Claremont School Board, September 18, 2019 | Public hearing and regular meeting

Participants

Everyone named or heard in the record. With no minutes available, names follow the project roster for 2015 to 2023 and the speakers' own introductions; transcript garbles are shown where they matter.
Name	Role	Participation
Frank Sprague	Chair	Opens the donation hearing and the meeting, amends the agenda, runs every vote. On state aid, the stabilization-grant loss; recounts the origin of the high school's grading scale as former principal; explains the class-rank question; plans the joint meeting with the City Council, the SAU meeting and the board retreat.
Rebecca Zullo	Vice chair	Answers the roll first. Seconds the amended agenda; abstains on the September 4 minutes (“I wasn't here on September 4th”); praises the middle-school project-based learning; asks for a school-safety discussion; says Stevens offers too few AP courses.
Jason Benware	Member	Called as “Jason. Benwell”. Gives the state-aid figures (“about 4.3 million” over two years against a post-veto “1 in 1 point four”); moves acceptance of the $20,000 donation; asks for school-nurse data on head lice since the policy change.
Michael Petrin	Member	Called as “Michael”; chair calls on “Mr. Peterson”. Says “As amended” on the agenda motion; moves the September 4 minutes; asks how the student representative is chosen; asks for the grading system as a future item.
Heather Whitney	Member	Asks the September 4 minutes to record the handbook-timing discussion; reports the policy committee's deferral; suggests the tech center make a plaque; argues for keeping weighted courses and the number-one rank.
Carolyn Towle	Member	Called as “Carolyn Toll”. Asks the student representative for feedback on the leadership event; questions the governor's funding statements; proposes a plaque for the Byrne Foundation; reports the safety committee will present at the retreat.
Rob Lovett Jr.	Member	Called on the roll (“Rob. Lovett. Junior.”); no answer captured and no speech attributed to him. The attribution report suggests an unidentified board-side voice may be his; not established.
Tyler Sullivan	Student representative, Stevens High School senior	Introduced by the chair (self-introduction transcribed “I am Tellus 11”). Gives the student report; says he is one of the students hosting the student-voice session; asks whether project-based learning can reach the high school; argues to keep valedictorian but weight band and choir like other courses.
Michael Tempesta	Superintendent	Slide report on the Dartmouth Thayer School partnership and the Skillful Teacher course; the Medicaid rule before JLCAR and the veto-override session; the grading, scheduling and class-rank committees.
Steve Moss	Curriculum specialist, grades 6 to 12, SAU 6	Self-introduced (“I'm Steve Moss on the curriculum specialist for Sussex for grades six through 12th grade”; once “Steve Morse”). Video and report on the Claremont Middle School project-based learning block.
Audra Buckland	Assistant principal, Claremont Middle School	Introduced by Moss as “our esteemed vice principal”. Describes the multi-year schedule redesign, teacher effort beyond paid hours, a nursing-home director's praise of students, and lower behavior referrals.
Mary Woodman	Clerk (addressed as Mrs. Woodman; once transcribed “Mrs. Whitman”)	Takes the roll; asked to record motions.
Unidentified	Board members and others	Second the donation motion and the closing motion; ask about scholarships and class rank; 73 of 358 rows carry no name.
Named, not speaking	Staff and others mentioned	Terry (also Terri) Hayward, middle-school teacher who organized the project choice boards; Courtney Steele, teacher; Principal Romeo and science teacher Mr. Bilodeau (Dartmouth partnership); “Misty”, staff member assisting the superintendent; State Representative Gary Merchant; Mayor Lovett (joint-meeting agenda). Spellings as transcribed.

Order of business (reconstructed)

No agenda is in any public share. The chair refers to “a agenda in front of us” and to item letters; the list below is reconstructed from his transitions.

