Participants
Everyone heard or addressed on the recording. Spellings follow the project's 2015-2023 roster where the transcript garbles a name; there are no minutes to check spellings against. Speaker labels come from the dialogue file and its attribution report.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Frank Sprague | Chair | Runs the meeting; invites Rep. Merchant to speak during the superintendent's report; raises the public-hearing threshold on the Byrne gift (0:30:53); offers to take the 4:00 negotiation sessions; reports on the state budget hearings. |
| Jason Benware | Member | Moves the handbooks, JICD and adjournment; works the state-aid arithmetic (0:21:53 to 0:22:15); asks to step back from negotiations (0:39:45). Transcribed Jason in the roll. |
| Carolyn Towle | Member | Praises the August 21 minutes; asks for plainer handbook language (0:04:26); asks what changed in JICD; asks to keep the audits and the swipe cards on future agendas (0:44:53); describes her own property-tax burden as a senior (0:54:42); flags NHSBA workshops. Transcribed Carolyn. Tall. |
| Rob Lovett Jr. | Member | Answers the roll (0:01:59). On August 21 he was named as a member of the policy committee; the report on JICD (0:28:26, 0:29:22) is unidentified in the dialogue file and the attribution report names him or Whitney as the likely speaker. |
| Michael Petrin | Member; chair, SAU 6 Board | Called in the roll as Michael (0:01:59); not identified as speaking. |
| Heather Whitney | Member | Answers the roll; seconds adjournment (the chair: Heather., 1:02:46). |
| Rebecca Zullo | Vice chair | Absent (her abstention on these minutes on September 18, 2019, show 10537). Named as a policy committee member (0:28:19) and on the paraprofessionals' negotiating team (0:38:15). |
| Gary Merchant | State Representative (Claremont Ward 2) | Introduced by the chair as "my friend and classmate and representative Gary Merchant" (0:17:21); explains the vetoed budget and the governor's counterproposal (0:18:02 to 0:26:46). "I know I represent Ward two, but I always think of myself as representing Claremont." |
| Michael Tempesta | Superintendent, SAU 6 | Reports on the school opening, summer credit recovery, the August 29 legislative hearing, the Byrne gift, the IRS letter and lunch-count controls, and negotiations. |
| Donna Magoon | Assistant superintendent, SAU 6 | Introduces JICD for second reading (0:27:38). |
| Ben Nester | Director of special education | Agrees to report on "the new program" on October 2 rather than September 18 (0:36:52). |
| Jeff Small | Director of technology, SAU 6 | Swipe-card badges wait on school photos; temporary laminated badges in use (0:46:54). |
| Mary Woodman | School district clerk | Calls the roll (0:01:56). |
| Unidentified | Various | 47 of 458 dialogue rows (10.3%), including the motion and second reappointing Pelletier (0:08:56, 0:09:03), the policy committee report on JICD, and a staff voice on credit-recovery eligibility (0:14:05). No member of the public speaks (0:03:43). |
Named but not present: Pauline Pelletier and Alex Herzog (CCTV board); a Mrs., Hodgman and a Keith whom the chair consulted about the CCTV seat (unidentified); principal Patricia Barry; Richard Seaman (transcribed Mr. Simon and Richard Simon); interim business official John Aubin (spelling unverified); district counsel Matt Upton; Senator Jay Kahn (transcribed Senator Khan, from Kenya [Keene]).
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda survives. The chair refers to "an agenda in front of us tonight" (0:02:10); the list below follows his transitions.
