Participants
Everyone the recording shows taking part, as named in the project's dialogue file. No minutes exist online to check spellings against, so non-members' names are as the transcription heard them and are marked where unverified. Children who presented are not named on this page. Members are listed first.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Frank Sprague | Chair | Called the meeting to order, amended the agenda to move citizens' comments after the student report, ran the votes, asked about budget needs, questioned the PRIDE presenters on capacity, the school day and staffing, listed future agenda items and organized the retreat. |
| Heather Whitney | Board member | Seconded the October 2 minutes; told the PRIDE presenters she was glad the outside contracts failed and asked how parents had received the program. |
| Jason Benware | Board member | Praised the outdoor program; asked what motivates private placements to release students and how progress is measured. The dialogue file also gives him the motion to enter nonpublic session and the motion to seal its minutes (medium confidence: those rows sit in a voice cluster shared with the special education director). |
| Michael Petrin | Board member; SAU 6 chair | Named by the chair (Mr. Patron.) during the vote to come out of nonpublic session. No attributed speech. |
| Rebecca Zullo, Rob Lovett Jr., Carolyn Towle | Board members | Attendance not established from the recording. "Carol and Joel" in the roll call and "Carol. Job and Frank" in the second roll call may be the clerk reading Carolyn Towle's name; during the retreat planning someone asks "Is Caroline coming?" and the chair answers "That I don't know". |
| Tyler Sullivan | Student representative | Student report: Friends of Rachel activities, the CARE conference at Colby-Sawyer, SAT and college-fair numbers, school events, and wishes for Principal Barry's recovery. |
| Michael Tempesta | Superintendent, SAU 6 | Superintendent's report on the CARE conference, the retired teachers' luncheon and the Title I literacy event; budget and Medicaid update; negotiations schedule; praised the PRIDE program. |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education, SAU 6 | Presented the history and design of the PRIDE program and answered Benware's questions (addressed as "Mr. Nestor"). |
| Sherry McDaniel Thomas | PRIDE program administrator | Described parent relations, baseline data collection, capacity, the daily schedule and student projects. Name as introduced by Nester and transcribed; spelling unverified. |
| Dale Chenette | Principal, Bluff Elementary School | Introduced the outdoor education presentation and a slide show and thanked the board. Surname from the project roster (medium-high confidence); Nester calls him "Dale, the principal who is here from bluff". |
| Mary Woodman | Clerk | Asked by the chair to call the roll and the roll-call votes. Her voice is not separately attributed in the dialogue file. |
| Unidentified (several) | Bluff Elementary teachers | First-grade and fourth-grade teachers who led the outdoor education presentation. Names not stated on the recording. |
| Unidentified (several) | Bluff Elementary students | First graders and two fourth graders who presented their outdoor work. Minors; not named on this page. |
| Unidentified | Board member | Moved the agenda as amended, the October 2 minutes and adjournment. |
| Unidentified | Board member or administrator | "I'd like to add that Mike and I have been" through the PRIDE program and seen "Some amazing things". Could be an administrator touring with the superintendent or a board member; not decidable. |
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 refers to "an agenda in front of us" and to its lettered items. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:16 | Call to order, pledge, roll call | Roll call garbled on the recording. |
| 0:01:11 | Agenda | Chair moved citizens' comments to follow the student representative report and struck a policies item ("So nothing to do with policies tonight."). Unidentified member: "Make a motion to approve the agenda as amended." Seconded; voice vote. |
| 0:02:12 | Minutes of October 2, 2019 | The chair read the date as October 2, 2018; the mover corrected it: "I moved into approval of minutes from October 2nd, 2019." Whitney seconded; voice vote. |
| 0:02:57 | Student representative report | Tyler Sullivan. |
| 0:08:29 | Citizens' comments | "Seeing none. I'll close citizens comments". |
| 0:08:55 | Presentation: Bluff Elementary School outdoor education | Principal, teachers and students; slide show. |
| 0:28:01 | Nonpublic session, RSA 91-A:3, II (legal advice) | Motion (dialogue file: Benware), seconded, roll-call vote; session not recorded. Roll-call vote to come out at 0:29:00. Motion to seal the nonpublic minutes at 0:29:51, seconded, voice vote. |
| 0:30:01 | Superintendent's report | CARE conference, retired teachers' luncheon, Title I community literacy event. |
| 0:37:13 | Budget update | Given by the superintendent under his report: legal advice awaited, budget workshop on Sunday, negotiations dates, state aid and Medicaid. |
