| 0:00:03 | Call to order | “The finance committee of the Claremont School Board is now in session. It’s 930.” The chair hands straight to Angell for “an update on where we stand on the budget.” No roll call and no approval of the December 10 session’s minutes. | MEDIUM |
| 0:00:22 | Payroll system will not calculate withholdings for about 101 employees | “The problem I’m running into is, is the system didn’t calculate employee withholdings for a certain group of employees.” At 0:00:49: “I’ve not seen the system do this. So it’s a setup issue, or there’s an issue with, how I’m processing it.” Last year’s file shows the same problem at 0:01:13: “I can see that Mary had the same problem because there’s one particular employee withholding that you can tell it’s just an even number. And so she just forced it in the budget.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:01:35 | Vacant positions budgeted without benefits | Angell: health insurance “had to have been budgeted lower than what your available positions are”; “normally I budget for a two person plan for vacant positions.” Whitney at 0:02:09: “they put in the salary that was attached to that vacant position, but did not put in the full comp package estimate for those vacant positions.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:44 | “Was that actually reflective of our needs” | Whitney: “we know 100% that the tax rate was calculated incorrectly. Now I want to know was the budget that the tax rate was based on. Was that actually reflective of our needs or was that number target”. Angell at 0:04:12: “I have to give you kind of a wishy washy, washy answer because there’s there’s two schools of thought.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:05:09 | “Deliberately undervalued” | After Whitney supplies the word: “Deliberately undervalue it. Okay. Right. And I’m getting the sense that they deliberately undervalued it.” Budgeting each remaining position, health insurance comes out “an increase of 23% over the prior year” (0:05:44), against the 11.3% he reaches with his own vacancy assumption (0:07:09). | OBSERVATION |
| 0:06:42 | $1 of health insurance per predicted vacancy | “when I’m doing the operating budget, I assume that I’m going to have about 23 vacancies.” At 0:06:51: “So for health insurance for those 23 people in the budget, I put in $1.” If the posts are filled, at 0:13:59: “so now we have a budget problem. I’d love to solve that problem”. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:08:03 | Two assumption models | Angell: “it’s not necessarily incorrect. It’s just a different assumption model. And so they’ve constrained the budget as much as possible to try to reduce the tax rate as much as possible.” Whitney at 0:08:47: “it’s an assumption that puts us at higher risk of where we are right now.” Crawford at 0:08:53: “It’s it’s not a reliable estimate. It’s a fake.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:08:59 | Administrators’ professional development | “in the collective bargaining agreement for the administrators. It requires the district to fund about $3,000 in professional development per administrator.” The current budget carries “like $1,000 per day” (0:09:17; “per day” as transcribed). At 0:09:31: “It doesn’t say it’s noncompliance.” Crawford at 0:11:35: “I would encourage you not to use a max unless you see that Max has been used in the past every single time.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:11:52 | The committee’s budgeting instruction | Crawford: “we’re asking you to budget estimate with a two person recognizing some will be one. Some will be family. Yes, but a realistic estimate is the two person. Yeah. I want you to apply that same theory to the rest of your modeling.” No document records this instruction. | MEDIUM |
| 0:13:18 | 78 vacancies, and what they mean | “We’re about 78 positions vacant.” Whitney at 0:15:09: someone “who wasn’t watching these meetings” would think “we need 78 more people”; she asks which are “Vital positions”. Angell’s first example at 0:15:41: “We’re losing our health teacher in the middle school.” | |
| 0:17:15 | 61 vacancies in the model; the SAU build | “the budget model has about 61 vacancies in it.” At 0:17:55: “For the 61, we’ve also added back the saw [SAU]”. Posts read out at 0:18:15: superintendent, business administrator, accountant, AP/payroll clerk, HR manager, HR coordinator, special education director, assistant student services director, two special-education admin assistants, admin assistants for the superintendent and for grants and curriculum, a grants/curriculum director, and a data manager whose office “is literally a closet”. Crawford counts thirteen, then fourteen, against “more than 13” last year (0:22:01). | |
| 0:22:36 | Curriculum coordinators deferred | Angell: two more positions the board “really needs to consider”, one for math and one for reading. Whitney at 0:22:56: “an absolute imperative.” Crawford at 0:25:05: “that might be a year or two situation.” Angell at 0:25:21: “School districts move in decades.” | |
