| 0:00:00 | Where special-education salaries sit | Whitney, mid-question: “Are there embedded services that like stay within the building, stay within that program, but are, on district wide budget line items.” Henry: related services are district-wide (“They're all district wide.”) rather than on building lines, which governs every building figure discussed afterward. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:01:44 | PRIDE at Bluff; life skills at Maple | McCosker: PRIDE “Is a behavioral. Program program that was started in lieu of sending kids out of district”, now one program at Bluff with “Maybe 6 to 10” students; “we brought a kid back this year from a pretty costly out of district” placement. Whitney: “it was almost $1 million worth of special add [ed] cost, allocated to the Bluffs”, a school of “about 168 students”. Blount: “there are three district wide life skills programs housed at Maple.” Whitney: “So that just explains the 1.5 million to me.” | |
| 0:04:45 | “about seven iterations” | Crawford: “can we all agree on the same copy to reference? I just want to make sure because there are about seven iterations here.” Henry: “that’s what she’s printing right now is version six.” Crawford: “I don’t print out 65 pages.” Henry had also revised the summary that day: “Because after Heather spoke to me, I went in and I made some changes.” Crawford’s copy showed 628; Whitney’s showed 490. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:06:51 | $490,062, a 2.82% increase before the CBAs | Whitney: “The total to be raised before CVA [CBA] agreements is 490,062”; “490062 for a 2.82% increase prior to all of the CBA. So that does not include any of the CBA.” Crawford: “So the 490,000 is the increase. Let’s talk about what is in and what is out of that number.” | |
| 0:08:13 | CMS guidance: three in the draft, two agreed | Pratt: “we had talked originally about, keeping the guidance at two. And it’s at, it’s at three.” Romeo: “It’s returning back to two”, “with other necessary adjustments.” Settled later at 1:03:41. | |
| 0:09:30 | Stevens activity account | Pratt asks where the vending money that once paid for the senior celebration now goes. Herrington: “I don’t think it generates a whole heck of a lot of money anymore”; “A lot of that money is used for, will help students that have issues with the class dues”, plus “Chromebook repairs for families that can’t quite do it.” | |
| 0:12:53 | Proposal: social workers and a director in place of coordinators | Whitney proposes to “embed a social worker in every elementary school” and, from the salary savings, fund a “director of in-house special programs”; the aim, “in a budget neutral way”, is to “provide options for the principals to consider what will best serve their needs”. Pratt: the principals say “we all need the social workers”. | |
| 0:18:21 | Lewis: what a coordinator does | “Now in my school it’s me. So I am the point of contact for special education. My student service coordinator does all 504 plans”. The positions were built “to help deal with a significant amount of behavior concerns”. | |
| 0:23:08 | “apples to potatoes” | Lewis: “I appreciate the thought that goes into that because the social workers are key people. For me, you are comparing apples to potatoes.” Blount: at Maple “we share the IEP roles”, and his coordinator “does supervise and evaluate the para educators”. | |
| 0:26:22 | The proposal dropped | Whitney: by days worked, the coordinators’ salary “rivals, the principal salary.” Crawford: “these guys who are the pros here prefer the three then. And its revenue neutral. Then I I’d say move on.” At 0:33:48: “since we’re on the 11th and a half hour of this budget process, I think that we need to move on.” No vote; the coordinators stay. | |
| 0:30:59 | Enrollment and identification rate | Whitney: “168 at bluff, 262 at Maple. 257 at Disney [Disnard]. 335 at CMS or 79 at Stevens, and 23 identified preschool students and 20 typical.” The Stevens figure is garbled. Identification: “Exact 27% of our student population.” | |
| 0:35:00 | $2.6 million up, two drivers | Crawford: the draft “shows a $2.6 million increase”; special education in two schools up “1,000,005” and health insurance “1.5 million”: “$3 million that we had no control over”, so “somewhere we’ve made $400,000 of adjustments, adjustments down.” | |
| 0:36:59 | What the draft leaves out | Crawford: “the s IRA [SREA] wage increase is not there. Isn’t that correct?” Henry: “That is correct.” “the parent [para] increases is not there.” “Correct.” “the preschool. There is no money for preschool in this one.” “That is correct.” Whitney: “23 identified, 20 typical whatever.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:37:38 | CMS tech ed | Crawford: “was it a re configuration of where the dollars were or was a program cut?” Henry: “It went to regular editor [regular ed] because that’s where they belonged.” Romeo: shop and computers were combined when the teacher retired; “We do not plan on returning it.” | |
| 0:39:42 | SRVRTC teacher education: finding the line | Crawford: “I looked on Friday at the sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center. We talked about $100,000”; “I didn’t see it on Friday.” Henry: “it’s on page 40. And it’s near the bottom”; “SRB TV [SRVRTC] teaching program salaries.” Michelle Herrington at 0:41:12: the program “would probably be upstairs”. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:41:34 | Stevens summer program: $30,000 to about $15,000 | Crawford: “Stephens high school summer program. On Friday. I saw $30,000.” Henry: “It’s not there now.” Pratt: “I wasn’t here for Friday.” Crawford: “does it really cost $30,000 for summer school.” Herrington (row marked uncertain): “To run it the way that it used to be was a $30,000. Does it need to be that way? No.”; the bare-bones figure: “probably around half that, like maybe 15,000.” Assent at 0:48:13. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:48:27 | Crawford to employees watching | “I’m sure that as people hear this, the the transcription of this meeting that employees might get panicked about, losing jobs”; “There’s shifting, but we haven’t necessarily cut positions.” Pratt: “Mr. Romeo did have to cut people.” Covered by attrition? “Not all of them. No, no.” | POSITIVE |
