Participants
Everyone heard or named as present on the recording. Names follow the project's 2015 to 2023 roster and the speaker attribution report; there are no minutes to check spellings against. Where a name rests on a single cue, the participation cell says so.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Frank Sprague | Chair, Claremont School Board | Calls the meeting to order, closes the Citizens Forum with no speakers (0:01:34), reports on the education-funding campaign and estimates an $800,000 shortfall (1:00:25), defends the openness of the budget process (1:18:53), and proposes that the city and the schools look at shared services and an efficiency study of the SAU (1:35:40, 1:41:59). |
| Charlene Lovett | Mayor, City of Claremont | Leads most items: the lead action team (0:05:23), questions to the DCYF presenter about school costs (0:34:13), the Senate Finance hearings (0:54:53), mental-health data from the Cities Thrive coalition (1:03:01), voter turnout (1:13:31), the Governor's Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion (1:25:55), energy initiatives (1:31:17) and the meeting schedule (1:45:32). Row 24 (“Spent the day with us.”, 0:04:36) carries her label in the dialogue file but may be a board member; see the method note. |
| Allen Damren | Assistant Mayor (spelling per project roster; “Alan D'Amour” and Damron in the transcript) | Leads the Pledge, reports on the city manager search (0:02:06), urges a freeze of the aid formula (0:58:52) and describes past joint fuel bids and the differing insurance plans of the bargaining units (1:37:24, 1:39:24). |
| Jonathan Stone | City Councilor (named in the roll call; attribution rated medium) | Reports the solar company's presentation to the council (1:34:50) and supports looking at shared payroll and personnel (1:37:51). |
| Michael Petrin | School Board member; Chair, SAU 6 Board | Gives the superintendent update: a signed contract with Michael Tempesta, start date July 1 (0:03:31, 0:04:14); suggests lighted signs for election notices (1:21:02) and shared maintenance and accounting (1:38:17). |
| Carolyn Towle | School Board member | Asks about respite care (0:36:05), recalls low turnout at the deliberative session (1:19:49), says the Stevens sign would cost “$50,000. Do you have some?” (1:22:39), takes the gender-identity policy question to the policy committee (1:29:43) and urges giving the new superintendent three to five months before shared-service talks (1:43:32). |
| Heather Whitney | School Board member (attribution of some rows rated low to medium) | Asks about the rise in local foster-care need (0:39:12), frames school funding as an economic issue for western New Hampshire (1:01:49), praises Tempesta's attention to cost (1:44:45) and suggests the director of student services speak at the next joint meeting (1:52:13). |
| Rob Lovett Jr. | School Board member | Called in the roll (0:00:58). The chair says Rob seconded the adjournment motion (1:54:19). No other rows are attributed to him. |
| Rebecca Zullo | Vice Chair, School Board | Called in the roll as “Rebecca. Missoula.” (0:00:58); her answer cannot be told apart on the transcript and no rows are attributed to her. |
| Jason Benware | School Board member | Absent (chair at 0:01:11) |
| Mary Woodman | School district clerk | Calls the roll of both bodies (0:00:54). |
| Caitlin Bartley | Resource worker, DCYF Claremont District Office | Self-identified (0:13:43). Presents foster-care figures for the district office's 16 towns and asks for foster homes, respite providers and donations; answers that the school district bears costs when children are placed elsewhere (0:34:28). |
| Laura (surname not established) | Executive director, HIV/HCV Resource Center | Speaks for the syringe service program (0:41:01, 0:42:20). The dialogue file labels her “Laura Sagen”; that surname rests on one phrase, “under Laura Sagen” (0:45:49), which may be the transcript's rendering of something else, so it is not printed here as her name. |
| Unidentified | Member of a substance misuse team serving greater Sullivan County; works with the syringe service program (Project 439) | Gives the program's history and opening schedule (0:41:37, 0:43:30) and commits to regular reports to the boards (0:47:04). |
| Unidentified | Board or council members heard briefly | A speaker on little publicity for the March school election (1:18:17) and one proposing a formal process for citizen feedback (1:24:10); neither is named on the recording. |
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda survives. The chair refers to “item five, which is announcements” (0:01:34), so a numbered agenda existed. The order below is reconstructed from the presiding officers' transitions.
