Participants
Everyone the recording shows taking part, as named in the project's dialogue file. No roll call is legible and no minutes exist online, so this is a list of voices and names heard, not an attendance record. Members are listed first.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Michael Petrin | Chair, SAU 6 Board (Claremont member) | Presided. He is never named on this recording; the dialogue file identifies him from the roster (SAU 6 chair since March 2019) and adjacent SAU recordings, at medium-high confidence. Restated the merit-pay motion before the vote at 0:25:38: "So we're working on making sure motions are clear." |
| Frank Sprague | Board member (Claremont) | Moved the July 1 minutes, then withdrew and re-made the motion as amended. Opened the merit-pay question and asked how SAU salaries would be presented in the budget. Several of his rows are the default assignment of a mixed diarizer cluster (medium confidence). |
| Steven Horsky | Board member (Claremont) | Moved to hold back release of merit pay until a formal process is in place. Asked whether the new website would be fully accessible to people with disabilities, recalling a website update from "the one I was on the board previously" that had compliance problems. |
| Nicholas Stone | Board member (Claremont) | Seconded the merit-pay motion ("I'll second that."; the chair confirms "a second by, Nick"). Seconded adjournment per the chair. |
| Heather Whitney | Board member (Claremont) | Asked for a simple evaluation matrix ("It doesn't have to be draconian."); asked when the website would launch. |
| Marjorie Erickson | Board member (Unity) | Recalled the original intent of the merit system and agreed with Sprague that it was never implemented as envisioned. Identified at medium confidence; Horsky's "Marjorie spoke to it" supports it. |
| Rob Lovett Jr. | Board member (Claremont) | Named by the chair as seconder of the July 1 minutes ("seconded by Rob"). No attributed rows. |
| Unidentified member | Board member | Asked, under other business, whether accounts payable could be contracted out, referring to a "conference with Matt Upton today". Not identified in the dialogue file. |
| Unidentified member | Board member | Pointed out that the July 1 minutes misspelled their surname ("an O instead of a you at the end"). |
| Michael Tempesta | Superintendent, SAU 6 | Superintendent's report on the SAU building renovation, COVID-19 tracking and testing, and the new district website. |
| Richard Seaman | Assistant Superintendent for Finance, SAU 6 | Introduced the FY23 SAU budget; answered on merit pay, the salary schedule and outsourcing accounts payable. |
| Ben Nester | Director of Special Education, SAU 6 | Gave the history of the merit-pay evaluation tool and offered to find it. Identified at medium confidence from his "when I came on in 1819" remark and the November 18, 2021 recording. |
| Mary (Mary Woodman in the roster) | Clerk | Called the roll at the chair's request ("Mary, you take a roll call, please."). No attributed rows. |
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. The chair refers to lettered items (Letter A, item D) and says "We have an agenda in front of us", so a written agenda existed. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:32 | Call to order, pledge, roll call | Roll called by the clerk; names largely inaudible. |
| 0:02:03 | Agenda | No changes. Chair: "Make a motion to accept the agenda for second. Second by Steven." Voice vote. |
| 0:02:25 | Minutes of July 1, 2021 | Sprague moved; a member noted a misspelled name; Sprague withdrew and moved "to accept the minutes, as amended", Rob [Lovett] seconding per the chair. Voice vote. |
| 0:03:31 | Superintendent's report | SAU building renovation; COVID-19 tracking for both districts; testing site; professional development. |
| 0:11:07 | Citizens' comments | No commenter is heard; the chair moves straight on. |
| 0:11:07 | A. SAU 6 budget preview | Chair: "Not up for vote on the budget tonight". Introduction by the assistant superintendent for finance, then Horsky's merit-pay motion (Stone second), carried on a voice vote whose tally is not audible. |
| 0:29:18 | D. COVID tracking update | Referred back to the superintendent's report. |
| 0:29:53 | SAU 6 website | Demonstration postponed; launch expected the following week. |
| 0:31:58 | Future agenda items; other business | Mid-November SAU budget meeting; next Claremont meeting November 3, Unity November 9; elementary restructuring forum October 25. A member's accounts-payable question. |
| 0:36:34 | Adjournment | Motion by Steven [Horsky] per the chair, second Nicholas; 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 |
|---|
| 0:00:32 | Call to order | "I let you call the October 21st first 2021 six board meeting to order." Roll answers include "Ryan Nicholson here.", which the attribution report leaves unresolved (possibly Nicholas Stone or Rob Lovett). | OBSERVATION |
| 0:02:25 | July 1 minutes amended and approved | Chair: "now we have the minutes from July 1st, 2021." A member: "my name is felt wrong and that it's an O instead of a you at the end." Sprague: "I'll withdraw my motion." and then "Make a motion to accept the minutes, as amended." Chair: "the second is by Rob". | OBSERVATION |