| 0:41:05 | Presentation: elementary alternative program (PRIDE) | Ben Nester and Sherry McDaniel Thomas; questions from Benware, Whitney and the chair. |
| 1:07:42 | Future agenda items | Employee drug-testing policy, retreat report, budget timeline, grading system, school safety, health policies, graduation rates, financial safeguards. |
| 1:09:33 | Other business | Retreat logistics: Sunday at 10:00 at the community center. |
| 1:11:04 | Adjournment | Unidentified member moved; 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 |
|---|
| 0:00:56 | Roll call | Chair: "Mrs. Woodman, could you do roll call attendance, please?" The answers survive only as "My position. Here. Here. Carol and Joel." No member count can be taken from the tape. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:01:11 | Agenda amended; October 2 minutes | Citizens' comments moved up to follow the student report; a policies item struck. The chair read the minutes date as "October 2nd, 2018" and the mover corrected it to 2019. Both carried by voice. | |
| 0:03:24 | Student representative report | "Yesterday, 13 students went to the care conference put on by Kearsarge High School at Colby Sawyer College". About 40 students sat the SAT and about 30 attended a college fair; students went to a Women in Engineering fair at the River Valley Technical Center in Springfield, Vermont; tech center carpentry students were refinishing benches for the city and building a wheelchair-accessible path at the preschool. He closed "by wishing Principal Barry speedy recovery". | |
| 0:08:29 | Citizens' comments | No speakers: "Seeing none. I'll close citizens comments". | |
| 0:09:00 | Bluff Elementary outdoor education | Principal Chenette recalled that the three elementary principals had asked the board the previous year to pursue an outdoor education program. First graders modeled nature vests and practice binoculars for a five-senses science theme, played a memory game with objects they had collected, and served applesauce made from an orchard trip ("farm to table"). A teacher tied a story to the Reading Wonders program. | |
| 0:20:04 | Fourth graders: Moody Park, journals | Two fourth graders read from nature journals about hikes at Moody Park and French's Ledges, bark and pine cones; the class multiplied fractions for an apple crisp recipe, which the teacher called "a fifth grade skill". | |
| 0:24:11 | Board response | Benware: "I'm just happy to see you guys are getting out and really letting these guys experience nature and, science in general. I think that we need more of that". A teacher: the children "just think it's a second reset, which is bonus points for us because the enthusiasm is through the roof." Chenette closed after a slide show: "I just want to thank the board for allowing us to do this." | POSITIVE |
| 0:28:01 | Nonpublic session for legal advice | "I'd like to make a motion to go to nonpublic session for RSA 91. Dash a colon three, sub paragraph two." The mover then read the text of the legal-advice exemption: "consideration of legal advice provided by legal counsel, either in writing or orally". Seconded. Chair: "Roll call. Vote. Mrs.. Woodman." Audible answers include "Jason. Edwin. Yes." and several Yes. The tape then cuts to the call to come out. | MEDIUM |
| 0:29:00 | Out of nonpublic; minutes sealed | "Could you do a roll call to come out of nonpublic?" A member: "I just made a motion and he seconded it." Roll call with answers of Yes. At 0:29:51: "I'd like to make a motion to seal the minutes for 83 years." (the figure is as transcribed and may be garbled). Seconded; the chair asked "All those in favor?" one Aye. is transcribed, and he then called for any opposed; no roll call, no count and no reason for sealing were stated. | MEDIUM |
| 0:31:16 | Superintendent's report | Tempesta attended the student CARE conference at Colby-Sawyer with Principal Barry, describing student-led ethics and governance forums, and the retired teachers' luncheon at the tech center. He previewed the Title I annual meeting, turned into a community literacy event at Stevens on the 29th with author David Elliott. He added: "I'm going to put these reports on the on the website to we have a bunch of them back backlogged." | |
| 0:37:27 | Budget update | "There's some information that we're waiting to get back from our attorney" on next steps. "We also have our budget, workshop this Sunday." The next negotiating session with one bargaining unit (transcribed "SERA") is on the 30th; "We had a meeting just before this meeting with the paraprofessionals and setting ground rules and dates to going out to December." Maintenance and secretaries' negotiations still to be scheduled. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:38:54 | Building needs, state aid, Medicaid | Asked whether administrators had begun listing needs, Tempesta said discussions were preliminary and "very conservative". On state aid, "the number is 6.2 million that we've presented that's coming in", though not all of it in this iteration, some of it tied to FY21 building money. On Medicaid, relaxed rules might mean "we might not take the hit that we anticipated being about 600,000." Sprague: "I think the Medicaid thing is a classic example of politicians meddling in the in something they, they know very little about." | |
