also the September 30 federal grant-claim deadline, teacher hires made without board election, and the Unity withdrawal agreement. Packet (13 documents) and draft minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| June 19, 2026 | School Board Finance Committee Claremont School District |
Finance Subcommittee work session — the first covered meeting. About $2 million in federal entitlement grants unclaimed and time-limited; a $350,000–$400,000 services contract signed without a funding source, purchase orders, or an authorized signer; annual audits years behind; proposals for a published budget book and accounts-payable register. No packet or minutes in the district's public shares. | 4 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| June 17, 2026 | Claremont School Board The last meeting of the fiscal year, and of SAU 6 |
Regular meeting, thirteen days before the end of the fiscal year and of SAU 6. The board thanked a private alumni association for having run the year’s student activities, accepted a bank’s refund of the interest on a four-million-dollar deficit loan, closed a shuttered school’s student activity fund, and spent sixty-two minutes in nonpublic session. Packet of five documents and approved minutes posted. | 6 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 3, 2026 | Claremont School Board Four weeks from the end of an SAU and the end of a fiscal year |
Regular meeting, twenty-seven days before SAU 6 is said to end and the fiscal year closes. A superintendent who does not take office until July 1 gave the longer of the two administrative reports; the board set meal prices, lent a closed school to the State Police, and added a nonpublic session to its own agenda from the chair. Packet of six documents and approved minutes posted. | 3 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| May 20, 2026 | Claremont School Board Five procurements, a stipend register with a blank approval column, and six weeks to go |
Regular meeting. Five procurements in one evening — transportation, food service, school photographs, a commercial broker and the federal grant assurances — alongside a stipend register of more than a million dollars whose approval column is mostly blank, and a policy adopted 6–1 over a member’s objection that the public had not had a second read. Packet and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 6, 2026 | Claremont School Board A new superintendent, a grant with no vote on record, and eight weeks to the end of the SAU |
Regular meeting. The incoming superintendent was introduced and nominated his own central office; a sitting member said the board had never voted on a $19,100 school-safety grant; a parent’s unrefunded lunch balance became a lesson in how money leaves a district; and in the last three minutes the chair gave her only public statement that the administrative unit must be wound up. Packet and approved minutes posted. | 8 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| April 15, 2026 | Claremont School Board A superintendent chosen, a four-million-dollar misreading, and Unity’s withdrawal |
Regular meeting, six days after the SAU 6 board’s reorganization. The chair announced the superintendent decision and her own dissent, read an absent officer’s finance report and understated the district’s encumbrances by exactly four million dollars, voted to pay counsel to repair by-laws whose numbering is broken, and gave the public its first plain account of Unity’s withdrawal. Packet of six documents and approved minutes posted. | 5 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| April 9, 2026 | SAU 6 Board The reorganization meeting, eighty-three days before the separation |
SAU 6 Board reorganization meeting, eighty-three days before Unity’s withdrawal from the unit takes effect. The joint Claremont–Unity board elected a chair and a vice chair, took neither of the two votes its own agenda noticed, and spent an hour on a separation for which no planning-committee record or state approval has been located. Packet of three documents; no minutes exist for this meeting or the three before it. | 1 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 6, 2026 | Claremont School Board, superintendent candidate forum Eighty minutes of public questions, and no record but the tape |
Public candidate forum — eighty minutes of questions to the sole superintendent candidate brought to the district for a full-day interview. Announced from the chair at the meeting of 1 April and filmed by a board member as a volunteer. No agenda, packet or minutes exist for the evening, so the recording is the only record of it. | 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 1, 2026 | Claremont School Board A twenty-thousand-dollar scoreboard, and the end of SAU 6 inside an insurance vote |
Public hearing on a private donation, followed by the second meeting of the board seated after the 10 March election. The evening covered a twenty-thousand-dollar scoreboard, and the end of SAU 6 surfaced inside an insurance vote rather than as an item of its own. Packet posted, and approved minutes signed by the board clerk. | 3 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| March 18, 2026 | Claremont School Board The organisational meeting after the vote |
Organisational meeting, eight days after the ballot. Two new members were sworn, a new chair elected, a motion to replace the vice chair defeated three to three, and every subcommittee reconstituted except the one choosing the superintendent. The state form reporting what the voters appropriated was signed at the only meeting available before its filing deadline; the operating budget passed and the petitioned cap did not. Packet and approved minutes posted. | 5 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| March 4, 2026 | Claremont School Board The last meeting before the ballot |
Regular meeting, the last of the 2025–26 board and six days before the March 10 ballot on a $42,957,713 operating budget and a petitioned budget cap. Neither article appears on the agenda, in the minutes, or on the recording. The board spent an hour on mid-year reading and mathematics data, adopted two policies, and asked why the salaries published to voters do not match the budget. Packet and approved minutes posted. | 4 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| February 18, 2026 | Claremont School Board, Public Hearing & Meeting Two warrant articles, then the board's own business |
Statutory public hearing on the two warrant articles going to the March 10 ballot — open enrollment and a petitioned budget cap — followed immediately by the regular board meeting. The cap hearing was also republished by CCTV as a recording of its own, which this archive covers on a separate page. Packet posted, and approved minutes covering both the hearing and the meeting. | 5 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 18, 2026 | Claremont School Board, Warrant Article 8 The statutory hearing on a petitioned budget cap |
Statutory public hearing on the petitioned budget cap, republished by CCTV as a recording of its own: forty-nine minutes on Warrant Article 8, twenty days before the ballot. The same evening’s open-enrollment hearing and regular meeting are on their own page in this archive. Packet and approved minutes posted. | 1 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| February 7, 2026 | Claremont School Board, Deliberative Session SB 2 first session: two amendments carried, a budget cap the statute does not fit |
Deliberative session — the first of the two sessions of the annual district meeting under SB 2, and not a board meeting: the body in the room was the registered voters of Claremont. Four hours, eight warrant articles, and the words “or lease” struck from both property articles, 105–36 on the first. An FY27 budget of $42,957,713 went to the ballot against a $44,449,704 default. Warrant posted; minutes still in draft. | 2 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 8 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 4, 2026 | Claremont School Board Athletics restored without a vote, three days before the warrant |
Regular meeting, the last before the voters took up the warrant at the deliberative session on Saturday 7 February. Athletics were restored to the budget without a vote being taken on the change, three days before the warrant went to the floor. Packet posted, and approved minutes produced and signed by the board clerk. | 3 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 21, 2026 | Claremont School Board Budget adopted 4–3 and the warrant set |
The FY2026-27 budget fixed at $42,957,713 on a 4–3 vote, with roughly $1.9M of cuts left for administration to identify and athletics carried at $1 on the MS-26; the full March warrant set, including a petitioned budget cap the board declined to recommend 6–0–1; a "chief education officer" model adopted 6–1. Packet of 16 documents and approved minutes posted. | 6 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| January 20, 2026 | Claremont School Board, Public Hearing on Proposed Budgets Two budgets and a petitioned cap |
The statutory budget hearing: Option A (four-school aligned, $44,844,373) against Option B (current configuration, $46,211,951), both default budgets, and a petitioned budget cap disclosed publicly for the first time — estimated by the administration to force a $9,143,468 or 20.39% reduction. Fifteen residents spoke. Packet of one document and approved minutes posted. | 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| January 7, 2026 | Claremont School Board, Public Hearing & Meeting Budget models and a closed session |
A $49,775 music-programme grant accepted; a closed session citing two different Right-to-Know provisions; the forensic audit stalled after two firms declined; and three school-configuration budgets put to separate votes — the four-school models advancing, the three-school model failing 3–4. Packet of three documents, approved, draft and unsealed nonpublic minutes posted. | 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| 2025 — 38 meetings | |||
| December 17, 2025 | Claremont School Board The restructuring models arrive |
FY27 restructuring models presented — four schools at $44,861,008 (rate 18.82) against three at $43,968,104 (18.09), on a current-year $43,179,564; roughly a dozen residents and the SREA president spoke against the pace. Budget calendar amended to a 1/20 hearing deadline. Clerk's stipend raised $300/month. The nonpublic session is minuted under the wrong statute. Packet of 10 documents, approved, draft and unsealed nonpublic minutes posted. | 3 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| December 12, 2025 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee The budget the board never saw in draft |
Subcommittee working session on the FY27 operating budget: the 2% target, a $1-per-vacancy benefits assumption, the SAU staffing build, a substitute line modelled at $185,000 against a $250,000 actual, athletics and arts, and the Bluff lease concept. Behaviour programmes disclosed as unbudgeted. No packet and no minutes posted for this meeting. | 3 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 10, 2025 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee The restructuring models are built |
Subcommittee working session where the three FY27 models were worked through before reaching the full board — enrolment projections, the $868,000 SchoolCare assessment, health-plan costs and prior-year bills paid from this year's appropriation. No packet and no minutes posted for this meeting. | 1 HIGH 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 3, 2025 | Claremont School Board Curriculum, test scores and the search |
SAS results and school improvement plans presented in full; a Code Monkey curriculum purchase voted the night it appeared after the business administrator said policy IGA had been bypassed; a lapsed Title IV programme; the superintendent search assigned to Madden and Petrin; five meetings' minutes approved in one sitting. Packet of 12 items and approved minutes posted. | 4 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| November 19, 2025 | Claremont School Board Staffing counted out loud, post by post |
Ed 306 required subjects unstaffed at CMS — music, health and wellness, computer science, no school nurse — and special-education programmes running below the 1:1 paraprofessional support the district says IEPs prescribe. School psychology interns hired outside the board's knowledge and the appropriated budget. Truancy officer reinstated 4–2. Packet of 8 items; draft minutes only. | 1 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| November 13, 2025 | SAU 6 Board Five sets of minutes approved, and none for this meeting |
The quarter's shortest meeting. Forensic audit extended to SAU records; new banking controls; five meetings' minutes approved at once; Unity's withdrawal seven months out with "nothing to update." Packet of 4 documents — three of them draft minutes of earlier meetings. No minutes posted for this meeting, or for any SAU 6 meeting. | 3 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| November 5, 2025 | Claremont School Board Trust withdrawals, a forensic audit and the vacant seat |
A $150,000 capital reserve withdrawal made without the district vote RSA 35:15 requires, on a trustees' letter that does not state the purpose. Forensic auditor authorised at New Hampshire State Police request. The former business administrator's termination announced. The vacant seat filled on the third vote by reinstating Frank Sprague, 3–2 with one abstention. Packet of 1 document; draft and unsealed nonpublic minutes. | 5 MEDIUM 1 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 5, 2025 | Claremont School Board, School Board Vacancy Discussion The seventh seat, filled on three votes of six |
Vacancy discussion — fifty minutes on one agenda item, republished by CCTV as a recording of its own. A six-member board that had already deadlocked three to three over two applicants filled its vacant seventh seat by reinstating the man who had resigned it, three votes to two with one abstention, after two further deadlocks and six residents speaking. Packet of one document, the agenda; minutes in draft. | 4 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 15, 2025 | Claremont School Board Tax rate, the late MS-25 and a suspension announced |
The FY25 MS-25 and DOE-25 put before the board for signature six weeks after the September 1 statutory deadline, with the special-education aid figure still unresolved — 9.18% or 6.08%, depending. A ten-cent-per-meal commitment signed by the former business administrator with no board vote. A $1.9M projected deficit. Conducted correctly under the electronic-participation rule. Packet of 19 documents; draft minutes only. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 6, 2025 | SAU 6 Board, Special Meeting A governance briefing, a sealed hour, and no minutes |
A governance and finance training session the board used to name its own oversight failures on camera, plus three central-office resignations. Nonpublic minutes sealed for five years with no statutory determination stated. Packet of 1 agenda. No minutes posted for this meeting, or for any SAU 6 meeting. | 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 6, 2025 | Claremont School Board, Special Meeting One item, twelve minutes, and no minutes at all |
Special meeting, twelve minutes, called to put back a school secretary post the board itself had abolished. It did that, skipped both of the other items its own notice promised, and heard three central-office resignations that were on no notice at all. One posted agenda; no minutes have been located anywhere, and the board’s December catch-up passed this meeting over. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 1, 2025 | Claremont School Board Deadlocked 3–3, and the FY2022 audit arrives in draft |
The FY2022 audit presented still in draft, more than three years after the period ended, with findings of oversight gaps, failed reconciliation and unsubstantiated balances — and FY2023–25 not yet begun. The board deadlocked 3–3 on the vacant seat. A resolution sought special legislation to borrow against next year's adequacy aid. Packet of 18 documents; no minutes in the Minutes share. | 2 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| September 17, 2025 | Claremont School Board Bluff closure voted 4–1 |
Vice Chair Petrin presided with the chair and the clerk both absent. The elementary principals presented their own plans and the board voted 4–1 to move Bluff School's students, staff and classrooms intact into Disnard and Maple Avenue by October 20, pending a fire-department inspection. A 6:00 p.m. nonpublic session appears in the notice but nowhere in the record. Packet of 7 documents; approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| September 11, 2025 | SAU 6 Board | The meeting that ended a superintendency: Christopher Pratt's resignation accepted, Kerry Kennedy appointed interim superintendent, and TMS Consulting engaged — each by voice vote, with no severance figure, effective date or compensation stated in public session. No minutes exist for this meeting in any district share. | 1 HIGH 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 10, 2025 | Claremont School Board Elementary consolidation tabled |
The administration's plan to close Bluff Elementary and reconfigure Disnard as K-2 and Maple Avenue as 3-5 by mid-October — opposed by all three building principals, tabled unanimously, then deferred 4–1 to the principals' own proposals. Eleven staff resignations reported; case managers carrying more than 40 students. Packet of 3 documents; draft minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| September 4, 2025 | SAU 6 Board | Joint Claremont–Unity board. Nearly the whole meeting — 84 of about 105 minutes — was a nonpublic session absent from the recording, with no sealing motion and no nonpublic minutes anywhere. A grant was accepted without its dollar value known, with the applying official absent. Packet of 2 documents; draft minutes posted. | 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| September 3, 2025 | Claremont School Board $4,000,000 note public hearing |
Noticed public hearing on $4,000,000 of borrowing against the district's state adequacy grant — opened by motion, held for two hours and forty-nine minutes, and approved 6–0 by roll call. Frank Sprague's resignation was announced from the floor, though the minutes never record it. Packet of 8 documents; draft minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 1 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 25, 2025 | Claremont School Board, Special Meeting Reduction in force and extracurricular cuts |
Three days before school opened: 20 positions eliminated (Howard opposed, Sprague abstaining) and the business administrator directed to eliminate or reduce all non-mandatory extracurricular and co-curricular programs (Sprague and Howard opposed). Athletics needed about $187,000 for the year with nothing committed. Neither tally is audible on the recording. Packet of 1 document; approved minutes posted. | 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 20, 2025 | Claremont School Board Emergency financial meeting |
The night the crisis met the public: a letter from the Commissioner of Education, counsel on bankruptcy and receivership, the auditor's account that FY20 and FY21 were the last completed audits — and roughly three dozen citizens' comments taken by a volunteer moderator, after the scheduled financial presentation by the business administrator was never delivered. Packet of 2 documents; approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 14, 2025 | Claremont School Board | First public disclosure of a deficit of "anywhere between 1 and $5 million," which district counsel called a state of fiscal distress. Student handbooks and nine finance policies adopted; a 78-minute nonpublic session sealed for five years with no statutory finding stated on the record. Packet of 20 documents; approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| June 18, 2025 | Claremont School Board | The board went straight into nonpublic before conducting public business — motion naming (a) and (c), roll call taken, and the minutes never sealed. Superintendent Pratt and Vice Chair Petrin both absent; the business administrator attended remotely while on medical leave and named a structural deficit and $2.3 million in encumbrances on the record. A special-education opportunity review was presented. Packet of 8 documents; approved minutes and unsealed nonpublic minutes both posted. | 5 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| June 12, 2025 | SAU 6 Board | Short joint-board meeting: April minutes approved, meeting cadence set, then a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and (c). Twenty seconds of recording cover roughly forty minutes of wall clock, and the vote to seal sits inside that gap. This meeting's own draft minutes are filed in two later SAU packet folders while its own folder holds April's. | 3 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 3, 2025 | Claremont School Board | Grade 3–8 NH SAS results presented from a slide deck that is missing from the packet, then five policies adopted at a single read with no motion to suspend the rule — GBEF, JICL, JICK, IHBA and ADC — while CHCA was held for a second read over the superintendent's invitation to adopt it anyway. Crawford and Sprague absent. Packet of 10 documents; approved minutes posted. | 3 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 21, 2025 | Claremont School Board | A "non meeting" with legal counsel — lawful under RSA 91-A:2, I and not a nonpublic session. Tax-rate forms had overstated the surplus and $2,089,152 was returned to the city in error; federal grant money was spent but never claimed; a private gift over $1,000 was accepted with no motion, agenda item or minute. Policy JBAB adopted with the second read waived. Packet of 10 documents; approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 7, 2025 | Claremont School Board Five trust-fund withdrawals |