| Taken up | Item | What was said and done |
|---|
| 0:01:17 | Call to order; Pledge; roll call | Six present; Zullo absent. |
| 0:02:10 | Agenda | No amendments; approved "As written." by voice vote (0:02:26). |
| 0:02:26 | Minutes of August 21, 2019 | The chair: "I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. As presented from August 21st, 2018, 2019." A second is asked for; approved by voice vote (0:03:05). |
| 0:03:19 | Citizens' comments | Not on the printed agenda; opened anyway; "Seeing none, I will close citizens comments." (0:03:43). |
| 0:03:59 | Approval of all school handbooks | "That we accept and approve all school handbooks." (0:04:13): the three elementary schools as one, the middle school and the high school. Second Benware (0:04:22); approved by voice vote (0:07:29). |
| 0:07:32 | Reappointment of Pauline Pelletier to CCTV | "I move that we reappoint Pauline Pelletier to the CCTV Board of directors." (unidentified, 0:08:56); seconded (unidentified); approved (0:09:05). |
| 0:09:11 | Superintendent's report, with Rep. Merchant | Information; no action. |
| 0:27:25 | Second read: student discipline policy and due process; safe school zone | Benware moves "Second and final read" of policy J (0:27:59); a second is recorded in his name (0:28:08); approved by voice vote (0:29:39), no opposition heard. |
| 0:29:52 | Donation from the Byrne Foundation | $20,000; acceptance deferred to a public hearing at the start of the September 18 meeting (0:31:08, 0:31:24). No vote. |
| 0:31:57 | Future agenda items | Budget retreat Sunday, October 20, 10 to 1, at the community center; Nester's report on October 2; negotiations as a standing item; capital improvement report date to be set. |
| 0:47:15 | Other business | The chair on the state budget hearings; NHSBA workshops. |
| 1:02:42 | Adjournment | Motion Benware, second Whitney; approved (1:02:46). |
Discussion timeline
Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/10521 SchoolBoard090419.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 |
|---|
| 0:02:39 | August 21 minutes | Towle: "I thought it was very well put together this time." Approved as presented. These are the minutes that record the August 21 teacher election, the fiscal 2016 audit item and the CCTV appointment. | MEDIUM |
| 0:03:19 | Citizens' comments missing again | Towle: "It's not on there. So that's the problem." and "Just missed it twice." The chair: "Well I submit it put it that it should be and it's not on there. Okay. We'll do it again." | OBS |
| 0:03:59 | Handbooks approved | "We had the opportunity of two weeks to look at those." Towle finds them "detailed" and "easy to follow" but asks for plainer language, saying "like 85% of our population reads below the eighth grade level" (her figure; the page has not checked it). The superintendent: the handbooks are "usually reviewed by the attorneys". He suggests work in the spring, "wrapping it in May before they go to press." | |
| 0:07:32 | A second CCTV seat | The chair's impression is that the district would nominate "someone who's a school employee", which Pelletier no longer is, but she wants to return and the CCTV side "was insistent". Benware: "I think there's lots of seats in there." Pelletier is reappointed, alongside Herzog, appointed on August 21. | |
| 0:11:30 | Summer credit recovery | "They're up another 20 for a total of 76 this summer. 35 were in English. 41 were in math classes". Tutors are "paid for for from gear up money" [GEAR UP], which may be in its last year. Eligibility was widened: "we were able to pull in a lot more students than we have in the past." | |
| 0:15:06 | The August 29 legislative hearing | The superintendent and the chair spoke to the "joint House and Senate AD hoc committee" on "the continuing resolution on the funding predicament with the veto of the governor's budget." The superintendent's example: the middle school still lacks teachers, "kids don't have full schedules". | |
| 0:18:02 | Rep. Merchant on the budget | "Claremont in the budget would have received or would have received $4.5 million over two years" under the House and Senate budget; under the governor's counterproposal "We would probably lose about 3 million of that." He questions whether one-time capital aid would need matching money. "Do we want to support Wall Street or do we want to support Main Street?" He urges viewers to "Call the governor's office and ask him to support a budget that we passed in the House, in the Senate." The Sullivan County delegation meets "next Tuesday, September 10th in Newport at the probate court". | OBS |
| 0:21:53 | What the difference means here | Benware: on the remainder, "you're at 1.5 million divided by two is 700." [$750,000 a year] and "We'd be $350,000 in the hole rather than 1.1 million. However, we'd still be in the hole." Merchant: "what happens after two years? A lot of that one time money just goes away." | OBS |
| 0:27:38 | JICD adopted | An unidentified policy committee member: "we continued the discussions in our subcommittee online to try and update this as much as possible. There was a lot of conversations specifically relating to time frames more than verbiage." and "the final consensus there was that we needed to meet one last time to discuss this specific policy". Of the wording: "we just removed some of the weaker words to make it a more a stronger statement". Adopted on second and final reading (0:29:39). | MEDIUM |
