| 0:00:47 | Roll call | Clerk: “Shannon Popescu.” / “Gary bader.” / “Frank Sprague here. Rebecca.” / “Jason. Benwell. Rob Lovett. Junior. Heather Whitney here. Carolyn Toll here. And Mike pitching here.” The first name called is inaudible and is answered Here. No answer is captured for Bader, Benware or Lovett, so the recording does not establish whether a quorum of the SAU board was present. | OBS |
| 0:01:19 | Agenda amended | Chair: “I'm going to make one change that we need to kind of get back on the regular schedule. The superintendent report. I'm going to add that in after citizens comments”. Moved, seconded, passed by voice. | |
| 0:02:01 | Superintendent's report | Tempesta: school “has opened both in unity and at in Claremont and things are going well”; the administrative team is “committed to spending at least four hours scheduled every day of the year in schools.” At 0:02:55: “Richard Seaman is going to be joining us October 2nd full time”, “transitioning well with John Aubin, who's our part time person.” Plans to have Unity and Claremont students perform and report to the board. | |
| 0:05:39 | Minutes not on the agenda | Sprague: “Approval of minutes is not on the agenda either.” The chair later takes up the July 25 minutes under other business (0:29:25). | OBS |
| 0:05:49 | Thanks to central-office staff | Petrin: the office “has gone through quite a turnover”; “All most of the faces here at the table are new. You know, Ben was here last year.” People “stepped up into new roles” over “a tough, probably at least a year.” | |
| 0:07:07 | IRS closing letter | Petrin: “We got good news from the IRS.” Tempesta: the letter was “a very, direct form letter that, you know, this matter is, is resolved”; “it is closed in.” He says the letter was included in the members' materials; it is not in any public share, and the recording does not say what the IRS matter was. | MED |
| 0:08:06 | Audit status | Tempesta: “the auditors are closing the Claremont 17 audit now, they, they expect to start the the 18 next week.” At 0:08:32: “the unity 17 is closed and we're going to be presenting that, the to the board for signature at the unity meeting next Tuesday.” A suggestion from “Mr. Robin” (identity unresolved; the attribution report guesses John Aubin) is to have the auditors attend the next SAU meeting. | MED POS |
| 0:09:36 | Auditors to present | Tempesta: “To have the auditors here themselves so they, they can talk about. Exactly. And particularly for the audience as well.” Next meeting “probably mid mid-October”; “it would be great to hear from the third party folks who do that.” | POS |
| 0:10:20 | Auditor recommendations | Towle asks whether auditors give “Recommendations on how to improve systems or controls within.” Tempesta: “You usually get a you know a recommendation letter in indoor findings”; a “new crew” comes in afterward, and Seaman has proposed “some pretty innovative ways to get a handle on everything.” | MED |
| 0:11:33 | Accountant/grants manager: the cost sheet | Tempesta says the handout did not print properly (“I had a legal size one, and I blew it up, but we couldn't get it on there”) and was rebuilt with John. Two vacant positions (assistant business manager/HR and director of technology) had been left unfilled to fund two middle-school teaching positions, budgeted at “$60,000 in salary and then approximately $30,000 in fringe benefits.” Actuals “came in actually a lot lower”: the transcript reads “with the actual salaries, with 36,030 7000. And the benefits estimated were 20,000”, and “we estimated that would be approximately 180,000. It was only 112,000.” | OBS |
| 0:13:36 | Accountant/grants manager: the proposal | The long-time grants manager resigned; “we paid that person approximately $70,000 a year”, out of “a consultant line.” Proposal: “we emerge the two aspects of the position” so there is “a full time employee” to “manage and control the grants” who is also “a skilled, experienced accountant”. Tempesta calls it “a very fiscally responsible way to go.” | OBS |