Vice Chair Petrin presiding with the chair absent. Five separate withdrawal motions totalling $888,998.42 across five funds — including $283,860 for two buses and $425,000 from the special-education expendable trust — each reimbursing spending already made, with no district vote or "agents to expend" designation anywhere in the record. The nonpublic minutes were released rather than sealed. Packet of 16 documents; approved minutes plus unsealed nonpublic minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| April 16, 2025 | Claremont School Board Regular meeting with an RSA 198:20-b grant hearing |
A public hearing under RSA 198:20-b to accept a $44,300 state grant for industry-recognized credentials at the tech center — properly held, though the motion misstated the amount as $444,300. A roughly $20 million tech-center renovation concept was aired on an admittedly un-estimated number, and the board authorized up to $50,000 from a trust fund for the Maple Avenue alternative program without naming the fund. Packet of 13 documents; approved minutes posted. | 4 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| April 10, 2025 | SAU 6 Board Annual reorganization and audit status |
The annual reorganization — Hawkins elected chair, Ruggeri vice chair — and auditor Michael Campo's spring status report: FY2020 finished but never reviewed in a public meeting, FY2021 before the board, FY2022 delivered in draft that afternoon, FY2023 not begun, FY2024 untouched. The business administrator's fullest appearance anywhere in this record. Packet of 1 document, filed in the Claremont share; draft minutes filed in a later SAU folder. | 4 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| April 2, 2025 | Claremont School Board | A 41-minute recording of a meeting whose ninety-minute nonpublic session is excised from it. A citizen's comment proposed treating the district's policy manual as a "single source of truth" and documented fourteen broken links on the site — the speaker maintains this project, disclosed on the page. The deficit was put at about $1.4 million on the recording and $1.5 million in the minutes. Packet of 5 documents; approved minutes posted. | 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| March 19, 2025 | Claremont School Board Organizational meeting and the policy JBAB vote |
The organizational meeting seating the board elected March 11, with Petrin chosen vice chair in absentia. A motion to suspend enforcement of the district's transgender and gender-nonconforming students policy was amended on the floor to drop the suspension, and the amended motion — tabling any action pending review by the policy committee and counsel within three months — passed 3–2. The policy was neither suspended nor rescinded. Twenty-one members of the public spoke. Packet of 16 documents; approved minutes posted. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| March 17, 2025 | Claremont School Safety Public Discussion Superintendent's public forum |
A public forum convened and chaired by Superintendent Pratt after the February 11 lockdown at Stevens High School — no chair, no roll call, no motion and no vote in an hour and a half, and no quorum of the board shown on the recording, so the page does not assert that minutes were owed. Principals answered parents on drills, entry points and communication. No packet and no minutes exist in any district share. | 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| March 5, 2025 | Claremont School Board Regular meeting: FY2020 audit, YRBS data, safety specialist |
Six days before the ballot: auditor Michael Campo presented the FY2020 findings the agenda had labelled FY2021 — unbalanced checkbook, no credit-card policy, unauthorized reimbursements — and asked the board to name a member to track the audits, which it did. The minutes record the Acuity letter vote as unanimous while the recording has the chair voting no. A safety-specialist proposal was withdrawn rather than voted. Packet of 7 documents; approved minutes posted. | 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| February 19, 2025 | Claremont School Board Regular meeting (13-minute recording) |
Thirteen minutes of recording for a meeting the minutes say adjourned at 9:56 p.m. Four of five public speakers came about the Acuity waste-facility proposal, not the lockdown; one raised a teacher's dismissal and reinstatement. Nonpublic minutes sealed for ten years with no statutory determination recorded. Packet of 2 documents; approved minutes posted. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 5, 2025 | Claremont School Board | A 25-minute broadcast around a 55-minute nonpublic session spliced out of it. The nonpublic motion named its exemption on the face of the motion and was roll-called both ways, but the minutes were sealed for five years with no statutory finding stated. A point of order forced the RSA 198:20-b threshold to be checked before a $14,000 acceptance vote. The FY2021 audit item was struck from the agenda again. | 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 1, 2025 | Claremont School Board, Deliberative Session First session of the annual district meeting |
The first session of the district meeting under RSA 40:13 — run by Moderator Tracy Pope, not the board. Four warrant articles were explained and sent to the March ballot exactly as printed: no amendment was moved and no voter spoke. The moderator asked that discussion be limited to comments rather than questions “which should have been asked at an earlier public meeting”, against a statute that provides for explanation, discussion and debate. Packet of 4 documents; approved minutes posted. | 4 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 21, 2025 | Claremont School Board FY26 warrant to the deliberative session |
The meeting that put the FY26 warrant on the ballot, and the only one of the quarter with no packet folder at all. The nonpublic motion cited RSA 91-A:3 without naming a paragraph II exemption on its face, and the minutes were sealed for seven years with no statutory determination recorded. Playground spending was proposed from “the trust” without identifying the fund. Approved minutes posted. | 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 15, 2025 | Claremont School Board, Budget Public Hearing RSA 32:5 budget hearing |
The RSA 32:5 budget hearing on a $42,933,564 proposed budget — held 55 days before the March ballot session, with nothing inserted into the appropriation afterward, and public comment taken well past the statutory floor. Seven days' published notice is not evidenced in the packet or the minutes. Packet of 4 documents; approved minutes posted. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| January 7, 2025 | Claremont School Board Contract ratifications, policy slate, and the FY26 budget to public hearing |
Budget season with the full pre-election board. A $255,000 property purchase was decided in nonpublic session, with the sealing motion recording no statutory ground; pre-kindergarten was eliminated on a unanimous voice vote over a written dissent read into the record; and the year's budget leaned on roughly $1.9 million of extraordinary aid the finance chair called “very much of a year to year thing”. Packet of 12 documents; approved minutes and unsealed nonpublic minutes posted. | 1 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 6, 2025 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee FY26 budget-building session |
The clearest record anywhere of how the FY26 budget was actually built — an hour and three-quarters of line-by-line work with all five building administrators, who talked the board out of a student-services restructure and watched pre-K come out at about $500,000. A subcommittee is a public body under the Right-to-Know Law, and no notice, no agenda, no packet and no minutes for this meeting exist in any district share. | 1 HIGH 1 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| 2024 — 30 meetings | |||
| December 18, 2024 | Claremont School Board The night the budget did not move |
Regular meeting at which the budget did not move: with two collective bargaining agreements unratified, the chair said the board had to stay “pretty mum” about its bottom line, and the only FY26 figure spoken was a $39,791,261 default disclosed with no worksheet and no document. The one money vote was an $857,592 seven-year lease added at the table. Packet of 10 documents and approved minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 8 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| December 18, 2024 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee the FY2026 budget reaches a target |
Finance Subcommittee afternoon work session, at which the FY2026 budget arrived at a number: three board members, four administrators, no agenda, no motion and no vote, and a closing direction to find another $200,000 and land the whole thing at about four per cent. The full board met in the same building hours later and none of those figures reached its record. No agenda, packet or minutes exist. | 1 HIGH 7 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| December 13, 2024 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee The FY2026 draft budget, school by school |
Finance Subcommittee work session — two hours and twenty-three minutes walking the draft FY2026 budget building by building with the superintendent, the business administrator and the director of student services. A proposal to close the district preschool, unmet special-education staffing needs, and a percentage never attached to a dollar total all entered the record here. No agenda, packet, minutes or posted notice exist. | 2 HIGH 7 MEDIUM 1 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 12, 2024 | SAU 6 Board, FY26 Budget Public Hearing A fifty-five-minute hearing at which no total, no increase and no percentage was ever said out loud |
SAU 6 budget public hearing and adoption. In fifty-five minutes nobody stated the budget’s total, its increase or any percentage; the sheet in the room printed a 0.67 per cent decrease, while the $2,755,723 the board then voted is 10.71 per cent above FY25. Packet of eight documents, posted the afternoon of the meeting; minutes approved in April 2025 and never published. | 2 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 8 OBSERVATION 6 POSITIVE |
| December 4, 2024 | Claremont School Board The budget season opens without a number |
Regular meeting opening the FY26 budget season, in which not one dollar figure about the district’s own money was spoken in eighty-five minutes. The noticed default-budget item was replaced from the chair by a calendar of three Finance Committee meetings, one of them a closed-door rehearsal. Two students presented a stress survey of 194 people. Packet of four documents and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 9 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| November 21, 2024 | SAU 6 Board, Strategic Plan Presentation Forty-five minutes of business before the meeting began, and five minutes fifty seconds of meeting |
Single-item SAU 6 meeting on the five-year strategic plan. The board had no quorum at the noticed hour, so the presentation and every word of discussion happened before the gavel, forty-five minutes into the recording; the noticed citizens’ comment period was never called; and the plan was adopted without a dollar figure being spoken. Packet of two documents, posted four and a half hours before the vote; minutes in draft. | 5 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| November 20, 2024 | Claremont School Board The consent agenda that swallowed two meetings |
Regular meeting. In seventy-one minutes the board ratified a two-year teachers’ agreement no member of the public could read, and carried two sets of minutes through its consent agenda without discussion — one of them recording an unfilmed meeting six nights earlier, forty minutes of it behind a closed door. It then held its own nonpublic session and produced no minutes of that either. Packet of six documents and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 19, 2024 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee FY2026 budget-request walkthrough |
Finance Subcommittee work session — the first FY2026 budget session on tape, with every principal and district director in one room presenting their building’s requests to a three-member subcommittee. No motions, no votes and no adjournment. No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting exist in any district share, so the recording is the record. | 2 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 14, 2024 | SAU 6 Board The seal review happens, the raises are handed to the superintendent, and a second meeting nobody filmed |
Regular SAU 6 meeting. The board carried out the sealed-minutes review its own new policy required and released eight sets of nonpublic minutes, handed the superintendent the authority to set next year’s staff raises, and adopted six policies at a single first reading with the sample publisher’s drafting notes still in them. A second, unfilmed board meeting followed in the same room. Packet of ten documents; minutes in draft. | 3 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 6 POSITIVE |
| October 16, 2024 | Claremont School Board Sixteen days after the federal deadline |
Regular meeting, sixteen days after the federal ESSER obligation deadline. ESSER was mentioned twice: once to explain where a van came from, and once when the Finance chair asked for its final disposition and was told the numbers were still being assembled. The board voted to retain up to $350,000 of the FY24 surplus on an exhibit the public packet does not contain. Packet of eight documents and approved minutes posted. | 3 HIGH 9 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| October 2, 2024 | Claremont School Board The first meeting after the deadline |
Regular meeting, the first after the September 30 federal ESSER obligation deadline. The board’s own minutes a fortnight earlier had promised a report on that money in October; there was no finance item on the agenda, the business administrator was not in the room, and ESSER was spoken once in forty-seven minutes, by a counsellor in an aside. Packet of six documents and approved minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 9 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 6 POSITIVE |
| September 30, 2024 | Claremont School Board and City Council, Joint Meeting Two public bodies, one set of minutes |
Joint meeting of the school board and the city council — the only one in this archive, and the first between the two bodies in several years. Two hours and ten minutes, five presentations, no vote of any kind, and one set of minutes left behind between two public bodies. It fell on the day every dollar of federal ESSER money had to be obligated. No packet and no separately posted agenda; approved minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 8 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| September 18, 2024 | Claremont School Board Twelve days before the federal deadline |
Regular meeting, the last before the September 30 federal ESSER obligation deadline. The board’s entire treatment of that deadline occupies about ninety seconds of a sixty-two-minute recording and ends with the subject deferred to October. The same night it received the FY26 budget calendar, which nobody voted on. Packet of five documents and approved minutes posted. | 3 HIGH 11 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| September 12, 2024 | SAU 6 Board Pratt confirmed, four policies, and Unity told what its 7.8 percent buys |
Regular SAU 6 meeting, the joint board’s first in five months. It announced Christopher Pratt’s appointment as superintendent by announcement rather than by vote, three months after it took effect; learned that the central office’s health insurance had already been moved to a different carrier and took no vote on it; and revised its own organizational policy in terms that do not match RSA 194-C. Packet of thirteen documents; minutes in draft. | 1 HIGH 7 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| September 4, 2024 | Claremont School Board The first meeting of the school year, twenty-six days before the ESSER deadline |
Regular meeting, the first of the school year and twenty-six days before the ESSER deadline. Five of seven members, four items all carried over from August, no financial report, no superintendent’s report, and the word ESSER never spoken. The board reversed a roll-call vote taken a fortnight earlier and gave direction without a motion on a report about Unity’s place in SAU 6. Packet of five documents and approved minutes posted. | 4 HIGH 11 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| August 21, 2024 | Claremont School Board A position filled before the board created it |
Regular meeting. The board learned that a newly created administrative post had already been offered and accepted before the board created it, then entered nonpublic session on a motion that stated no exemption at all, declined to seal the minutes, and filed none. It also elected thirty-one teachers and changed a regular meeting date in perpetuity by voice vote. Packet of eight documents and approved minutes posted. | 3 HIGH 11 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| June 20, 2024 | Claremont School Board The last meeting before the fiscal year and the summer |
Regular meeting, the last before the fiscal year closed and the board’s summer recess. It voted $583,000 for two roofs under an agenda item headed “Financial Update (Discussion),” naming no source of funds, on the recommendation of a subcommittee with no notice, agenda or minutes; and it created a new standing body and changed two chairs without a vote. Packet of eleven documents; approved minutes reached the public share on 8 August. | 3 HIGH 10 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 5, 2024 | Claremont School Board By-laws adopted by a bare quorum |
Regular meeting, and the one that adopted the twenty-two-page Claremont School Board By-Laws. It opened with the chair announcing that there was no quorum, paused, and then ran the whole evening on four of seven members. Also on the night: three student handbooks, the ESSER-funded strategic-planning engagement described from the chair as budget neutral, and state assessment results at about half the state average in mathematics. Packet of thirteen documents and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 15, 2024 | Claremont School Board The $54,000 that nobody moved |
Regular meeting, all seven members present, three motions carried on uncounted voice votes. The board authorised an unbudgeted pre-bond architectural payment: the proposal, the request, the motion and the chair’s question were all $50,000, and the agenda and both the draft and approved minutes record $54,000, with no source of appropriation named anywhere. Packet of ten documents and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 13 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 17, 2024 | Claremont School Board The meeting that took the place of one that never happened |
Regular meeting, the board’s only one in April and the first with all seven seats filled since the March election. It stood in for a 3 April meeting for which no record of any kind exists and that nothing says was cancelled; the ESSER balance presentation scheduled for that night never happened. The district’s federal grant assurances were accepted with no motion and no vote. Packet of five documents and approved minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 7 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 11, 2024 | SAU 6 Board Annual reorganization, eight policies, Unity's withdrawal |
The joint Claremont–Unity board’s annual reorganization: Arlene Hawkins re-elected chair and Rocco Ruggeri vice chair in ninety seconds, with no secretary or treasurer chosen although RSA 194-C:5 names all three offices. Eight policies moved in one sitting, including a Title IX grievance policy the chair says the SAU had gone without since the 2020 federal regulations took effect, and a §504 grievance procedure tabled after a member argued such complaints belong at the Office for Civil Rights. Unity’s withdrawal reaches this board for the first time. Packet of 9 documents; draft minutes exist but are filed in the 9/12/24 packet and were approved 154 days after the meeting. | 1 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| March 20, 2024 | Claremont School Board The organizational meeting, and the year’s roster |
