Participants
Everyone the recording shows taking part. Names follow the project's dialogue file; no minutes exist online to check spellings against. The diarizer merged the male members' voices heavily at this meeting, so several members' remarks are left Unidentified. Members are listed first.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Brian Rapp | Chair | Presided; abstained on the December 7 minutes because he had missed that meeting; asked about long-term substitutes, short-term disability, the Johnson Controls work and paraprofessional staffing; closed the substitute-pay discussion without action. Transcribed Wrap in the roll call. |
| Chris Irish | Vice Chair | Read the fall all-state athletic honors; argued that staff absences are days "that they've been contacted [contracted] to have"; asked for the budget in electronic form and a full cost summary of the tech center; called the draft "the wish list budget". Moved the nonpublic session. The dialogue file rates several of his attributions medium. |
| Michelle Pierce | Board member | Asked why the substitute-pay comparison omitted nearby districts; pressed on the staff absence figures and short-term disability; spoke during citizens' comments about the city's holiday lights and an art space. |
| Frank Sprague | Board member | Described a Stevens video shown at a school-climate rally; floated tiered pay for experienced substitutes; asked for detail on new positions and what "property" and "other objects" lines contain. Moved the amended agenda. |
| Patrick Adrian | Board member | Described Charlestown's substitute incentives; asked for the old budget-presentation format and about out-of-district savings; moved acceptance of the Project Lead the Way grant. Several of his remarks were reassigned from other clusters by the dialogue file (medium confidence). |
| Alex Herzog | Board member | Asked when substitute pay was last raised; promoted First Night on December 31 during citizens' comments (medium confidence). |
| Brent Ferland | Board member | Answered the roll. No remarks are firmly attributed to him; the attribution report notes he is the only member present without a firm voice cluster, and that some Unidentified member remarks may be his (hypothesis only). |
| Middleton McGoodwin | Superintendent, SAU 6 | Asked to add the donations; gave the superintendent's report; presented the January budget schedule and the substitute-pay comparison with two years of absence data. |
| Cory LeClair | Assistant Superintendent, SAU 6 | Called the roll and took the minutes; presented the three donations; explained substitute qualification rules after the federal law change and the paraprofessional pay history. Transcribed Corey Little Claire. |
| Michael O'Neill | Business Administrator, SAU 6 | Presented the first-draft FY18 budget by function; explained sick-day payouts, retirement-rate increases, paraprofessional staffing, the tech center daycare closure and the Johnson Controls escrow. |
| Nathan (surname not stated) | SAU 6 human resources staff | Reported that current substitute pay matches a 2011 document and explained sick leave as the district's only short-term disability cover. LeClair says he is new to his position. |
| Marion Lovett | Student representative, Stevens High School (first-name spelling uncertain) | Gave the student report and described the National Honor Society's retirement celebration for a longtime staff member and the student art show. |
| Unidentified board members | Board members | Questions on out-of-district costs (1:04:37), a request to email the business administrator (1:34:46) and the adjournment motion are by members the dialogue file cannot place. |
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 on the recording. The superintendent refers to "the third page" of the agenda and its budget schedule, so a written agenda existed. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:16 | Call to order, pledge, roll call | All seven present; LeClair called the roll. |
| 0:01:59 | Agenda changes and approval | Donations added as action items (the superintendent said two, LeClair said three because the Project Lead the Way grant also needed an action item). Sprague moved the agenda as amended; voice vote. |
| 0:03:13 | Minutes of December 7 | Moved by an unidentified member; approved by voice vote, the chair abstaining. |
| 0:03:44 | Student representative report | Informational. |
| 0:12:05 | Superintendent's report | Informational. |
| 0:19:11 | Citizens' comments | Two board members spoke; no member of the public. |
| 0:21:08 | Nonpublic session | Motion citing "RSA 91 a two. Two C." as transcribed; Irish moved, Sprague seconded; roll call, all audible votes yes. Came out by voice vote at 0:22:04; no vote to seal on the recording. |
| 0:22:30 | Discussion: Project Lead the Way grant | Informational; action taken later. |
| 0:25:25 | Discussion: budget meeting schedule | January 4 meeting, January 11 public hearing, February 8 deliberative session, Saturday January 7 as a placeholder. |
| 0:28:57 | Discussion: substitute pay scale | No action. |
| 0:53:29 | First look at the FY18 budget | Presentation by the business administrator; no action. |
| 1:35:31 | Action: accept grants and donations | $5,000 Hope Foundation grant (Adrian moved), then $2,000 New Hampshire Charitable Foundation (anonymous donor) and $1,100 Greater Claremont Board of Realtors together; voice votes, no audible opposition. |
| 1:39:13 | Policies | Third reads postponed to the next meeting. |
| 1:39:36 | Adjournment | Unidentified mover; 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 |
|---|
| 0:00:16 | Call to order; roll | LeClair took the roll: "I just want to pull up a document so I can start taking a minutes." Chair: "All present." | |
| 0:02:03 | Donations added to the agenda | Superintendent: "Two different donations, sums of money that we'd like to school board to approve." LeClair: "There's actually three, I think because the project lead the way, it would need to be a action item." | MEDIUM |
