Participants
Everyone the recording shows taking part, as named in the project's dialogue file. No minutes exist online to check spellings against, so non-members' names are as the transcription heard them and are marked where unverified. Members are listed first.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Marjorie Erickson | SAU 6 chair presiding (Unity); elected vice chair this meeting | Presided throughout, including after Petrin's election as chair; amended the agenda; corrected the February and March minutes; answered the employee commenter; oriented new members on board roles; advocated the efficiency study and said she had discussed it with the superintendent nominee; summarized the superintendent search and relayed counsel's advice on the March 7 vote. |
| Michael Petrin | Claremont member; elected SAU 6 chair | Elected chair; supported the efficiency study; read the March 7 roll-call vote into the record. |
| Robert McDevitt | Unity member | Raised the point of order that minutes be approved one set at a time; answered the employee commenter on how news of board votes reaches staff; moved the efficiency study. |
| Prudence McCormick | Unity member | Answered the roll; named as seconder of the March 7 motion in the vote read into the record. Not otherwise separated in the dialogue file. |
| Shannon Popescu | Unity member, new | Asked whether the efficiency study had to go out to bid. Identification low confidence. |
| Frank Sprague | Claremont member (Claremont board chair) | Moved the minutes; nominated Erickson for chair; asked who oversees the lunch application; proposed withholding diplomas for unpaid lunch debt; supported an efficiency study and raised city-school consolidation; seconded the study motion after Towle withdrew. |
| Rebecca Zullo | Claremont member | Seconded Petrin's nomination; explained the press-release glitch on the superintendent announcement; relayed lunch-billing complaints; opposed an efficiency study before the new superintendent arrived; spoke on disclosure of the March 7 votes. |
| Jason Benware | Claremont member | Moved the amended agenda; corrected the November 8 minutes; nominated Erickson for vice chair; asked about the lunch losses and budget effects; supported the study as an investment; proposed a contingent motion that did not get a second; moved the nonpublic session. |
| Carolyn Towle | Claremont member | Nominated Petrin for chair; seconded the efficiency study and then withdrew her second; suggested a subgroup work with the superintendent once a contract was signed. |
| Heather Whitney | Claremont member, new | Asked what authority the food service assistant has; questioned the study's scope and timing before a new superintendent. |
| Rob Lovett Jr. | Claremont member | Corrected the year on the February minutes; opposed the study as "reckless spending" given lost reimbursements. |
| Cory LeClair | Acting superintendent, SAU 6 | Reported the late lunch application and corrective steps, the lunch debt figures and billing complaints; reported on forensic audit versus efficiency study options and costs. |
| Michael O'Neill | Business administrator, SAU 6 | Read the lost reimbursement figures; presented the SAU expenditure and revenue projections and the merit-pool accounting question. Surname spelling unverified. |
| Mary Woodman | Clerk | Called the roll and the nonpublic roll-call vote. |
| Mimi (surname not on record) | Citizens' comments; Stevens High School employee | Spoke for keeping the hot lunch program. Surname not audible (transcribed rise for one). |
| Charlie Gessner | Citizens' comments, Ward 1; district employee | Asked about Dr. Pfeifer's status and pay, how staff learned of the new superintendent, whether a contract was signed, and the cost of superintendent turnover. Spelling as in the dialogue file. |
| Unidentified | Pledge group; short board-side responses | Group ayes, abstention counts and crosstalk. |
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda for this meeting is posted in any district share, so this list is reconstructed from the chair's transitions on the recording. An agenda existed: the chair amends numbered and lettered items ("under three H") and later says "I put the agenda together". Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:33 | Call to order; pledge; roll call | Full attendance indicated. |
| 0:02:10 | Agenda | Citizens' comments added; item 3H, contract discussion and ratification, moved to the nonpublic session. Benware moved; carried by voice. |
| 0:03:33 | Minutes: November 8, 2018; February 19, February 21 and March 7, 2019 | Corrected, including adding nonpublic roll calls and sealing votes; approved one set at a time after McDevitt's point of order, each moved by Sprague and seconded by Benware, with abstentions from members not present. |
| 0:13:12 | Citizens' comments | Mimi; Charlie Gessner (Ward 1). |
| 0:23:58 | Welcome and orientation of new members | Board roles; NHSBA workshops. |
| 0:27:25 | Election of officers | Chair: Petrin (Erickson declined Sprague's nomination). Vice chair: Erickson. Voice votes. |
| 0:32:25 | Food service (item D) | Late NSLP application and lost reimbursements; lunch debt; billing complaints. Discussion only. |
| 0:53:05 | Efficiency study / forensic audit | McDevitt moved to hire a company for an efficiency study on staffing and training, as soon as available, not to exceed $5,000; Towle's second withdrawn, Sprague seconded; failed on a hand count. Benware's contingent motion drew no second. |