| 0:03:34 | SAU building renovation | Superintendent: "Just amazing job, D.W. construction." The entrance reuses stones, with "granite face stones in there now"; "It should be completed in the next three weeks or so." | |
| 0:04:47 | COVID-19 tracking | "There's been very little to to know sustained disruption of classes". Unity's vaccination figure is misleading because the town spans "five different zip codes and regions". Unity's matrix thresholds: "their minimal starts at 300 active cases to 400 for moderate to 500 for severe"; "We we just broached for active cases over 302 about ten days ago." Free drive-up testing at River Valley Community College "from 9 to 3, seven days a week." | |
| 0:11:36 | FY23 SAU budget introduction | Seaman: "We're not anticipating any change in staffing from the budget that was approved for this year." Retirement: teachers budgeted at "17.8% was our contribution and it was increased to 21.02%"; other employees "We budgeted for 11.17 and starting this year, after our budgets were approved, it was raised to 14.06%." Health insurance unknown; a nearby district heard "about 6%". Last year's salaries rose 2%; "There is not a recommendation as of yet". Payroll and benefits "70 plus percent" of expenses. | |
| 0:15:04 | Budget calendar | Seaman proposed a November meeting on a first draft and "hopefully an approval in December", feeding the Claremont and Unity assessments. | |
| 0:15:41 | Merit pay questioned | Sprague asked what is budgeted: 3%. Amount: "For this year $33,000." Who gets it: "Everyone within the saw." Sprague: "is it fair to say that there's not really an evaluation process that to to give that out?" Seaman: "Yeah, I think that's a fair statement." Evaluations are "between the supervisor and the employee. It's not something that's formalized into the into the files." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:18:02 | History of the merit tool | Nester described a peer-evaluation tool from an earlier human resources director; "under sort of the Pfeiffer error [Pfeifer era], it, it got lost". Horsky: "I don't think it was supposed to be just a flat 3% slush fund." Erickson: "to my knowledge, in three years it's never been utilized the way we had envisioned it". Seaman offered to budget it "but only pay it out if the program if the evaluation is in place." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:23:02 | Motion to suspend release of merit pay | Horsky: "I would like to make a motion to suspend the use of the merit pay. As far as the budget goes, we can budgeted in, but I don't want it released." Stone: "I'll second that." Horsky: "Freeze, the release of the funds until the system is put in place." Payment is at year end (June.). Whitney: "Very simple matrix." Chair: "that's not what we're looking to do. We're looking to get the formalized process in place in order to give those those merits out." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:25:38 | Motion restated and carried | Chair: "So we're working on making sure motions are clear. So just to be clear, your motion is to suspend the increases until the, formalized evaluation process is put in place. Correct. And a second by, Nick. All those in favor." The response is heard only as I opposed?; no tally is audible. | POSITIVE |
| 0:26:11 | How salaries will be presented | Seaman: the schedule is "a separate schedule. That includes. Salaries because that's public information." It also includes health-care information "which is not public information", so he asked that it "be kept confidentially by the board". Later: "not all the information related to salaries is public information. Someone requests it, we provide it." | |
| 0:27:57 | Budget meeting dates | Draft to the board a week ahead in electronic form; "16th of December type of timeframe for the final approval." | |
| 0:29:53 | New SAU 6 website | Superintendent: converting to "app to G" [Apptegy, per the attribution report] designed for phones; "Timmy Morse" [Tammy Morris] leading. Horsky: "We had issues with being compliant for disabled people." Superintendent: "everything is checked. They do a review as well as part of the package." Launch "Should be next week." | |
| 0:31:58 | Future agenda; announcements | "The next Claremont school board meeting is November 3rd. The next unity meeting. November 9th." The elementary restructuring forum on October 25 "from 6 to 730 at Stephens High School", attendable virtually. | |
| 0:32:50 | Contracting out accounts payable | An unidentified member, prompted by "our conference with Matt Upton today", asked "what does it cost you to write a check?" Seaman: "In my time here, it has not come anywhere near the top of the list"; "Cutting the check is not the expensive part. It's ensuring that we've approved it." And: "I don't think we're having trouble actually attracting resumes as it relates to our accounts payable process right now." | |
| 0:36:34 | Adjournment | "Looking for a motion, Stephen? Motion to adjourn." Seconded by Nicholas; voice vote. | |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the law in force on October 21, 2021. 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. Three flags follow, ordered by severity.