Items in the order taken up, with dispositions from the recording.
| Taken up | Item | Disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:12 | Call to order, Pledge, roll call | Called to order by the chair; the clerk calls the School Board and then the Council (0:00:44). |
| 0:01:34 | Minutes | “we do not have any minutes. To review tonight, so we'll pass that by and we'll look at those at our next meeting.” No motion. See flag 1. |
| 0:01:34 | Citizens Forum | “If there are any citizens that would like to come forward and address the joint body, seeing none, I'll close Citizens Forum”. |
| 0:02:00 | Announcements: city manager search, superintendent update, lead action team, lead training | Reports only. Next steps on lead-team updates agreed by nods: email updates plus an agenda item (0:12:32, 0:12:35). |
| 0:12:38 | DCYF presentation on foster care | Awareness presentation and questions; no action. |
| 0:40:27 | Syringe exchange program update | Report and questions; no action. |
| 0:48:31 | Education funding update | Discussion of points for the next day's Senate Finance hearing; no action. |
| 1:02:57 | Behavioral health overview | The mayor will keep sending Cities Thrive material for distribution to the School Board, and will send it to the Council (1:12:12). |
| 1:13:31 | Improving participation in local elections | Ideas collected; the chair will ask residents for feedback on a local social-media page (1:24:53); a voting protocol is carried to the next joint meeting (1:25:43). |
| 1:25:55 | Governor's Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion update | Policy review for gender identity referred informally to the School Board policy committee (1:29:13). |
| 1:31:17 | Energy initiatives update | Report; the School Board's capital improvement committee is “Starting this week.” (1:31:54). |
| 1:35:34 | Next steps: shared services, meeting schedule, next agenda | Consensus to meet quarterly on the second Thursday of January, April, July and October (1:48:20); next agenda: voting protocol, cost-saving measures, education funding, a mental-health continuum-of-care presentation with the director of student services, and an introduction of the new superintendent (1:49:44, 1:52:18, 1:53:11). |
| 1:54:16 | Adjournment | “Amanda. And then Rob seconded it. Further discussion was in favor I.” The mover's name is lost in the transcript; voice vote. |
Discussion timeline
Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/10358 SchoolBoardCityCouncilJoint050619.mp4.CSV) and link into the recording. Quotations are as transcribed; bracketed words are corrections, with the transcript's wording kept where the correction changes sense.
Chronological topics with the most concrete material first.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:44 | Roll call | Clerk: “I'm here. Rebecca. Missoula. Heather Whitney here. Rob Lovett, junior year. And.” Chair: “Jason's not here.” Clerk: “And Jason and I just have three city councilors.” and “Here. Jonathan Stone and Alan D'Amour.” followed by “You here? You love it.” [the mayor's answer] (0:01:29). | OBS |
| 0:01:34 | No minutes; Citizens Forum | No minutes to review; they will be taken up “at our next meeting.” No one comes forward at the Citizens Forum. | MED POS |
| 0:02:06 | City manager search | Damren: the advertisement went online that day; one response so far. “The deadline is the first Tuesday in June”, after which the field is cut to ten, who receive essay questions (0:03:10). | |
| 0:03:31 | Superintendent update | Petrin: “we do have a signed contract with our new superintendent, Mr. Michael Tempesta.” “His official start date at this point is July 1st.” (0:04:14). He also reports that “the player [the acting superintendent, Cory LeClair] has, accepted a position with the playing field of Cornish School District” (0:03:53); her own words on May 15 put it as superintendent of Cornish and Plainfield. Tempesta will attend the May 16 SAU 6 meeting (0:04:38). | |
| 0:04:29 | Board retreat | Sprague: “So he did join us for our our retreat, our goal setting retreat.” A voice labeled as the mayor adds “Spent the day with us.” (0:04:36). | OBS |