| 1:30:05 | Revenue and expenditures | O'Neill's year-end projection; merit-pool accounting left as last year. |
| 1:41:43 | Summary of search process and vote | Search summarized; March 7 roll-call vote read into the record, 8 to 3 for Michael Tempesta. No motion. |
| 1:50:49 | Nonpublic session | Benware moved under RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and II(c); roll call under way when the recording ends. |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue CSV. Times are the start of the cited exchange, taken from the CSV's own second count. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell for the full entry.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:02:15 | Agenda amended | Erickson: "First off, we missed putting the citizens comments on that. We always have. So I would like to add citizens comments." Under 3H, "We have contract discussion and ratification that needs to be moved to the nonpublic." | OBSERVATION POSITIVE |
| 0:06:09 | Minutes: nonpublic records added | For February 19, "I have the roll call vote coming out of nonpublic and I have the roll call vote for sealing the minutes for 99 years", to be added; the same for February 21. For March 7: "I did not run the meeting. Mike Patron, vice chair, ran the meeting." [Petrin], and the superintendent nomination should read as moved into nonpublic, not removed. Petrin to supply the March 7 roll calls: "give her the coming out of nonpublic and sealing the minutes." | MEDIUM POSITIVE |
| 0:10:15 | Point of order | McDevitt, on approving all four sets together: "Can't do that. Some of us weren't here." Each set approved separately, with abstentions. | |
| 0:13:22 | Citizen: hot lunch | Mimi: "I work at the high school. Just full disclosure before I started my comments." "for some of these kids, it's the only hot meal they get." "But it's also only year two of this program." | |
| 0:15:52 | Citizen: superintendent communication | Gessner: "Disclose I'm an employee for the district." "In regards to Doctor Pfeiffer, I can appreciate that it's a personnel issue, but I know a lot of people in the district, including myself, want to know what the status is." "My phone blew up on Saturday night when you hired your new superintendent." "employees were finding out through an indirect source that we had hired a new superintendent." "the rumor that's going around is that while we've picked a superintendent, we haven't officially signed one" and "by all counts, we will have had four superintendents." | MEDIUM |
| 0:20:35 | Board responses | McDevitt: the press reports a vote and "The next day is when possibly employees can be informed." Erickson: "no one person on this board has authority to act and represent the board." Zullo: the announcement was "supposed to go out via school messenger at the same time, so that everybody would have the information." "And there was a glitch on that part." | POSITIVE |
| 0:24:34 | Orientation | Erickson: "Our role, our responsibilities are to set and establish school board policy", budgets, hiring and evaluating the superintendent, bargaining, communication and planning; NHSBA new-member and "The two right to know. Law orientation, workshops." | OBSERVATION POSITIVE |
| 0:28:24 | Election of chair | Sprague: "I think nominate Marjorie Erickson is chair of the." Erickson: "I'd have to have a lot of arm twisting and." Towle: "I'd like to nominate Mike patron." [Petrin], seconded by Zullo. "All those in favor of Mike as chair." No opposition audible. | |
| 0:30:25 | Election of vice chair | The practice is to "have a chair from one board and a vice chair from the other board." Benware: "Then I'm going to nominate Marjorie chair." [vice chair]. Voice vote: "All those in favor of me as vice chair". Towle: "one horrendous year". | |
| 0:32:42 | Lunch application filed late | LeClair: "we've missed the National School Lunch program filing deadline", filed at the SAU level and "was not filed till January 30th." The next row, labeled for the chair in the CSV: "This is the second year that the National School Lunch Program application was not filed at the beginning of the year." O'Neill: "It's 209 for this year and slightly less for last year." Claremont's 2018 figure: "Hundred and $50,722.12." Unity figures are garbled. "Many things that we thought were done already were not done." | MEDIUM |
| 0:36:23 | Corrective steps; lunch debt | The board in "November hired a food service program assistant"; electronic role assignments split so filing does not all run through the business office. Debt as of March 28: 1,827 accounts "that owe a total of $4,259.42"; "There are 64 accounts that owe a total of $15,162.30". | MEDIUM |
| 0:44:17 | Effect on the budget | Benware: "with a almost $200,000 worth of sort of lost money." O'Neill: "I feel like we can certainly cover it with the health insurance changes." | MEDIUM |
| 0:45:53 | Diplomas and lunch debt | Sprague: students should be told "you're not going to get your diploma unless you paid this debt." and the board may choose "to not give a diploma until all their debt service." Zullo: a letter to parents too. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:47:40 | Billing complaints | Zullo: teachers charged for lunches not taken, "Parents sending in checks and then those checks aren't being cashed", former staff billed. LeClair raised these with the Abbey Group; they are "not necessarily school district within the school district purview, those concerns." | |
