Participants
Everyone the recording shows taking part, as named in the project's dialogue file. No minutes exist online to check spellings against, so names are as the transcription heard them and are marked where unverified. Members are listed first.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Michael Petrin | Chair, SAU 6 Board (Claremont member) | Presided; abstained on the July 25 minutes "because I wasn't here for one"; asked for the September 5 minutes to be corrected; raised SAU-specific policies; scheduled the next meetings. |
| Frank Sprague | Claremont chair; SAU 6 member | Moved the July minutes; gave the Claremont update (four contracts in negotiation, budget retreat October 20, Medicaid); said the governor's building money should go into the capital plan; asked for a proposed SAU budget; volunteered to contact the New Hampshire School Boards Association about policies. |
| Heather Whitney | Claremont member | Moved the agenda (medium-high confidence: the chair named "Heather" as mover), seconded the July minutes, moved the September 5 minutes and adjournment. |
| Prudence McCormick | Unity member | Pointed out that December 12 clashed with a joint school board and council meeting. |
| Robert McDevitt, Gary Bader | Unity members | Named in the roll. Whether either is one of the unidentified Unity speakers is not established. |
| Rebecca Zullo, Jason Benware, Rob Lovett Jr., Carolyn Towle | Claremont members | Named in the roll (Zullo and Lovett with an audible Here). No speech is attributed to any of them by name; a Claremont-side woman who welcomed the organized budget report may be Zullo or Towle (not decidable). |
| Unidentified | Unity member | Gave the Unity update (a Unity principal retiring, the budget committee) and said she had driven the push for SAU policies because the SAU had none. Possibly Marjorie Erickson, the SAU vice chair, but that is not confirmed on the record. |
| Unidentified | Board members (several) | Asked about building money, asked whether minutes must be approved separately, asked for the budget report, and scheduled meetings. |
| Michael Tempesta | Superintendent, SAU 6 | Reported the $6.2 million state check, the audit timetable, business-office changes and the strategic-plan committees; estimated a proposed SAU budget within weeks. |
| Richard Seaman | Business administrator, SAU 6 | Corrected the audit years; presented the SAU budget-to-actual report; said the auditors had not spoken to him about policies. |
| Mary Woodman | Clerk | Called the roll. |
| Mr. Small | SAU 6 staff (technology) | Ran the superintendent's slides ("go ahead, Mr. Small"). No speech attributed. |
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. An agenda existed: the chair says "We have a genda in front of us." Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:13 | Call to order, pledge, roll call | Roll called by the clerk. |
| 0:01:27 | Agenda | "Accept the agenda as presented." (Whitney); voice vote. |
| 0:02:08 | Minutes of July 25 and September 5, 2019 | Taken separately after a member said they could not be combined. July 25: Sprague moved, Whitney seconded, carried with the chair abstaining. September 5: Whitney moved, seconded, carried with corrections to the date and the chair's name. |
| 0:04:15 | Superintendent's report | State aid, audits, business office, strategic plan committees. |
| 0:12:27 | Citizens' comments | "I'm going to open up citizens comments and seeing none." |
| 0:12:49 | Updates from the Claremont and Unity boards | A standing item the chair said was newly added. Sprague for Claremont; a Unity member for Unity. |
| 0:17:09 | Update on budget planning | Request for a proposed budget; Seaman's budget-to-actual report. |
| 0:23:54 | Policy discussion | SAU 6-specific policies; Sprague to contact the School Boards Association; to remain on the agenda. |
| 0:27:54 | Future agenda items | Next meeting November 14 with the proposed budget and a policy placeholder; December 12 as the budget wrap-up. |
| 0:32:18 | Other business; adjournment | Whitney moved to adjourn; seconded; 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 |
|---|
| 0:00:52 | Roll call | "Gary Bader, Frank Sprague here. Rebecca Zulu. Here. Jason Benwell, Rob Lovett, junior. Here. Heather Whitney, here, Carolyn Toll and Mike patron here." (Zulu, Benwell, Toll and patron are ASR renderings of Zullo, Benware, Towle and Petrin.) | |
| 0:02:22 | Two sets of minutes | A member: "Do they have to be done separately? I don't think you can combine them." The chair agreed, "because I wasn't here for one." July 25 approved with the chair abstaining. On September 5, members noted handwritten marks: "So those will be fixed in the official." A voice: "It's not online." Petrin: "So the date needs to be corrected to September instead of August." Sprague: "It says Petrie should be patron." Approved as corrected. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:04:54 | $6.2 million state check | Tempesta: "we just got this check for $6.2 million yesterday, which we're very happy about." Improvements would follow in Claremont and Unity. Richard Seaman, the new business director, was working through the historical books; an accounting and grants manager was joining; staff had trained on the Infinite Visions software. | |