| 0:05:23 | Lead action team pilot | The mayor: Claremont is one of seven communities in a pilot with the Conservation Law Foundation and New Hampshire Listens. After SB 247, on July 1 the state threshold for childhood blood lead “is going to move down to 7.5 micrograms per deciliter.” (0:06:28). The core group includes “the chair of the school board.” (0:06:58). “The kickoff meeting for this whole project is May 31st” (0:07:26). Sprague: lead exposure can explain behavior otherwise “treated with Ritalin” (0:09:16). The mayor announces a free May 16 training in Keene on educational interventions for children affected by lead (0:09:42). | |
| 0:13:43 | Foster-care shortage (DCYF) | Bartley: the Claremont District Office covers 16 towns. In 2018, “We had 105 children, from our office that were in placement.” (0:17:25). This year “we have 60.” in care, 13 with relatives and 27 with non-relatives (0:18:23); five in group homes and 11 in institutions (0:19:37). “I can tell you we have 29 homes.”, of which “there's actually 12 of them that are Icpc only.” (0:22:23, 0:22:43). She describes several individual children awaiting homes; this page does not repeat those details. “I have one bed in Claremont for a toddler or an infant, three and under.” (0:34:01). | OBS |
| 0:33:48 | Who pays when children are placed out of town | The mayor: “Is the school district then on the hook to pay for that service?” Bartley: Yes, ma'am. Sprague: “Technically they're homeless. Yes.” (0:34:31). Bartley: the district joins the court process and “you would decide whether they get transported back here every day or whether they transferred to Newport.” (0:34:35). Sprague puts a residential placement at Crotched Mountain at “about 200,000 a year.” (0:35:58). | OBS |
| 0:36:05 | Respite care; local trend | Towle asks whether weekend respite providers help; Bartley says there is “a huge need for even just respite providers” (0:36:29). Whitney asks the percentage increase; Bartley has no figure but says she once had about 30 local homes and in two years has never been able to place a child locally from the list (0:39:19). | |
| 0:41:01 | Syringe service program | “We opened last Thursday, and will continue to be open every Thursday except for holidays, from 330 to 630” at Valley Regional Hospital's occupational health unit (0:41:37); “There were no people there last week” (0:42:05). History: begun by Geisel medical students in July 2017 at the soup kitchen, halted because it sat within 1,000 feet of a school; a law change let hospitals in drug-free school zones host programs; the School Board met on it in August and September 2018 and “it was passed at that point that we could operate a syringe exchange program in a drug free school zone as long as it was at the hospital.” (0:44:58). Sprague: the board agreed on after-school hours given the proximity to “Desert School” [Disnard], and “we would see how it went and then possibly in the future, look at expanding the hours more into the day.” (0:46:24). The presenters offer the state's quarterly reports (0:47:55). | POS |
| 0:48:36 | State education funding | Sprague reads the Funding Fairness Project's asks, starting with “Restoring loss stabilization grants to 2016 levels in fiscal year 2020.” and says “We've been losing about 220 a year.” (0:49:13). He and Whitney attended a Newport forum (0:49:55). The mayor: “They have reduced the stabilization grants by 4% a year.” (0:53:58). Whitney: “77% of the towns receive stabilization grants.” (0:54:37). Senate Finance hearings on HB 2 are set for the next day in Representatives Hall and May 8 in Manchester (0:54:53, 0:56:21). Damren: “It makes no sense to me to not freeze the formula.” (0:58:52). Sprague: with fixed-cost increases and lost state aid, “we would have to have cut $800,000 out of the, budget to level fund at 1819 levels for the 1920 budget” (1:00:25). These figures are the speakers' characterizations; no document was presented. | |
| 1:01:03 | City infrastructure; regional economy | The mayor: lost state revenue limits road work; the last quote was “A complete $1 million for a mile.” (1:01:32). Whitney: families will not move to the region “unless we improve our school system.” (1:02:14). | |