| 0:27:31 | Dental coverage | “About 15% of our, employees don’t get dental.” The district pays 50% (0:28:56); full coverage “it’s only going to cost about $300,000” (0:29:05). Angell at 0:29:41: “these people are not taking care of themselves.” Crawford: “It’s not today and tomorrow.” (Cassandra Edwards answered this exchange at the December 17 board meeting.) | |
| 0:30:19 | The first bottom line | Crawford: a board target of no more than 3% “is bogus because we don’t know what the starting point was.” Angell at 0:30:37: “So right now where I’m at, I’m at a 2% increase.” With New Hampshire retirement at 0:31:01: “an additional 3 to $400,000. Okay. So it may push it up to, like, a 2.5% increase.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:31:44 | Full-time substitutes | Each elementary school wants a full-time substitute at “about $100,000” with benefits (0:32:05); Crawford: “That goes from 250 to 400.” Angell at 0:35:22: “Right now I have the sub line at 185,000.” His aim at 0:35:52: “at least a 0% increase or a slight reduction”. Crawford at 0:38:23: “budgets are best estimate.” | |
| 0:34:35 | A substitute under contract with no budget line | “There’s only one full time sub right now in the district and she doesn’t have a budget. She doesn’t. She was offered a contract before I was hired and brought on board. And so there’s no budget lined up for her position.” Crawford at 0:34:56: “She’s not in the current budget.” Angell: Right. | MEDIUM |
| 0:39:03 | Interventionists are not substitutes | Whitney: redeploying teachers as permanent substitutes “takes them out of the interventionist role.” Angell at 0:39:11: “As administration, we need to make sure that the interventionists are not being used as substitutes.” All three agree. | POSITIVE |
| 0:40:45 | Behavior programs paid from other lines | Angell: “The the other thing that wasn’t in the budget is, some of the alt ed models.” Kennedy at 0:41:07: “the camp and the academy that physically sit here right now. They were not in a budget. So they were proposed in a model of instruction, but budgetary. Nobody put a line item in.” At 0:41:45: “They’re they’re being paid, but they’re not budgeted under a certain line item.” At 0:41:53: “They’re cannibalizing other budget.” At 0:42:14: “there was a spreadsheet behind the scenes … when you went back to vision, it was never in there.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:42:40 | Budgeting by program | “I’ve asked each of the building principles to prepare their budget based upon program rather than line item.” The high school sent a course-level spreadsheet; two schools sent “supplies, $1,000”. At 0:43:49: “We’re not where we need to be. Where I can explain to the public that first grade costs this amount of money.” | POSITIVE |
| 0:45:06 | Athletics and the arts restored | “I put in exactly what the athletic director requested, and, I, I’m pretty certain I overestimated in the, stipends for athletics.” The CBA “specifically says which teams have to be funded” (0:45:34). Buildings got “exactly what each of the buildings asked for” (0:46:10). Whitney at 0:46:31: “So it’s restorative. It’s a restorative budget.” Angell: “It will be like this year never happened.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:46:45 | Academic priority in the program of studies | Whitney: the schools’ requests “mirror the programs that were, offered prior to I called the tsunami event” (0:49:34); “if we are actually going to value align ourselves to target student achievement, then we need to have our budget and our program … be aligned with those values.” | |
| 0:50:55 | Three schools versus four | Crawford: “What is the cost difference between a three school and a four school?” Kennedy: “We haven’t gotten there yet.” Angell at 0:51:32: moving to three schools means “eliminating a building principal custodian secretary. But you’re not eliminating so much the number of teachers.” Crawford at 0:51:59: “the difference between the four and the three is minimal cost wise, but it has ramifications.” Whitney at 0:52:50 on building age: “Dessner [Disnard], 1958. Maple, 1946.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:54:39 | The board’s earlier motion on the alternative program | Whitney: “I went back and looked at some of the minutes … There was a motion made that was essentially, we are going to move this program for fiscal year 26.” Crawford at 0:55:12: that is why “The the Masonic building was purchased.” Whitney at 0:55:16: the board, “with the support of the Citizens Advisory Group and the tech subcommittee”, made a public motion, and “it is not in the best interest of the students that are in this type of program to be housed within a large school.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:57:26 | “He hasn’t budgeted for it” | Whitney: “But I’m hearing from Matt. He hasn’t budgeted for it.” Angell at 0:57:57: “The cost of a building, right? Is not in the current year operating budget.” At 0:58:04: “Do we want to keep the Masonic Temple or not?” At 1:04:06, asked whether a location is budgeted: “I do not.