| 0:53:08 | Forensic audit or efficiency study | LeClair: a forensic audit suits suspected wrongdoing, "And to my knowledge, there's no concern about that at this time." A full audit is "that's probably a five year process, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars." Municipal Resources Inc. suggested "a not to exceed cost would probably be around $5,000, which would represent just over 40 hours of work." Advice: "don't spend the money if you don't have a specific purpose for the outcome." | |
| 0:58:30 | Case for and against | Erickson: "it's not our job to stop the say, our job is to hire the superintendent" [staff the SAU], and a study would inform the new superintendent's entry plan. Sprague on SAU staff growth and possible city-school consolidation. Zullo preferred to wait for the superintendent. Erickson: "I did share this with our nominee, and he was very supportive of the idea". Zullo: "Like, we haven't even had the conversation at a board level." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:10:40 | Motion; bid question | McDevitt moved; Towle seconded. Popescu: "Is this something we need to go out to bid to do?" MRI removed from the motion: "hire a company to perform a proficiency study in an amount not to exceed $5,000." [efficiency]. Scope narrowed to staffing and training. | |
| 1:13:17 | Debate | Whitney: strong leaders redesign their own departments. Erickson: many problems arose "of a lack of oversight on training and staffing during his tenure." [the prior superintendent]. Lovett: "to spend another up to $5,000 to do what this new superintendent is supposed to be coming in to do." "We just found out earlier tonight we have over $300,000 in reimbursements that we're missing out on." "There's just, I think, reckless spending at this point." Benware: an outside look is an investment. | |
| 1:21:45 | Vote | Towle: "Can I withdraw my second?" Sprague seconded instead. Final wording: hire a company for an efficiency study on staffing and training "as soon as available" and "for an amount not to exceed $5,000." Voice vote unclear; hand count: "That's for all those opposed. Okay. Opposed carries." [four in favor, as heard]. Benware's contingent motion got no second: "Well, at the moment we're tabled because we don't have." | |
| 1:31:55 | SAU budget projection | O'Neill: $25,000 a year for a tech integrator paid through Claremont; security cameras added "we should do it at the Dow as well for security purposes." "I'm projecting a budget balance at the end of the year of 133. 714" [$133,714]; "in projecting $9,071.25 positive variance on the budget side for revenues"; fund balance increase "142. 78552 which is not a bad place to be." [$142,785.52]. Merit-pool reallocation kept as last year. | POSITIVE |
| 1:41:56 | March 7 vote: counsel's advice | Erickson: "I learned after the fact that we actually should have come out of our nonpublic on March 7th to take a vote." The "remedy for that is to retake the vote in public, which we could do, except that between that meeting, in this meeting, we've lost two members in game two members." So "we could simply read the roll call vote that was taken at the end of our March 7th meeting." Search: "By January 15th, we had 14 applicants", five phone interviews, three in-depth interviews, two finalists and "We had a public meet and greet". | MEDIUM |
| 1:46:02 | Roll call read into the record | Petrin: "The motion was made by Jason Bender to offer Mr. Michael to the jobs as a you six superintendent. Seconded by prudence." [Benware; SAU 6; McCormick]. No: Sprague, Erickson, Lowe; yes: Lovett, Pierce, McCormick, Benware, Towle, Zullo, McDevitt, Petrin. "The total being 8 to 3 in favor of Mr. Tempesta." Erickson: "And I think that makes us now legal." | MEDIUM |
| 1:47:01 | Members on disclosure | Zullo: "I have no problem ever sharing how I voted." but "the disservice is that the public did not have the huge presentation that we did." Benware: "since we have these conversations about policy or personnel matters in a closed session, oftentimes none of that context will ever exist." Erickson: "this was came from the lawyer that we hired." Zullo: "I think had we followed the process that we had originally agreed to without it getting changed last minute" she would feel differently; Erickson: "And there was nobody on air left." | MEDIUM |
| 1:50:49 | Motion to enter nonpublic | Benware: "I'd like to make a motion to go on a non public session for RSA 91, a column three, subparagraph two." He read ¶II(a), "Promotion or compensation of any public employee or the disciplining of such employee", and ¶II(c), "Matters which, if discussed in public, would likely affect adversely the reputation of any person of than a member of the public body itself." Roll call begins at 1:51:49; every audible answer is yes. The recording ends during the roll call. | OBSERVATION |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the law in force on March 28, 2019. Several provisions cited below have since been amended, and each flag cites the text as it then read. They are not findings of violation, and nothing here is legal advice. Where no verified rule applies, the flag says so and is recorded as an observation. Seven flags follow, ordered by severity.