| 0:50:13 | Romeo: four teachers short | “we are now operating down one science, one social studies, one English, one math. We’ve had to rearrange our schedule to accommodate that.” Further cuts mean “we’re going to have to change our schedule”. “I will the best I can to save teacher positions.” Enrollment: “from 400 to 338.” “if I have to go back to half your science and socialism [social studies], I don’t want to do right.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:57:28 | Sprague on minimum standards | “the United are United Arts, PE, health and such. They are all subject to minimum standards as well. At least they used to be.” Romeo agrees and adds a creative-writing element tied to new testing. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:02:41 | A CMS counselor position removed, the person kept | Henry: “In fiscal year 25 budget. There’s two in fiscal year 26 there’s three”; the actual this year is three. Romeo at 1:03:41: “Take away the position. That’s a cost savings of taking away the position. And we have convinced her to stay in district because she is good.” “Should be rift [RIF’d].” A departing PE teacher will not be replaced: “If we adjust our schedule we’re not filling it.” Pratt: a third counselor had once been removed “without letting me know.” | |
| 1:05:09 | What pre-K costs | Sprague: “I’m trying to find out what pre-K costs.” McCosker: “The coda works three days a week period at pre-K”; the SLP “spends about 37 hours a week out of 40”. Sprague: “Where was I couldn’t find contracted services under district wide.” McCosker: “But the number got zeroed. I’m not. We’re not sure why.”; “We have about 20 people that are here as on contracted service”. Program figure: Whitney “500.”; Pratt “Is that 500,000, right.” | OBSERVATION OBSERVATION |
| 1:13:12 | “the last meeting we had” | Pratt: “I think we spoke quite a bit about this at the last meeting we had when we were talking about pre-K.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:15:23 | Will related-services staff still be busy? | McCosker: “the people working with pre not with pre-K, have full case law [caseloads]. Yes.” At 1:17:07: “I don’t know that assuming is safe.” Then: “Assumptions are very dangerous. But my assumption is is no, these people will still be busy”; “one way or the other, we have to provide those services.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:19:15 | The bottom line with the teachers’ agreement | Henry: “we have the 2.6 million. That’s the actual increase. But then we take away 2.1 million in additional revenues”, to “that $490,000. So then I add the 515 on”: “1,005,062, which is a 5.78%, change increase”; “$81.47 per 100,000. So the increase on the rate would be $0.81.” The paraprofessional and administrator agreements were not yet ratified and are not in the figure. | |
| 1:22:47 | Another $150,000? | Pratt: “is this committee asking the administration to cut another $150,000?” Crawford: “I am not.” Sprague: “Not yet.” Crawford: “Frank was an English major.” | |
| 1:23:20 | Default budget above the proposed budget | Henry: “the default is 90,000 more than the general budget right now”; “90,000 more, which is roughly another $0.08.” Crawford: “if they didn’t pass the budget, it would cost them more and they wouldn’t get the increase for the teachers”. Whitney: “making it a wash between the default and all the Warren [warrant] articles.” Henry at 1:26:03: “I honestly like to have a difference in default compared to budget because it gives people a choice.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:26:03 | $1.5 million cut; the counselor still to come out | Henry: “we’ve cut over 1.5 million already out of this budget.” Whitney: does the $1 million figure include the CMS counselor? Henry: “No, I haven’t taken that out yet. That’s probably another 100,000.” | |
| 1:29:10 | Pratt on costs | “we’ve done this process right down to the 12th hour”; “education is not immune to that”; “from 2001 to 2019, education spending went from 2.3 billion to 3.3 billion.” Reported as spoken, not verified. | |
| 1:30:42 | Crawford: New Hampshire “50th” | “New Hampshire is 50th in all states for, support for education, and if they double the amount that they spent on education, doubled it, they would still be 50th”. A speaker’s characterization, not verified here. | |
| 1:32:18 | Whitney: median household income | “And the median household income in Claremont is $55,000.” Her aim: “to give people who are making $55,000 a year for their whole household feeling like they can pull the lever.” Reported as spoken. | |
| 1:32:53 | Out-of-district placements | Sprague: “we characterize out of district placements as a cost we can’t control.” He wants “a presentation on the protocols. And how does a kid get placed out of district? This is very foreign to me.” Pratt: “I think it’s foreign to most.” No date was set. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:35:42 | Romeo: pre-K and Title I | “I agree with the title one funding. We’ve talked about what we need to do. I think not having a pre K contradicts that.” Crawford: “for me to justify spending 500,000, I can’t do it given even without spending that it’s going up 5.78%.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:37:43 | Whitney against restoring pre-K | “the literature also shows that the benefits that children receive in preschool fade if they do not go into a high quality elementary school environment.” “our typical students that attended the preschool, when tracked through, scored lower than non attenders.” At 1:39:36: “it’s literally a lottery system”; a universal program would cost “between 4 and 6 million a year.” At 1:41:30: “I will not support it unless we can do it. Universal.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:42:21 | Close | Whitney: “is there any way we could have a printout of actually what was eliminated?” Henry: “I will have that done as well this evening.” Pratt: “take $1.5 million out of the budget”; “We’re now going to break the bone and start getting into the marrow.” Crawford thanks the principals for letting the committee “hear your pushback when it’s appropriate.” At 1:43:53 Whitney: “We’re all good. Thank you. Adjourned. Frank.” Sprague: Yes. Adjourned. | HIGH OBSERVATION |