| 1:03:01 | Behavioral health | The mayor describes the Cities Thrive mayors' coalition and a March 17 roundtable, then cites 2018 figures from CDC data: “But in New England, New Hampshire has the second highest rate of suicide.” (1:06:21). She offers an example of a student mental health council from Harford County, Maryland (1:08:14). Sprague: during a contentious budget two years earlier, “the rumor mill got Ahold of is that we were going to be cutting the, the mental health workers in the schools and which thankfully never happened.” (1:10:49). | |
| 1:13:31 | Voter participation | The mayor: “the overall voter turnout for the school district was 11%” in March (1:14:26). Banners once hung on every school (1:17:43); Petrin suggests the DPW's lighted signs (1:21:02); the Stevens High School sign is broken (1:22:32). Sprague: the budget “was a it was a process that, was very transparent.” and “We probably spent 30, 35 hours in the process of developing the budget.” (1:19:16). Towle: “we were quite surprised of the lack of headcount that came that night.” at the deliberative session (1:19:49). Damren asks whether school events compete with the deliberative session (1:22:46). | POS |
| 1:26:25 | Diversity and inclusion report; gender identity | The mayor reads from the Governor's Advisory Council report that “the Council recommends that New Hampshire enact a state statute that prohibits discrimination against students in public schools” (1:27:39), and says “In July of 2018, the legislature amended RSA 35 for 354 A to expressly prohibit discrimination against based on gender identity.” (1:28:08), so policies should be reviewed. Sprague: “Is anybody here on the policy committee?” (1:29:13). Towle: “I just want to bring it to the policy meeting.” (1:29:43). The statutory point is the mayor's characterization; this page did not verify the 2018 chapter. | |
| 1:31:17 | Energy initiatives | The council adopted a renewable-energy tax exemption in March (1:31:56); “there will be a button up workshop this fall through Eversource.” at the regional technical center (1:34:07); a solar company asked “for access to the city owned land” (1:34:50). | |
| 1:35:40 | Shared services between city and schools | Sprague proposes “starting to approach things from a larger scale, such as insurance, fuel purchasing, even certain administrative tasks, payroll, these types of things.” (1:36:11). Damren: fuel “was always a joint bid, to get the best price for exactly that reason.” (1:37:24) and “I believe Claremont School District still has four bargaining units” with different plans (1:39:24). Sprague: the SAU level has discussed “bringing in someone to really do an efficiency study on the structure of the Sao.” (1:41:59). Towle: “I just think we have to let him take the reins for 3 to 5 months” (1:43:32). | OBS |
| 1:45:32 | Meeting schedule and next agenda | The mayor asks whether to keep a quarterly schedule; Towle: “I would prefer quarterly.” Agreement on January, April, July and October, “we do the second Thursday of each of those months.” (1:48:20). Next agenda includes “protocol for voting cost saving measures.” (1:49:44). Whitney: the director of student services “could speak to us as a group at the next joint council.” (1:52:13); Towle asks to include the new superintendent (1:52:51). | POS |
| 1:53:48 | Adjournment | Sprague: “We don't need to vote on on journey because we never formally” and then “I'm looking for a motion.” (1:54:16); “Amanda. And then Rob seconded it.” (1:54:19). | |
Items flagged for review
These flags are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each one names the rule it rests on, as that rule read on May 6, 2019, or is labeled an observation where no verified rule applies.
MEDIUM No agenda or minutes for this joint meeting survive in the district's shares, and the previous joint meeting's minutes were not ready four months on
MAP.md records no Drive material for this meeting: the district's shares hold no year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023. The recording is the only district-side account. RSA 91-A:2, II, as amended by 2018, 244:1 (effective January 1, 2019) and in force on this date, required minutes recording the names of members, persons appearing, a brief description of each subject, final decisions, and the names of members who moved and seconded each motion, open to public inspection not more than five business days after the meeting.