Organizational meeting after the 12 March district election, and the source for the board’s 2024–25 officers, subcommittees and delegate. The chair and vice chair were re-elected on uncounted voice votes taken before the roll call of attendance, and every subcommittee appointment was disposed of by “no objection” on an agenda that headed each item “Nomination/Vote.” Packet of seven documents and approved minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 13 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| March 6, 2024 | Claremont School Board The outgoing board spends the $420,000 it was holding |
Regular meeting, the last of the board elected in 2023 and six days before the district election. Its central item was a statutory public hearing on transferring $420,000 of retained fund balance into the FY2024 general fund; a motion to wait two weeks for the ballot result failed, the operative argument against it being that the board would not be the same board in two weeks. Packet of six documents and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 21, 2024 | Claremont School Board The night the board adopted the record of a meeting that has no other record |
Regular meeting with the largest packet in this archive, twenty-four documents. The one that matters most runs three pages, carries no attendance, no times and no location, and records a meeting with no video, no notice and no agenda; the board approved it on the consent agenda without a motion, a second or a vote. Packet of 24 documents and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| February 15, 2024 | SAU 6 Board The first meeting under a new interim superintendent, whose contract does not appear on it |
Regular SAU 6 meeting, the first with Christopher Pratt sitting as interim superintendent. Five policies were disposed of in about seventy minutes, three of them adopted at a reading the agenda had noticed as a first read. The evening opened with a fifty-six-minute nonpublic session of which the published recording contains sixteen seconds. Packet of ten documents; minutes in draft. | 3 HIGH 7 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| February 3, 2024 | Claremont School Board, Deliberative Session SB 2 first session: five articles, one typo, no amendment |
Deliberative session — the first of the two sessions of the annual district meeting under SB 2, and not a board meeting: the body in the room was the registered voters of Claremont. Ninety-three minutes, five warrant articles, and the voters’ power exercised once, to correct “2015” to “2025.” The FY25 budget went to the ballot exactly as written, at $39,582,407. Packet of nine documents; draft and approved minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| January 17, 2024 | Claremont School Board The night the FY25 budget got its final number |
Regular meeting, and the one that fixed the FY25 budget at $36,117,406.87 — $196,001.10 below the figure carried into the hearing two weeks earlier, and $210,633 above the default. The board took two votes, neither counted; the approved minutes name a mover for the night’s only amendment whom the recording does not support; and the budget documents showed no revenue of any kind. Packet of fourteen documents and approved minutes posted. | 7 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 6 POSITIVE |
| January 11, 2024 | SAU 6 Board The superintendent is terminated and a successor appointed, both effective the next day |
SAU 6 Board meeting — the night the unit changed superintendents. Under an agenda item consisting of the single word “Superintendent,” and after a sixty-eight-minute nonpublic session whose minutes were sealed for thirty years, the board terminated Michael Tempesta’s contract with six months’ severance and appointed Christopher Pratt interim superintendent, both effective the next day, 10–1–1 with no member speaking to either motion. Packet of four documents; minutes in draft. | 2 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| January 5, 2024 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee The $688,426.17 answered, and the meeting nobody could watch |
Finance Subcommittee work session, two days after the statutory budget hearing. The $688,426.17 credit the committee had chased since December turned out to be a plug for grant-funded salaries never distributed to the lines they belonged on, leaving $16,830 unplaced; the chair reported about half a million more in prior-year misentries. The committee then scheduled a further session and decided on camera not to televise it. No minutes exist. | 2 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| January 3, 2024 | Claremont School Board, FY25 Budget Public Hearing The statutory budget hearing under RSA 32:5 |
Budget public hearing — the one hearing state law requires before a district asks its voters for money. The board presented an operating budget of $36,313,407.97 against a default of $35,906,774, and not one member of the public spoke; every question in the forty-one minutes came from the board itself. Packet of seven documents and approved minutes posted. | 5 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| 2023 — 39 meetings | |||
| December 20, 2023 | Claremont School Board The FY2025 budget goes to hearing |
Regular meeting, and the hinge of the FY2025 budget season: after five televised finance sessions in nineteen days, the board voted to send a budget of $36,313,407.97 to public hearing, and the approved minutes record the motion, its mover and its seconder but not the amount. It also ratified three collective bargaining agreements and spent two hours and twenty-nine minutes in nonpublic session. Packet of five documents and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 7 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| December 18, 2023 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee FY2025 budget, the last working session |
Finance Subcommittee work session, the fifth and last of the FY2025 budget season. No total is spoken in two hours and twenty-four minutes; the largest figure on the table is an increase of 1.783 million, about $350,000 more than the board moved two days later. The session ends with the chair clearing the room for a members-only caucus, and the recording stops. No agenda, packet or minutes exist. | 2 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| December 14, 2023 | SAU 6 Board, FY25 Budget Public Hearing The budget is adopted, and a 35-minute nonpublic session vanishes from the tape |
SAU 6 budget public hearing and adoption: $2,489,151.03, up $93,151.03 or 3.89 per cent, eighteen days inside the statutory deadline and after a hearing that lasted about sixty-seven seconds. The minutes place a thirty-five-minute nonpublic session inside a twenty-two-minute recording, and the board approved 7 December minutes that exist in no public share. Packet of three documents; minutes in draft. | 2 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 8 OBSERVATION 6 POSITIVE |
| December 13, 2023 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee FY2025 budget review, day four |
Finance Subcommittee work session, the fourth of the FY2025 season and the last before the committee reported to the full board. Nobody in the room could say what the total was: the chair says so out loud, and the business administrator confirms that the summary page in the members’ binder had already been superseded. No agenda, packet or minutes exist in any district share. | 2 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| December 7, 2023 | SAU 6 Board The FY25 budget meeting, and the minutes that were approved and never published |
SAU 6 Board meeting on the FY25 budget — thirty-nine minutes as published, with the caucus recess and the nonpublic session edited out. The board took the proposal from 8.12 to 4.25 per cent in one sitting and moved $2,497,924 to a hearing the statute does not require, then sealed nonpublic minutes for ninety-nine years with the chair voting no. The public minutes were approved a week later and never published. Packet of three documents. | 1 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 8 OBSERVATION 7 POSITIVE |
| December 6, 2023 | Claremont School Board Two schedules, one vote |
Regular meeting, thirty-five recorded minutes. The board came out of a nonpublic session with two officials of another district having voted to become Croydon’s anchor district, sealing the discussion for six months; adopted two different Programs of Studies for the same school year in a single motion; and heard its Finance Subcommittee report that the record of five budget sessions is the CCTV broadcast. Packet of four documents; draft and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 9 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| December 6, 2023 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee FY2025 budget review: facilities and special education |
Finance Subcommittee work session, the third in seven days on the FY2025 budget, bringing in the buildings-and-grounds and special-education directors. On camera the district’s own officers establish that the current year’s budget did not account for positions needed or vacant, that a supply line is still charged for a programme closed about a decade ago, and that a social worker is counted twice. No agenda, packet or minutes exist. | 2 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 1, 2023 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee FY2025 budget review, day two |
Finance Subcommittee work session — three hours line by line through the secondary-school and district-wide halves of the FY2025 budget, the morning after an evening on the elementary schools. The business administrator tells the committee the current year’s budget contains a negative line of $688,426.17 she cannot account for, and the chair finds one employee budgeted in two places at once. No agenda, packet or minutes exist. | 2 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 30, 2023 | Claremont School Board Finance Committee FY2025 elementary budget review |
Finance Subcommittee work session, the opening night of the FY2025 budget season: three board members, four administrators and the three elementary principals going line by line through the elementary school budgets on live television, with no agenda, no motions, no votes and no adjournment. No agenda, packet or minutes exist in any district share. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| November 15, 2023 | Claremont School Board A clerk is appointed, and stops the meeting |
Regular meeting. The district clerk’s seat, empty since March, was filled — by a woman who had already stopped the meeting to tell the board it had sealed minutes the wrong way. The state told Claremont that Bluff Elementary is in the lowest-performing five per cent in New Hampshire, and the business administrator reported roughly $300,000 of federal pandemic money unclaimed. Packet of five documents; draft and approved minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 11 OBSERVATION 6 POSITIVE |
| November 9, 2023 | SAU 6 Board A clerk appointed, and the office the statute names still empty |
Regular SAU 6 meeting, sixty-two minutes of business. The board appointed Noelle Kronberg as its clerk in the first four minutes, after withdrawing an earlier motion when told the Claremont seat was Claremont’s to fill; the office of secretary that RSA 194-C:5 actually names was left empty. It also adopted four objectives and sixteen key results with no timeline attached. Packet of six documents and minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| November 1, 2023 | Claremont School Board The pre-K case, the clerk's pay, and a 50-year seal |
Regular meeting built around the administration’s five-point plan to rebuild the district’s early-childhood programme, including a first-ever fee for regular-education families; the board received it, asked for a timeline in January, and took no vote on any of it. It did vote to approach the paraprofessionals’ union, raise the district clerk’s pay, and set an FY25 tuition rate of $16,000. Packet of seventeen documents, the largest of 2023, and minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| October 18, 2023 | Claremont School Board The athletic-fields licence, the fund balance, and an attendance record missing two members |
Regular meeting. No roll call was taken and the minutes account for only five of the board’s seven members; one of the two omitted speaks eight times on the recording. The board took the first public vote this archive can find on a $30,000-a-year municipal athletic-fields licence whose term had already run seven weeks, and heard how far the district’s audits had fallen behind. Packet of nine documents and approved minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| October 4, 2023 | Claremont School Board Twelve NHSBA resolutions, a policy adopted, and no subcommittee minutes anywhere |
Regular meeting. The board worked through the New Hampshire School Boards Association’s twelve proposed resolutions one at a time, taking a recorded position on each ten days before the delegate assembly, and adopted policy GBE on second reading. A capital-improvements report from a building tour found two roof sections unreplaced, a floor failing on a badly laid subfloor, and a building management system broken for years. Packet of five documents and minutes posted. | 4 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| September 20, 2023 | Claremont School Board The tax-rate primer, and a set of minutes that never came |
Regular meeting. Its substance is a twelve-minute public walkthrough of how Claremont’s school tax rate is built, every figure of which ties to the packet and to the statutory formula. Around it: a nonpublic session entered on a miscited exemption and sealed for ten years, and the previous meeting’s minutes postponed for want of a draft that still does not exist. Packet of five documents and minutes posted. | 3 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| September 6, 2023 | Claremont School Board Board governance, the Yondr rollout, and a meeting with no minutes |
Regular meeting. The recording stops mid-sentence after fifty-two minutes, on the second of seven discussion items, so for the last two thirds of the agenda — a nonpublic session, a six-year athletic-fields licence and the second read of the policy governing public comment — there is no public record of any kind. Packet of thirteen documents, the richest governance packet of 2023; no minutes exist. | 2 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| August 17, 2023 | SAU 6 Board The treasurer refilled, the secretary still missing, and a purchase already made |
Regular SAU 6 meeting, eighty-two minutes. The board refilled the treasurer’s office its July chair election had emptied but took no countable vote on it; suspended policy CBI because the superintendent had not been evaluated in a timely manner, a vote that appears nowhere in the minutes; and learned that a roughly $120,000 software purchase had already been made before it voted to approve it. Packet of nine documents; minutes in draft. | 3 HIGH 7 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| August 16, 2023 | Claremont School Board The last meeting before school opens |
Regular meeting, the last before school opened: seventy-four minutes, four of seven members, no superintendent, and eight recorded votes, every one unanimous and taken by four members. Three student handbooks were approved with amendments that did not yet exist in writing, two health policies adopted in thirty-three seconds, and nineteen educators elected in twenty-four. Packet of thirteen documents and minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 9 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| August 9, 2023 | Claremont School Board Special meeting: The Academy at the Tech Center |
Special meeting on a single item, two hours long: whether to put an alternative-education programme for struggling Stevens High School students inside a career and technical education centre that state statute reserves for career and technical education exclusively. The board approved it 4–3 on a raised-hand vote, with the legal opinion it had commissioned still unwritten. Packet of three documents and minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| August 2, 2023 | Claremont School Board Handbooks, adequacy aid and two health policies |
Regular meeting, two hours and forty minutes of back-to-school business for a district short of teachers, drivers and time: three student handbooks brought in draft, a bus-driver shortage waiver renewed for one season only, the first full account of the new adequacy-aid formula from a business administrator four weeks into the job, and two health policies moved on a first read. Packet of twelve documents and minutes posted. | 8 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| July 19, 2023 | Claremont School Board Filling the vacant seat |
Regular meeting. Its single action of consequence was the appointment of a seventh board member: three residents applied for the seat Steven Horsky vacated on 21 June, each answered the same three questions at the podium, and the board chose between two nominees on a 4–2 show of hands. Packet and minutes posted. | 4 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| July 13, 2023 | SAU 6 Board A chair elected by show of hands, and two statutory offices left empty |
Regular SAU 6 meeting. The board elected a new chair by show of hands, and only after a member’s point of order stopped a paper ballot; that election moved the treasurer into the chair and left the treasurer’s office empty, on a board that had never chosen a secretary. The chair was told that retirement money withheld from teachers’ pay had gone unforwarded for months. Packet of four items; minutes in draft. | 1 HIGH 8 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| June 21, 2023 | Claremont School Board Last meeting of the school year |
Regular meeting, the last of the 2022–23 school year. It opened with an hour and a half in nonpublic session, came back into public view for Steven Horsky’s resignation effective immediately, added $90,000 to the Stevens High School roof job, raised every school meal price, and adopted the policy that governs how this board adopts policy. Packet and minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 5 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 7, 2023 | Claremont School Board A $5,500 gift over the threshold, a 177-day calendar, and a retreat dated 2020 |
Regular meeting. The board accepted a $5,500 donation from a national foundation — over the $5,000 threshold that then triggered a mandatory prior hearing with seven days’ newspaper notice, which nothing in the record shows — and approved changes to a school-year calendar printing 177 student days, three below the statutory 180, on the consent agenda without a vote. Packet of eleven documents and minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 11 MEDIUM 8 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| May 11, 2023 | SAU 6 Board A business administrator, a third-read adoption, a ten-year seal |
Regular SAU 6 meeting. The board appointed the SAU’s business administrator on an item the posted agenda does not contain, adopted policy GCQB-R at third and final read in a text still missing the amendment it had voted in four weeks earlier and still citing a United Kingdom statute, and sealed nonpublic minutes for ten years without stating any statutory ground. Packet of seven items; minutes in draft. | 2 HIGH 7 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| May 3, 2023 | Claremont School Board The special-education report, an ASL class, and the CCTV appointment |
Regular meeting carried by two items: an hour-long report from the Director of Special Education, and the appointment of a board member to the board of Claremont Community Television. An appendix to the special-education report lists individual students by name, grade and disability programme on the district’s public share. The board also approved an American Sign Language class at Stevens over its vice chair’s lone no. Packet of six documents and minutes posted. | 3 HIGH 4 MEDIUM 6 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| April 19, 2023 | Claremont School Board Regular meeting: a $500,000 capital-reserve roof vote, an ELA purchase with no price, and a public-participation policy pulled from the agenda |
Regular meeting. The chair arrived late, and her first act was to strike from the agenda the one item marked “Vote required.” The board approved a district-wide literacy purchase for which no dollar figure appears anywhere in the record, filled six subcommittees and a delegate seat without a vote, and voted to release up to $500,000 from the Capital Reserve Trust Fund for a leaking roof. Packet of seven documents and minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 8 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| April 13, 2023 | SAU 6 Board Policy second reads, a new treasurer, a 50-year seal |
