Claremont School Board Finance Committee, December 18, 2023

Participants

No minutes exist to settle names, so speakers follow the dialogue file's attributions, each anchored there by direct address or self-reference; roles follow the 2023–24 roster notes and the December 20 board agenda.
Name	Role	Participation
Frank Sprague	Finance Committee chair; Claremont School Board vice chair	Opens at 0:00:13 and frames the session as "a caucus with our with the three of us who are the budget finance committee"; presses the $688,000 line (0:10:10, 2:06:20) and the tax impact (1:23:33); quotes 1.783 at 2:04:16; ends at 2:24:03. Describes bringing a discipline-monitor model to Stevens "as the principal" (0:55:19).
Heather Whitney	Claremont School Board chair; committee member	Suggests the default budget if clarity is lacking (0:01:37); argues for zero-based review and staff pay (1:43:25, 1:48:39); asks "So at what point is a forensic audit?" (2:11:35). The dialogue file notes that her diarized cluster also carried Mary Henry for a stretch; those rows are reassigned there.
Candace Crawford	Board member; committee member	States at 0:01:08 she cannot present the budget to the board on Wednesday; leads the line-by-line questioning on guidance, academic centres, paras, field trips, preschool and the Stevens schedule.
Michael C. Tempesta	Superintendent, SAU 6	Arrives at 0:14:14 with the middle-school schedule "right off the printer"; answers on CMS staffing, the Stevens schedule estimate and bargaining.
Mary Henry	Business Administrator	Arrives with new sheets; the district-wide section is unfinished (0:18:06). Gives the middle-school overrun (1:07:22), assessment base and tax impact (1:25:32, 1:50:05, 2:05:07), and the account of the $688,000 line (2:06:41); declines the need for a forensic audit (2:11:39).
Frank Romeo	Principal, Claremont Middle School	Arrives at 0:34:22; presents the proposed CMS schedule and student (academic) centres; leaves after 1:07:17.
Miss Foster	Claremont Middle School staff; built the proposed master schedule	Introduced by Tempesta at 0:27:43; explains the team structure (0:38:52) and student-centre rotations (0:44:24); "this is my 13th year in the district" (0:54:44). Surname at medium confidence in the dialogue file; first name not spoken.
Miss Steel (ASR rendering)	Claremont Middle School counselor	Named as present by Tempesta at 0:27:43; not identified as speaking.
Unidentified	Fragments	35 short rows (acknowledgements and clipped onsets) that the dialogue file could not tie to a voice.
Public	None	No member of the public speaks or is addressed; no comment period was held.

Order of business (reconstructed)

No agenda was posted or found. The order below is reconstructed from the chair's and members' transitions on the recording.

Reconstructed order of business, with the time each topic is taken up.
Taken up	Item	Disposition
0:00:13	Opening; whether the committee can report on Wednesday	Members only. Crawford lists open questions; default budget and a later hearing date discussed; no decision.
0:08:35	December 13 ESSER-sunset handout and the $688,000 district-wide line	Questions only; administration not yet present.
0:14:38	Claremont Middle School staffing and schedule	Tempesta summary from 0:20:32; Romeo and Foster presentation 0:34:22 to 1:07:17. No action.
1:07:22	Current-year overrun; staffing sheets; elementary schools	Henry's $85,000 middle-school figure; Bluff staffing, Title I lines, field trips, paras.
1:23:33	Tax impact	Henry's estimates, revised during the session to $1.19 per thousand.
1:29:13	Stevens schedule, SKY program, preschool	Estimates said to be outside the budget or unresolved.
1:32:58	Readiness for the board, target number, bargaining	Crawford not ready; Sprague wants "a recommendation for a target number"; paraprofessional bargaining kept off the record (1:35:52).
1:43:25	Priorities, must-haves and nice-to-haves	Discussion; no figure agreed.
2:06:20	Page 44 expense-reduction line; forensic audit	Henry cannot allocate it; forensic audit raised and not pursued.
2:13:38	District-wide sheet (ESSER positions moved to the budget)	Line questions; follow-ups with Ben Nester.
2:22:40	Next meeting; caucus	"So 11:00 Wednesday maybe." Then "I think we need to we need to caucus, I guess." and the administration is thanked out at 2:24:19. Recording ends.