| 0:42:52 | PRIDE program: design | Nester: "Pride stands for project based, respectful, individualized data driven education." Contracts with private providers to run a satellite program fell through, and "there were financial reasons that we that we bailed on those"; the program was built internally over the summer, with targeted teaching, positive behavior supports grounded in applied behavior analysis, the AIM curriculum, and family supports, aiming for "something that rivals what Brattleboro Retreat offers, what Spaulding Youth Center offers". | POSITIVE |
| 0:47:32 | PRIDE: students returned | "As of October 16th, we've transitioned two students back from out of district placement that that were ready." He expected "another student or two this school year", and said students not yet placed out of district were also being served in the program. He credited out-of-district coordinator David Cochran and a committee that included elementary principals. | POSITIVE |
| 0:50:11 | Benware's questions | Benware: "what is the motivation for them to want to release those kids back to us? I mean, they're a revenue stream for them." Nester: "Ultimately we do." decide, as the district of liability, and private schools have "a line of 20 other kids ready to roll". Benware asked what quantitative measure of progress was in place; Nester said there was one and deferred to the administrator, adding an anecdote about a Bluff student smiling in the program. | |
| 0:53:19 | Whitney: ownership and parents | "I'm really glad that those contracts failed and that Claremont was able to retain ownership of the program." She asked how parents had received it, having heard fears about quality. McDaniel Thomas: "Change is hard and that's a reality." Relationships had moved from reserved to stable. | |
| 0:54:53 | PRIDE: data and capacity | Three to four weeks of baseline data, then behavior charts; compared with last year's PowerSchool records, "we're seeing about a 75% reduction in behaviors overall" (her characterization, six weeks in). Capacity is 12: "We're at half capacity right now." with three students in each of two rooms and offers out to families in out-of-district placements. | |
| 0:57:56 | PRIDE: the school day; staffing | Full day with breakfast, a morning meeting, project-based academic blocks and social skills instruction. Sprague: "this is really a therapeutic program". Tempesta: "it's amazingly successful so far." Asked if fully staffed: "We are not." A teacher and a behaviorist position were open; "Both of those packages were submitted to the saw [SAU]." | |
| 1:02:05 | PRIDE: student projects | A space unit, a zoo-design project with square-footage calculations, a haunted-house sales pitch, plants, a bat unit and a community-helpers visit. Sprague invited a return visit after the first semester; McDaniel Thomas: "By then we'll be able to have some quantifiable data, both academic and behavioral." | |
| 1:07:53 | Future agenda items | Sprague: "revisit our drug policy that we that the mandatory testing of employees for drugs", a report on the retreat, the budget timeline, the grading system, a school safety update, health policies, graduation rates, and "financial safeguards to protect the district", with placeholders for the new business administrator ("As Richard gets, Mr. Simon gets his feet under him", meaning Richard Seaman). | |
| 1:09:33 | Retreat planning | "the most important topic there is who's bringing what to the retreat". Food assignments, then: "So, so 10:00." "And we're meeting over at the community center." in the big room, with setup at 9:40. The superintendent had called it the budget workshop "this Sunday". | OBSERVATION |
| 1:11:04 | Adjournment | "I'd like to 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 16, 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 nonpublic minutes were sealed by a voice vote, with no count and no statutory reason stated on the record
Entry into nonpublic session followed the statute's form: the motion at 0:28:01 cited "RSA 91. Dash a colon three, sub paragraph two" and read out the words of the legal-advice exemption, and the chair called a roll-call vote. After the session, a member moved at 0:29:51 "to seal the minutes for 83 years." The chair put the question as "All those in favor?" the tape records one Aye., and the chair then asked for any opposed and moved on. In 2019, RSA 91-A:3, III required nonpublic minutes and decisions to be "publicly disclosed within 72 hours of the meeting, unless, by recorded vote of 2/3 of the members present taken in public session, it is determined that divulgence of the information likely would affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the public body itself, or render the proposed action ineffective, or pertain to terrorism." On the recording, no member states which of those determinations the board was making, and there is no roll call or tally to show a two-thirds vote.
