Claremont School Board — July 21, 2021

OBSERVATION An unwarned request from citizens' comments was given "tacit approval" by nods rather than a vote

The chair correctly said at 0:14:42 that the Vermont players' request was "not warned as an action item" and that he did not want to decide it without the athletic directors. He then took the room's temperature ("I think I everybody nodding. I think we could safely give tacit approval", 0:17:10), and the superintendent recommended letting the players condition while the question came back for a vote. Whatever direction administration took from that is not a recorded act of the board, and the mover, seconder and tally a vote would have produced do not exist. No statute in force in 2021 required an agenda to list every item, so this is an observation; the point is that the record shows an informal board position with no vote behind it. Mitigation: the chair and Petrin both framed it as interim, pending a vote at the next meeting, and the superintendent had described the prior year's exceptions as the practice being followed.

Sources: No statute identified; the board's own procedures for citizens' comments are not in any available record.

OBSERVATION A seconded roll-call motion on the Fish Tank program was withdrawn and replaced by an unvoted "directive"

Horsky moved at 1:36:38 to suspend Fish Tank "until it's properly vetted before the community" and asked for a roll call; the motion was seconded at 1:37:16. After an hour of discussion he rephrased it at 2:02:47 as a call for "a blast email and other forms of communication", then at 2:05:47 withdrew it: "I think we're just giving directive to the administrative teams in what we expect." When Stone asked at 2:08:55 whether a motion would be made, Horsky answered "It's a directive okay." The board therefore left the meeting with a direction to administration (public communication about Fish Tank, with building principals as contacts) that no vote adopted and whose wording exists only in scattered remarks. The curriculum coordinator said at 1:37:41 that the plan was already to "roll it out K-5". Whether the program's adoption needed board action at all is disputed on the record itself: the chair described curriculum approval as "past practice" with "I don't think there's a policy" (1:40:53), and the principal said "We did not change the curriculum" (1:41:52). No statute is identified that settles it; this page records it as an observation about what the record can and cannot show.

Sources: No statute identified; district curriculum-adoption policy not located.

OBSERVATION Three members met with administration on the Fish Tank concerns before the meeting

The chair explained at 0:36:06 that he, Heather Whitney and Michael Petrin met with administration, received presentations from the curriculum coordinator and the assistant superintendent, and "followed up with some conversations of our own" before deciding "we really shouldn't be having these conversations without the rest of the board." Three of seven is not a quorum, and RSA 91-A:2, I defines a "meeting" as "the convening of a quorum of the membership of a public body". A separate question is whether a group of members convened by the chair on a board matter is a "committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body" of the board under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d), which would carry notice and minutes duties of its own; the recording does not show that the board created such a group, and it was not described as a committee. The chair's choice to disclose the sessions and bring the matter to the full board in open session is to his credit (see flag 7).

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I (2019 codification): a meeting is the convening of a quorum; RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (2019 codification): a public body includes "any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof, or advisory committee thereto".

OBSERVATION Statements about Education Freedom Accounts differ from the statute as enacted

The chair said at 2:19:58 that under the new program families "get the state money and the local money. So now they get a check, they get 20. I believe they do. They get $20,000." The law enacted in the 2021 budget, RSA 194-F:2, directs the commissioner to transfer to the scholarship organization "the per pupil adequate education grant amount under RSA 198:40-a, plus any differentiated aid that would have been provided to a public school for that eligible student". That is state adequacy aid, not local spending. Whitney said at 2:31:03 the income limit was "something like $43,000 per family" and added that she "could be wrong with the number"; the statute as enacted set eligibility at household income "less than or equal to 300 percent of the federal poverty guidelines", a figure that varies with household size (raised to 350 percent in 2023). The chair's further statement at 2:30:04 that eligibility turns on a school being "at the 40th percentile or lower" on standardized tests does not appear in the statute's definition of an eligible student, which rests on residency, eligibility to enroll in a public school and income. RSA 194-F took effect August 24, 2021, a month after this meeting.

These were members' good-faith attempts to explain a law signed weeks earlier, offered for budget planning; the business administrator said he was not aware of the income limit. The concern is only that the public record of the meeting carries figures the statute does not support.

Sources: RSA 194-F:2 (2023 codification; source 2021, 91:431, eff. Aug. 24, 2021, unamended): grant equals the RSA 198:40-a adequacy amount plus differentiated aid; RSA 194-F:1 (source 2021, 91:431; 2023, 110:1): eligible-student definition, 350 percent after the 2023 amendment; 2023 HB 515 as introduced, reciting the pre-amendment text "300 percent of the federal poverty guidelines".

OBSERVATION No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting are posted online

MAP.md section 147 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 chair refers to "an agenda in front of us tonight", the Fish Tank presenters cite "page 33, 34 and 35" of a packet, and the board approves the June 2 minutes at 0:02:49. RSA 91-A:2, II required minutes to be "promptly recorded and open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting"; whether that was met cannot be tested from here. The project's missing-records rule is applied on its online-availability limb because the recording itself shows minutes being kept and approved. The packet's state assessment pages and reading data, which the board discussed at length, are not available to the public reader of this page.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification, in force July 2021): minutes open to inspection within 5 business days; Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 147.