Regular SAU 6 meeting, the first since the board elected new officers on 30 March. It took second reads of the two policies opened two weeks earlier and finished them differently, one adopted and one sent to a third read; elected a treasurer who twice asked to think about it first; and sealed a two-minute nonpublic session’s minutes for fifty years without stating any ground. Packet of seven items; minutes in draft. | 5 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| April 5, 2023 | Claremont School Board Organizational meeting: officers elected, a transportation waiver, two donations and the tech-center plan |
Organizational meeting, the first of the seven-member board seated by the March 14 election. The superintendent presided over the officer election in the first two minutes, on unanimous voice votes with no count taken. The board approved a liability waiver letting approved adults drive middle-school athletes in private cars, against its own attorney’s earlier advice, and committed $47,900 of ESSER money to a tech-center study. Packet of nine documents and minutes posted. | 5 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| March 30, 2023 | SAU 6 Board The annual reorganization: a 6–5 paper ballot |
Annual SAU 6 organizational meeting. Claremont’s delegation went from six seats to seven, and the chairmanship passed from Unity to Claremont on a 6–5 paper ballot whose individual votes no public record contains. The superintendent read the business administrator’s retirement letter, effective in fifteen days, and the board elected a chair and a vice chair but not the secretary and treasurer the statute names. Packet of eleven documents; minutes in draft. | 4 MEDIUM 7 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| March 1, 2023 | Claremont School Board ESSER update and the last meeting before the election |
Regular meeting and public hearing, the last before the March 14 election that removed the chair. Its substance was a single accounting: with seven months left to run on the ESSER II obligation deadline the district had drawn down $389,390 of a $2,879,320.86 allocation and still had $269,878.54 unbudgeted, and the assistant superintendent presenting the grants said he had never done ESSER reporting. Packet and minutes posted. | 3 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 5 POSITIVE |
| February 16, 2023 | SAU 6 Board Superintendent evaluation, Teach United, a 99-year seal |
Regular SAU 6 meeting. The board adopted a written superintendent-evaluation process, tool and calendar after its chair said on the record that the board had not been very good at that in recent years; the chair stated that the SAU had missed its December budget hearing; and a nonpublic session was voted, held and sealed for not longer than ninety-nine years while the microphone kept running. Packet of four documents; minutes in draft. | 1 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| February 15, 2023 | Claremont School Board Adding $600,000 to the default budget |
Regular meeting, one week after the deliberative session put $1,000,000 back into the operating budget. The one number still in the board’s own hands was the default budget: the chair cut off a grade-reconfiguration presentation, a member moved to add $600,000, and it carried 4–2 on a roll call. The result, $36,942,948, is the default printed on the March 14 ballot. Packet of six documents and minutes posted. | 1 HIGH 3 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| February 8, 2023 | Claremont School Board, Deliberative Session SB 2 first session: the $1,000,000 amendment |
Deliberative session — the first of the two sessions of the annual district meeting under SB 2, and not a board meeting: the body in the room was the registered voters of Claremont, presided over by the district moderator. A voter moved from the floor to put $1,000,000 back into the operating budget; after about forty-eight minutes of debate and a secret ballot the amendment carried 41–27. Packet of seven documents and approved minutes posted. | 2 HIGH 6 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 1, 2023 | Claremont School Board Budget reduction and grade reconfiguration |
Regular meeting, one week after the board voted 5–1 to cut a further $1,000,000 and one week before the deliberative session. In two and three quarter hours the administration explained how it proposed to find the money — moving pre-K, grade 5 and grade 8 between buildings and shifting about sixty per cent of the savings onto grants. Seventeen residents spoke, nearly all against the timing. Packet and minutes posted. | 5 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 17, 2023 | Claremont School Board, FY24 Budget Public Hearing | Two bodies in one recording. The SAU 6 board heard, amended and adopted its FY24 budget at $2,396,000, seventeen days after the statutory January 1 date. The Claremont board then heard its proposed $38,345,312 budget and voted four ways on it: a 4 to 2 voice count set aside, an abandoned roll call, a secret ballot the minutes record as 3 to 3, and a $1,000,000 cut carried 5 to 1. Draft minutes of both bodies posted late. | 2 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 11, 2023 | Claremont School Board, Public Hearing & Board Meeting | Regular meeting with the required public hearing on a $10,000 Byrne Foundation gift, later accepted. First full look at the FY24 budget, about $39.3 million and a projected $2.26 rate rise; learning Newport was already launching a teacher-education program, the board dropped both new technical-center positions and, by consensus, told the administration to aim for the FY2022 rate. Joshua Lambert resigned; the board voted to leave his seat empty until March. Packet and draft minutes posted. | 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 9, 2023 | Claremont School Board | Fifteen-minute special meeting. Five of seven members ratified the two-year SREA teachers' agreement (3.25 and 3.75 percent, grid rebuilt to keep teachers past year three) after the business administrator gave its cost, just over $1 million in year one, and explained that it rides inside the operating budget rather than as a separate warrant article. Packet posted the same afternoon; minutes posted within five business days. | 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 3, 2023 | SAU 6 Board | Joint Claremont and Unity SAU board, seven of twelve present. Worked through the FY24 SAU budget (positions moved from Claremont, a new HR director, an ESSER curriculum post made permanent) and voted to adopt $2,406,073, three days after the statutory January 1 date; the minutes describe the same vote as sending the figure to a public hearing. A former member asked whether a hearing is legally required. Minutes posted on the twelfth business day. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| 2022 — 22 meetings | |||
| November 16, 2022 | SAU 6 Board | Claremont chair Michael Petrin presides because the SAU chair and vice chair join by Zoom. Consultants Bill Lupini and Anne Wilson present an organizational study of the SAU central office with eleven recommendations, led by a trained HR lead, current job descriptions and cross-training. The superintendent calls it accurate and mentions past years without audits. Budget calendar set for December 1 and 15. All votes are voice votes despite remote members; the roll on tape and in the minutes disagree. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 3, 2022 | Claremont School Board, Special Meeting | Single-session special district meeting under RSA 197:3-a, moderated by Tracy Pope. Voters amend and pass by voice vote the $482,094.01 SB 420 extraordinary need grant appropriation for student achievement, adding a board-approved accountability plan requirement proposed by David Putnam. The meeting also approves the 2022 and 2021 deliberative-session minutes, which the statute's no-other-business clause calls into question. The rules sheet described an SB 2 ballot meeting. Minutes surfaced three months later. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 19, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Second hearing on the SB 420 money, now a one-article warrant adding $482,094.01 to the operating budget for student achievement, to buy literacy and math materials and training a year early. A motion to table until the business administrator and counsel could answer fails; the warrant goes to the November 3 special meeting 5-2, Whitney and Horsky opposed. Members disagree on what a no vote would do. Staff confirm lapsed Title funds. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 5, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Public hearing on a draft special-meeting warrant putting about $430,000 of SB 420 grant money into capital, transportation and energy reserves. Residents read the statute's student-achievement purpose aloud; the business administrator calls it unrestricted aid. The board tables the draft pending written advice from counsel. Regular business: policies JICD and JICK adopted, ESSER II balance of about $503,664 reviewed, restructuring and schedule slides, special-education staffing gaps. Summer-program assessment data reported lost. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 29, 2022 | SAU 6 Board | Consultant William Lupini outlines the SAU central-office staffing study, promising staff non-attribution. Budget calendar set for October 27, December 1 and a December 15 vote. Auditor asks to push Claremont's fiscal 2020 audit, due the next day, to end of October; Claremont used nearly all expiring Title funds. Minutes from December 2021 onward approved in a batch. A member joins by video with voice votes only; draft minutes list one member as present and absent. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 21, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Board votes an SB 420 warrant putting $429,867.51 into energy, transportation and capital trusts, later reversed after residents cited the grant statute. ESSER III spending shown line by line; curriculum team reports the summer program's growth data was lost. Citizens' comments limited to non-agenda items; a resident's $650,000 question goes unanswered. Budget, policy and ad hoc committees report meetings with no minutes located. A 2019 special-education trust still holds $650,000. File name and Cablecast date wrongly say 9/15. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 7, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Business administrator reports fiscal 2020 audits still being finished, single audit current only from fiscal 2022, and $828,000 of Claremont grant money unspent or unreimbursed before a September 30 lapse, calling past grant management "not a good process". A resident who could not find minutes online questions staff during agenda items. JICD and JICK to second read; 24 teachers approved; board votes to hold an SB 420 special meeting on about $430,000. Minutes omit seconders. | 3 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| August 24, 2022 | Claremont School Board, Special Meeting | Vice chair presides with the chair and one member absent. Stevens, middle-school and elementary handbooks approved after a long exchange on restorative justice for felony-level offenses; the Stevens text is edited live. Skillen elected NHSBA delegate, Sprague alternate; co-chairs named for six committees plus an ad hoc parliamentary committee. Business administrator puts the fiscal 2020 audits at end of September. Minutes name the vice chair as both mover and seconder of adjournment. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| August 17, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Regular meeting at the tech center. The curriculum team presented a plan for district-wide baseline assessments; the board elected a slate of new staff, several on ESSER money, and declared a local critical shortage for a library media specialist under RSA 189:39-a. Handbooks were tabled to August 24 because members had not received them. A resident learned the FY2020 audits were still under way and the board had not seen the FY2019 report. The minutes omit one seconder. | 2 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| July 20, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Summer meeting with five of seven members (Horsky and Sprague absent per the minutes). Reports on ESSER-funded summer programs and high school credit recovery; new assistant superintendent Michael Koski introduced. The tech-center visioning committee gave its first report and the board approved sending out an RFP for a consultant. A $3,000 Byrne Foundation gift was acknowledged without agenda notice. The finance officer reported the FY2019 audit just completed. | 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| June 16, 2022 | SAU 6 Board | Short SAU 6 board meeting with no agenda or minutes online. The board entered nonpublic session by roll call and voted to seal those minutes for 90 years without stating a statutory ground. It approved minutes from October and November 2021, with December and April still outstanding, asked the superintendent for an SAU staffing-needs assessment, planned a retreat at the chair's home, and raised the SAU clerk's pay from $75 to $150 a meeting. | 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 15, 2022 | Claremont School Board | The recording opens as the board leaves a nonpublic session and votes by roll call to seal its minutes for 99 years, with no statutory ground stated on tape or in the minutes. The board approved six sets of minutes back to January, heard a district data presentation, switched food service to Fresh Picks after a scored RFP with a guaranteed $25,000 surplus, began filling the vacant clerk's office, and reappointed its two CCTV board members over two no votes. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| May 19, 2022 | SAU 6 Board | The SAU 6 board postponed its minutes again because they were still not ready, voted to take the roughly $35,000 SAU merit pay pool out of the budget and freeze it until the board approves a use, and asked for an impartial outside review of SAU staffing (22 FTE in 2017-18 against 16.5 now). It set a tentative joint retreat for July 24 and outlined the superintendent's year-end evaluation. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 18, 2022 | Claremont School Board | The board seated the chair's daughter as student representative, with the relationship disclosed, and heard the incoming Stevens principal's restorative practices plan after a parent group raised bullying. Three elementary principals reported on the year. The special education director put in-district program savings at about $585,000, correcting his own $623,000 figure. Universal free meals end June 30; food service expects a $300,000 surplus. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| May 4, 2022 | Claremont School Board | The superintendent presented a $3.34 million ESSER staffing plan sunsetting in FY2025, and pre-K data showed non-attenders outscoring attenders. The business administrator disclosed a state monitoring visit that found missing federal-grant policies, procedures and time-and-effort certifications, and admitted reimbursements were behind. The board authorized the FY2023 assurances, adopted the two flagged policies, joined an amicus brief, tabled BEDH, and entered nonpublic session on a motion whose cited exemption is unclear. No minutes online. | 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| April 21, 2022 | SAU 6 Board | Organization: Unity's Marjorie Erickson elected chair in absentia after Michael Petrin declines; Frank Sprague elected vice chair and presides. Three sets of 2021 minutes are tabled because the clerk had not produced them. Members question the central-office budget; data and privacy plan approved. On the SAU merit-pay pool, a motion to suspend fails 4-6 and a flat 1.5% release fails 5-5 by head count, Claremont members for and Unity members against; tabled to May. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 HIGH 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| April 6, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Organizational meeting after the March election: clerk Mary Woodman sworn in, Michael Petrin elected chair and Heather Whitney vice chair. An $8,000 scholarship gift goes through the public hearing then required at $5,000. The superintendent presents the ARP ESSER III plan (survey of 196, new staff, academic centers, deans, eighth-grade exploratory courses); members and residents press on sustainability after the one-time money. Three principals elected, calendar adopted, May 1 retreat set. Minutes exist; their masthead lists the old board. | 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| February 16, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Unscheduled one-item meeting, titled an emergency session by CCTV, to revise the COVID-19 matrix. Masks become optional in school from Monday, February 21, 2022, while bus masking under the federal order and state post-isolation masking stay. The amendment carries on a confused roll call announced 4-3; the amended motion passes 5-2 with Joshua Lambert voting remotely. Residents speak for and against. December 2021 minutes reach the board eleven weeks late. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 9, 2022 | Claremont School District, Deliberative Session | First session of the 2022 annual meeting, with Charlene Lovett presiding as acting moderator. The $37,243,825 operating budget equals the default. Voters object to halving the technical-center director and, on two secret ballots, add $61,973 to restore the director (53-6) and $87,290 for a full-time technical-center counselor (48-9 per the minutes). Counsel says the additions do not bind spending. Four bargaining articles advance unamended. Two versions of the minutes exist. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| February 2, 2022 | Claremont School Board | The superintendent explains tech center reductions (nurse, guidance counselor, half-time director) and the administration recommends cutting one preschool teacher and classroom; residents are heard within each item under a new policy barring comments on agenda items. Omicron attendance data reviewed; protocols unchanged. The agenda printed a 7:00 start against the usual 6:30. For a third meeting there are no minutes to approve, with several pending. Ends in a roll-call nonpublic session. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 18, 2022 | Claremont School Board | FY2023 budget hearing held on the SB 2 deadline: $37,243,825 appropriation, general fund down $541,581, estimated total school rate $23.20. About twenty residents speak, mostly against tech center cuts and elimination of the autism specialist; one member says he voted without knowing that position was cut. After a nonpublic session the budget and four contract warrant articles go to the deliberative session unchanged; a filing notice's wrong term length is corrected. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 5, 2022 | Claremont School Board | Four collective bargaining agreements (secretaries, maintenance, paraprofessionals, administrators) ratified and sent to the ballot, with per-year costs read into the record. The $37,243,825 FY2023 budget is sent to the January 18 hearing, a $500 Bluff gift and the Stevens Program of Studies accepted. A basketball Covid cluster dispute brings the district nurse coordinator to the podium to answer two parents. The finance officer overstates catastrophic aid at 90%. No minutes available. | 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| 2021 — 23 meetings | |||