Items in the order taken up. Movers are named only where the transcript names or clearly attributes them; tallies are not stated on the recording.
Taken up	Item	What happened
0:00:25	Public hearing: Byrne Foundation donation	Chair: comments taken “on the acceptance of a donation from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation to the SRB RTC, the sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center, in the amount of 20 $0” [$20,000, per the later motion]. “Board policy requires us to have a public hearing when we are given a gift of this size.” No one comes forward; hearing closed.
0:01:29	Call to order, roll call	“we are now going into our school board meeting of September 18th, 2019.” Roll at 0:01:58.
0:02:16	Agenda	Floor amendments: add a student representative report, add approval of minutes, and add acceptance of the donation under action items (“we had, warned it last time”). Agenda accepted “As amended” (Petrin), second Zullo, voice vote.
0:03:35	Minutes of September 4, 2019	Moved by Petrin. Whitney's addition on receiving school handbooks earlier is accepted. Second not identified; voice vote; Zullo abstains as absent on September 4.
0:04:34	Student representative report	Tyler Sullivan; questions from Petrin, Zullo, Towle.
0:10:17	Superintendent's report	Includes Steve Moss and Audra Buckland on middle-school project-based learning (0:29:26).
0:41:36	Citizens' comments	None: “I don't see any citizens.”
0:41:36	Action: acceptance of donation	Benware moves to accept “20,000” from the “Jack and Dorsey” [Dorothy] “Byrne Foundation with our heartfelt thanks”; second unidentified (0:42:03). Discussion of a plaque. Voice vote at 0:43:54, no opposition heard.
0:44:03	Policy approval	Deferred: Whitney says the committee had to defer and will report at the next meeting.
0:44:23	Future agenda items and dates	Joint meeting with the City Council Thursday the 26th at 6:00; SAU 6 meeting on the 10th; board retreat 10 to 1 (date not stated here). Items: grading-system update at the first October meeting, school safety, head-lice data, class rank.
1:04:34	Other business; adjournment	“Any other business?” A motion is not captured; “I'll second that.” and a voice vote follow.

Discussion timeline

Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/10537 SchoolBoard091819.mp4.CSV) and link into the recording.