| 0:03:13 | December 7 minutes | Approved; chair: "And I will abstain. I miss the meeting." | |
| 0:03:44 | Student report | National Honor Society caroling and a student fundraiser; elementary food drive of "over 700 items"; winter sports records. Sprague and the student described a Stevens retirement-celebration video shown to "A couple thousand kids probably" at a regional school-climate rally. | |
| 0:09:34 | Athletic honors | Irish read the fall all-state selections in football, soccer, field hockey, volleyball and golf and noted "three coaches named coach of the year this year". | |
| 0:12:05 | Superintendent's report | The football banquet, a radio appearance with the student representative, the holiday concerts. On bargaining: "we're coming to closure and have reached agreements, and we'll be discussing that more publicly in early January." | |
| 0:14:58 | Student art in the community | A member (the dialogue file says Irish; the attribution report marks the passage uncertain) asked about a public gallery for student art; the superintendent: "I'm not satisfied that we're doing enough". | |
| 0:19:11 | Citizens' comments | Only members spoke: Pierce on a poll ranking Claremont "Number three out of the nine most prettiest cities"; Herzog on First Night activities on December 31. | |
| 0:21:08 | Nonpublic session | Chair: "Now we have a public take a motion for nonpublic for RSA 91 a two." then Two C. Irish moved; roll call. The tape resumes on the motion to come out at 0:22:04. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:22:33 | Project Lead the Way grant | LeClair: Maple Avenue "has been awarded a grant in the amount of $5,000 from hypothermia Hope Foundation" (the foundation's full name is garbled) for an after-school engineering program; "There's no additional cost to the district." | MEDIUM |
| 0:25:30 | Budget schedule | "we need to have a deliberative session on February 8th and we have to have a public hearing on January 11th." Saturday, January 7 is "a placeholder", "if necessary". | |
| 0:28:03 | Food service RFP | O'Neill does not expect a budget impact; a decision could come "in February or March". | |
| 0:29:00 | Substitute pay comparison | "We are setting $65 a day, $75 if the if the staff member is certified and you see the long term sub is 100 compared to other districts were comparable, we're below." Pierce asked why Charlestown was missing; the superintendent had only the replies received by the day before. | |
| 0:36:19 | Substitute qualifications | LeClair: the highly-qualified rule for long-term substitutes ended with the federal reauthorization midway through hiring; the Department of Education advised continuing it this year. Nathan at 0:39:45: "we found a document from 2011 that reflects what we're paying today." | |
| 0:42:10 | Absences and cost | Substitutes ran "$50,000 over" budget. Pierce: "2459 days" in 2014-15. Irish: "They're taking days that they've been contacted to have." O'Neill: sick-day payouts totaled "$48,400 last year"; paraprofessional and teacher absences came to "3670 days that we paid out a substitute for"; rollover "was 24,300" days. Rapp: "Well, we're not going to solve it tonight." | |
| 0:53:29 | First-draft FY18 budget | Superintendent: "an initial review of an unedited budget, meaning there have been no intentional strategic reductions." O'Neill: wages up about $795,000 with no bargaining costs included; paraprofessionals the district hoped to cut add about $600,000; the teachers' retirement rate "Now we're at 17.36" against 5.7% ten years earlier. | POSITIVE |
| 0:57:46 | Detail requested | Sprague and Adrian asked for the old sheet listing new positions with justifications; Irish asked for the spreadsheet and a tech center cost summary and called the draft "the wish list budget to start with". | |
| 1:02:40 | Regular education and supplies | Supplies proposed about 15% above a line not fully spent, "which just defies logic"; O'Neill proposes cutting supply lines. | |
| 1:07:46 | Special education | "you're talking close to 25 positions that we had hoped to cut that are still in this budget." After reviewing IEPs, "we couldn't legally justify the reductions that we wanted to make." Out-of-district placements down about $152,600. | |
| 1:16:10 | Tech center daycare closed | Removing the daycare cuts spending about $235,000 "but also reducing revenues by $200,000." | |
| 1:22:23 | School board and SAU lines | Legal budget raised: "I increase the legal budget because we've been overspending". The SAU apportionment "went up 73,000 317". A $25,000 tech center administrative request drew Irish's "Did we start opening programs again that I didn't hear about?" | |
| 1:24:43 | Buildings and grounds | Heating controls at Bluff; middle school floor tile, doors and a fire pump project of "about $135,000"; single-pane windows in the high school technology wing, "about $35,000". | |
| 1:32:46 | Debt service and total | Debt service down about $274,000 because the Johnson Controls escrow surplus is covering two years of lease payments. The overall total is garbled on the tape; the percentage heard is 3.2%. | |
| 1:35:34 | Grants accepted | The $5,000 grant accepted on Adrian's motion. LeClair then presented $2,000 from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation (anonymous donor) and $1,100 from the Greater Claremont Board of Realtors for the One for All space at 169 Main Street, to support planned infant care for student parents; the Realtors' gift was "a complete and really nice surprise". Accepted by voice vote. | MEDIUM |
| 1:39:13 | Policies postponed | Third reads put off to the next meeting. | |
| 1:39:36 | Adjournment | Chair: "I'll accept it gladly." | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the law in force on December 21, 2016. Several provisions cited below were later amended, and each flag cites the text as it then read. They are not findings of violation, and nothing here is legal advice. Where no verified rule applies, the flag says so and is recorded as an observation. 4 flags follow, ordered by severity.