| December 16, 2021 | SAU 6 Board | After a nonpublic session on compensation, the SAU 6 board heard a revised SAU budget of about $1,795,945 (up 1.34%), debated how merit pay had been paid flat without evaluations, adopted the budget by voice vote, and extended the superintendent's contract five years on terms still to be agreed. One member attended remotely yet votes were by voice; prior minutes still not ready. No agenda or minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 1, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Short meeting: interim-principal searches at Bluff and Maple, winter-sports COVID rules, tentative agreements with the secretaries and the custodial and maintenance unit, and budget committee sessions set for December 13 and 14. A Capital Improvement committee met entirely over Zoom; an online member apparently could not take part while all votes were by voice. November 3 minutes approved. No agenda or minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 18, 2021 | SAU 6 Board | The proposed SAU budget was presented for a December vote; members questioned above-budget salaries, a $100,000 surplus set aside for office improvements, and audits running two years behind (FY19 only finishing). October minutes were not written, the clerk citing an injury. The motion to enter nonpublic session named no exemption and was put to a voice vote as the recording ends. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 3, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Former member Jason Benware questioned the restructuring's pre-K costs and a reported $175,000 reserve draw; the business administrator later said it came from the transportation fund on a prior approval. The superintendent presented universal pre-K and a common secondary schedule; members debated leaving Region 10. Four policies adopted on first read, one still marked up; a Veterans Day retreat was set. No agenda or minutes online. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 21, 2021 | SAU 6 Board | A 37-minute SAU 6 meeting. The board approved its July 1 minutes as amended, heard the superintendent on the SAU building renovation and COVID-19 tracking, and received an introduction to the FY23 SAU budget with retirement rates up about 3 points. Told the 3% merit pool (about $33,000) was paid to all staff without formal evaluation, the board voted to withhold release until a process exists. Roll call and tally inaudible; no minutes online. | 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 20, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Public hearing and acceptance of a $10,500 NH Charitable Foundation grant and $1,000 Claremont Savings Bank gift. The board tabled the September 15 minutes; the chair said his remote Fish Tank vote was meant for calling the question. The lead nurse reported school-by-school COVID-19 figures and an unreported cluster. The Capital Improvement Committee said the Maple Avenue roof was reportedly paid from the emergency reserve fund with no board vote anyone recalled. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| September 20, 2021 | SAU 6 Board | An administration-led community forum at Stevens High School, not a board business meeting: no roll call, motions or votes. The superintendent presented grade-level elementary schools with universal pre-K, draft class-size ceilings of 14 and 18, and a timeline, saying the plan should cost the same or less. Parents and a teacher questioned an early survey the superintendent called incomplete and one teacher could answer twice. Hybrid and televised. | 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 15, 2021 | Claremont School Board | With chair Frank Sprague participating remotely and Heather Whitney presiding, the board voted on an audible 5-1 roll call (Lambert no, Lovett unrecorded) to remove Fish Tank and temporarily reinstate Reading Wonders, several members saying they had been misled about its use in social studies. Four other votes were by voice although a member was remote, contrary to RSA 91-A:2, III(e). The board adopted per-item public comment. No minutes online. | 1 HIGH 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 1, 2021 | Claremont School Board | A week into the school year the board heard the state-funded surveillance testing plan, tabled vaccination incentives on the administration's advice, approved the Stevens program of studies, and amended the COVID-19 decision matrix 4-3 by roll call so masks at the moderate level are strongly recommended rather than required. A resident asked for public comment on motions, and the board planned a "non meeting" for the superintendent's evaluation. No agenda or minutes are online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| August 18, 2021 | Claremont School Board | With Petrin absent, the board approved elementary and middle school handbooks, tabled the Stevens handbook for a transcript section, met new assistant superintendent Dr. Mary Ellen Janeiro, and adopted the 2021-22 COVID-19 matrix by roll call 4-1 with one abstention, allowing masked spectators indoors. A seconded motion to authorize $20,000 in CARES-reimbursed vaccination incentives was never voted. Nominations passed 5-1. No agenda or minutes are online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| August 4, 2021 | Claremont School Board | The board adopted the administration's reopening plan, masks optional except on buses, by voice vote after the chair declined a roll call. Stevens reported a class of 2021 completion rate of about 67% against 78 to 79% in prior years. The board approved an April 2022 Puerto Rico senior trip and an interim out-of-district pay-to-play arrangement, and the chair corrected his earlier statements on education freedom accounts. Rob Lovett Jr.'s attendance is uncertain. | 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| July 21, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Teachers presented the Fish Tank reading pilot; Steven Horsky's seconded roll-call motion to suspend it was withdrawn for an unvoted directive to inform parents. Tacit approval for Vermont players to condition with CMS football pending a vote. Fall masking deferred to August. Members' Education Freedom Account figures differ from RSA 194-F. Voice votes were taken with a member remote, after the state of emergency ended. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| July 1, 2021 | SAU 6 Board | First SAU 6 board meeting since December 10, 2020, so the board organized after the April 1 to June 1 window in RSA 194-C:5. The superintendent opened the meeting and ran the officer election: Michael Petrin re-elected chair in absentia, Marjorie Erickson vice chair. Steven Horsky elected treasurer; superintendent evaluation subcommittee set for August 4. Renovation and summer program reports. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| June 2, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Moment of silence for member Carolyn Towle, who died in May. Nicholas Stone, the only applicant, spoke in citizens' comments and was appointed and sworn in under RSA 671:33. Masks made optional at board meetings. The superintendent reported about $10.6 million in COVID relief funds. The board authorized summer hiring of budgeted positions, sent out-of-district athletes to the policy committee and declined to oppose HB 544. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| May 5, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Regular meeting at the middle school. The 2021 to 2026 strategic plan was adopted on a voice vote with an unidentified mover. On its first presentation the board voted a conceptual, district-wide change separating competency reporting from letter and numerical grades, after the chair asked about public input and members said feedback was already in. Plans for a student vaccine clinic, outdoor prom and graduation; realignment debated. April 7 and retreat minutes approved; none online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 7, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Second Cablecast copy of the April 7, 2021 meeting, titled for 4-7-21 but carrying a 4/15/21 event date and file name; its separately recognized transcript runs about 16 seconds behind show 11444. Same business: the technology grant added to a public hearing without statutory notice and accepted with the library gift, a return to voice votes, and the needle exchange permission revoked. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 7, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Public hearing and regular meeting. A $451,832 federal technology grant was added on the night to a hearing noticed for an $11,160.92 library gift, under a stated $10,000 threshold the statute did not use; both were accepted. The board heard of about $2.9 million in new CARES money, returned to voice votes once all members were present, and revoked a needle exchange permission for a site the program left in 2020. Towle absent. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| March 17, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Organizational meeting after the March 2021 election, opened by the superintendent while the swearing-in was delayed. Frank Sprague re-elected chair; tallies and the second office are not audible. By roll call the board let the superintendent reopen schools for maximum in-person learning from April 12. A $450,000 federal technology grant was announced with inconsistent match figures, and the needle exchange's promised quarterly reports were found never to have arrived. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 4, 2021 | Claremont School District Meeting | Twelve-minute second virtual session under HB 1129. No voter submissions were received on either article, no board member proposed an amendment, and the election article and the $37,785,406 operating budget went to the March 9 drive-up ballot as posted. Petrin called the budget not a rubber stamp, citing five budget subcommittee meetings for which no notice or minutes are available. These minutes were approved in February 2022 but are not online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| February 1, 2021 | Claremont School District Meeting | First virtual session of the 2021 annual meeting under HB 1129, moderator Tracy Pope presiding and the board chair absent. Voters could not speak live, yet all participants were unmuted for a voice vote on the 2020 minutes. The finance administrator presented the $37,785,406 budget, a $24.53 tax rate and a $37,762,398 default budget whose paperwork was corrected that day. The clerk was not present, and her minutes, approved in November 2022, record a statement the recording lacks. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 27, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Remote meeting (file and Cablecast event date say February 3; content and show title fix January 27). The chair read a nurses' letter urging continued remote learning and a coach asked for winter sports; the board then voted 6-0 by roll call to return schools in person on February 1 with winter sports. It accepted seven unnamed retirements, appointed two CCTV board members, and heard the HB 1129 annual-meeting plan. The agenda was adopted by voice vote despite remote participation. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 13, 2021 | Claremont School Board | Remote budget hearing on a $37,785,406 budget for 2021-22 (tax rate $24.53 against $23.93) held with no public speakers and no default budget, which was still being calculated. The board sent the budget to the annual meeting unanimously, voted 6-1 by roll call (Benware opposed) to use the HB 1129 virtual procedure instead of an in-person deliberative session, and after a first in-school COVID cluster set a January 27 re-evaluation of remote learning. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 HIGH 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 6, 2021 | Claremont School Board | A hybrid meeting opened with a public hearing and roll-call acceptance of an anonymous $5,000 special education gift. The board sent a proposed 2021-22 budget of about $37.8 million to its public hearing after the budget subcommittee directed eight more position cuts, and voted by roll call to support moving all schools remote from January 8 to 19. Two $500 donations were announced as not on the agenda, with no acceptance vote. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| 2020 — 16 meetings | |||
| December 16, 2020 | Claremont School Board | The board corrected its December 2 draft minutes to show a motion passing 4 to 3, heard a report on the Goshen anchor-school tuition agreement, and debated moving Stevens High School fully remote for the third quarter after a staff roundtable attended by three members. The roll call on the chair's motion is not on the recording and no result is announced. A remote member said she sent notes during deliberation. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| December 10, 2020 | SAU 6 Board | A public hearing on the fiscal year 2022 SAU 6 budget drew no public comment; the business administrator explained a $61,871 business office increase as a transferred position and a food service position omitted the year before. In regular session the board adopted a $1,772,143 budget by roll call, though only one answer is audible. The superintendent reported that Claremont, Unity and Goshen had approved the Goshen tuition agreement. No agenda or minutes online. | 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| December 2, 2020 | Claremont School Board | The board approved an anchor-school tuition agreement with Goshen while its text was still under negotiation, and by 4 to 3 rejected two weeks of remote learning after the Christmas break; the chair first announced the motion as failing, one remote vote was read off a screen, and the draft minutes recorded it as defeated until corrected on December 16. The second-semester plan was tabled. A resident's question was answered. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 7, 2020 | Claremont School Board | Held in person with two members on Google Meet. A Stevens counselor opposed ending high school busing for the October 19 return; staff presented new middle and high school schedules. By roll call the board retained 5% of the net assessment (about $845,000) under RSA 198:4-b as amended ten days earlier, and, after objections over vans, cut a transportation-trust purchase to $247,000 for two buses and one van. A retreat replaced the November 4 meeting. No agenda or minutes online. | 6 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 23, 2020 | Claremont School Board | The vice chair presided, with the chair on video and the public by phone. Counsel briefed members on liability; the administration said it could not meet CDC spacing or be ready by October 5. That motion went to a roll call with no announced result. A substitute drafted on the floor passed 6-1: cohorts A and B back five days October 19 pending safety equipment, high school hybrid to the quarter, no high school busing. No agenda or minutes online. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 22, 2020 | SAU 6 Board | The joint Claremont and Unity board, several members on video, adopted three policies by roll call: drug-free workplace without its medical-marijuana clause, the chair's duties, and public comment. It entered nonpublic session citing the employee exemption, sealed the minutes with no stated finding, then corrected the ground to the tuition-contract exemption for a Goshen agreement. The agenda and June minutes passed by voice vote. Superintendent evaluations went to an October 14 subgroup. No agenda or minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 2, 2020 | Claremont School Board | Held the night before hybrid classes began. The business administrator projected an FY20 surplus of about $1 million; the superintendent reported 161 fully remote elementary students and 63 homeschool requests. Members split over using the state's new September 1 guidance to return students full time sooner, and set a single-item meeting for September 23. Two callers spoke. The 48-hour community service requirement was kept by roll call, the only roll call despite two remote members. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| August 5, 2020 | Claremont School Board | The administration presented its fall 2020 reopening plan: a hybrid of two in-school days, masks all day, 12 students per room and bus. Two callers spoke and three letters were read. A motion for a full in-person or fully remote choice failed on a roll call whose result was never announced; the chair's motion supporting a hybrid schedule with phase metrics passed 5-2. Routine votes were voice votes with a member on the phone. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 3, 2020 | Claremont School Board | Remote meeting with every vote by roll call. The school attorney warned that Emergency Order 16's ten-person limit applied to graduation spectators; the superintendent previewed a likely hybrid reopening; the business administrator projected a $60,000 food-service surplus and asked for a board group on the Abbey Group renewal. The May 6 minutes were corrected to show a split vote, and an August 9 retreat replaced the summer meetings. No public comment period; no agenda or minutes posted online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 6, 2020 | Claremont School Board | Remote organizational meeting, two hearings and regular meeting. Frank Sprague re-elected chair and Heather Whitney elected vice chair; $325,000 moved from the special education trust fund to the FY2021 budget after a reporter questioned its use for social workers; last day of school set at a half day June 5 (5 to 2); clerk's raise to $85 failed 2 to 5. The business administrator said the fiscal 2018 audit was still unfinished. No agenda or minutes posted online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| March 4, 2020 | Claremont School Board | Donations hearing and regular meeting six days before the town vote. The board accepted $11,947.39 for middle school Chromebooks and $3,000 for a fourth-grade trip, heard the early childhood program, the superintendent's entry-plan findings, a first coronavirus briefing and a Medicaid update, provisionally approved the program of studies, and tabled the February 23 retreat minutes as incomplete. The chair, a member and the business administrator urged yes votes on the ballot articles. No agenda or minutes posted online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 1, 2020 | Claremont School District, Deliberative Session | Voters took up a $38,202,661 operating budget (default $35,501,890) built partly on one-time state aid, three bargaining agreements and two $500,000 capital reserve funds for buses and buildings. No amendments; all articles went to the March ballot. Debate covered the default budget, pellet-boiler savings and board control of reserves. The record points to Wednesday, February 5, not MAP.md's February 1. No minutes online. | 7 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 21, 2020 | Claremont School Board | FY2021 budget hearing and regular meeting. The superintendent postponed elementary restructuring a year, and most hearing speakers addressed it. The board sent a $38,202,661 budget to the deliberative session after Whitney's motion to cut the two reserve articles to $350,000 and $150,000 failed 4-2. The new business administrator could not explain several inherited budget lines. Policy DAF was adopted to close an audit. No minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 15, 2020 | Claremont School Board | The administration presented the FY2021 budget ($34.7 million local, $38.2 million with grants), a default budget, five warrant articles and a grade-band elementary restructuring plan that was postponed six days later. The board accepted a $2,500 gift to the technical center, approved the January 8 minutes with corrections not stated aloud, and scheduled a Sunday retreat. No minutes online. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 8, 2020 | Claremont School Board | Donations hearing and regular meeting chaired by Vice Chair Rebecca Zullo with the chair absent. Nine gifts, two of unknown amount, were accepted in one vote; four bargaining agreements were ratified, the teachers' contract costed at about $680,000 in year one. Lunch debt on accounts over $100 stood at $33,070. Nonpublic minutes were sealed by voice vote with no finding stated. The FY2017 audit had just arrived. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 2, 2020 | SAU 6 Board | Public hearing, with no public present, and regular meeting. The board adopted the FY2021 SAU budget of $1,727,004.01, down $173,534.76, one day after the January 1 date set by RSA 194-C:9, I. Draft SAU policies went to second reading the day most members received them, and members said no goals had yet been set with the superintendent. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 HIGH 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| 2019 — 29 meetings | |||