This page applies the MEDIUM limb of the project's severity rule because the record mitigates the gap: the chair's statement that the minutes will be reviewed “at our next meeting.” (0:01:34) shows that minutes of these joint meetings were being kept. The mayor dates the previous joint meeting to January (0:05:23), so its minutes were not before the bodies for approval about four months later. The statute's five-day rule is satisfied by draft minutes, so a late approval is not by itself a breach; whether drafts were available cannot be checked from here. A joint meeting is two public bodies, and the city's notices, agendas and minutes are kept by the city clerk; they were not inspected, so nothing here is a finding about the city's records.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1)
OBSERVATION Only three city councilors attended, so the council side of this joint meeting appears to have lacked a quorum
The clerk reports “And Jason and I just have three city councilors.” (0:01:12): Jonathan Stone, Allen Damren and the mayor (0:01:25, 0:01:29). The mayor passes on Councilor Pope's apology for his absence (1:33:06). The project's working notes record the City Council as a nine-member body; this page did not re-read the city charter. RSA 91-A:2, I defines a meeting as “the convening of a quorum of the membership of a public body”, so a council gathering short of a quorum is not a council meeting, and the council could not act. Nothing on the recording required it to: the only motion is adjournment, and the agenda for the next joint meeting was settled by agreement rather than vote. The School Board, with at least five of its seven members heard, did have a quorum. The point for review is whether the city side was noticed and minuted as a meeting, which only the city clerk's records can show.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I (definition of meeting; 2019 codification)
OBSERVATION A School Board goal-setting retreat attended by the incoming superintendent has no recording or record in the corpus
Sprague reports that Michael Tempesta “did join us for our our retreat, our goal setting retreat.” (0:04:29). On the April 17, 2019 recording the chair describes the retreat as held at the community center on a weekend day (“on Saturday. Sunday. Excuse me.”), where the board set goals and was “forming subcommittees around goals and forming, designating who's going to be on negotiating committees and such.” (Dialogue/10330 SchoolBoard041719.mp4.CSV, row 207, 0:30:36 on that recording). Board business conducted by a quorum is a meeting under RSA 91-A:2, I, which brings the notice and minutes duties of RSA 91-A:2, II. Who attended, whether it was noticed, and whether minutes were kept cannot be determined from the material available to this project; the corpus holds no recording of it and the district shares do not reach back to 2019. This is recorded so a reviewer can look for the notice and minutes.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I and II (2019 codification); Dialogue/10330 SchoolBoard041719.mp4.CSV (row 207)
OBSERVATION The exchange on who pays to transport children in foster care described the law of an earlier period
Asked whether the school district is “on the hook to pay for that service” when a child is placed in another town (0:34:13), the DCYF worker answered Yes, ma'am. and the chair added “Technically they're homeless. Yes.” (0:34:31). By this date federal law no longer treated children awaiting foster care placement as homeless: the Every Student Succeeds Act struck “awaiting foster care placement” from the McKinney-Vento definition, effective one year after enactment (December 10, 2016) in most states and two years after in states whose own statutes used the phrase. In its place, Title I's state-plan provisions require that a child in foster care enroll or remain in the school of origin unless that is not in the child's best interest, and a district receiving Title I funds must have written procedures on how transportation to the school of origin “will be provided, arranged, and funded”. Where transport adds cost, the district provides it if the child welfare agency agrees to reimburse it, the district agrees to pay, or the two agree to share. So the answer is not a simple yes: payment turns on an agreement between the district and DCYF. Whether Claremont had such written procedures in 2019 is not in this record; they are the document that would settle it.