Chronological topics. Quotations are verbatim from the transcript, including its errors; bracketed words are editorial.
Time	Topic	What was said	Flags
0:00:25	Donation hearing	“So at this point in time, I would invite any citizens who would like to give input on this donation to the podium. Seeing none. I will close the public hearing.”	OBS
0:01:35	Thanks to the foundation	Zullo: “can we just give a big, huge thank you to the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation?”
0:01:58	Roll call	Zullo answers Here.; clerk: “Jason. Benwell, Rob. Lovett. Junior. Michael. Heather Whitney, Carolyn Toll and Frank Sprague here.” Seven members called; six are heard speaking during the meeting.
0:02:53	Donation added to the agenda	Chair: “I'd like to add the acceptance of the of that donation into the action items we had, warned it last time, and we, announced we'd be talking about it tonight, so I think that's sufficient warning.”	OBS
0:03:48	September 4 minutes	Whitney: the handbook approval drew “a somewhat lengthy conversation” about “us receiving the books earlier. It seemed like something important to add to the minutes.” Chair: “would be nice to get them earlier, preferably in the spring.” Zullo (0:04:26): “I'm abstaining from that because I wasn't here on September 4th.”
0:04:57	Student report	Student-voice sessions with a representative “aligned with the Nellie May Foundation” on September 19; mini college fair; an October 1 assembly and parent evening with a Value Up speaker who survived the shooting the transcript renders “the Taliban high school shooting” [Columbine]; open houses and events across the schools. Selection of the student representative (0:09:30): “It's by interested seniors.”
0:10:45	Superintendent: showcasing classrooms	Tempesta: the administrative team is in schools “every day for up to four hours”. At 0:11:11: an ideation session at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth with Mr. Moss, Principal Romeo and science teacher Mr. Bilodeau, planning a “five year partnership”; Dartmouth “have money as well to help fund or in loan some of this equipment to the schools participating.”
0:17:40	Skillful Teacher course	“we 24 people, including administrators and teachers, taking the skillful teacher course here in this room today”; “a series of eight full day workshops”, with “another spring cohort” hoped for “through our our training grants.”
0:19:51	Medicaid rule and veto override	A JLCAR meeting on Medicaid funding “where they want to put a new threshold of how you have to report”; the superintendents' and special-education directors' associations sent a letter urging reconsideration. At 0:20:51: the joint House and Senate session on “overriding the governor's veto”; under a continuing resolution “we don't know how we're going to be funded going forward” and are operating “at only a quarter of our budget that was promised for the year.”	OBS
0:22:40	The governor's funding letter	Towle: “isn't he saying that he has found a way to fund the educational piece?” “There are no numbers mentioned. That's the problem.” Sprague: “It felt felt like a shell game to me”. Tempesta (0:23:39): best case “almost two, 2.3 or 2.4 million” additional if the legislature's budget stood; Representative “Gary Merchant” had also found it “still very gray”.	OBS
0:24:59	Benware and Sprague on the numbers	Benware: the money “over, two year period was about 4.3 million, and the post veto solution was more like 1 in 1 point four”, so “we'd still be in the hole at budget season.” Sprague (0:25:20): the continuing resolution keeps “the continued loss of stabilization grants, which is about a quarter of a million to us”; “500 K or more, just a level fund”. Benware (0:25:58): “somewhere around 950 zero 0 to $1.1 million short”, “after we lose that extra 4%.” Sprague (0:26:26): “We're operating at a million less stabilization money than we were.”	OBS
0:27:31	Medicaid detail	Tempesta: New Hampshire “is going for reimbursement from the feds”; the associations' letter, “that I included in the packet”, says the change is premature and “doesn't rise to the level of an emergency”, and taken literally would be “somewhere in the vicinity of $28 million immediately impacting the cities and towns”.
0:29:26	Middle-school project-based learning	Moss shows a video, then (0:32:58): teachers choose projects tied to their competencies; students rank choices; the last “55 minutes of the school day” is project time. Examples: a labyrinth with the math to build it; buying versus leasing a car, insurance rates from websites, then engine maintenance. “the engagement level of these kids is off the charts.”
0:36:08	Buckland on the redesign	“a multiple year effort that involved teachers, administrators at the district level, school level parents”; it “took many, many, many extra hours of work than what we pay them for”; “We do have to think about how we're going to sustain that level of energy.” At 0:38:42: “behavior referrals during this part of the day are incredibly down.”
0:39:35	Board reaction	Zullo: teachers “finally able to, have a little bit more control over what they're teaching”. Tyler Sullivan (0:41:12): “We need to get this to the high school”; Moss: modeling it at the middle school first, “it works even better in high school.”
0:41:54	Donation accepted	Benware: “I move that we accept the donation of.” / “20,000.” / “Byrne Foundation with our heartfelt thanks.” “A second.” Chair: “Did you get that, Mrs. Woodman?” Towle (0:42:26) asks for a plaque; Whitney: “Maybe the tech center can make it.” Vote at 0:43:54: “All those in favor? Aye, aye. Opposed? Okay.”	OBS
0:44:03	Policy approval deferred	Whitney: “Was due to a myriad of personal situations we ended up having to defer”; “We will have it done by then.”
0:44:23	Joint meeting and SAU quorum	The superintendent and chair met the mayor and drafted an agenda for the joint meeting “on the 26th”, at 6:00. At 0:45:17: “Our next saw board meeting is the 10th”; “we see they're really close to having a quorum on those. That's helpful if we know who's going so we can actually have the meeting”.
0:45:45	Board retreat and the budget	A retreat with “a single agenda item”; Sprague hopes to go “into looking into negotiations and such without wondering how much we would have to eliminate to to make ends meet.” He wrote an op-ed for the e-Ticker with legislators' contact details: “These are our kids. This is our town.” Retreat time (0:46:58): “10:00”, “10 to 1”, potluck breakfast.
0:47:36	Grading system	Petrin wants the grading system to “go by the wayside and be something different.” Tempesta (0:48:00): committees are forming; parents, students or community members who “want to be a part of that, please contact us and we'll put you on that committee”. Sprague (0:49:20) recounts introducing the scale as principal, “P plus due to my, my guidance background”, to resemble the “kneecap” [NECAP] grades; “in my mind it's a very easy fix.” Update set for the first October meeting (0:52:57).	POS
0:53:13	School safety	Zullo: “a hot topic for me has always been school safety”; she asks for a conversation on “the recommendations from the Department of Homeland Security and see how safety improvements are going to be worked into the CIP plan”. Towle (0:53:58): the committee hopes to report at the retreat.
0:54:19	Head-lice policy data	Benware asks for a school-nurse report on whether incidence changed since the policy change: “I'd like to see some data, if it exists”.
0:55:29	Retiring future agenda items	Sprague: items have “stayed on the future agenda items for forever”; “It'd be nice if we could get them retired”. Tempesta: a standing template item, then “we remove it.”	POS
0:56:14	Class rank	Sprague: it arose when a National Merit Scholar who took performing-arts courses rather than weighted ones “Wound up 10th in the class”; the idea was “valedictory groups”. Tyler Sullivan (0:59:56): valedictorian “gives us something to shoot for” but band and choir should carry “the same amount of weight”. Whitney (1:00:36): “I kind of have an opposite opinion.”
1:01:10	Scheduling and AP offerings	Tempesta: the scheduling committee is looking at hours per course and weighting; Massachusetts high schools have “at least a dozen” AP offerings. Zullo (1:02:38): “we don't offer enough.” Teachers carry “approximately 120 to 140 students over the course of the year”.
1:04:34	Close	“Okay. Any other business?” followed by “I'll second that.” and a voice vote; the motion itself is not in the transcript.