| December 12, 2019 | Claremont School District, Special District Meeting | Single-session district meeting called to cure notice defects at the November 21 meeting, which by the district attorney's account missed RSA 197:3-a's website posting. Voters ratified the $650,000 Special Education Expendable Trust Fund 70 to 12 on a counted standing vote after debate from eight residents. The cure met RSA 31:5-b's timing. The moderator is not named on the recording; no warrant or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 5, 2019 | SAU 6 Board | Joint Claremont and Unity board meeting. The new business administrator presented a line-by-line FY2021 SAU budget; members cut the placeholder raise to 2%, declined to approve it by email, and sent $1,727,004.01 to a hearing set for January 2, after RSA 194-C:9's January 1 adoption date, on a split voice vote with no tally. The Claremont chair described the notice defect behind the December 12 district meeting. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| December 4, 2019 | Claremont School Board | The chair read counsel's statement conceding the November hearing and special-meeting notices missed the website rule, and a reporter and a parent criticized them. The board voted, contingent on counsel's confirmation, to carry the hearing result to a December 12 curative meeting, and named two members to answer questions online so no quorum would form. The technical center director reported enrollment up from 58 to 82 and state letters about preschool use of its space. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 21, 2019 | Claremont School District, Special District Meeting | In a single-session special meeting under RSA 197:3-a, voters approved a $650,000 special education expendable trust fund from this year's increase in adequacy aid, with no tax money; the other half of the increase went to tax relief. A dozen residents debated tax relief against programs to keep students with autism and behavioral needs in district. Counsel later said the meeting notice was posted on the SAU 6 website a day late. No warrant or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 20, 2019 | Claremont School Board | The auditor from Plodzik & Sanderson said the fiscal 2017 audit would be final only in December 2019, called the district one of the firm's most delinquent clients, and aimed to be current by March 31, 2020. After a nonpublic session on legal advice the minutes were sealed by voice vote. The superintendent costed three special education programs; on counsel's advice the board scheduled a December 12 curative meeting. Meal debt reached $25,900 at the end of fiscal 2019. | 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 6, 2019 | Claremont School Board | A hearing on an article putting $650,000 of restored state stabilization aid into a special education expendable trust fund drew two residents' questions; the board sent the article to the November 21 special district meeting. It voted 4-2 to move to one regular meeting a month, accepted a donated organ, and heard that reimbursement claims had been missed for months in prior years. Counsel later said the hearing notice missed the SAU 6 website. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 16, 2019 | Claremont School Board | Bluff Elementary teachers and students presented outdoor education, and the special education director reported the new in-district PRIDE program had brought two students back from out-of-district placements at half its 12-seat capacity. The board entered nonpublic session for legal advice by roll call and sealed the minutes by voice vote with no reason stated. Roll call unintelligible; a Sunday budget retreat was planned. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 10, 2019 | SAU 6 Board | The superintendent reported a $6.2 million state aid check and audit timelines: fiscal 2017 finishing in October 2019 and fiscal 2018 by December. Business administrator Richard Seaman gave the first budget-to-actual report on the SAU budget (about $264,000 of $1.6 million remaining). Members said SAU 6 had no policies of its own. Budget meetings set for November 14 and December 12. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 2, 2019 | Claremont School Board | The board permanently moved citizens' comments earlier, heard of about $5.5 million in added state aid and audits running late (fiscal 2017 due October 2019), reviewed the Stevens program of studies (AP weighting only for exam takers), approved the German exchange, and heard Rep. Gary Merchant on the Medicaid authorization change. A $500 gift was accepted, and the October 20 retreat was to be warned as a public meeting. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| September 18, 2019 | Claremont School Board | A public hearing drew no comment on a $20,000 Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation gift to the regional technical center, later accepted by voice vote. The superintendent described a Dartmouth partnership and the state budget impasse; members projected a $950,000 to $1.1 million shortfall. The middle school launched project-based learning. The chair said SAU 6 meetings were near losing a quorum. Grading, safety and head lice data were set as future items. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 5, 2019 | SAU 6 Board | The superintendent reported the IRS matter closed and the Claremont FY17 audit closing, with auditors to be invited to present. The board merged the grants manager and assistant business manager work into one full-time accountant and grants position, citing a $170,000 cut to the SAU assessment. July 25 minutes were put over because members had not received them. Members raised thin Unity attendance. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 4, 2019 | Claremont School Board | Handbooks approved and the student discipline policy adopted on second reading. Pauline Pelletier reappointed to the CCTV board. Rep. Gary Merchant estimated Claremont would lose about $3 million of $4.5 million under the governor's budget counterproposal. A $20,000 Byrne Foundation gift was held for the required public hearing. Budget retreat set for October 20; Benware stepped back from negotiations. Citizens' comments again missing from the agenda. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 21, 2019 | Claremont School Board | The board heard the FY2016 audit report with FY17 and FY18 still open and an IRS penalty abatement expected, elected 33 new teachers, appointed Alex Herzog to the CCTV board, moved the discipline policy to second reading and provisionally approved handbooks received that day. Presentations covered a Dartmouth science grant, new-teacher mentoring, student ID cards and the capital improvement program. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| July 30, 2019 | Claremont School Board | A short Tuesday session. The board voted to use SAU money returned to Claremont, about $89,669 per position, for a middle-school science teacher and a social studies teacher, by a motion naming no amount. It accepted $720, $360 and $1,595.51 in donations and tabled a CCTV board reappointment so it could be warned. The roll is truncated and the minutes approved are dated June 16. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| July 25, 2019 | SAU 6 Board | The first SAU 6 meeting under Superintendent Tempesta, with vice chair Erickson presiding. The board sent a Claremont-only teacher item to the Claremont board, corrected the June 4 minutes from memory, approved Jeff Small as technology director and Donna Magoon as assistant superintendent, cut two central-office posts returning $205,416 to Claremont and $24,125 to Unity, and accepted a $3,602.09 backpack donation. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| June 4, 2019 | SAU 6 Board | After a nonpublic session with counsel, the board took a split roll call on a motion the recording does not capture. It rejected, with only three yes votes audible, a motion reserving the assistant superintendent post, then gave incoming Superintendent Tempesta unrestricted summer hiring authority. It authorized a press release on newly discovered matters and received the SAU's FY2018 audit, which carries an adverse opinion. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| May 16, 2019 | SAU 6 Board | Incoming superintendent Michael Tempesta was introduced; Acting Superintendent Cory LeClair and the assistant business director resigned. An exit-interview motion passed and was then withdrawn. LeClair reported the business administrator post had no applicants and major questions about Claremont's year-end position. The board approved the data governance plan ahead of the June 30 deadline and a Primex rate cap, then went into nonpublic session. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 15, 2019 | Claremont School Board, Special Meeting | A special district meeting ratified, on a voice vote, the results of the March 12, 2019 annual meeting after DRA found the budget, default budget form and warrant were not posted as RSA 32:5 required. The regular board meeting followed: LeClair's farewell, youth in government, outdoor education, endorsement of a parent-led winter program, a Primex rate cap, the new capital improvement subcommittee, and two teachers elected. No warrant or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 6, 2019 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | Joint meeting with only three of nine councilors present. Petrin reported Superintendent Tempesta's signed contract (start July 1); DCYF described a foster-care shortage; the syringe service program opened at Valley Regional Hospital. Sprague said the district would need to cut $800,000 to level-fund, described 30 to 35 hours of budget work by three members, and cited "dropped balls" at SAU 6. Quarterly meetings set. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| May 1, 2019 | Claremont School Board | Two hearings, then a regular meeting. The acting superintendent reported that the 2019 warrant, budget and default budget were not posted by the January 28 deadline and set a May 15 ratification meeting. She also said E-Rate money had long been accepted without the required hearing; the board accepted a $25,000 Merrow bequest. The Primex rate-cap decision, already past its deadline, was tabled. A finance sub-subcommittee was described. No minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 17, 2019 | Claremont School Board | Nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and (c), then a motion to seal its minutes "for 76 years" with no stated ground and no recorded vote. The board approved the Goshen tuition agreement and a Bluff field trip, heard lunch debt near $22,000, and presented its retreat goals. It learned the lunch revenue-loss timeline was not delivered, and after adjourning stayed off camera to answer the auditors' FY2016 to FY2018 questionnaire. No minutes online. | 3 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 11, 2019 | SAU 6 Board | The acting superintendent and business administrator explained two years of lost federal meal reimbursement (about $60,000), including an FY2019 application not filed until January 30 because a Unity food-service RFP was late. The SAU had no policies of its own; a subcommittee was formed without a vote. Carolyn Towle was elected treasurer after a period with no external cash reconciliation. The efficiency study was deferred until Mr. Tempesta started. No minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 3, 2019 | Claremont School Board | A public hearing drew no comment on a Couch Family Foundation grant and state infrastructure-fund money, though no acceptance vote appears. A Ward 3 resident said the audience could not hear the board. The board entered nonpublic session under the words of RSA 91-A:3, II(j) and sealed the minutes for 99 years by voice vote with no stated finding. It approved a 2020 music trip, accepted $760, and heard superintendent contract talks had begun. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| March 28, 2019 | SAU 6 Board | Organizational meeting: Michael Petrin elected chair, Marjorie Erickson vice chair. Officials reported the National School Lunch Program application filed late for a second year, with reimbursements lost. A $5,000 efficiency study of the SAU office failed on a hand count. On counsel's advice the board read into the record the March 7 nonpublic roll call choosing Michael Tempesta, 8 to 3. Recording ends at the nonpublic roll call. Filed as 3/25; held 3/28. | 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| March 20, 2019 | Claremont School Board | Heather Whitney was sworn in; Frank Sprague and Rebecca Zullo were re-elected chair and vice chair by public vote after members were wrongly told a ballot was an option. The board accepted a $3,000 Byrne gift, set an April 3 hearing on larger grants, heard i-Ready and Abbey Group reports, heard the March 12 results (turnout about 11%), and adopted a bus lease resolution. The FY2016 single audit was still unfinished. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| March 6, 2019 | Claremont School Board | The board heard the superintendent search was down to two finalists, with the SAU 6 board to decide the next night; approved a $7,500 summer carpentry program for county inmates at the technical center after public questions; heard the preschool director's report; adopted policies read as a string of codes; and debated renewing the Abbey Group food service contract, including a bag-lunch option. Michelle Pierce said farewell. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 20, 2019 | Claremont School Board | The board approved four student trips, accepted $10,250 in Byrne Foundation and Hannaford gifts in one vote with no hearing on the $7,500 gift, and joined IDN Region 1. Staff reported the FY2015 audit only just final and FY2016 still in draft. The chair disclosed his daughter's district job; nepotism policy BCB went back to subcommittee. A Chromebook fundraiser proceeded on tacit support. No agenda or minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| February 6, 2019 | Claremont School District, Deliberative Session | An hour-long first session sent six articles to the March 12 ballot unamended: officers, a $35,293,063 operating budget carrying a three-year administrators' agreement with its yearly costs, the Bluff roof, the Disnard fire panel, $249,950 for radios and $51,000 for bus cameras. The default budget was stated three ways and one vote was retaken on the correct figure. No warrant or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 2, 2019 | Claremont School Board, Budget Public Hearing | The budget subcommittee presented a $31,828,063 FY2020 budget and four special articles; the business administrator said the new default budget rules put the default about $179,000 below the proposed budget but deferred discussing it. Two residents and an Eagle Times reporter asked questions. The board then moved all warrant articles to the deliberative session; whether the operating budget was finalized after testimony is unclear. No notice or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| 2018 — 38 meetings | |||
| December 19, 2018 | Claremont School Board | After a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a), the board debated $20,821 in lunch debt, redirected donations sent for the debt to school food shelves, and recommended ending a la carte charging at zero and warning seniors about diplomas. It authorized signing a three-year administrators' agreement without stating its cost and sent a $31,828,063 budget to the January 2 hearing. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| December 13, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | Chair Marjorie Erickson's board heard three Lempster School Board members ask whether SAU 6 would explore taking Lempster back or selling it services, and agreed by consensus to a small working group. The HR director presented the SAU office evaluation system and 3% merit pool; the chair reported nine superintendent applicants and a search committee working by Zoom. The nonpublic motion named no lettered exemption. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| December 5, 2018 | Claremont School Board | The moderator debriefed the 2018 deliberative session and disclosed she had kept its secret ballots at home. The board accepted $4,311.93 in donations, sending lunch gifts to school food pantries, heard that refusing federal aid would forfeit about $16.4 million, and received a 64-page draft FY2020 budget without its personnel cuts over Michelle Pierce's objection. November 7 minutes deferred as incomplete. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 8, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | Vice chair Michael Petrin presided over the public hearing on the FY2020 SAU budget, which came in below the prior year; after health-insurance rates arrived 4.3% rather than 6%, the board adopted $1,901,532.65 well before the January 1 deadline. October minutes were amended to record Carolyn Towle's dissent. The nonpublic motion cited only RSA 91-A:3. Cablecast title dates it 11/9. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 1 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 7, 2018 | Claremont School Board | The board interviewed candidates for its vacant seat on camera, deliberated under RSA 91-A:3, II(c), appointed Rob Lovett Jr. until the March election and sealed the nonpublic minutes for 83 years by voice vote. After a public hearing it accepted $32,596.23 in donations clearing 2017-18 student lunch debt, and heard the tech center's plans and a draft in-district special education program. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 30, 2018 | Claremont School Board | A single-item meeting on the $32,000 school lunch deficit. The recording opens as the board leaves nonpublic session and seals its minutes for 97 years by voice vote with no stated determination. A Ward 1 resident asked about the debt and lottery money; administrators outlined a coordinator hire and policy review, and the board set a November 6 deadline for lunch-debt donations. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 18, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | With the interim superintendent and assistant absent, the chair declined an unexplained nonpublic session. The board approved a school funding letter to legislators and candidates, adopted a superintendent evaluation tool, created a food service compliance position at $12,000 to $15,000 over one nay, and sent a $1,930,809 SAU budget (Claremont 89.47%) to a November 8 hearing. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 3, 2018 | Claremont School Board | After a hearing, the board accepted a $15,000 Byrne Foundation gift it had voted on too early in September. Steven Horsky's resignation was announced. The fiscal 2015 audit questionnaire was approved; the annual financial report due September 1 was unfinished. Tuition rose to $15,000, the cell phone policy was adopted, Carolyn Towle won a search committee seat by paper ballot, and small lunch balances were written off. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 HIGH 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| September 19, 2018 | Claremont School Board | Administrators disclosed that the application for universal lunch at Bluff was never filed by the June 30 deadline, costing about $13,000. The board saw an audit questionnaire for fiscal 2015, approved a girls hockey co-op, accepted a $15,000 Byrne gift before the required hearing, sparred over the cell phone policy and handbook, and named Horsky and Zullo to the search committee. Recording starts mid-meeting; no agenda or minutes online. | 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 13, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | Chair Marjorie Erickson's board amended its August 23 minutes to add the omitted vote sealing nonpublic minutes, reviewed a draft fiscal 2020 SAU budget of about $1.90 million (down $45,292.94) and questioned July 1 merit raises paid despite a directive members recalled. It set a seven-member superintendent search committee, members due by September 28, referred a $1,186 enrollment study to the district boards and entered nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a). No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 5, 2018 | Claremont School Board | The board received the fiscal 2014 audit four years late, seven audits still outstanding. By a 5-2 roll call it let Valley Regional Hospital run a syringe service program inside the school zone, under a school-board exception in force since August 11, 2018; conditions members wanted were never added. It adopted the head lice policy, sent the cell phone policy to second read, deadlocked 3-3-1 on the opioid class action and accepted a $500 donation. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 23, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | The New Hampshire School Boards Association presented its superintendent search method, and the board approved a $12,000 search agreement 8-0-1 by roll call, extras priced at $1,000 a day left open. Members split over a board-led or community search committee, deferring it to September 13. Three of five Unity members were absent. The budget calendar set a November 8 hearing; the strategic plan was tabled to January 5-3-1. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 15, 2018 | Claremont School Board | Interim Superintendent Keith Pfeifer's first meeting. Bluff qualified for universal lunch; the Brattleboro Retreat in-district program and the technical center renovation were put off. The board elected a staff slate after Pfeifer insisted on formal nomination, tabled a syringe service program request near Disnard under the new RSA 318-B:45, and amended handbooks on phones while staff could not find the phone policy online. A nonpublic session cited RSA 91-A:3, II(j) for pupil records. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 9, 2018 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | The city manager reported on a shared public information officer; the idea was tabled by a pooled 7-6 roll call, although the council alone voted 4-2 against tabling. The bodies set an August 25 candidate forum with Steve Marchand, delegated a behavioral health training date to the mayor and chair, and deferred any position on the vetoed SB 365 and SB 446 after a citizen urged study. Members got training materials that afternoon. No district records online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| July 26, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | After an unrecorded nonpublic session on personnel and hiring, the board sealed its minutes "for ten years" with no statutory finding stated, then in public accepted the chair's nomination of Dr. Keith Pfeifer as interim superintendent, contingent on negotiations (16 applicants, three interviewed). Members planned the Sunday retreat and the August 14 funding forum; the assistant superintendent reported 68 to 71 vacancies and pending audit letters. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| July 18, 2018 | Claremont School Board | The board accepted Brattleboro Retreat's contracted Bridges classrooms "as presented", pitched as avoiding about $385,000 in out-of-district costs, by a voice vote with no amount in the motion. It named Alex Herzog to the CCTV board, let the acting superintendent hire over the summer without prior board approval, and elected Kathleen Bunnell Maple Avenue principal plus a staff slate. Cell phone and head lice policy work followed. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| July 12, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | After a costing of six staffing scenarios, the board voted by roll call, Pierce alone opposed, to cut the interim superintendent's base salary from $130,000 to $120,000 and hire a full-time interim, an option staff projected would still leave the SAU budget about $4,000 short. It adopted a self-evaluation tool for its July 29 retreat and heard that the search committee met July 5 and would interview two certified candidates. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 28, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | Marjorie Erickson's first meeting as chair. The board approved a succession plan for replacing Superintendent McGoodwin, heard a corrected fund balance of about $85,000 after his buyout and a missed $44,000 revenue entry, adopted interim criteria with certification as a preference, and set up a seven-member search committee that members suggested need not be warned because it lacked a quorum. A press release was approved. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| June 21, 2018 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | The city presented departing Superintendent McGoodwin with a State House clock. A citizen asked that the superintendent search include community members, and the new SAU 6 chair promised it would. The bodies set an August 9 meeting on a shared communications officer, named education funding their top 2019 legislative priority with two state representatives present, and asked for HB 413 to be refiled. City records not inspected; no district minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| June 20, 2018 | Claremont School Board | Six days after the SAU 6 board parted ways with Superintendent McGoodwin, three citizens thanked him and one called the board's handling cowardly; a departing Stevens English teacher said she was never sent an exit survey. The business administrator projected a FY18 fund balance of about $275,000 and described catastrophic-aid proration. The board heard ELO and scheduling committee updates, approved the CMS and preschool handbooks and four nominations, and counted 59 departures. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 14, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | After a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a), the board announced it and Superintendent Middleton McGoodwin would part ways, sealed the minutes for 99 years, and heard his resignation letter. Cory LeClair was named acting superintendent with terms left to the two chairs; a 12-month interim was advertised; a June 28 meeting was set to put $55,000 of fund balance toward separation costs. Marjorie Erickson was elected SAU chair 6 to 4. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 6, 2018 | Claremont School Board | The board elected Frank Romeo principal of Claremont Middle School. The business administrator said the district's audits were three years behind, with FY2014 just final, and described budget transfers and the $200,000 capital reserve. Members debated school security and asked Carolyn Towle to consult the police chief. Two donations were accepted, several policies adopted on one reading, and the head lice policy sent to second reading, with no audible vote on BEDH. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 16, 2018 | Claremont School Board | Attorneys Tom Connor and John Tobin briefed the board on a possible new school-funding lawsuit, and chair Frank Sprague proposed a planning retreat. The board debated the high school cell phone policy, reviewed its April 22 retreat (a $5,000 transfer-notice threshold, agendas emailed to about 2,300 families, regular expense reports) and accepted a $15,000 Class of 1968 gift added to the agenda that night with no hearing mentioned. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| May 10, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | Chair Sara Lowe's board, with two members by phone, approved Ben Nester as special education director by roll call but took the agenda and minutes by voice despite a member's request for a roll call. Members objected that a $17,500 merit pool had funded pay-equity raises without an evaluation system, received a draft superintendent evaluation, and entered a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(c) with the superintendent excused; the press later reported his contract would end. No minutes online. | 1 HIGH 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| May 2, 2018 | Claremont School Board | With vice chair Rebecca Zullo presiding, the board announced three-minute citizens' comment rules from its April 22 retreat and debated Steven Horsky's proposed no-nit head lice procedure for over an hour, hearing four residents before a garbled motion to open the policy for review passed by voice. The business administrator projected a year-end balance near $500,000 and a $1,000 field-trip grant was accepted. The recording starts mid-report; no minutes online. | 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| April 24, 2018 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | Joint meeting that the recording itself dates April 17, 2018, not the mapped April 24. Scouting and Turning Points Network presentations; a draft communications coordinator job description (about $45,000 salary plus $33,000 benefits) was debated and sent back to the superintendent and city manager without a vote; warrant-funded security upgrades of about $700,000 were explained; a Medicaid expansion letter was offered for both bodies' signature without a vote; June 21 joint meeting set. No minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 18, 2018 | Claremont School Board | All seven members present. NHSBA attorney Will Phillips gave an hour of Right-to-Know training; the chair's public-comment practice and members' Facebook posting drew counsel's cautions. Climate survey, System of Care grant (about $2 million over four years) and proficiency grading discussed. A policy subcommittee formed; $1,000 Hannaford donation accepted; 2018-19 calendar approved; administrators' student-loan request failed 0-7 on roll call; seven policies adopted on third reading. No minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| April 4, 2018 | Claremont School Board | The board amended its March 21 minutes after a member showed they omitted the bus-surveillance policy discussion, and learned the policy was printed with the old 10-day retention term while the superintendent sought counsel (state law caps school bus audio retention at 10 school days). It approved the 2018-19 Program of Studies, advanced the health opt-out policies with no cost to families, set an April 22 retreat and signed the MS-22 report. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| March 29, 2018 | SAU 6 Board | Organizational meeting three days before the statutory April 1 to June 1 window: Sara Lowe re-elected chair, Michael Petrin vice chair, and Michelle Pierce elected treasurer after staff said the SAU had lacked one for years and faced audit corrective actions. The superintendent said he had no evaluation goals for two years; a five-member subcommittee was formed. At his request a listed nonpublic discussion of his performance was held in public. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| March 21, 2018 | Claremont School Board | Organizational meeting after the March 13 election: Zullo, Benware, Horsky and Towle sworn in, Frank Sprague re-elected chair and Rebecca Zullo vice chair. The board debated narrowing the health-education opt-out policy to the statutory parent-pays alternative, heard three citizens on it, reviewed i-Ready data and a Title I kindergarten summer program, accepted a $2,000 gift, adopted five policies as amended and deferred the program of studies. Ballot results read: main budget 726-202. No minutes online. | 2 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| February 21, 2018 | Claremont School Board | Nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(c) by roll call, subject unstated and no sealing vote. Dr. Alex Herzog's board resignation, effective the day before, was accepted and he was elected SRVRTC director. Three gifts, including $5,000 from the Byrne Foundation added to the agenda, were accepted in one vote with no hearing on the record. A parent described bullying at the middle school; the board approved a Healthy Relationships curriculum and the state K-8 competencies. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| February 8, 2018 | Claremont School District, Deliberative Session | First session of the SB 2 annual meeting. On a voter-petitioned secret ballot, 99-43, voters added $307,153 for the teachers' contract, sending Article 2 to the ballot at $34,920,410, still below the $35,111,787 default; a $175,000 technology amendment failed 66-67 after repeated counts. The first ballot was put using the unamended figure. Security ($141,000), bus lease ($190,000) and roof ($100,000) articles went forward unamended. No minutes or warrant online. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 31, 2018 | Claremont School Board | Frank Sprague presides from the first frame: the 5-2 vote replacing chair Brian Rapp and vice chair Chris Irish came before the camera started and is known only from the press. Moderator Tracy Pope set deliberative session rules, the administration handed the audience its $1,761,356 FY19 reductions list, the board voted to oppose voucher bill SB 193, and five policies, including bus audio recording, went to second reading. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 30, 2018 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | Quarterly joint meeting chaired by Brian Rapp and Mayor Charlene Lovett. The bodies backed a Kimball Union Academy study testing pets for lead, announced the governor's February 8 SB 247 signing, agreed by consensus to make online presence a joint priority, and asked for April 17 costs of an in-town program for about 20 out-of-district students. The mayor will draft joint letters on HB 413 and HB 525 without a vote. District records not online; city records not inspected. | 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 3, 2018 | Claremont School Board (part 2 of 2) | Part 2 of the post-hearing meeting. The board sent the $31,148,256.95 FY19 operating budget to the deliberative session 4-3 by roll call (Irish, Pierce, Sprague, Zullo yes; Herzog, Petrin, Rapp no), agreed without a vote that members may argue their own positions despite the ethics policy, and recommended a $141,000 security match, a bus lease and $100,000 for roofing. The clerk corrected the agenda's filing dates to January 24 to February 2. Minutes not online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 3, 2018 | Claremont School Board (part 1 of 2) | After the FY19 budget hearing the board reconsidered its $31,148,256.95 budget and debated folding in the $307,153 teachers' contract, which officials said a court decision requires Claremont to carry in the operating budget. Herzog's amendment to $31,455,410 failed 3-4 by roll call after heated exchanges over cuts and scare tactics. The contract reached the board in a December 20 closed session; where it was ratified is not recorded. Minutes not online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 3, 2018 | Claremont School Board, Budget Public Hearing (part 2 of 2) | Second half of the FY2019 budget hearing: sixteen residents and staff spoke, defending the adult education director, the crisis counselor, German and English positions. The vice chair said four members backed the $31,148,257 bottom line; the superintendent said he had asked the board to reconsider its October directive; the business administrator explained fund balance under the wrong RSA. Hearing not televised live; minutes kept but not online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 3, 2018 | Claremont School Board, Budget Public Hearing (part 1 of 2) | First half of the FY2019 budget hearing. The superintendent presented a $31,148,257 budget and the business administrator reconciled it to $31,455,410 with the contract ratified December 20; the default budget was disclosed only as a $0.24 tax effect. During testimony the chair called a break and four unidentified members voted to overrule him; the hearing continued. Not televised live; minutes kept but not online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| 2017 — 31 meetings | |||
| December 20, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Budget vote night. After 45 minutes of student and resident comment against cuts, the board accepted $2,000 in grants, heard the business administrator say line transfers are made administratively, and adopted $31,148,256.95 (a $328,980.05 reduction) by roll call after a $31.3 million proposal drew no second. Hearing set for January 3; the recording ends entering a collective-bargaining session, and the reported contract ratification is not on tape. | 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 6, 2017 | Claremont School Board (part 2 of 2) | Partial recording of the December 6 meeting: administrators walked the board through proposed reductions position by position (school psychologist, special education and Stevens English and language teachers, an elementary section) and said the cuts would hurt; a $42,800 resource officer line omitted from the document was restored. Two resignations accepted. Minutes approved December 20 but not online. | 1 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 6, 2017 | Claremont School Board (part 1 of 2) | Part 1 of the December 6 budget meeting. Nine residents spoke, most against deeper cuts; City Manager Ryan McNutt discussed the city budget and tax rate; the board accepted a $1,600 Joe's Jewelers donation. Administrators walked through the list of cuts meeting the board's directive of a FY19 budget $1.2 million below FY18, about $2.6 million below the November 15 draft. The file stops mid-discussion; no agenda or minutes online. | 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| December 6, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Budget-season meeting. The superintendent reported on substitute pay, head lice and Senate Bill 193; citizens' comments ran 36 minutes on the budget and two school incidents; City Manager Ryan McNutt discussed the city budget and valuations; the board accepted a $1,600 donation. Administration then presented, without a vote, the reductions needed to reach the board's directive of a FY2019 budget $1.2 million below FY2018. The recording ends before the nonpublic session; no agenda or minutes are online. | 8 OBSERVATION 4 POSITIVE |
| November 29, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Budget study session with no administrators present. All seven members reviewed the FY2019 draft line by line, flagging lines budgeted far above past spending and two apparent duplicate salary entries ($16,584.75 and $39,802). Questions were to be compiled by email and sent to the business administrator. The session ended with a nonpublic motion stated only as "personnel"; the recording stops before any roll call. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 15, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Vice Chair Chris Irish presided. A Ward 1 parent challenged 23-pupil Bluff kindergarten classes, students presented extended learning opportunities, and the technology department defended its staffing. The superintendent's first-draft FY2019 budget omitted the board's $1.2 million directive; members called it deliberately ignored and he committed to a directed budget by December 6. The recording starts over an hour into the evening; no minutes online. | 5 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 2, 2017 | SAU 6 Board | Public hearing and adoption of the FY2018-19 SAU 6 budget. Staff reviewed technology replacement, the SAU staff move to a lower-cost health plan, grant-management savings and reduced building rent; no citizen commented. After the hearing closed at 7:11 p.m. the board adopted the budget, cut $224.07 by late insurance changes, and entered nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(c) by roll call. Chair unnamed on tape; no minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 1, 2017 | Claremont School Board | The board interviewed four candidates on camera for Patrick Adrian's vacant seat, deliberated in nonpublic session on a motion that names no exemption as heard, and appointed Dr. Alex Herzog, sworn in at the table. The superintendent disclosed that board signatures on payment vouchers had not been done for some time. Middle school administrators presented on bullying, and the superintendent argued against the board's $1.2 million reduction target. No minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 18, 2017 | Claremont School Board | The fiscal year 2017 year-end report, due to the State by September 1, was finished the day of the meeting; the board applied $326,329 of fund balance to reduce taxes and retained $197,765. It accepted a $13,320 Byrne Foundation donation and a grant stated at $100,000 with no public hearing on the record. The chair and vice chair clashed over reconsidering the September 30 $1.2 million target. Residents raised school traffic. No minutes online. | 1 HIGH 1 MEDIUM 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| October 12, 2017 | SAU 6 Board | First quorate SAU 6 meeting since November 2016: the board approved those minutes, joined the Primex rate-cap program it had missed for 2017-18, and approved a Professional Growth Master Plan the State had approved ten months earlier. It carried a $1,955,423 FY2018-19 SAU budget, using $55,000 of fund balance, to a November 2 hearing. Members debated paying CCTV for inquorate meetings. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 4, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Recording starts mid superintendent's report on the late-August events. Members reviewed a September 30 Saturday study session that set a $1.2 million reduction target for the FY19 budget, agreed to route budget questions through the superintendent with answers in the public packet, approved a German exchange, sought a lead-screening opt-out and formed a diversity subcommittee. The Stevens principal's plea against a planned demonstration prompted a sharp Irish-Adrian exchange. Policy approvals are garbled on tape. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 28, 2017 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | Joint meeting chaired by Mayor Lovett: updates on the legislative strategy workshop and lead bill SB 247, the school lead-screening policy and its planned opt-out, city screening results, Gear Up, the One for All center, 55% free and reduced lunch and a free preschool with transportation. The superintendent described the district's response to the late-August incident; the mayor framed a shared commitment to cultural change. Poverty deferred to December 14. City records not inspected. | 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 20, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Frank Sprague presided with the chair and vice chair apparently absent. A grandparent objected to the lead screening policy and the board agreed, without a vote, to revisit it. The superintendent addressed the response to a late-August incident. With five members present, it voted to let the superintendent relax the scheduling committee's memorandum with the teachers' union, accepted a $478 honor society gift, approved D.C. and Italy trips and adopted the nonacademic survey policy. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| September 6, 2017 | Claremont School Board | First meeting of the 2017-18 school year, with Michelle Pierce apparently absent. After a long argument over whether a board-only planning session counted as a board meeting, members set one for Saturday, September 30, saying it need not be recorded. The board corrected voting day to November 7, approved a late-arrival early release model and six nominations, and moved revised survey, drug-free workplace, counseling, health exemption and child abuse reporting policies forward. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 16, 2017 | Claremont School Board | The business administrator presented the district finance comparison promised on August 2 (42.4% of costs paid by local taxpayers; adjusted cost per pupil $15,488). The board approved the elementary, high school, athletic and Owls and Alt handbooks, including the restructuring members had questioned, and approved the draft strategic action plan with a monthly update. A planned non-meeting with counsel never happened. Sprague absent. No minutes online. | 2 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| August 2, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Four of seven members present, vice chair Irish presiding. A Ward 1 resident's cost-per-pupil questions opened a long debate on state school funding. The board heard the high school nurse on head lice and the Abbey Group on food service, accepted nominations after members called the Owls restructuring a possible end run resting on nonpublic discussion, reappointed its CCTV board seat over Irish's objection, and entered nonpublic session under II(c). No minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| June 22, 2017 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | Quarterly joint meeting. The mayor reported another lead-poisoned child and the council's June 14 budget with a 17 cent tax increase; two residents commented. A Green Dot presentation was followed by a homelessness film, a judge's call for a regular childhood-poverty report, and district data (156 homeless students, 50% free and reduced lunch). September 28 was set by consensus. Roll call not transcribed; city records not inspected. | 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| June 21, 2017 | Claremont School Board | The board heard first-year i-Ready growth results, held a brief nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(c), and awarded the food service contract to the Abbey Group on its committee's unanimous recommendation (90 to 93 points). It cancelled the July 5 meeting, delegated summer hiring offers to the superintendent, approved new hires, and moved a meal-charge policy to second read for July 19, after the federal July 1, 2017 deadline. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 31, 2017 | Claremont School Board | With Chair Rapp absent, Vice Chair Irish presided. The student representative gave a critical farewell address on board procedure and punctuality, and the two food service bidders, the Abbey Group and Fresh Picks Cafe, presented and took questions ahead of a committee recommendation. The superintendent slated the meal-charge policy for summer work. A CCTV board appointment was deferred. Roll call not transcribed; no agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 17, 2017 | Claremont School Board | A TLC clinician and the superintendent discussed adverse childhood experiences, and the special education director presented five years of out-of-district costs (about $2.1 million estimated for 2017). The board then met in nonpublic session with principals under the reputation exemption for a briefing without student names. It took written answers to its May 3 technology questions, accepted the program of studies, two resignations and an overnight fundraiser, and set May 31 for food service. No minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 3, 2017 | Claremont School Board | The superintendent announced full NEASC accreditation for Stevens High School and urged calls to Claremont's representatives on the full-day kindergarten bill, and the board settled on a consensus rather than a vote to have its chair weigh in. The mayor sought support for the lead-screening bill. Budget briefings covered roofs, technology and security, with members asking where earlier money went. The 2017-18 calendar, a field trip and a resignation were approved. No minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 3 POSITIVE |
| April 19, 2017 | Claremont School Board | All seven members present. The board accepted Dale Chenette as Bluff Elementary principal after a unanimous ten-member search committee, heard an eighth grader on school meals and the Stevens accreditation report (31 commendations, 34 recommendations), voted $11,787 of unspent health insurance money toward the City's Monadnock track resurfacing, and adopted the lead screening policy. The superintendent argued against the voucher bill. Ends at a nonpublic session; no agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| April 5, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Six members present, Chris Irish absent. The board accepted $44,750 in grants on one motion (Title I summit funds, McKinney-Vento money for a student child care space, two early-learning grants) with no hearing on the record, renewed the Primex contribution cap, heard the technical center director propose three new programs, set vendor presentations for the food service contract, and approved four policies. Ends at a nonpublic session; no agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| March 30, 2017 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | Joint session with no votes. New city manager Ryan McNutt introduced; the school lead screening policy (pre-K added), hospital screening rates and SB 247 discussed with Valley Regional Hospital and Southwestern Community Services. Attorney Tom Connair reviewed the Claremont funding litigation; the superintendent and members spoke on the stabilization grant phase-out and SB 193 vouchers. Next joint meeting set for June 22. No agenda or minutes online; council quorum not established on tape. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| March 15, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Organizational meeting after the March 14 election. New members sworn in; Brian Rapp re-elected chair and Chris Irish vice chair; the clerk read the results (Sprague and Petrin to three-year seats, Zullo to a one-year seat). Two food service workers questioned the planned RFP. The FY2018 appropriations report ($35,183,247) was signed for filing; a short nonpublic session was called under a garbled citation; the lead screening policy moved to second read. No minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| March 1, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Last meeting before the March 2017 election, Sprague absent. Youth and Government trip and an NHIAA leadership conference approved; midyear i-Ready data showed middle and high school growth at 34 to 49 percent against 80 to 85 percent targets. Members asked that a projected tax-rate sheet go to the press and every parent before the vote. The Bluff principal's resignation was accepted and three policies passed first reading. The superintendent said the strategic planning committee's meetings were not posted. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 24, 2017 | Claremont School Board | FY18 budget session after the joint meeting. The administration presented a $31,193,006 operating budget with no tax impact; the board restored $90,000 for the administration to distribute and dropped the $89,200 technology warrant article, leaving $31,283,006, then backed the other warrant articles by voice vote. The default budget, $31,207,288, first appears on the record here and was described as higher than the proposal when it was $75,718 lower. Three members of the public spoke for the arts. | 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 24, 2017 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | Joint meeting with Claremont's state representatives. The mayor and superintendent reported testifying that day for HB 525 on the statutory 4% annual cut in stabilization grants, and the mayor read the joint letter sent in both bodies' names. By consensus the school board agreed to write a kindergarten lead-screening policy and a joint lead-education committee was proposed. Both sides summarized budgets. No agenda or minutes located; city records not inspected. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 18, 2017 | Claremont School Board | With the chair and one member out sick, the vice chair ran a four-member quorum. Six members of the public, three of them students, spoke against cutting the Stevens physical education and business positions. The administration reported both reworked and the FY18 budget $92,553 over the current year; the board reviewed its flagged budget lines with principals. It accepted Brent Ferland's resignation effective March 13, 2017 so voters would fill the seat. No minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 11, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Public hearing on the FY18 budget. The superintendent presented about $850,000 in recommended reductions; eleven speakers, mostly Owls graduates, defended the Owls alternative program and the Stevens PE position. The default budget figure was called to be announced rather than disclosed. A short board meeting followed with a nonpublic session on personnel and a sealing vote, neither stating a statutory basis. No agenda or minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 4, 2017 | Claremont School Board | Five members sent five collective bargaining agreements to the ballot after a nonpublic session on negotiations; their cost items were stated publicly only later in the meeting. The draft FY18 increase had fallen from about $1 million to about $553,000 before the agreements. The board set a Saturday, January 7 budget work session that has no record online, and approved six postponed policies. Pierce and Brent Ferland absent. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| 2016 — 19 meetings | |||
| December 21, 2016 | Claremont School Board | First public look at the unedited FY18 budget, about a 3.2% increase before bargaining costs. The board discussed substitute pay and staff absence data without acting. It accepted a $5,000 Hope Foundation grant with no hearing on the record and two smaller donations added to the agenda that night. Nonpublic session entered on a motion citing the wrong statute section as transcribed. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 2 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| December 7, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Vice Chair Irish presided with the chair absent. The board honored the Stevens football team's Division III championship, heard River Valley Community College's Pathway to Success proposal, accepted two agenda-noticed $500 grants and two resignations, and moved six policies to third reading over Irish's objection to the word equal. The recording ends during the nonpublic roll call. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 16, 2016 | Claremont School Board | A snowplow contractor used citizens' comments to dispute a five-year plowing contract awarded to Morris Enterprises; the business administrator said board policy lets him decide such purchases and members said they had not seen the bids. The board moved the FY18 deliberative session to February 7, 2017 to stay inside the RSA 40:13 window, held a collective-bargaining non-meeting, and sent the home-school access policy back over the word equal. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| November 15, 2016 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | Joint session with no City Council quorum, so nothing was voted beyond adjournment. A state lead-poisoning prevention presentation put Claremont among the highest-risk communities; the business administrator said the stabilization-grant phase-down costs $251,312 a year, consistent with RSA 198:41. Both bodies agreed to seek a December meeting with the delegation. The mayor routed school communications through the council clerk. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| November 2, 2016 | Claremont School Board | The board interviewed three candidates in public for Becky Ferland's seat (Richard Seaman withdrew), went nonpublic on a motion naming no exemption, sealed the minutes by voice vote without a stated determination, and appointed and swore in Dr. Alex Herzog. The business administrator reported a $651,329 FY16 fund balance, proposed keeping about half, and sought signatures on the school financial report two months after its September 1 due date. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| October 19, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Chair Brian Rapp's six-member board set a public interview format for the November 2 vacancy, left open whether to deliberate in nonpublic, and heard the first i-Ready baseline (90% of first graders on level in math, 94% in reading). It approved a November 3 early-release day, moved six policies to third reading, and aired a member's emails to colleagues; the superintendent said two-member subcommittees need no notice. No minutes online. | 2 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| October 5, 2016 | Claremont School Board | The chair announced Rebecca Ferland's resignation as accepted without a vote and refused a motion to reconsider and a request to agenda her rescission. The senior class trip to Wells, Maine was approved. After four members of the public spoke in support, the board waived the third reading and adopted the condom distribution policy, now opt-out, with distribution widened to authorized personnel. Election-day calendar change approved. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| September 21, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Six of seven present. A former employee asked about staff morale; the NH Food Bank reported 1,300 summer lunches; the superintendent set measurable district goals; three students returned from out-of-district placements. A brief nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(c) was entered on a motion naming the exemption only by reference. The transgender students policy was adopted on third reading after debate over athletics; the tally is inaudible. No agenda or minutes online. | 1 MEDIUM 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| August 17, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Pre-opening meeting: elementary handbooks and the Stevens return to the 4x4 block approved; Maple Avenue roof awarded to Melanson at $109,500 against a $100,000 warrant article with the balance's source unstated; the food service RFP missed its deadline, so in-house service continued without a vote. First readings of transgender, building rental and background-check policies; the board struck checks of existing employees after SB 152. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| August 9, 2016 | Claremont School Board & City Council, Joint Meeting | A one-minute school board meeting authorized the chair to sign a Stevens schedule agreement with the teachers before its final wording existed. The joint meeting with the City Council then heard Mayor Charlene Lovett and Superintendent Middleton McGoodwin on growth, workforce and poverty, and formed by consensus subcommittees on vocational training, marketing and poverty, with members affirming they must be noticed. Next joint meeting set for November. No minutes online; city records not inspected. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| August 3, 2016 | Claremont School Board | A divided board debated the Stevens High School A/B schedule after a ruling for the teachers' association. Chris Irish's motion not to comply failed 3-4 by roll call; an appeal was approved; a motion to keep A/B failed and reconsideration failed; a bare motion to comply was tabled to a special meeting. The board also reappointed Pauline Pelletier to CCTV, accepted ten resignations and deferred food service. Recording lacks the start and end; no minutes online. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| June 1, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Class of 2016 survey reviewed; Chromebooks approved for the board without a dollar figure in the motion; August 9 set for a joint meeting with the City Council. An hour on out-of-district special education costs of about $2.7 million and the search for an in-district program. Rental, harassment, violence and summer policies adopted after debate over the $240 Trump campaign invoice; four staff and a revised calendar approved; nonpublic exemption unclear on tape. No agenda or minutes online. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| May 18, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Mostly academic reports: Stevens Life Skills, elementary math facts and writing, and middle school reading interventions, including weak growth among top students. The business administrator reported $323,028 left in a $31.19 million general fund and a spending freeze, driven by out-of-district placements and offset by $567,466 in extra revenue. JLCA adopted with its No Child Left Behind reference to be struck; two teachers approved; nonpublic session under II(c). No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| May 4, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Two students and a parent criticized the new Stevens A/B schedule in citizens' comments. The superintendent recounted the union's arbitration challenge and said the board would not restore the 4x4 block despite an April 2016 award of 8% ($153,000). The board heard the YRBS study group, adopted a 175-day calendar with two parent-teacher conferences over the union's $54,000 demand, and approved an $8,000 strategic-plan consultant. No agenda or minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| April 6, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Recording begins mid-meeting and ends at the nonpublic roll call. The board discussed bargaining priorities in open session (salary and health insurance), adopted a pre-employment drug testing policy, let the superintendent decide changes of school assignment by consensus rather than vote, accepted a $5,000 donation with no hearing shown, signed the MS-22 after the 20-day window, and entered nonpublic session on a motion naming no exemption. No agenda or minutes online. | 4 MEDIUM 1 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| March 16, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Organizational meeting: Adrian, Pierce and Sprague sworn in; Brian Rapp elected chair 4-3 over Becky Ferland, Chris Irish vice chair; March 8 results read. After long parent testimony the board adopted by roll call the plan to end the tech center early childhood program and move the district preschool into its space; the tally is only partly audible. Drug testing policy passed first reading. No minutes online. | 6 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| February 3, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Regular meeting after the deliberative session. Police Chief Alex Scott briefed the board on pre-employment drug screening; the superintendent proposed reviewing class rank, and a parent described a counselor offering to adjust her daughter's standing. January 19 minutes were held over because the wrong set was printed. The board voted to place Articles 1 through 9 on the March 8 ballot. No agenda or minutes are online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| February 3, 2016 | Claremont School District, Deliberative Session | First session of the 2016 annual meeting. With the moderator absent, voters chose a temporary moderator on the district attorney's suggestion. The superintendent and four principals presented results and the budget; all nine articles, including a $34,131,283 operating budget (default $34,422,886), four bargaining agreements, $20,000 for background checks and $121,000 for security, went forward unamended after debate. No warrant or minutes are online. | 5 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| January 9, 2016 | Claremont School Board | Saturday budget work session. On roll calls the board ratified four contracts, three as separate warrant articles, with paraprofessionals costing $143,449. Three hours on the FY2017 budget followed: special education, a building for the early childhood program, technology and a 2.5 percent retained fund a member asked to tap for a building. Warrant articles for background checks and security were directed. No minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 1 POSITIVE |
| 2015 — 2 meetings | |||
| March 4, 2015 | Claremont School Board | Six days before the March 10 election, a candidate and an endorsement were heard in citizens' comments and a sitting member spoke as a candidate. The board accepted the Bluff principal's resignation, debated cutting a tuition rate above $18,000 to draw students, deferred an unagendized field trip, and held renovation payments until a March 18 punch-list review. A member said monthly financial statements had lapsed. No minutes online. | 3 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |
| January 21, 2015 | Claremont School Board | Two weeks before the deliberative session, a first roll call to send the $33,959,382 FY2015-16 budget to voters failed amid confusion over grant and food-service funds and a DRA form printing doubled figures; a second motion passed, tallies inaudible. The board recommended six warrant articles, opposed a petitioned zero-percent tax cap, and advanced the restraint and seclusion policy. Recording starts mid-meeting; no minutes online. | 4 OBSERVATION 2 POSITIVE |