Discussion timeline

Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/15451 SchoolBoardFinance121823.mp4.CSV). Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording.

Time	Topic	What was said	Flags
0:00:13	Opening as a caucus	Sprague: "And we're here to look at the the budget and have a caucus with our with the three of us who are the budget finance committee." He heard from no other board member: "I didn't I did not hear, from any of the other board members."	MEDIUM
0:01:08	Not ready for Wednesday	Crawford: "there's no way I can present this to the board on Wednesday night. There are too many questions." Whitney: "For me, I would go to the default budget would be my recommendation if we don't have clarity." Sprague: "No. Nullifies all the negotiations."
0:03:06	Hearing date	Crawford proposes "we've got until January 17th for that hearing". Whitney: "That was our snow date. So the reason we chose the third was so that if there was snow, we would have some buffer." Later (1:33:50): "The hearings been warned."
0:06:52	ESSER and the 688,000	Crawford: "the bottom line for me is district wide, the there's an expense reduction line of 688,000 that I cannot make sense of. And I've asked a number of times and I haven't gotten the answer." She puts the increase at "a million for over last year's budget, and that's a 16% increase."	MEDIUM
0:08:35	December 13 handout	Sprague reads its title: "sunset. Additional staff funded by federal Esser positions intended to mitigate student learning loss". For CMS: "a reduction in regular instruction of 333,000. I'm looking at a reduction of 133,000 in special ed." and "Estimated additional impact 300,000."	OBSERVATION
0:10:10	"Probably a dollar on the tax rate"	Sprague: "it's the 688 K. Right. And I think we asked what is that. And I think we were told, they weren't sure". Whitney recalls the amount "is consistent with the amount of money that was put back into the budget last budget cycle" and that "there was no documentation of how that money was allocated".	MEDIUM
0:14:14	Administration arrives	Tempesta: "We have a new schedule and that's why we're a little late." On Henry: "She had the summary that Frank wanted. She was just printing that." Henry at 0:18:06: "It because I'm not done with it, so I'm going to finish it."	OBSERVATION
0:20:32	New CMS staffing model	Tempesta: "So we we have one assistant principal. Okay. One principal, no academic deans." "there was more ancillary support than there was teachers, and that was the concern." Class size "of about 16 if they had, five teachers, okay, per subject area."
0:24:35	Guidance and the tech-centre position	A long reconciliation of three CMS counselors against two next year. Tempesta: "the line for guidance at middle school is 1943 20. That's three people". Crawford: "It was 194 in the proposed. It's 117." Henry on the prior year: "Again put into last year's budget I don't know if it was supposed to be there or it wasn't."	MEDIUM
0:33:35	Union consulted on schedules	Tempesta: "I met with the SRE [SREA] about the high school schedule in the middle school schedule". Their response: "They said, yeah, we know. So when we when we see it, give us a breakdown and we will."
0:35:50	The proposed CMS schedule	Romeo: teachers now "teach three out of the five blocks"; the new schedule "takes us from 56 minutes to 42 minutes, roughly of instructional time. Right? 45." with teachers "now going to be teaching four out of this six blocks."
0:43:01	Student (academic) centres	Foster: "every teacher has two student center blocks per week". Crawford: "But there isn't any in this proposal." Romeo: No. Romeo at 0:57:35: "They're not in this budget currently. I would like them to be."
0:52:37	Four teacher positions	Romeo: "I'm reducing for teacher positions in this model." Whitney at 1:03:17: "So I'm hearing that we've reduced for teaching positions. And you're telling me it's two people." Crawford: "I think we have more work to do."
1:01:48	Why CMS goes down	Crawford: "On page 18 a Sped tuition is down 425,000." and "if you've got 130,000 and 425,000, and that's 560 560,000 of that, 636 is just transferring from the middle school to the high school."
1:07:22	Current-year overrun	Henry: "Just so everybody knows to in this year's budget so far we're $85,000 over budget and teacher salaries based on this year's budget in the middle school." With science and math positions open; possible reason "if we hired in people at higher wages."	OBSERVATION POSITIVE
1:12:21	Staff reductions	Whitney: "So we're we are saving in staff reductions roughly half a million." Henry: "Yes. That's what I'm trying to get out." Crawford: "I don't see how that can be."