| 0:16:27 | Assessment reduction | “the total reduction of the Saw assessment is 170,000.” The net change is garbled in the transcript: “we still will have a 60. What is that, 56,000, $57,000, 40,000 in Claremont to be returned and 17,008 as part a portion.” At 0:17:04: Claremont carries “89.5% of the overall assessment” and Unity “a little over 10%, ten, 10.5%.” The split cannot be reconstructed from the transcript without the handout. | OBS |
| 0:17:50 | Member questions | An unidentified member restates that the previous grants manager “was only a part time position at 70 K” and asks whether combining the roles is still “a huge savings”; Tempesta says it is “more effective” and keeps someone “in the building all the time.” Sprague (0:18:42) asks the salary difference between “Mike O'Neill” (part time) and Seaman (full time): “not much”, “A few thousand dollars”. Human resources will be supervised by Seaman and the superintendent (0:19:12). | |
| 0:20:13 | Sprague on the IRS letter and restructuring | Sprague: “I've been asked by the press and various people as the Claremont board chair, about the IRS letter”; he has said the board and administration are “taking every step to make sure that these errors don't happen again”, and the plan has “very fine mesh for things to. So nothing big will slip through”. | |
| 0:21:21 | Vote: accountant/grants manager | Chair: “Looking for a motion to approve this.” Sprague: “Make that motion.” An unidentified voice (0:21:25): “I make a motion that we approve this, grant slash accounting position.” “I'll second that.” Voice vote, Aye.; “Opposed? All right. Thank you.” No dissent heard; the tally is not stated. | OBS |
| 0:21:44 | Business administrator update | Seaman starts October 2, “Coming to us with lots of experience.” Sprague: “I asked the question last year when when we were having some issues is why isn't this why isn't that position full time.” A Unity member asks whether this came up at the Unity meeting; Tempesta: “We we spoke about all.” | |
| 0:23:01 | SAU budget calendar | Sprague: “Our budget for the saw is to December ish”, earlier than the district budgets, “So that really is something we need to start soon”; he suggests planning, “maybe a subcommittee”. Petrin: in past years the whole board did it “over a couple of meetings”, with no subcommittee. | OBS |
| 0:23:50 | Unity attendance | Towle: “We barely have unity members at the meetings.” “I'm quite concerned about the lack of membership from the unity side.” Asked whether SAU meetings are optional, a member says there is “No policy on on this. You know, the city council has that.” Sprague: “My response to that is then don't complain about the decisions that get made.” / “If you're not here to contribute.” | OBS |
| 0:25:18 | Standing district updates | Petrin: “Something that Marjorie had brought up is maybe putting on the agenda on a regular basis is just a report from unity, a report from Claremont.” Added as an ongoing item. | POS |
| 0:26:14 | Next meeting date | Petrin hopes audit reports will be ready; Towle: the usual “Second Thursday”, “Which would be the 10th.” Petrin: “October 10th.” The superintendent is asked to circulate the date for consensus. | |
| 0:27:15 | Getting the news out | Towle: people online think “the administration is essentially still the same” and do not know there has been “almost a complete clean out of the staff at the administration”. A member suggests a monthly superintendent's report like Lebanon's; Tempesta: “I'll do press release.” | |
| 0:29:25 | Minutes of July 25 deferred | Petrin: “We have the minutes from July 25th.” Towle: “I didn't get this prior to the meeting. Was it sent out?” She asks that minutes come in advance “so that we can read it before we get here”. The item goes “on the agenda for the next one”. | OBS |
| 0:30:15 | Education-funding listening session | Towle: a “public hearing and listening session regarding education funding” at the Sullivan County administration building, “third floor at the probate courtroom in Newport”, at 6 p.m. (the handout has “the date wrong” in one spot). Sprague: “A bipartisan group”, a chance to meet those who “May need” “Further convincing that schools need to be funded adequately.” A Unity member: Unity meets that night. | |
| 0:31:39 | Adjournment | “I made a motion to adjourn.” Voice vote. Towle: “That was the shortest meeting ever.” | |