Participants
Everyone in the record. Speaker names follow the project's dialogue file (66 rows, 15 of them unidentified); attendance and the movers of motions follow the minutes, because the recording does not name them. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Michael Petrin | Chair | Presided and put every question. Introduced the item and noted "We do have Heather and Whitney here on the team." Invited public comment on the agreement at 0:13:06 before the vote. Never named on this recording; the minutes name him as the chair who called the meeting to order. |
| Heather Whitney | Vice Chair; negotiating team | Present. Seconded the agenda and the ratification, per the minutes. One of the two negotiators "here on the team"; whether the unidentified negotiating-team voice at 0:11:06 is hers or Whitney Skillen's is not settled by the recording. |
| Whitney Skillen | Member; negotiating team | Present. Seconded the adjournment, per the minutes. Named by the business administrator as a negotiator (Whitney skilling). |
| Joshua Lambert | Member | Present. The minutes record him moving all three motions: the agenda, the ratification ("Josh Lambert makes a motion to accept the contact between the Claremont School Board and the Sugar River Educator Association"; contact as printed) and the adjournment. The dialogue file leaves the voice that makes those motions unidentified; the attribution report notes that one unnamed voice moves both the ratification and the adjournment, which is consistent with the minutes. He resigned from the board two days later. |
| Bonnie Miles | Member | Present per the minutes. Not named on the recording. |
| Steven Horsky | Member | Absent per the minutes. He abstained on these minutes on January 17, saying he had the flu. |
| Frank Sprague | Member; negotiating team | Absent per the minutes, although the business administrator names him as the third board negotiator. The roll-call fragment at 0:01:09 (Yeah. And Sprague Whitney still here and.) is the roll-caller reading names, not his answer. |
| Richard Seaman | Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations, SAU 6 | Presented the agreement from 0:02:54: the strategy, the comparables, the terms and the cost, and the budget mechanics. Not named on this recording; the dialogue file attributes the presentation to him by content (medium confidence) and the minutes confirm: "Richard Seaman gives an overview of the negotiations and discusses data from prior years." |
| Michael Koski | Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, Innovation & Assessment, SAU 6 | Explained the teacher-evaluation committee at 0:09:52. Handed the item by name (Mike Kosky); the minutes confirm. |
| Unidentified board member | Negotiating team | Spoke at 0:11:06 for "our committee" on why raises were weighted to early-career teachers. Heather Whitney or Whitney Skillen; the recording does not say which. |
| Unidentified board member | Question on the salary columns | Asked at 0:12:42 what the "BA plus 15" columns mean. |
| Chelsea Weatherford | Recording secretary | Submitted the minutes. Not heard. |
Agenda
From the posted agenda, 1.9.23 CSB Agenda, with dispositions from the minutes. Quoted agenda and minutes wording is marked as such. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:13 | I. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance | Agenda: "6:30PM Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance". Minutes: "6:30PM Meeting called to order by chair, Mike Petrin". |
| 0:00:55 | II. General Business: roll call | Minutes: "Present: Mike Petrin, Heather Whitney, Joshua Lambert, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen Absent: Steven Horsky, Frank Sprague". The roll caller is not named and the recorded fragments cannot be matched to members. |
| 0:01:18 | Agenda: amendments and final approval | Minutes: "Josh Lambert makes a motion to approve the agenda as presented; Seconded by Heather Whitney; all in favor via voice vote." |
| 0:01:39 | Citizens Comments | Minutes: "Citizens Comments- No citizen comments." See flag 4. |
| 0:01:57 | 1. Discussion/Ratification of the SREA 2024-2025 contract | Agenda: "Discussion/Ratification of the SREA 2024-2025 contract." (the two fiscal years the agreement covers). Presentation by Seaman and Koski; public comment invited at 0:13:06, none offered. Minutes: "Josh Lambert makes a motion to accept the contact between the Claremont School Board and the Sugar River Educator Association ; seconded by Heather Whitney; all in favor via voice vote." No opposition is audible at 0:13:29. |
| 0:13:46 | II. Other Business/Future Agenda Items | Minutes: "Regular board meeting scheduled for 1/11/23" and "Public Hearing for FY24 Budget scheduled for 1/17/23". |