| 0:29:52 | A $20,000 gift waits for a hearing | The superintendent: "an amazing donation of of $20,000" from the Byrne Foundation, arranged by Dr. Herzog for the technical center; the foundation gave 15,000 the year before. The chair: "So is this above the threshold, though, where we would have to have a public hearing to accept this amount of money?" Benware: "So is it above 5000? Yeah." The chair: "We'd have to warn this as a as a public hearing." The hearing is set for the start of the September 18 meeting. | POS |
| 0:32:17 | Budget retreat | Benware describes last year's approach: board goals set at a retreat, then "Corey went to town with trying to put something together that would work." [Cory LeClair]. This year is "kind of a crapshoot" without a state budget. Set for Sunday, October 20, "10 to 1", at the community center. | |
| 0:37:45 | Negotiations | Four contracts are open at once: teachers (transcribed the aria), paraprofessionals (pears, Paris), maintenance and others. Benware: "I'd really like to step back from negotiations". Of the role: "our our our lawyer, Matt Upton, tends to do most of the heavy lifting." The superintendent: "we're short on the business side right now". The chair will take the 4:00 sessions and an unidentified member the 6:00 ones; progress reports become a regular agenda item. | |
| 0:45:16 | IRS letter and lunch-count controls | The superintendent: "the IRS so that that's a fully gone and satisfied the 17 and 18. We weren't sighted on up to the 16." and "putting the controls in measures in, for lunch counts and things that, that, that were of, of, mentioned and rightly so last year that were deficient." See the August 21 audit flag. | |
| 0:47:19 | The state budget hearings | The chair: Newport "replaced 37 teachers this year"; one speaker said "we don't really have a property tax problem. We have a a funding problem". He asks whether candidates are "taking the pledge or are you willing to look at additional funding streams". Towle describes her own taxes as a senior. Benware and the chair discuss enrollment: about 1,200 at Stevens then, 520 now. | |
| 1:00:01 | NHSBA workshops | Towle notes "Setting the Foundation An Introduction to Education Funding in New Hampshire" and asks that the bulk workshop fee paid last year be arranged again; the chair thinks it comes from the Claremont budget rather than the SAU's. | |
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 September 4, 2019, or is labeled an observation where no verified rule applies.
MEDIUM A policy committee member described continuing the committee's deliberations "online"
Asked what had changed in JICD, an unidentified member speaking for the policy committee said "we continued the discussions in our subcommittee online to try and update this as much as possible" and that the members argued over time frames, "we thought this was taking too long, we thought this wasn't enough time", before agreeing "that we needed to meet one last time" (0:28:26). On August 21 the committee's members were named as Lovett, Towle and Zullo (August 21 page). A board committee is a public body under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d). RSA 91-A:2-a, I, unchanged since 2008, provides that public bodies "shall deliberate on matters over which they have supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power only in meetings held pursuant to and in compliance with the provisions of RSA 91-A:2, II or III", and II adds that "Communications outside a meeting, including, but not limited to, sequential communications among members of a public body, shall not be used to circumvent the spirit and purpose of this chapter". RSA 91-A:2, III(c), in the 2019 codification, adds: "No meeting shall be conducted by electronic mail or any other form of communication that does not permit the public to hear, read, or otherwise discern meeting discussion contemporaneously at the meeting location specified in the meeting notice." Committee members debating a policy's time frames with one another online, outside a noticed meeting, is the kind of exchange those provisions bar. The page grades this MEDIUM rather than HIGH because the record does not show who took part, whether a quorum of the committee exchanged views, or what "online" meant; comments sent only to staff for a draft would be different. The committee's own messages would settle it, and they are public records only if retained.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2-a, I and II (source note 2008, 303:4, never amended); RSA 91-A:2, III(c) (2019 codification); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (committees are public bodies)
MEDIUM No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting survive in any district share
MAP.md records no Drive material for this meeting: neither share holds a year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023. The board gave final approval to five handbooks and a discipline policy and filled a CCTV seat, and the recording is now the only public account. RSA 91-A:2, II, in the 2019 codification, required minutes including "the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, and a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions", required that "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes", and required inspection "not more than 5 business days after the meeting". This page applies the MEDIUM limb of the project's severity rule because the record mitigates the gap: minutes were taken and were approved, with an added note on the handbook discussion, on September 18, 2019 (show 10537). The minutes matter more than usual here: the motion and second that reappointed Pelletier are unidentified on the recording (0:08:56, 0:09:03), and the second to JICD is labeled to the member who made the motion (0:27:59, 0:28:08). The adopted text of JICD and the approved handbooks, which the chair said would be posted on the web page (August 21 page), are not in the record either.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2019)