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:59:11 | Bluff School as the home | Crawford: “because of this past year’s, Fiasco activity, we have an additional school building that might be available. I’m talking about bluff.” Angell at 0:59:54: rent it to a nonprofit “that would offer that service for us for a fee.” Whitney at 1:00:30: “we could bring back almost 1.2 and out of district savings”. Angell at 1:01:42: in ten years “that program will not be viable by itself within the district.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:02:09 | Regional special-education consortium | Kennedy: “I meet every few weeks right now” with the southwest superintendents; “we each kind of pay into this consortium. And so there’s like a slot” (1:02:55). At 1:03:32: “Camp was not budgeted.” | |
| 1:08:00 | Direction on the alternative program | Crawford: “From my perspective right now, I don’t see any reason why it will be in this facility.” Whitney at 1:08:32: “that has to be a directive that is given to Matt.” Crawford: “To me, I am only one person.” At 1:08:47: “not having that alternative program in this facility should be the expectation.” Whitney: “Then he needs to budget for that.” | MEDIUM |
| 1:08:58 | A lease plan for Bluff | Angell: “The recommendation that’s probably going to come from administration is, is to, to ask the school board to lease the Bluff School”, with “two different schools with inside of bluff” and the remaining space leased “to a nonprofit to offer special education services.” Whitney at 1:09:43: “But that is speculative. The only way that would be feasible is if we could actually find that nonprofit.” Angell: “we’re going to have to create it ourselves.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:11:18 | The Masonic Temple | Whitney: in the administrators’ opinion the Masonic Temple is “like a non thing that just needs to go away.” Angell at 1:11:34: “It was poorly executed.” At 1:12:00, as transcribed: “Comfortable with how administration asked the school board to buy it.” (The opening of that sentence is lost; the page does not supply it.) Kennedy at 1:12:12: “It happened. Move on. I don’t see the value in it.” At 1:12:25: “So ideally in March that would be on the ballot”. The November 12 minutes record a March 2026 warrant article to sell the building. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:13:22 | Direction given and accepted | Crawford: “In your budget. You’re going to plan for the camp and all. And yes going to bluff.” Kennedy: “That’s our ideal.” Angell at 1:13:32: “I love the direction that you’re giving me. Yes. And I will make sure that that happens.” | MEDIUM |
| 1:13:55 | Scheduling, and a Tuesday-night gathering | Crawford: “I know you’re not available during the day on Monday or Tuesday. I met with you on Tuesday afternoon, and then Heather, you and I get together on Tuesday night.” Kennedy at 1:14:15: “we can’t make decisions or, like, we’re not. This isn’t a decision making.” | MEDIUM |
| 1:14:34 | A Monday session, “on CCTV” | Kennedy, who cannot attend: “Just show me the minutes or whatever.” At 1:14:43: “I’ll watch the video.” At 1:15:08: “Do you want it on CCTV? My assumption is that you’ll want it on CCTV if Josh can accommodate that.” Crawford at 1:15:36: “I’ll ask Josh if he can do it Monday at 1:00.” Angell at 1:15:41: “The milestone in a slideshow.” | OBSERVATION POSITIVE |
| 1:17:05 | Small costs add up; athletics line items | Whitney: “we keep thinking like 3500 bucks is in anything, or $10,000 isn’t anything until like, and everybody thinks that way, and then you have all of a sudden you have $5 million of debt”. At 1:20:18: “whatever we decide we’re funding and we’re offering, we need to make sure it’s line item budgeted across all departments”. Crawford at 1:20:34: athletics expenses should “go through the alumni association and not done on the side”. | POSITIVE |
| 1:23:10 | The grant-funded social worker | Whitney: “the additional social worker we had is under grant funding. And the last thing I want is for that to get missed”. Angell at 1:23:48: “I don’t think I added any social workers.” Whitney at 1:24:15: either the grant continues or “we need to consider whether or not we will we will assume it in the general.” | POSITIVE |
| 1:24:45 | School nurse staffing | Whitney: “you do not need to have a registered nurse in every building.” Kennedy at 1:25:12: overseeing someone “not within your building” is a problem. Whitney at 1:25:23: “the RSA does allow a lot of flexibility”. Crawford at 1:26:14: “I think we have RSA and then we have actual implementation of the RSA.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:27:27 | Adjournment | “Let’s adjourn the meeting at 11:00.” The models reached the full board five days later: see the December 17 page. | |