SAU 6 Board — September 29, 2022

OBSERVATION The draft minutes list one member as both present and absent, record the late-arriving chair as present from the start, and reached the public share seven weeks later; the agenda reached it half an hour before the meeting

The roll in the minutes reads "Present: ... Whitney Skillen and Heather Whitney. Absent:Garry Bator, Heather Whitney". The chair arrived after the minutes votes (0:14:38), yet appears in the present list with no note, although the agenda itself says "Board Members who arrive after the meeting begins will be noted as “present” at the point in the agenda at which they arrive". RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes to "include the names of members". The minutes do record a mover and seconder for each motion, and they name Frank Sprague as the member who called the meeting to order, which the recording does not settle.

The draft was created in the November 16 SAU 6 packet folder on November 16, 2022: the thirty-first business day after the meeting, counting Columbus Day, the biennial election day and Veterans Day out, against a requirement that minutes be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". The agenda's Drive copy was created at 6:00 p.m. on September 29, thirty minutes before the call to order. Drive created times date online posting, not the notice posted in public places or availability at the SAU office, so both are observations about online availability.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2022 codification: names of members; five business days); RSA 288:1 (legal holidays); draft SAU 6 School Board Meeting Minutes 9.29.22.

OBSERVATION Minutes of a December 2021 meeting were approved nine months later, from copies members said they did not have in front of them

At 0:02:21 the presiding member introduced the December 16, 2021, April 21, 2022 and June 16, 2022 minutes: "We don't have them here, but we received them by email." All three were approved by voice vote. Approval has no statutory deadline; what RSA 91-A:2, II requires is that minutes, draft or final, be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". Whether the December and April drafts were available that quickly cannot be tested from here, because the district's online packet share begins in July 2022. A nine-month gap between a meeting and approval of its minutes means the public record of that meeting stayed in draft for most of a year. Recorded as an observation.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2022 codification).

OBSERVATION Claremont's fiscal 2020 audit, due under the district's own schedule the next day, was put back another month at the auditor's request

Seaman at 0:36:55: the auditor asked "that we push back the date for the Claremont audit, which was supposed to have been done by tomorrow to the end of next month", citing "the unexpected departure of two senior members" of the audit team and "the continuing effort that we have in reconciling our grant funds"; the fiscal 2022 audit would still be done by February 15, "which is really the most critical time frame for us to get on to so that we're back on to a normal audit." The SAU's 2020 audit arrived in draft this week and Unity's was "in final draft". The federal deadline and the severity of the backlog are analysed on the September 7 Claremont page, flag 1, where the finding sits. On the positive side, Seaman reported at 0:38:27 that Claremont had used all but about $10,000 of its expiring Title II, III and IV funds within the deadline, which answers the lapse risk raised on September 7.

Sources: the recording at 0:36:29 to 0:39:57; 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1) (2022 edition).