Participants
Everyone in the record, as named in the dialogue CSV. No agenda or minutes are available to confirm spellings; spellings follow the project roster, and the transcript's renderings are given where they differ. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Frank Sprague | Chair | Presided. Explained the retreat and goal-setting process; asked the board whether it wanted public input before deciding on grading (1:09:53); recalled the contentious move to proficiency grades ("we took a lot of public input"). Rendered Jeff Frank Sprague in the roll call. |
| Heather Whitney | Board member | Spoke on vaccine safety; questioned the grading proposal repeatedly ("it bothers me a lot to know that you could fail a competency and pass the course", 1:19:49); moved the grading change (1:35:52); asked that parents be involved before any realignment presentation (2:07:58). |
| Michael Petrin | Board member | Asked whether the grading change would apply district-wide (1:18:12); supported it from experience as a parent; urged realignment "for next year" (1:57:36); handed the board's Facebook page to Lambert (2:15:28). |
| Steven Horsky | Board member | Seconded the agenda (per the chair). Asked about class rank (1:05:30) and AP weighting; questioned the summer field trips (1:43:42); pressed for a realignment public hearing "next month" (2:02:50); moved the calendar (1:56:07) and adjournment. |
| Joshua Lambert | Board member | Credited by the chair with seconding the minutes. Said public feedback on grading had already been gathered, including through his own pre-election survey (1:12:48). Took over the board Facebook page. |
| Rob Lovett Jr. | Board member | Named in the roll call; no row is attributed to him. |
| Carolyn Towle | Board member | Named in the roll call ("Carolyn Tall"); no row is attributed to her, and whether she was present is not established by the recording. She died on May 11, 2021. |
| Michael Tempesta | Superintendent, SAU 6 | Presented the strategic plan (0:10:04) and asked for its adoption; described the grading vote as "conceptual" and district-wide (1:17:34, 1:18:28); argued that realignment needed community buy-in and could not be ready for the coming year (1:59:15). His report is introduced as "Mr.. Kevin's report" in the transcript. |
| Donna Magoon | Assistant Superintendent, SAU 6 | Announced a COVID-19 vaccination clinic for students 12 and older (0:06:06); clarified the scope of the grading vote (1:17:20) and AP weighting. Later short interjections are a medium-confidence attribution. |
| Patricia Barry | Principal, Stevens High School | Presented the grading proposal (0:30:28): "we're not talking about abandoning competency based education, at all." Described credit recovery, the outdoor prom and the graduation at Monarch Farms (1:36:49). |
| Charlie Gessner | Guidance chair, Stevens High School | Walked the board through the grade book, the proposed scale and the report card (0:35:29). Surname spelling rests on this recording. |
| Prescott Herzog | Student representative | Student report (0:04:00); spoke in favor of standardizing grades (1:10:39); asked about senior events. Rendered Truscott at one point. |
| Mary Woodman | School district clerk | Called the attendance roll (0:01:18). |
| Jeff Small | Director of Technology, SAU 6 | Ran the slides ("Mr. Small", 0:10:04); does not speak. |
| (none) | Public | Citizens' comments were called at 0:03:48; no one spoke. |
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. The chair and superintendent refer to lettered discussion items (the calendar becomes "item F"; items C and D are swapped), so a written agenda existed. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:27 | Call to order, pledge, roll call | Roll called by the clerk at 0:01:18; answers run together. |
| 0:01:43 | Agenda amended and approved | Bowling team recognition deleted (team not reached); revised school calendar added as item F. Mover not identified ("I move that."); "So Steve seconds"; voice vote. |
| 0:02:45 | Minutes of April 7 and April 18 (retreat) | "We have April 7th and April 18th, which was our retreat." Motion by an unidentified member; the chair: "We'll give it to Josh" for the second; voice vote. |
| 0:03:48 | Citizens' comments | "Seeing none, I'll close citizens comments". |
| 0:04:00 | Student representative report | Brief. |
| 0:04:11 | Superintendent's report | COVID trends; student vaccination clinic; strategic plan 2021 to 2026. |
| 0:24:28 | A. School board goals | Chair's account of the April 18 retreat. No vote. |
| 0:28:34 | B. Strategic plan | Unidentified member: "I need to adopt the Claremont Public School strategic plan 21 through 26." No second audible; voice vote (0:28:57). See flag 2. |
| 0:29:27 | D (taken before C). Grading proposal | Presentation by Barry and Gessner. Whitney moves "to accept the proposed new grading system, which separates the competency based evaluation from another evaluation from an evaluation, numerical evaluation" (1:35:52); second unidentified; voice vote (1:36:15), no opposition audible. See flag 1. |
| 1:36:37 | C. High school failures and credit recovery; end of year | Summer credit recovery with Friday field trips; prom and graduation plans. No vote. |
| 1:55:42 | F. Revised 2021-22 calendar | Layout reverted, same days. Horsky moves (1:56:07: "Received and amended."); second unidentified; voice vote. |
| 1:56:15 | June agenda; school realignment | Discussion only; the superintendent to sketch options for the next meeting. |
| 2:15:23 | Good of the order; adjournment | Board Facebook page; a damaged fence. Horsky moves to adjourn (2:17:16); second; voice vote. |
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 |
|---|
| 0:01:43 | Agenda and minutes | The bowling team recognition is dropped ("I was not able to reach Sean"); the calendar added. The April 7 minutes and "April 18th, which was our retreat" approved together. | POSITIVE |