| 0:14:16 | III. Closing Activities; IV. Adjournment | Minutes: "Josh Lambert makes a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by Whitney Skillen; all in favor via voice vote." |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue CSV (66 rows). Each time is the start of the cited exchange, rendered 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 |
|---|
| 0:00:13 | Call to order, roll, agenda | "Good evening. I'd like to call the January 9th, 2023." Pledge, a roll whose answers the transcript cannot separate, and the agenda approved on a voice vote. | |
| 0:01:39 | Citizens' comments | "Citizens. Comments. We have any comments?" The rest of the line is garbled; nobody came forward and the chair moved on. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:01:57 | The item introduced | "the ratification of the Share Day 2024 2025 project" [SREA 2024–2025 agreement]. "Everybody should have gotten the contract is in your packet". "We do have Heather and Whitney here on the team." | |
| 0:02:54 | How the negotiation went | "We had three members from the board that were part of the negotiating team. Heather Whitney, Whitney skilling, and also Frank Sprague." "there was a declared impasse coming out of the negotiations and working with a mediator and were successful in our efforts working with the mediator." Settled "Just before Christmas". | |
| 0:03:24 | The strategy: keep teachers past year three | "Claremont is a great training ground for new teachers." "But then once they get their training, once they get their experience, they leave." Of 399 teachers who left since 2005, "22% of those that leave left in the first year." "After the first year, another 14% left after the second year. Another 17% left after the third year." So the aim was "to address the dollars down into the lower level of the grid" and "to put an increase into year three". | |
| 0:05:29 | Comparables | "right now at the start of brand new teacher, coming into Claremont School District was making 40,728. Let's hold on. The second Sol Mountain are making $4,000 more." [Fall Mountain] Kearsarge about the same, Lebanon higher, Cornish lower, "comparable, with Windsor and a little bit higher than Newport." | |
| 0:06:42 | Terms and cost | "at that time, I think we are sitting with an 8% inflation market". "it was a two year agreement. And in year one we're looking at a 3.25% increase. And in year two we're looking at a 3.75% increase." "The total increase from the negotiation in year one is $767,000. We have 172 teachers or $767,000, and then loaded for retirement, and there's an additional 235,000. So it's just over $1 million. Is the cost in year one. In year two, the increase on the salary side is 438,000." "And the benefits to that are 134,000." | POSITIVE |
| 0:08:54 | Inside the budget, not a separate article | "with all of our other negotiated agreements, you'll remember last year we had four of them. They show up as separate warrant articles. In the case of the Syria and the teachers, there is not a separate warrant article. This is built into the budget. So approving the budget approves the contract, not approving the budget and ending with a default budget does not approve the contract." [Syria = SREA] "This is the sheer saying yes, we'd like it to continue to be just within the budget." | POSITIVE |
| 0:09:52 | Teacher evaluation deferred to a committee | Koski: "time during negotiations to, to make those changes, but we've established a committee" of SREA members and administrators. "We have an end date on that of April 1st, 2024 to have that agreement in place", with the new system in place "September of 2024". Also "some, give backs in insurance by the teachers." | |
| 0:11:06 | A negotiator on why the raises were weighted | "we had heard from educators for decades, actually, that one of the of our district is that we fail to keep these young teachers". Young teachers "are carrying student loans. We have educators right now that are working two jobs to keep a roof over their heads." (Unidentified: Heather Whitney or Whitney Skillen.) | |
| 0:12:42 | Questions, then the vote | A member asked about the BA plus 15 columns ("Plus years. College credit"). The chair: "Any questions or comments from the public on this item at this point seeing none." Motion: "Set agreement between the Claremont School Board and the Education Association." Seconded; "All those in favor? Aye. Opposed?" No opposition audible. | |
| 0:13:46 | Next meetings; adjournment | "we have a meeting this Wednesday. A regular board meeting. So. And then a meeting. Next Tuesday, the public hearing on the budget." Adjourned at 0:14:25. | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the state law in force on January 9, 2023. 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; there is no HIGH or MEDIUM flag on this page.