MEDIUM The superintendent vote was taken in the March 7 nonpublic session; its roll call first reached the public record 21 days later, on counsel's advice
The chair said she "learned after the fact that we actually should have come out of our nonpublic on March 7th to take a vote" (1:41:56). Because two members had since left and two joined, counsel advised reading the March 7 roll call instead of retaking it, and Petrin read it: 8 to 3 to offer the superintendency to Michael Tempesta (1:46:02). Earlier the chair corrected the March 7 minutes to say the nomination was moved into the nonpublic session, and said the roll calls for leaving nonpublic and for sealing the minutes would be added (0:08:07). In 2019, RSA 91-A:3, I(c) allowed decisions to be made in nonpublic session only within the matters in the motion, and ¶III required "Minutes and decisions reached in nonpublic session" to be publicly disclosed within 72 hours unless a recorded two-thirds vote in public session determined that disclosure would harm a non-member's reputation, render the action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism. The member-by-member vote appears in public here 21 days after March 7. The record mitigates this: the decision itself was announced within days (an employee describes the weekend announcement at 0:16:43, and Zullo explains the press release at 0:22:55), the board acted on legal advice to cure the defect, and it says so on the record. Whether the March 7 motion to enter nonpublic cited ¶II(b) (hiring) and whether the March 7 seal carried a statutory finding cannot be checked, because no minutes are online. Graded MEDIUM because the board itself identified the gap and the record shows a cure attempt.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(c), II(b) and III (2019 codification; source note ends 2016, 30:1 and 280:1).
MEDIUM National School Lunch Program application filed late for a second year, with federal reimbursements lost
The acting superintendent said the SAU "missed the National School Lunch program filing deadline" and filed on January 30, and the next row adds that the prior year's application was also late (0:32:42). The business administrator's figures are partly garbled; Claremont's 2018 loss reads as $150,722.12 and his total for this year as 209 (0:34:03). Members characterized the loss as "almost $200,000" (Benware) and "over $300,000" (Lovett); those are their characterizations, not audited figures. The standard for a recipient of federal awards in the 2019 Uniform Guidance is to "Establish and maintain effective internal control over the Federal award" (2 CFR 200.303(a)), and a missed program application two years running is the kind of control failure that provision addresses. The record shows corrective action: a food service program assistant hired in November, filing roles split, training planned, and the state timeline circulated (0:36:23). No verified rule fixing the NSLP application deadline was checked for this page, so the flag rests on the internal-control standard and the officials' own account.
Sources: 2 CFR 200.303(a) (2019 annual CFR edition); recording.
OBSERVATION "Contract discussion and ratification" was moved into a nonpublic session that the recording does not show
The chair moved agenda item 3H, "contract discussion and ratification", into the nonpublic session (0:02:48). Benware's motion read the words of RSA 91-A:3, II(a) and II(c) (1:50:49), which satisfies ¶I(b)'s requirement that the motion state the exemption. Discussing an employee's compensation fits ¶II(a). Ratifying a contract is a decision, and under ¶I(c) and ¶III any decision made there had to be confined to the motion's matters and disclosed within 72 hours unless sealed with a statutory finding. The recording ends during the roll call (1:53:04), and no minutes are online, so which contract was ratified, and whether the result was disclosed, cannot be determined from the record.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b)-(c), II(a), II(c) and III (2019 codification).