| 0:04:55 | COVID trends and a student vaccine clinic | Magoon (0:06:06): "Next Friday, we will be hosting a clinic, a, a Covid vaccination clinic for students 12 and older", with approval for 12-year-olds "still pending"; "over 50 students already signed up"; "Permission slips for obviously students under the age of 18 will be sent out to parents next week." Whitney (0:07:47): "you're more likely to be struck by lightning than to have a severe adverse reaction from either one of these vaccines." | |
| 0:10:04 | Strategic plan 2021 to 2026 | "I think we had 13 committees. All those things came into topics and initiatives that we will be talking about this year boils down to six." Focus areas include benchmarking achievement and "Increasing and individualizing the student time on learning" (0:14:44). "We'll post it on the web for beginning tomorrow." Adopted at 0:28:57 after the chair's remark that one board goal "is to support the, the administration in the achievement of their goals". | OBSERVATION |
| 0:24:28 | Board goals and the retreat | Sprague: the retreat brings the board together "especially when we have new board members"; a "whip around"; subcommittees that "come back and report out". | POSITIVE |
| 0:30:28 | Grading proposal presented | Barry: Claremont was "one of the leaders in competency based education"; but "the language of competency can be sometimes daunting"; "we're not talking about abandoning competency based education, at all. We're talking about changing the way in which we report that out". Gessner (0:40:48): a scale with "Notice no D's. No D no D plus no D minus", a 70 cutoff, and a "CR for credit recovery"; Barry: CR "would most likely represent a 60 to a 69". Barry (0:45:46): no return to "extra credit for the sake of getting the numbers up". | OBSERVATION |
| 0:50:42 | Can a student fail a competency and pass? | Whitney: "you can fail a competency and still have an overall passing grade." Sprague: "Which you couldn't do before." Whitney: "Which you couldn't do. But and I don't know if I like that." Sprague (0:53:41) on the old P-plus scale: "computers do numbers. They don't do letters." | |
| 1:08:00 | Decide tonight, or seek public input? | Sprague: "you're looking for us to make a decision on this tonight. True." The superintendent: "just the separation of the competencies from from the grade". Sprague recalls the earlier change: "it was contentious. And we had we we took a lot of public input." Then (1:09:53): "Is this something we want to get some public input on, or do we want to make a decision tonight to allow them to go forward?" Barry: "In the seven years that I've been principal, I have never once had a parent or a student say, this is an awesome grading system." Lambert (1:12:48): "I think there's been plenty of public feedback". | OBSERVATION |
| 1:16:31 | Scope of the vote | Horsky: "How quick can we implement it all the way across the district?" Magoon (1:17:20): "So tonight the vote is across the board, right." The superintendent: "It's conceptual. Yes, yes." Petrin (1:18:12): "is it the whole district." The superintendent: "The whole district for next year?" ... Yes. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:19:49 | Whitney's reservations | "it bothers me a lot to know that you could fail a competency and pass the course"; objections to test retakes; "you can't bomb the substantive [summative] anywhere in life". Barry answers with a whiteboard demonstration. Whitney (1:28:55): "This makes me happy. As long as I know they have to pass all their confidence again." | |
| 1:34:33 | Grading change adopted | Petrin: "I'll make a motion to, prove the change to the grading system." Chair: "Let's be more specific." Superintendent: "retain the competency, system and all the work that that there is, but dissolve the linkage between it being in the grade." Whitney moves (1:35:52); unidentified second; "All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay." | OBSERVATION |
| 1:36:49 | Credit recovery, prom, graduation | Letters sent to students with recoverable failing grades; Friday field trips in summer school. "Prom is going to be down at the visitor center under a tent." Graduation at Monarch Farms, "nine acres of meadow for parking" (1:41:00). Horsky (1:43:42): "What what is the reward to have that field trip, to be quite honest." Long exchange on AP weighting follows. | |
| 1:55:42 | Calendar revised | "it's the same content. But we're going to revert back to the same count how we did it before." Approved. | |
| 1:57:36 | Elementary school realignment | Petrin: "we know what needs to be done, to get great class size more equal throughout the elementary schools." Superintendent (2:01:53): "They will never be a better time. We have deficits. We need to gain ground." but "you want to make sure you have community by in". Horsky (2:02:28): "We have a duty to the taxpayer and the students of Claremont, not what school is where"; asks for "a public hearing next month". Whitney (2:07:58): "the community wasn't involved up front" last time. Superintendent (2:04:55): an earlier model freed "about 6 or 7 teachers" at a class size "about 18". Agreed: options sketched for the next meeting (2:13:21). | |
| 2:15:28 | Board Facebook page | Petrin: "we do have a Claremont School Board Facebook page, which is really used to put information out." "I usually put the agenda on there." He also shared meeting videos; Lambert takes it over. Petrin: "it's not a back and forth between people. It's no problem. Information information." | POSITIVE |
| 2:17:16 | Adjournment | Horsky: "I will be your motion guy tonight." | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the state law in force on May 5, 2021. They are not findings of violation, and nothing here is legal advice. Each flag cites the rule it rests on; where no verified rule applies, the flag says so and is recorded as an observation. Four flags follow, ordered by severity.