OBSERVATION The agreement and agenda reached the public share about four hours before the meeting, and no public notice for this special meeting has been located
The packet folder holds the agenda and the tentative agreement, both with a Drive createdTime of January 9, 2023 at 19:16 UTC (2:16 p.m. Eastern), four hours before a 6:30 p.m. meeting that ratified a two-year, roughly $1.6 million agreement. Unlike the January 3 and January 11 folders, this folder holds no public notice. RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice of the time and place of a meeting to be posted "at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays" beforehand (quoted from the statute); notice may be posted physically, and nothing here shows it was not, so this is an observation about what the online record lets a citizen check, not a finding. The agenda itself is not the notice and no statute fixes when a packet must be posted. A Google Docs copy of the agreement in the same folder was created on March 27, 2023, after the meeting.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (notice; 2017 codification, same wording in force in January 2023); Google Drive metadata for 10fEPrYGlzmVFdrMzxVB-jgwilQBzfJwa and 1dajirsvxoq9CFTZ9gLkSNsqf1ryfu6K7, read 2026-09-26. Observation.
OBSERVATION Citizens' comments lasted seconds; RSA 189:74 sets a 30-minute floor, and what that floor measures is unsettled
The chair opened citizens' comments at 0:01:39 and moved to the agreement within about eighteen seconds; the minutes record "No citizen comments." RSA 189:74, in force since September 6, 2022, requires a school board to "provide the opportunity for the public to comment on school district matters at a meeting of the school board held under RSA 91-A:2" and says "The public comment period shall be for no less than 30 minutes" (quoted from the statute). It excepts emergency meetings and meetings held solely for a nonpublic session; this special meeting is neither. Whether the 30 minutes is a floor on the opportunity or on elapsed time when nobody wishes to speak is not settled by the text, and nobody was turned away. In the board's favour, the chair also invited public comment on the agreement itself, at 0:13:06, before the vote.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (2022, 333:1, eff. September 6, 2022; never amended). Observation.
POSITIVE The cost of the teachers' agreement, and how the voters would decide it, were stated in public before the board ratified it
Before the vote the business administrator gave year-by-year figures (year one $767,000 in salary plus $235,000 loaded for retirement, "just over $1 million"; year two $438,000 plus $134,000), put the teacher-turnover data and district comparables in the packet, and explained the consequence of embedding the agreement in the operating budget: "approving the budget approves the contract, not approving the budget and ending with a default budget does not approve the contract." RSA 273-A:3, II(b) provides that "Only cost items shall be submitted to the legislative body" of the public employer for approval (quoted from the statute); the board's ratification is not that approval, and the administrator said as much. The figures given here match the cost note the district later printed with Article 2, $1,002,364 and $573,097 (see the February 8, 2023 deliberative session page). Eight days later a resident at the January 17 hearing warned that an agreement embedded this way is hard for voters to see (see the January 17 page); on this record, at least, it was disclosed.
Sources: RSA 273-A:3, II(b) (cost items to the legislative body; source note ends 2013, 244:1); Additional Information 1.9.23.pdf.
POSITIVE Minutes posted within five business days, with a mover and seconder for every motion
The draft minutes in this meeting's folder carry a Drive createdTime of January 15, 2023, the fourth business day after the meeting, inside the RSA 91-A:2, II requirement that minutes be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". They name the mover and seconder of all three motions, as the same paragraph requires ("The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes."; in force from 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019), which is the only way a reader can learn who moved the ratification: the recording does not say.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II; Google Drive metadata for 1-K9YJ1rdIhnwSR7BukhXYQrMXYJB9xPy, read 2026-09-26.
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/14835 SchoolBoard010923.mp4.CSV (66 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/14835 SchoolBoard010923.mp4Input/Transcripts/14835 SchoolBoard010923.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/14835 SchoolBoard010923.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 182
Laws and rules cited on this page
- Right-to-Know. RSA 91-A:2, II (24-hour notice; five-business-day minutes; mover and seconder), read from the 2017 codification and the 2023 codification; the 2023, 188:1 amendment (eff. October 3, 2023) post-dates this meeting.
- Public comment. RSA 189:74 (school board public comment period of no less than 30 minutes; 2022, 333:1, eff. September 6, 2022).
- Collective bargaining. RSA 273-A:3, II(b) (only cost items go to the legislative body for approval).