MEDIUM A $5,000 grant was accepted with no prior public hearing on the record, and two smaller donations were added to the agenda the same night
In 2016 a school board could accept unanticipated money from "a private source" under RSA 198:20-b, I, if the district had adopted the enabling article, subject to two notice rules in paragraph III: "For unanticipated funds in the amount of $5,000 or more, the school board shall hold a prior public hearing on the action to be taken", with newspaper notice at least seven days ahead; for smaller amounts the board "shall post notice of the funds in the agenda and shall include notice in the minutes". The Hope Foundation grant was exactly $5,000 and was accepted at 1:35:48. Nothing on the recording refers to a hearing on it, before or during this meeting. The $2,000 and $1,100 donations were added to the agenda at the start of the meeting (0:02:03), so they were not on the agenda as posted.
Mitigating points: the grant was on the posted agenda as a discussion item, and LeClair had announced it publicly at the December 7 meeting; a hearing held on another date would not appear on this recording; the board may have relied on a different authority, and whether Claremont had adopted the RSA 198:20-b article is not established here. The donations were described in full in public session and, if the minutes record them, the minutes limb of III(b) would be met. Graded MEDIUM as a probable process gap that the minutes, if found, could resolve.
Sources: RSA 198:20-b, I and III(a)-(b) (2016 codification; source note ends 2005, 188:1, so in force until the 2023 amendment): prior public hearing at $5,000 or more; agenda and minutes notice below.
OBSERVATION The nonpublic motion, as transcribed, cites the wrong section of the Right-to-Know Law
At 0:21:08 the chair asked for a motion "for nonpublic for RSA 91 a two." and added Two C. In 2016, RSA 91-A:3, I(b) required that "Any motion to enter nonpublic session shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II." The exemptions are in RSA 91-A:3, II, and II(c) is the reputation ground ("Matters which, if discussed in public, would likely affect adversely the reputation of any person, other than a member of the public body itself"). RSA 91-A:2 contains no nonpublic grounds. Read charitably, the chair meant 91-A:3, II(c) and the letter is right; whether he misspoke or the transcription dropped a word cannot be told from the tape. The roll call the statute requires was taken. No vote to seal was taken on the recording, so under RSA 91-A:3, III the nonpublic minutes were due for disclosure within 72 hours; that cannot be checked from here.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(c) and III (2015 codification; the 2016 amendments effective June 21, 2016 and January 1, 2017 left these sentences unchanged).
POSITIVE The unedited first-draft budget, and the unwelcome numbers in it, were presented in public three weeks before the hearing
The administration put its "unedited budget" (0:53:29) before the board and the television audience a month before the statutory hearing, function by function, including items it expected to cut: supply lines it called illogical, paraprofessional positions it had failed to reduce, a $25,000 tech center request, and a legal line raised because of overspending. The substitute-pay item came with two years of absence data and payout figures (0:42:10). No statute required a public first draft; it gave members and viewers the baseline against which the January reductions can be measured (see the January 4 and January 11 pages).
Sources: No statute requires this practice; see the discussion timeline.
OBSERVATION No agenda, packet, budget booklet or minutes for this meeting are posted online
MAP.md records that neither district Drive share holds anything before July 2022 (checked 9/26/26), so this page rests on the recording alone. The budget booklet (a ten-page summary and a 67-page detail report), the substitute-pay comparison and the absence summary are not available. In 2016, RSA 91-A:2, II required minutes to be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". The recording shows minutes being taken and the December 7 minutes being approved, so minutes were kept; whether these were timely cannot be tested from here. The limb of the missing-records rule applied is the online-availability observation.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2015 codification, the text in force until January 1, 2017); Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 21.
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/8815 SchoolBoard122116.mp4.CSV (663 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/8815 SchoolBoard122116.mp4Input/Transcripts/8815 SchoolBoard122116.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/8815 SchoolBoard122116.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 21
Laws and rules cited on this page