OBSERVATION A district-wide change in how grades are reported was voted the night it was first presented, after the chair raised and the board passed over public input
The high school's proposal was presented from 0:30:28. At 1:09:53 the chair asked: "Is this something we want to get some public input on, or do we want to make a decision tonight to allow them to go forward?", recalling that the earlier change to proficiency grades "was contentious" and drew "a lot of public input". Members answered that feedback had already been heard informally, including through a member's pre-election survey and Facebook (1:12:48). The assistant superintendent and superintendent then confirmed that the vote covered every school ("It's conceptual. Yes, yes.", 1:17:34) and would apply to "The whole district for next year" (1:18:27), although only the high school's version had been shown and the superintendent said the middle school was "in the process" of a parallel structure. The motion passed at 1:36:15 on a voice vote with an unidentified second.
No New Hampshire statute in force in 2021 required a hearing before a board changes grade reporting, so this is not a rule-based flag. The superintendent's statement that competencies are "a requirement" is his characterization and is not verified here. Whether a district grading policy governed the change, and whether it was amended, cannot be checked without the policy manual or minutes. The point for a reader is sequence and scope: a first presentation, a conceptual vote, and a district-wide effect.
Sources: no statutory rule; dialogue rows at 1:09:53, 1:17:20, 1:18:12 and 1:35:52.
OBSERVATION The five-year strategic plan was adopted on a voice vote with an unidentified mover and no audible second, and the plan itself is not in the record
At 0:28:39 the superintendent invited "a motion to adopt those goals"; an unidentified voice said "I need to adopt the Claremont Public School strategic plan 21 through 26." (0:28:49) and the chair went straight to "all those in favor I opposed." (0:28:57). The superintendent said the plan would be posted "on the web for beginning tomorrow" (0:10:55); no copy is in the district's current shares or the project's files. RSA 91-A:2, II, as in force in 2021, provided that "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." The recording cannot show whether the minutes did so; the minutes are not posted (flag 3). Several other motions on this recording (the agenda, the minutes, the grading and calendar seconds) also have unidentified movers or seconders.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2022 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1, so this is the text in force in 2021): movers and seconders recorded in the minutes.
OBSERVATION No agenda, notice or minutes for this meeting are posted online, though the recording shows minutes being kept
MAP.md records that neither district Drive share holds anything before July 2022 (checked 9/26/26). At 0:02:45 the board approves the April 7 minutes and those of the April 18 retreat. In 2021, RSA 91-A:2, II required minutes open to public inspection "not more than 5 business days after the meeting". Whether that was met cannot be tested from here. The limb of the project's missing-records rule applied is the online-availability observation.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2022 codification; text in force in 2021); Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 144.
POSITIVE The Sunday retreat was minuted and its minutes approved in public, and a member was posting agendas and meeting videos to a board page with an eye to the open-meetings line
The April 18 retreat was held on a Sunday at the community center with no recording in the corpus. At 0:02:45 the chair put "April 18th, which was our retreat" to a vote alongside the April 7 minutes, so the retreat was treated as a meeting of the board with its own minutes. RSA 91-A:2, I, as in force in 2021, defines a meeting as "the convening of a quorum of the membership of a public body" to discuss or act on matters within its "supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power", so a goal-setting retreat of the full board is a meeting and its minutes are a requirement rather than a courtesy. Keeping and approving them is the practice the law expects. At 2:15:28 Petrin described the board's Facebook page, where he posted the agenda and shared meeting videos, and said it "should be" run as information only: "it's not a back and forth between people." Citizens' comments were also called, though no one came forward (0:03:48), more than a year before RSA 189:74 required a comment period.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I and II (2022 codification; text in force in 2021): meetings of a quorum, and minutes; RSA 189:74 (2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022): not in force in 2021.
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast show 11510, "Claremont School Board Meeting of 5/5/21": Claremont Community TV, CLAREMONT SCHOOLS gallery. 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, notice, strategic plan, grading presentation, calendar or minutes for this meeting were located.
- The April 18, 2021 retreat whose minutes are approved here has no recording in the project's corpus.
- Related pages: March 17, 2021 (grading proposal previewed) and April 7, 2021 (whose minutes are approved here).
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/11510 SchoolBoard050521.mp4.CSV (651 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/11510 SchoolBoard050521.mp4Input/Transcripts/11510 SchoolBoard050521.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/11510 SchoolBoard050521.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 144
Laws and rules cited on this page
- New Hampshire statutes, as in force on May 5, 2021. RSA 91-A:2, I and II (meetings; minutes; 2022 codification, whose source note ends with 2018, 244:1). RSA 189:74, cited only to show it post-dates this meeting (2022, 333:1).