Claremont School Board — November 3, 2021

OBSERVATION The board set a working retreat for Veterans Day evening at the SAU office; no recording, notice or minutes of it are available

After Whitney proposed a retreat "to sit down and really hash out what the vision of the restructuring plan is" (1:27:40), the board settled at 1:54:12 on Thursday, November 11, at 5:00, with the superintendent proposing the SAU office building ("Let's meet at the doubt.", 1:55:37). A gathering of a quorum of the board to work through district business is a meeting: RSA 91-A:2, I defined a meeting as "the convening of a quorum of the membership of a public body" for "discussing or acting upon a matter or matters over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power", and RSA 91-A:2, II required notice "at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays", and minutes. November 11 is a legal holiday under RSA 288:1, which affects the notice count but does not bar a meeting.

The retreat evidently took place: at the November 18 SAU 6 meeting the superintendent said "we had a great retreat in, in Claremont" (quoted from the transcript of Cablecast show 12033; see the November 18 page). The project's corpus has no recording of it and MAP.md lists no section for it. That is a limit of what the district posts online, not by itself evidence that notice was not posted or minutes were not kept, so this is an observation. It matters because the retreat was where the board meant to settle the restructuring vision.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I and II (2019 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1, so in force in 2021): definition of meeting; 24-hour notice; minutes; RSA 288:1 (source note ends 1999, 106:2): November 11 is a legal holiday.

OBSERVATION A citizen reported a $175,000 draw on reserves without a vote; the business administrator said it came from the transportation fund on a prior board approval, and that trust deposits had not been made for a period before his time

Benware said at 0:07:38 that he had heard of "About $175,000 that was taken out of our emergency fund" with no board vote, after members had told the deliberative session that the fund would be touched only by a vote. Seaman answered at 1:40:08 that nothing had been taken from the capital reserve expendable trust or the special education fund, and that "based on the board's approval last year, we did take, I think it was approximately $175,000, which was for the two busses and the van" from the transportation fund. He also said that when warrant articles are approved "we're supposed to actually take that cash and send it to the trustees of the trust funds", which "hadn't been done prior to that for some period of time."

The prior board approval he relied on is not in any available record, and this page found no verified statute to test the transfer practice he described, so both points are recorded as his account. What a reader can take from the tape is that the business administrator told the board, on the record, that the district had for some period not moved voter-approved reserve money to the trustees, and that the board did not ask how long or how much. Whitney's remark that the balance given to the board had been lower than expected (1:46:52) is also unexplained on the tape.

Sources: No statute verified; speaker's characterization. The prior-year board approval and the trustees' records were not located.

OBSERVATION Four policies, including the Title IX sexual harassment policy, were adopted on first reading while the chair said the text still carried highlights and open questions

Horsky presented BEDH, GADA, BGBEC and ACAC (codes as heard) at 1:35:52 and asked that they be adopted on first read, three of them for compliance. Before the vote the chair said at 1:39:22: "There's still a few highlights on the a CAC the title nine sexual." and that he needed "To review with Mike" some questions in it. Whitney proposed to "proceed" and amend later, and all four passed by voice vote at 1:39:48. No statute in force in 2021 required a set number of readings; that is a matter of board policy, whose text is not in any available record. The point for a reader is that the version adopted was not final by the chair's own account, and no adopted text is posted anywhere this project can reach. On the other side, BEDH (public participation at board meetings) was drafted by a member and reviewed by the committee, and the chair noted the association's three-year review cycle.

Sources: No statute identified; the board's policy-adoption procedure and the adopted texts are not in the record.

OBSERVATION A non-meeting was added to the end of the agenda without stating which exclusion it relied on

At 0:01:09 the chair added "a quick, very brief non meeting at the end of this meeting", and at 2:03:46 Horsky moved "to adjourn the public meeting". RSA 91-A:2, I excludes four things from the definition of a meeting, among them "Strategy or negotiations with respect to collective bargaining"; a session that fits one of them needs no notice or minutes, while one that does not is a meeting. The recording does not say which exclusion was claimed. The context (active negotiations with the custodians and secretaries, reported at 1:33:09 and 1:47:43) makes collective-bargaining strategy the likely one, so this is an observation.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I (2019 codification): exclusions from the definition of a meeting.

OBSERVATION No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting are posted online, and minutes of an earlier meeting were still being redone

MAP.md 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 recording shows a written agenda and shows the board approving the October 20 minutes after a member's correction. At 0:02:16, however, the clerk said of the minutes of the meeting before that: "I have to go through all of it again. I apologize." Which meeting she meant, and when those minutes were finished, is not on the tape. The slides for the restructuring and schedule presentations, and the four policies, are not posted either. The limb of the project's missing-records rule applied is the online-availability observation.

Sources: Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 155; RSA 91-A:2, II (2019 codification): minutes open to inspection within 5 business days.