1:14:03	Bluff: budgeted versus filled	Henry: "the 788 is what's budgeted and 679 is what I have currently" because of three open positions; combined multi-level classes, "And we're splitting them back out again." Title I positions are listed but grant funded (1:16:25).
1:20:43	Paraprofessionals	Crawford: "Maple said there were 22." and Bluff "18 pairs"; the budget shows 11. Tempesta at 1:22:43: "When Ben started, I think he had 116 powers [paras] in these cuts to under 70."
1:24:44	Fund balance returned	Henry: "You gave back a lot of fun balance in the previous year which drove that tax rate down." Sprague: "So that's one of the reasons that we put as much as we did into, the the long term bonds or whatever they were. But trust the trusts."
1:25:32	Assessment base	Henry: "It's one 1,228,844,331." Prior: "And then 22, your amount was 747,000." [the context is a valuation of about $747 million]. Sprague at 1:27:29: residential assessments rose "at average 56% or something like that".
1:29:13	Stevens schedule estimate	Crawford: "changing from the high school from the block to traditional would be a cost of $100,000." Tempesta: "Mr. Pratt thought that he could do it neutral". Whitney: "but currently this 100,000 is not in the budget." Sprague: "Not in the budget."
1:33:23	A target number	Sprague: "We have to develop a a recommendation for a target number for the rest of the board."
1:35:39	Paraprofessional bargaining	Crawford asks about meetings with the paras; Tempesta: "We have? We have a meeting with them coming in for Wednesday." and "So, yeah, we shouldn't talk about this right now." Sprague later (2:21:29): "My inner voice is saying, don't talk about that."
1:43:25	Priorities and pay	Whitney: "I think we should do is we should have what our priorities are." Tempesta at 1:48:19: "Total compensation for teachers right now is competitive in the region." Whitney at 1:48:39: "for me, being competitive isn't isn't going to meet the mark."
1:50:05	Tax impact revised	Henry: "It's $1.19." "So on $100,000 home, you're looking at $119." "you're going from 14, 14, to $15.33." And "you gave back 1.2 million in the last fiscal year to come off the tax rate for fiscal year 22, fiscal year 23, we gave back 360,000."
1:53:35	Counselor ratio	Whitney: "No, it's 300 students per one guidance counselor. And we have under 600 students." (speaker's characterization of the state minimum; not verified on this page)
1:59:17	No outcome data for ESSER interventions	Sprague: "It would have been nice to see that something actually worked and I didn't. I mean, he's telling me that it helped." Whitney: "unless you see an increase in academics than to me it's a meaningless number."
2:04:16	The 1.783 figure	Sprague: "So, Mrs. Henry, so we're looking at 1.783. So if that if we went with that budget, that's going to be a dollar." Henry at 2:05:07: "the net change of local tax assessment that needs to be raised is 1.4 million or 9.15%. So even though the budgets up 5.7%, the overall increase to the amount we have to raise is nine."	MEDIUM
2:06:20	Page 44: the expense-reduction line	Sprague: "What in the world is that?" Henry: "when the budget was uploaded, Dave, Jack and I [Dave Jack and I] had this number. Dave told me about it, and then we went back and tried to figure out where it belonged. Had something to do with your guys? With the deliberative. I know a million was added back then, but I'm not sure what the 688,000." And: "I don't know what it's allocated to."	MEDIUM
2:08:52	Predecessor's spreadsheets	Henry: "I've looked at spreadsheets that had been done by my predecessor and compared them to the budget. They don't match up." Sprague at 2:10:18: "it's like mining Bitcoin. There's these little pieces of things that don't that that don't match." Henry: "That was the number that reconciled it."	MEDIUM
2:11:35	Forensic audit	Whitney: "So at what point is a forensic audit?" Henry: "I had a talk with our audience [auditors] about that. I don't feel there's any reason for a forensic audit." and "a forensic audit is not cheap." No member moves it further.	MEDIUM
2:13:38	District-wide sheet	ESSER-funded positions moved to the general budget (ARC coordinator, occupational therapist, BCBA, district-wide coach). Sprague at 2:18:04: "I think I just found, 60,000 of your number." Whitney at 2:20:40: "I'm seeing a quarter of a million already in just salaries that were Esser funded last year."
2:22:40	Next meeting; caucus	Sprague: "So 11:00 Wednesday maybe." Whitney: "I mean, I'm oh, I already found a quarter of a million." Sprague: "Well I think we need to we need to caucus, I guess." "I think. Are we done with the admin?" Recording ends at 2:24:25.	MEDIUM