OBSERVATION A member asserted authority to withhold diplomas for unpaid lunch debt
Sprague proposed telling students they would not receive a diploma until lunch debt was paid, calling it "actual authority" the board has (0:45:53). No statute granting or forbidding that authority was verified for this page, so this is recorded as the speaker's characterization. For context only: the meal-payment-policy provision added to RSA 189:11-a by 2019, 301:1 took effect on July 1, 2019, after this meeting; it requires that such a policy "ensure that all students have access to a healthy school lunch" and that "no student will be subject to different treatment from the standard school lunch meal or school cafeteria procedures", and does not in terms address diplomas. No action was taken on the proposal here.
Sources: RSA 189:11-a, VIII (2019 codification; source note 2019, 301:1, eff. July 1, 2019; not in force on March 28, 2019).
OBSERVATION The chair discussed the efficiency study with the superintendent nominee before the board had discussed it
Having told new members that "no one person on this board has authority to act and represent the board" (0:21:24), the chair later said she had shared the study idea with the nominee and that he "was very supportive of the idea" (1:05:22); Zullo objected that the board had not yet discussed it. Nothing on the record suggests a quorum met outside a meeting, so RSA 91-A:2-a is not engaged; this is a governance observation about a single member speaking to a candidate still in contract negotiation.
Sources: Recording only; the members' own statements.
OBSERVATION No agenda, packet or minutes online; the file name and Cablecast date disagree with the meeting date; the recording ends mid-roll call
MAP.md section 96 records that neither district Drive share holds anything before July 2022 (checked 9/26/26), so this page rests on the recording alone. That is a limit of what the district posts online, not evidence that records were never made: the board corrects and approves four sets of its own minutes here. In 2019 RSA 91-A:2, II required minutes to be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". The recording is filed as 032519 with a Cablecast event date of March 25, while the show title and the speakers place it on March 28; this page uses March 28. The tape stops during the nonpublic roll call, so the end of the meeting is not in any public record reachable from here. The limb of the project's missing-records rule applied is the online-availability observation.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1); Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 96.
POSITIVE Citizens' comments restored, nonpublic votes added to the minutes, new members oriented, and employee concerns answered in public
The chair added citizens' comments that the printed agenda had omitted (0:02:15); the board amended its February and March minutes to record the roll calls for leaving nonpublic session and for sealing (0:06:09); the chair oriented new members on board roles and pointed them to the NHSBA Right-to-Know workshops (0:24:34); and three members answered an employee's criticism in public, with an apology for the announcement glitch (0:20:35). The business administrator's line-by-line year-end projection drew thanks for more frequent updates. None of this is required beyond statutory minimums in 2019 (the 30-minute public comment statute, RSA 189:74, dates from 2022).
Sources: Recording; practice beyond statutory minimums.
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast show 10304, "SAU #6 SCHOOL BOARD meeting 3-28-19": Claremont Community TV. Every timestamp on this page links into this recording.
- No Drive material: neither the Claremont nor the SAU 6 share holds a year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023 (MAP.md, checked 9/26/26). No agenda, packet, food service job description, expenditure report or minutes were located.
- Related pages: Claremont School Board, March 20, 2019 and Claremont School Board, April 3, 2019.
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/10304 SAU6032519.mp4.CSV (791 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/10304 SAU6032519.mp4Input/Transcripts/10304 SAU6032519.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/10304 SAU6032519.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 96
Laws and rules cited on this page
- New Hampshire statutes, as in force on March 28, 2019. RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes; 2019 codification, source note ends 2018, 244:1). RSA 91-A:3, I(b)-(c), II(a)-(c) and III (nonpublic sessions; 2019 codification, source note ends 2016, 30:1 and 280:1). RSA 91-A:2-a (deliberation only in meetings). RSA 189:74 (public comment; enacted 2022, not in force).
- Not in force on this date, cited for context. RSA 189:11-a, VIII (meal payment policy; 2019, 301:1, eff. July 1, 2019).
- Federal. 2 CFR 200.303(a) (internal control over federal awards; 2019 annual edition).