Items flagged for review

These flags are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each cites the rule it rests on, read as it stood on September 18, 2019, or is labeled an observation where no verified rule applies.

MEDIUM No minutes or agenda for this meeting are in the district's public shares

The board worked from a written agenda (“we have a agenda in front of us”, 0:02:16) and a packet that included the associations' Medicaid letter (0:28:19). No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting is in any district share; the Drive archives begin in 2022. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes open to public inspection within five business days, kept as permanent records, and from January 1, 2019 naming the mover and seconder of each motion. Graded MEDIUM rather than HIGH because the record mitigates it: on October 2, 2019 Zullo asked that the “previous minutes” add her school-safety request, and Petrin moved “We approve the September 18th, 2019 minutes, as amended”, second Zullo (Dialogue/10558 SchoolBoard100219.mp4.CSV, about four minutes in). Minutes were written; they are not where the public can now find them. The seconders of the September 4 minutes, the donation and the closing motion cannot be named from the recording.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II, 2019 codification (minutes within 5 business days; permanent records; mover and seconder named)

OBSERVATION $20,000 private gift accepted after the prior public hearing the statute requires; notice not verifiable

For unanticipated money of $5,000 or more from a private source, RSA 198:20-b, III(a) requires the board to hold a prior public hearing, noticed in a newspaper at least seven days ahead, and the board may accept only if the district has adopted the enabling article under ¶I. The board held the hearing at 0:00:25, heard no one, and accepted the Byrne Foundation's $20,000 in public session at 0:43:54 on Benware's motion. That sequence matches the statute. What this page cannot confirm is the newspaper notice or the enabling article; the chair says only that the item was “warned” at the previous meeting and announced (0:02:53), which refers to the agenda, not the hearing notice. The chair attributes the hearing requirement to “Board policy”; the statute imposes it independently. The opening's “20 $0” is a transcription error for the $20,000 in the motion.

Sources: RSA 198:20-b, I and III(a), 2019 codification (enabling article; prior hearing and 7-day newspaper notice at $5,000 or more)

OBSERVATION State-aid figures under the 2019 budget veto are members' estimates; the stabilization phase-out they describe was statutory

With the state on a continuing resolution, members gave competing figures for Claremont's loss: “about 4.3 million” over two years against a post-veto “1 in 1 point four” (Benware, 0:24:59); a stabilization loss of “about a quarter of a million” a year (Sprague, 0:25:20); “950 zero 0 to $1.1 million short” (Benware, 0:25:58). The page cannot check these against a document; none was shown. The mechanism Sprague and Benware describe is in the statute as last codified before this meeting: from fiscal 2017 a municipality's stabilization grant is 96 percent of its 2012 amount, reduced by 4 percent of the 2012 education grant each year after. This page does not establish whether the 2019 budget, then still being negotiated, changed that schedule; the October 2 meeting reports a compromise.

Sources: RSA 198:41, IV(d), 2018 codification (96 percent for FY2017, reduced by 4 percent a year; source note ends 2016, 85:9)

POSITIVE Public invited onto the grading committee, and standing agenda items given dates

The superintendent invited parents, students and community members to join the grading-system committee (“please contact us and we'll put you on that committee”, 0:48:25), and the chair set the grading update for the first October meeting and asked that long-standing future-agenda items be “retired” rather than carried indefinitely (0:55:29). No rule requires either; both make the board's follow-through checkable.

Sources: the recording; no rule requires these practices.

Appendix: source files

Official and public sources

Cablecast: SCHOOL BOARD meeting 9-18-19 (show 10537)
Agenda, packet and minutes: none found. MAP.md section 110 records no Drive material because neither share holds a year folder older than 2022 and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023 (checked September 26, 2026).

Project files

Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.

Dialogue/10537 SchoolBoard091819.mp4.CSV (358 attributed rows; the basis of this page)
Dialogue/10558 SchoolBoard100219.mp4.CSV (the October 2, 2019 meeting, cited for the approval of these minutes)
Dialogue/_backlog-attribution-report-2015-2023.md (backlog attribution notes)
Input/Videos/10537 SchoolBoard091819.mp4
Input/Transcripts/10537 SchoolBoard091819.mp4.json
Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md (section 110)

Laws and rules cited on this page

State: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1); RSA 198:20-b, I and III(a) (2019 codification; source note ends 2005, 188:1); RSA 198:41, IV(d) (2018 codification)