Items flagged for review

These flags are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each one cites the rule it rests on as that rule read on December 18, 2023; check the recording and the primary source before relying on any of them. Severity: HIGH, a likely breach of a binding rule or a missed statutory deadline; MEDIUM, a probable process gap or control weakness; OBSERVATION, notable with no confirmed rule; POSITIVE, practice beyond the legal minimum.

HIGH A public body met for two and a half hours on the district budget with no notice, agenda or minutes in any district share, two days before the board was told the minutes were online

The Finance Committee is a committee of the school board and so a public body: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) reaches any school district board "or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof" (statute). Its three members are the committee's whole membership and they met, deliberated and set their next steps on the budget. RSA 91-A:2, II requires notice at least 24 hours ahead and minutes "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting" (statute), naming members, persons appearing, the subjects and decisions. MAP.md records no packet or minutes in either district share (checked 2026-08-28, including the next board meeting's folder and keyword searches), and a date search on 2026-10-02 found nothing either. On December 20 the board's approved minutes record, under this committee's report, "Subcommittee meetings and minutes are available online for people to review" (minutes' wording). On the December 20 recording (show 15483, not linked here) the board chair added: "There has been one brief meeting, that occurred this week, and the minutes of that meeting will be on the website." No such minutes have been found either. The recording is public, but a recording is not the minutes the statute requires. Graded HIGH under the project's rule for unmitigated absences: nothing on the recording or in any document explains where notice or minutes went, and the deadline passed years ago. This matches the grading of the committee's December 6 and December 13 sessions.

Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (committees are public bodies); RSA 91-A:2, II (2023 codification; notice and five-business-day minutes); approved minutes, December 20, 2023, item IV.6(b)

MEDIUM The session was called a caucus, and the recording stops when the chair says the members need to caucus

Sprague opens by saying the committee is there to "have a caucus" (0:00:13) and closes with "I think we need to we need to caucus, I guess." followed by "Are we done with the admin?" (2:24:03); the recording ends seconds later. RSA 91-A:2, I defines a meeting as "the convening of a quorum of the membership of a public body" able to communicate contemporaneously (statute), and its caucus exclusion, I(c), covers only "A caucus consisting of elected members of a public body of the same political party who were elected on a partisan basis" (statute). School board members are elected on the non-partisan ballot RSA 671:30 requires, so no caucus exclusion is available to them. If the three members continued to deliberate after the administration left, that was a meeting of the committee, with the same notice and minutes duties as the televised part; nothing shows whether they did. The record has a hole at exactly this point: at 2:04:16 the chair says "we're looking at 1.783", and two days later he moved $36,313,407.97 to hearing (December 20 page). Read as $1.783 million over the FY24 operating appropriation of $34,880,312 used in the district's later budget documents, the televised figure implies about $36.66 million, roughly $350,000 above the motion. That gap is unexplained on the record; it is not evidence of what was decided off camera.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I and I(c) (2023 codification); RSA 671:30 (non-partisan ballot for school district officers; 1979, 321:1); December 20, 2023 board page

MEDIUM A $688,000 line in the current budget that the business office cannot allocate, carried into the FY2025 comparison

The budget book's page 44 carries a district-wide line Sprague reads as "board voting, voted expense reduction" of about $688,000 (2:06:20). The business administrator says that she and Dave Jack, the interim business administrator before her, had the number when the budget was uploaded ("Dave told me about it"), that it "Had something to do with" the deliberative session's added million, and "I don't know what it's allocated to" (2:07:31). She has compared her predecessor's spreadsheets to the budget and "They don't match up" (2:08:52); the line is "the number that reconciled it" (2:10:39). Crawford had asked "a number of times" (0:07:22), and the guidance-line reconciliation at 0:28:10 shows the same problem at line level ("I don't know if it was supposed to be there or it wasn't."). Because the FY24 column is the comparison base for every FY2025 line, the increases the committee is trying to evaluate cannot be read line by line. RSA 32:5, IV requires the budget form to carry comparative columns of prior-year appropriations and expenditures; it does not require the lines to reconcile, so no breach is shown, but a comparison column the preparer cannot tie to the appropriation is a control weakness. Whitney's question about a forensic audit (2:11:35) is answered by the business administrator, not decided by the board. The budget report the board moved to hearing two days later carries the line as account 100.40.1100.113.5.00000, ($688,426.17) in the FY 23-24 column and $0.00 proposed, so its reversal supplies $688,426.17 of the $1,433,096.06 increase (December 20 page, flag 3). The committee returned to the figure on January 5, 2024 (see that page).