OBSERVATION A budgeted merit pool of about $33,000 had been paid to every SAU employee without a formal evaluation, and the board voted to hold it back
At 0:15:41 the assistant superintendent for finance told the board the SAU budgets 3% for merit pay, "For this year $33,000", paid to "Everyone within the saw", and agreed it was "a fair statement" that there is "not really an evaluation process" behind it. Members who had served when the pool was created said it was meant to be tiered by performance: Horsky, "I don't think it was supposed to be just a flat 3% slush fund"; Erickson, that in three years it had "never been utilized the way we had envisioned it". The special education director said a tool had existed but "got lost". A budget line labelled merit that is distributed across the board is a gap between what the board approved and what was administered.
The board's response is on the record: Horsky's motion at 0:23:02, seconded by Stone, to keep the money in the budget but not release it until a formal evaluation process exists. The SAU board, not the administration, "shall fix the salaries of all school administrative unit personnel" under RSA 194-C:5, III, so this was the board acting within its own statutory function. No statute governs how merit pay is evaluated, so this is recorded as an observation. The tally of the vote is not audible and no minutes are online, so what was recorded as adopted cannot be checked; the motion was worded three ways in the course of discussion (suspend "the use of the merit pay", "Freeze, the release of the funds", and "suspend the increases").
Sources: RSA 194-C:5, III (SAU board fixes SAU salaries; 1996, 298:3, never amended).
OBSERVATION No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting are posted online, and the roll call is not legible on the recording
MAP.md section 154 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: at 0:02:25 the board takes up its July 1, 2021 minutes, corrects a member's misspelled name, and approves them as amended, which shows minutes being kept and reviewed. In 2021, RSA 91-A:2, II required minutes to be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting", and "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes." The limb of the project's missing-records rule applied is the online-availability observation, because the recording shows minutes being kept. The practical cost is that the roll call (0:01:41) cannot be read from the tape, so who attended, and the outcome of the merit-pay vote, depend on minutes that are not online. SAU 6 is a public body under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d), which names school administrative units.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1, the text in force until October 3, 2023); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (public body includes a school administrative unit); Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 154.
POSITIVE The chair restated the merit-pay motion, with mover and seconder, before the vote
After a discussion in which the motion had been phrased several ways, the chair at 0:25:38 said "So we're working on making sure motions are clear", restated the motion, confirmed it with the mover, and named the seconder ("a second by, Nick") before calling the vote. The chair also named the mover and seconder on the agenda, the minutes and adjournment motions. RSA 91-A:2, II, in force since January 1, 2019, requires that "The names of the members who made or seconded each motion shall be recorded in the minutes"; saying them aloud gives the clerk and the viewing public the record the statute calls for. The chair also stated that the budget item was "Not up for vote on the budget tonight", which told viewers in advance what the board would and would not decide.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification; mover and seconder clause added by 2018, 244:1, eff. January 1, 2019).
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/11980 SAU6102121.mp4.CSV (219 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/11980 SAU6102121.mp4Input/Transcripts/11980 SAU6102121.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/11980 SAU6102121.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 154
Laws and rules cited on this page
- New Hampshire statutes, as in force on October 21, 2021. RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes; mover and seconder; 2019 codification, unamended until 2023, 188:1, eff. October 3, 2023). RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (public body). RSA 194-C:5, III (SAU board fixes SAU salaries; 1996, 298:3, never amended).