Mitigating: a unanimous voice vote can be recorded as such in the minutes, and a determination may appear there; the minutes are not online to check (flag 3). Legal advice to the board is the kind of matter where disclosure could "render the proposed action ineffective", so a lawful seal was plausibly available. The duration, "83 years" as transcribed, is probably an ASR error and is not relied on here. The grade is MEDIUM because the record gap is in documentation, not in the power to seal.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(l) and III (2019 codification; source note ends 2016, 30:1 and 280:1).
OBSERVATION A Sunday budget workshop and retreat of the board was arranged, and no notice or minutes for it are available
The superintendent said "We also have our budget, workshop this Sunday." with the board (0:38:06), and at 1:10:38 members settled on 10:00 at the community center, in the big room. Sunday was October 20, 2019. In 2019 RSA 91-A:2, I defined a meeting as "the convening of a quorum of the membership of a public body ... for the purpose of discussing or acting upon a matter or matters over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power", and 91-A:2, II required 24 hours' posted notice and minutes. A board retreat on the budget fits that definition. Two weeks earlier the chair had said the retreat would be warned as "a regular board meeting open to the public, with citizens comments" (October 2 page, recording 10558, flag 4), which is the right approach; the venue then given was the tech center, while this recording settles on the community center, so a posted notice would have needed the final location. The recording is itself a public announcement of the date, time and place, and the chair scheduled a "report out on the retreat" for the next meeting (1:07:53). Whether a formal notice was posted, and whether minutes were kept, cannot be checked: no record from 2019 is online, and the project holds no recording of October 20. This is recorded as an observation.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I and II (2019 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1).
OBSERVATION No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting are posted online, and the recording cannot supply the attendance
MAP.md section 113 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 October 2 minutes on this recording (0:02:17). In 2019, RSA 91-A:2, II required minutes to be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting" and to include the names of members present and "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion". Here the minutes matter more than usual: the roll call is unintelligible on tape (0:01:06), several movers are unidentified, and the seal determination discussed in flag 1 would appear only in the minutes. The limb of the project's missing-records rule applied is the online-availability observation.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification); Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 113.
POSITIVE The board took public reports on two new programs, including in-district results for students returned from out-of-district placements
Two program reports were given in open session, with the people who run them answering members' questions. The Bluff outdoor education program, approved the previous spring, was shown by its teachers and students (0:09:00). The special education director and the PRIDE administrator reported that two students had been returned from out-of-district placements to a program in their home district (0:47:32), described their data collection honestly as too new to chart, and accepted the chair's invitation to return after the first semester with "quantifiable data, both academic and behavioral" (1:07:23). The effectiveness claims (for example a 75% reduction in behaviors) are the presenters' own characterizations and were not independently checked. No rule requires this kind of public reporting on a program; the flag records a practice that gives residents a baseline to measure the program against.
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/10577 SchoolBoard101619.mp4.CSV (401 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/10577 SchoolBoard101619.mp4Input/Transcripts/10577 SchoolBoard101619.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/10577 SchoolBoard101619.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 113
Laws and rules cited on this page
- New Hampshire statutes, as in force on October 16, 2019. RSA 91-A:2, I and II (meeting definition, notice, minutes; 2019 codification, source note ends 2018, 244:1). RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(l) and III (nonpublic sessions, legal-advice exemption, disclosure and sealing; 2019 codification, source note ends 2016; later amended in 2021 and 2023).