OBSERVATION For the second meeting running, the printed agenda left out citizens' comments
On August 21 the chair noticed that citizens' comments were missing from the agenda and noted to himself that the item needed to go back in (August 21 page). Two weeks later the item was missing again; Towle: "It's not on there. So that's the problem." and "Just missed it twice." The chair said he had submitted it and opened the period anyway (0:03:36, 0:03:43). No member of the public was waiting either time. In 2019 no statute required a school board to hold a comment period; RSA 189:74 dates from 2022. This is an observation about the agenda process: the chair's instruction did not reach the printed agenda, and the agendas themselves are not public, so the omission can be seen only on tape.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022; not in force in 2019)
OBSERVATION The state-aid figures presented to the board are a legislator's estimates, and the governor's counterproposal is not in the record
Invited to speak during the superintendent's report, Representative Merchant said Claremont would have received "$4.5 million over two years" under the vetoed House and Senate budget and would "probably lose about 3 million of that" under the governor's counterproposal (0:18:24, 0:18:58), while cautioning "we're not quite sure exactly where the government is coming from" (0:18:02) and "we don't have the actual numbers" (0:21:30). He also gave figures on business tax relief ($93 million; "Less than 1% of the corporations") and on the governor's vetoes (0:19:52, 0:25:54). Board members built on the estimates: Benware calculated that the district would be "$350,000 in the hole rather than 1.1 million" (0:22:15). The chair said he had read the governor's August 29 letter and "really couldn't get my head around what was going on with the with the numbers" (0:16:54). Neither the letter nor any state run of district aid is in the record, and this page has not verified the figures. No rule requires a school board to present both sides of a state budget dispute, so this is an observation: the numbers on tape are characterizations, offered with a call to "Call the governor's office" (0:24:17), and anyone relying on them should compare the Department of Education's aid estimates for fiscal 2020 and 2021.
Sources: Cablecast: SCHOOL BOARD meeting 9-4-19
POSITIVE The board held a $20,000 gift for the public hearing the statute requires
When the superintendent presented "an amazing donation of of $20,000" from the Byrne Foundation for the technical center (0:30:04), the chair asked whether it was "above the threshold" for a public hearing, Benware confirmed the $5,000 figure, and the board deferred acceptance: "We'd have to warn this as a as a public hearing." (0:30:53, 0:31:03, 0:31:08). RSA 198:20-b, III(a), in the 2019 codification, provides that "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 notice in a newspaper of general circulation at least 7 days before. The hearing was held at the start of the September 18 meeting, and the gift was accepted later that evening (show 10537). The record does not show the newspaper notice; the chair on September 18 relied on having warned the item at this meeting. Recognizing the threshold unprompted and waiting for the hearing is the procedure the statute sets.
Sources: RSA 198:20-b, III(a) (2019 codification; source note ends 2005, 188:1; threshold raised to $20,000 only in 2023)
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast: SCHOOL BOARD meeting 9-4-19 (show 10521; run time from the Cablecast API not retrieved, the API refused requests from this environment on 2026-10-02)
- 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.
- Related: Claremont School Board, August 21, 2019 (first read of JICD; tentative handbook approval; the audit). Claremont School Board, September 18, 2019 (show 10537): approval of these minutes, the Byrne hearing and acceptance, cited in prose.
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/10521 SchoolBoard090419.mp4.CSV (458 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Dialogue/10537 SchoolBoard091819.mp4.CSV (the September 18 meeting cited above)Input/Videos/10521 SchoolBoard090419.mp4Input/Transcripts/10521 SchoolBoard090419.mp4.jsonInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 108Scripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/10521 SchoolBoard090419.mp4.md (speaker attribution report)
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:2, II and III(c), 2019 codification (in force January 1, 2019 to October 2, 2023): minutes content and timing; no meeting by electronic mail
- RSA 91-A:2-a, I and II (2008, 303:4): deliberation only in meetings; no circumvention by outside communications
- RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (source note ends 2008, 354:1): committees of a school board are public bodies
- RSA 198:20-b, III(a), 2019 codification: prior public hearing for unanticipated funds of $5,000 or more
- RSA 189:74: school board public comment period, effective September 6, 2022 (cited to show it did not apply)