Sources: 42 U.S.C. 11434a(2)(B)(i) and note on the 2015 amendment (Pub. L. 114-95, sec. 9105); 20 U.S.C. 6311(g)(1)(E) (school-of-origin presumption); 20 U.S.C. 6312(c)(5) (transportation procedures and cost)
OBSERVATION A state caseworker described individual children in care on a televised meeting
To show the need for homes, the DCYF resource worker described several children by age, sex, length of placement, condition and, for one, the conduct that led to his record (0:15:46, 0:19:57, 0:21:25). No child was named, and two were said to be from this town. When told she was on television, she answered “Are you kidding me?” (0:32:28). New Hampshire law makes DCYF case records confidential and makes it unlawful for a person entrusted with information from them to disclose it. Whether these descriptions came from case records, and whether anyone could recognize a child from them, cannot be determined from the recording; her purpose was recruitment, and she gave no names. This page summarizes rather than repeats the details.
Sources: RSA 170-G:8-a (2018 codification; “The case records of the department shall be confidential.”)
OBSERVATION The School Board chair said in public that the SAU had “significant dropped balls” and a poorly defined chain of command
Explaining the call for an efficiency study, Sprague said: “We've as very publicly have had some significant dropped balls at the saw.” and that the question is “who supervises, what's the chain of command, which is very, apparently very poorly defined.” (1:41:59, 1:42:40). He did not say which failures he meant. About four weeks later the SAU 6 board received its FY2018 audit, which the acting superintendent described as an adverse opinion with significant deficiencies and material weaknesses (Dialogue/10407 SAU6060419.mp4.CSV). No rule is cited here; the statement is recorded as the chair's own assessment of the SAU's administration at the time.
Sources: Dialogue/10358 SchoolBoardCityCouncilJoint050619.mp4.CSV (rows 458 and 459); Dialogue/10407 SAU6060419.mp4.CSV
POSITIVE The two governing bodies shared information in public, offered a forum, and set a fixed schedule and follow-up items
The meeting opened a Citizens Forum to residents (0:01:34), though none came forward. The syringe service presenters committed to report regularly and to share the state's quarterly reports (0:47:04, 0:47:55). On voter turnout, the bodies agreed to collect residents' suggestions and to build a protocol for advertising elections (1:24:53, 1:25:43). The mayor asked that each item have a goal so it could be closed rather than carried (1:49:18), and the bodies fixed a quarterly calendar (1:48:20). No statute in force in 2019 required a school board or a city council to take public comment; RSA 189:74, the school-board comment statute, dates from 2022.
Sources: Cablecast: JOINT MEETING of the CITY COUNCIL & SCHOOL BOARD 5-6-19
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast: JOINT MEETING of the CITY COUNCIL & SCHOOL BOARD 5-6-19 (show 10358; the Cablecast API refused requests from this environment, so the run time is taken from the last transcript row)
- Google Drive: no packet folder, agenda or minutes. MAP.md: “neither share holds a year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023 (checked 9/26/26).” Not searched again for this page, per the run instructions for meetings with no Drive material.
- City of Claremont council records (city clerk): not inspected for this page.
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:2, I and II, 2019 codification (source note ends 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019): definition of meeting; notice; minutes content including movers and seconders; five-business-day inspection
- RSA 170-G:8-a, 2018 codification (source note ends 2016, 202:2, 3, eff. Aug. 5, 2016; next amended 2019, 45:3, eff. Jan. 1, 2020): confidentiality of DCYF case records
- RSA 189:74 (school board public comment), named only to note that it postdates this meeting
- 42 U.S.C. 11434a(2) (McKinney-Vento definition of homeless children and youths; “awaiting foster care placement” struck by Pub. L. 114-95, sec. 9105(a)(1), effective Dec. 10, 2016, or Dec. 10, 2017 in covered states)
- 20 U.S.C. 6311(g)(1)(E) and 20 U.S.C. 6312(c)(5) (ESSA educational stability for children in foster care; current United States Code text, as enacted by Pub. L. 114-95)