| 0:05:57 | Audit timetable | Tempesta first said the 18 audit would finish at the end of this month and "the 19 audit will be finished up by the end of December". Seaman corrected him: "Reversed that we end of this month." Tempesta: 17. Seaman: "This month. End of the year. That's right." So: the fiscal 2017 audit in October 2019, the fiscal 2018 audit by the end of December 2019. The entity audited is not named. An HR area was being reconfigured. | MEDIUM |
| 0:06:40 | Strategic plan committees | Committees of teachers and administrators from both districts on school safety, teaching and learning, STEM and arts, alternative programming, technology, curriculum, and social-emotional learning; community members wanted, and the community college had volunteered for two or three. The committee work "will be the primary driver for all for the strategic plan for the next 3 to 5 years". | |
| 0:10:41 | Building money | Asked about money for buildings, Tempesta said it is set for FY21 in two allocations and is not part of the 6.2 million: "It's in addition to that." Sprague, recalling the governor's visit the day before: "he was talking specifically about schools with leaky roofs", and for Claremont "it is going to be for us in Claremont, about $2.5 million. And personally, I don't want to leave one penny of that on the table." It should be part of the capital improvement plan. | |
| 0:12:27 | Citizens' comments | None. | |
| 0:12:51 | Claremont update | Sprague: four contracts in negotiation (teachers, secretaries, maintenance and paraprofessionals). "This the 20th of October, we're going to be having our budget retreat." On Medicaid: "Could be well north of a half $1 million that we we lose". Whitney, Lovett and Towle sit on the capital improvement committee, sorting emergencies from projects to fund with the new state money. | |
| 0:15:09 | Unity update | Unity is maintaining a new building and finishing its master plan with the planning board. "The big news is that we will be looking for a new principal in the coming year. Chip is going to retire at the end of this year." A search committee will form; the Unity budget committee meets first in November. | |
| 0:17:30 | SAU budget planning | Sprague asked for a proposed budget from the administration, based on last year's with changes. Members recalled last year's process ran from late October to December. A member had asked to see "where we are in our budget for this season". | |
| 0:19:30 | Budget-to-actual report | Seaman explained columns for actual, budget, year to date, encumbrance and remaining: "we've addressed a little over a million of the million six of the budget. So there's still remains about $264,000 for other items." "The nice thing is, I'm not seeing any surprises in here." Caveat: "this is sort of my first shot through as it relates to the Saw budget. So you may find some inconsistencies in here." He had not yet tied in a modification brought forward by "John Auburn" [John Aubin, per the attribution report]. A member: "Nightmare, and this is just a relief to see this. It's organized." | POSITIVE |
| 0:23:54 | SAU 6 policies | Petrin: "We've talked about developing saw six specific policies." A member: "Just right now, we don't have any." A Unity member said gaps had shown up around the superintendent, board and SAU interactions and business-office procedures: "We had nothing to protect us." and "All of the audits have talked to to the lack of procedures". Petrin: "So I was kind of deferred back to Claremont policies". Seaman: "They haven't spoken to me about that yet". Sprague will ask the School Boards Association for multi-district policies; the item stays on the agenda. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:28:25 | Next meetings | Tempesta: "I think we can have one in a proposed one in a couple of weeks"; Seaman: "Two weeks next to three, four weeks." A member: "I won't be able to attend on the 14th." Petrin: "Let's shoot for the 14th and put it out to the all the other unity members." December 12 was set as a second budget meeting after McCormick noted a joint school board and council meeting that week: "Maybe that would be our wrap up one." | |
| 0:32:23 | Adjournment | Whitney: "I make a motion to adjourn." Voice vote. | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the law in force on October 10, 2019. Several provisions cited below have since been 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. Four flags follow, ordered by severity.