Sources: RSA 32:5, IV (2023 codification; comparative columns); December 20, 2023 board page, flag 3; Finance Committee, January 5, 2024 page

OBSERVATION Middle-school teacher salaries $85,000 over the current year's line, with positions still open

Henry volunteers that "in this year's budget so far we're $85,000 over budget and teacher salaries" at CMS (1:07:22) while science and math positions are unfilled, and offers higher hiring steps as a possible cause, "So I would have to go back to confirm that" (1:09:25). RSA 32:8 bars spending for a purpose with no appropriation, and RSA 32:10 lets the governing body transfer between lines within the total, so a line overrun is not by itself a breach. It is noted because the same session shows the line budgets are not reliable (flag 3) and the committee was setting a target from them.

Sources: RSA 32:8 (limitation on expenditures); RSA 32:10 (transfers)

OBSERVATION The documents the committee worked from are not published

The session runs on papers handed across the table: the administration's December 13 ESSER-sunset handout (0:08:35), the CMS schedule presentation "right off the printer" (0:14:27), revised school staffing sheets, and a new budget book whose page 44 and page 18 are quoted, with the district-wide section still unfinished (0:18:06). None is in a district share for this date. A viewer of the recording cannot follow the figures being read. RSA 91-A:4 makes them public records available on request; no rule required posting them, so this is an observation.

Sources: RSA 91-A:4, I (right to inspect governmental records)

POSITIVE A televised working session with the officials who could answer, and unfavourable figures disclosed unprompted

Nothing required this committee to televise a working session. It did, brought in the middle-school principal and the staff member who built the proposed schedule, and let the members test the staffing model in public. The business administrator disclosed the current-year overrun without being asked (1:07:22) and said plainly on camera that she could not reconcile her predecessor's figures (2:08:52), and the members kept collective-bargaining specifics off the record (1:35:52, 2:21:29), which RSA 91-A:2, I(a) permits.

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I(a) (collective-bargaining strategy excluded from "meeting")

Appendix: source files

Official and public sources

Cablecast: School Board Finance Mtg 12/18/23 (Claremont Community Television (CCTV) / Claremont Community Media Center (CCMC); title as MAP.md records it)
No notice, agenda, packet or minutes found. MAP.md section 218 records the search of the 2023 Meeting Documents archive, both candidate year folders of the Meeting Minutes share, the next board meeting's folder and keyword searches (2026-08-28); a title search for the date on 2026-10-02 returned only a project file. Search results are not proof of absence; this is "not found", not "does not exist".
Context documents from the next board meeting: _CSB Agenda 12.20.23.docx (6).pdf (item IV.6(b) "Presentation of Finance Subcommittee Recommendations"); 21. approved CSB meeting minutes 12.20.23.pdf
Related pages: Finance Committee, December 6, 2023; Finance Committee, December 13, 2023; Claremont School Board, December 20, 2023; Finance Committee, January 5, 2024

Project files

Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.

Dialogue/15451 SchoolBoardFinance121823.mp4.CSV (1,466 attributed rows; the basis of this page)
Input/Videos/15451 SchoolBoardFinance121823.mp4 (local copy of the recording)
Input/Transcripts/15451 SchoolBoardFinance121823.mp4.json (diarized transcript)
Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 218 (video-to-document map)

Laws and rules cited on this page

State, as codified for the meeting date: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); RSA 91-A:2, I, I(a), I(c) and II (2023 codification); RSA 91-A:4, I; RSA 671:30; RSA 32:5, IV (2023 codification); RSA 32:8; RSA 32:10
Session laws mentioned for dating only: 2023, 188:1 (RSA 91-A:2, eff. Oct. 3, 2023)