MEDIUM The fiscal 2017 audit was still being finished in October 2019, and the fiscal 2018 audit was expected at the end of December
As corrected by the business administrator at 0:06:05, the audit for the year ended June 30, 2017 was to be finished at the end of October 2019, some 28 months after that year closed, and the audit for the year ended June 30, 2018 by the end of December 2019, 18 months after year end. For any non-federal entity that "expends $750,000 or more during the non-Federal entity's fiscal year in Federal awards", the Uniform Guidance in force required the single audit to be completed and submitted "within the earlier of 30 calendar days after receipt of the auditor's report(s), or nine months after the end of the audit period", that is, by March 31 of the following year. On the timetable described, both deadlines had passed long before this meeting.
Why MEDIUM and not HIGH: the recording does not say which entity's audits these are (the SAU, the Claremont district, Unity, or all of them), and it gives no federal expenditure figure, so it cannot be shown from this record that the $750,000 threshold applied to the entity in question. The Claremont district reports the same timetable at its October 2 meeting. New Hampshire's audit statute for districts in 2019 was permissive about hiring auditors and is not relied on here. The new administration presented the timetable openly and was catching up; the lateness predates it.
Sources: 2 CFR 200.501(a) (2019 annual edition; $750,000 single-audit threshold); 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1) (2019 annual edition; nine months after period end).
OBSERVATION Members said SAU 6 had no policies of its own and that the audits had cited missing procedures
At 0:23:54 the chair reopened the question of SAU 6-specific policies, and members said the SAU had none: "Just right now, we don't have any." A Unity member said the gap had left the board without guidance on superintendent matters, board-SAU interactions and business-office procedures, "We had nothing to protect us.", and that "All of the audits have talked to to the lack of procedures". The chair said he had fallen back on Claremont's policies. The business administrator said the auditors had not raised it with him. These are members' characterizations; the audit reports are not in the project's record, and no statute requiring an SAU board to adopt its own policy manual has been verified for this page, so this is an observation. The board chose to adapt School Boards Association models rather than form a subcommittee, and kept the item on its agenda.
Sources: Recording only; members' characterizations, not findings.
OBSERVATION No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting are posted online
MAP.md section 112 records that neither district Drive share holds anything before July 2022 (checked 9/26/26), so this page rests on the recording alone. That is a limit of what the district posts online, not by itself evidence that records were never made: the board approves its July 25 and September 5 minutes on this recording, the second with corrections to its date and to the chair's name (0:03:40). During that exchange a voice says "It's not online." The remark is unattributed and its subject is unclear (it may refer to the marked-up draft), so no finding rests on it. In 2019 RSA 91-A:2, II required minutes to be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". The limb of the project's missing-records rule applied is the online-availability observation.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1); Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 112.
POSITIVE The new business administrator gave the board a budget-to-actual report with encumbrances, and proposed to do so monthly
At 0:19:30 Richard Seaman walked the board through a line-item report comparing budget, year-to-date actuals, encumbrances and remaining balances for the SAU budget, stating his caveats in advance ("you may find some inconsistencies in here") and naming a prior budget modification he had not yet reconciled. He said this is the format he would use for each budget, meeting to meeting. Members who had described earlier SAU finances as a "Nightmare" welcomed it. This is a control that the statutes do not require of an SAU board at every meeting; it is recorded as good practice, especially given the audit backlog in flag 1.
Sources: Recording only; practice beyond statutory minimums.
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/10567 SAU6101019.mp4.CSV (271 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/10567 SAU6101019.mp4Input/Transcripts/10567 SAU6101019.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/10567 SAU6101019.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 112
Laws and rules cited on this page
- New Hampshire statutes, as in force on October 10, 2019. RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes; 2019 codification, source note ends 2018, 244:1).
- Federal, 2019 annual CFR edition. 2 CFR 200.501(a) (single-audit threshold, $750,000); 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1) (report due the earlier of 30 days after the auditor's report or nine months after period end).