Claremont School Board Finance Committee, December 6, 2023
An afternoon working session of the board's Finance Committee on the proposed FY2025 budget, held hours before the regular board meeting that evening, with two of its three members present. The buildings-and-grounds director answers on each school's maintenance lines; the special-education director presents out-of-district placements, contracted services and three coordinator proposals that are not yet in the budget; and the business administrator reports a special-education salary line already $100,000 over this year. No notice, agenda or minutes for this session was found in either district share, so the page is built from the Cablecast recording's attributed dialogue, with the same evening's board documents for context. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording.
Body
Claremont School Board Finance Committee: Frank Sprague (chair) and Candace Crawford present; Heather Whitney absent ("Mrs. Whitney is in Las Vegas getting a well-deserved break", the chair at 0:00:05).
Date
Wednesday, December 6, 2023
Start time
1:00 p.m., as set aloud on the committee's December 1 recording ("we'll tentatively say for 1:00 December 6th", show 15444; see that page). The recording carries no call to order or clock time and runs 1:29:16. The regular board meeting followed at 6:30 p.m. the same day (agenda).
Location
Not stated in available records. No agenda or notice was found, and nothing on the recording names the room.
Board composition
Two of the three committee members, a quorum of the committee; two of the seven-member board.
Recording
Cablecast: Claremont School Board Finance Committee 12/6/23 (observed extent 1:29:16 from the last row of the dialogue file; the Cablecast API refuses requests from this environment, so no run time was read from it). A separate recording (show 15453) holds the evening board meeting; the two share no material.
Minutes
None located in the district's public shares (MAP.md section 213, checked 2026-08-28; a title search for the date on 2026-10-03 returned only the board and SAU 6 packet folders). The approved minutes of that evening's board meeting record under the Finance Sub-Committee report: "Sessions have been recorded on CCTV" and "Budget binder provided- a revised version will be available" (minutes' wording).
Participants
No minutes exist to settle names, so speakers follow the dialogue file's attributions, each anchored there by introduction or direct address; titles follow the December 6, 2023 board agenda masthead and the project's 2023–24 roster notes.
Name
Role
Participation
Frank Sprague
Finance Committee chair; Claremont School Board vice chair
Opens at 0:00:05 ("Mrs. Crawford and I are running the show"); reads school maintenance lines; objects that staffing is no longer broken out by name (0:32:57); describes his own past role at Stevens as "director of student services" (0:46:52); asks when the rest of the board will see the budget (1:25:47).
Candace Crawford
Board member; committee member
Leads on water and electrical lines (0:05:41, 0:07:28), preschool staffing, out-of-district placements (0:36:52, 0:37:36), coordinator certification (0:47:58) and the middle-school configuration (1:21:50, 1:23:02).
Heather Whitney
Claremont School Board chair; committee member
Absent. Sent questions by email that the chair left at home (1:21:27). The evening board minutes also record her absent.
Steve Holt
Director of Buildings and Grounds
Introduced at 0:00:05 (the chair settles on Director); answers each school's maintenance lines: doors, access control, a washer and dryer at Maple, snow blowers, an inaccessible technical-center entry (0:15:14), aging pellet and chip boilers (0:17:21); thanked out at 0:24:10.
Ben Nester
Director of Special Education
"invited Ben back" after the December 1 session (0:00:36); presents modular preschool units, out-of-district placements, contracted services and three coordinator proposals (0:48:50–0:50:10); explains how the prior budget was built (0:51:55); keeps a named employee's details off air (1:04:33).
Mary Henry
Business Administrator
Edits the budget file during the session (0:57:04, 1:15:21); reports Stevens special-education salaries "$100,000 over in that line" (0:54:58); says board members may already "pick them up" (1:26:59).
Michael C. Tempesta
Superintendent, SAU 6
Introduced at 0:00:36; places the modular units at Bluff and Disnard (0:25:45); undertakes to meet the middle-school principal on staffing (1:24:10); "We'll bring them tonight." (1:28:43).
Unidentified
Short interjections
Two rows of the dialogue file.
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda was posted or found. The topics were set on the December 1 recording: the buildings-and-grounds and special-education directors, and an update on revisions. The order below follows the chair's transitions.
No vote. Next session "Next Wednesday from 9 to 12" (1:21:43); version one of the budget binder to go to the full board that evening (1:28:43).
Discussion timeline
Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/15452 SchoolBoardFinance120623.mp4.CSV) and link into the recording. Page references are to the budget binder the members held, which is not published.
"Okay. Looks like we're live." The chair notes Whitney's absence and that questions on special education "on, on, Friday" went unanswered, so "we've been invited Ben back to get some specificity on that" (0:00:36).
Sprague asks where the projects stand "in relationship to any of our reserve funds that we might have set up". Disnard building improvements go from 12,000 to 28,000 (0:02:25) for "several doors that we'd like to replace" (0:02:59).
Crawford: water and sewer "5800, then 2223 is 11,900". Holt: "I'm not sure that that data is correct." (0:05:52) and "I think I probably put that number in there." (0:06:29). Henry: "there may be some moneys that need to be moved back into 22 that haven't been moved back into 22 yet" (0:07:19). Crawford: the electrical figures "all seem wildly variant" (0:07:28).
Maple: access control under a grant application, entry doors and "a commercial washer and dryer" whose cost is mainly installation (0:09:47). Bluff: "$15,000 for a set of doors with a fobs" (0:12:48); a damaged fence Holt says is "news to me" (0:13:39); 20-year-old snow blowers (0:13:48).
Building maintenance from 6500 to 19,000: "the front entry way is not handicapped compliant" (0:15:14); no citation pending (0:15:35). The maintenance post is open and covered by custodians from other schools (0:16:16).
The pellet and chip boilers installed in 2014 need "significant repairs" (0:17:21); a pump drive at the high school costs "$15,000 for replacement" (0:17:42); repairs are bought on the pellets line from the same vendor, which Sprague asks be separated (0:20:45). A Stevens item is "a big ticket item. Probably 300,000 plus." (0:21:54); Stevens building maintenance rises to 25,000 against 7500 last year (0:23:11).
Nester seeks "the blessing of the finance Committee" for two modular units (0:25:01); Tempesta: "one at, bluff and one at Disney [Disnard]" (0:25:45). Preschool staffing is in a separate sheet tucked in the binders (0:27:42).
Sprague: "if we had the specificity of staffing that we had last year, in the year before, none of these questions would be taking place right now" and "this is so inefficient." (0:34:09).
Nester: "relatively no significant change"; most placed students "have aged up" into the high school budget (0:35:10). The count given is 28 (0:35:24); Crawford checks that the school-by-school figures add up to "2.5 2.6 million" (0:36:52). Nester offers "a redacted spreadsheet" (0:37:20) and a trend line for the hearing (0:39:27).
Down "about 200 000" after a contracted OT resigned and the district hired its own (0:40:36). Crawford: "we know that the last year's budget numbers are not reliable. So that doesn't mean much to me." (0:41:11). The salary-line rise and contracted-services fall are a wash (1:12:21).
A middle-school coordinator was cut "two years ago" to reduce the budget and "it just didn't go well" (0:45:04, 0:45:31). Sprague recalls being "director of student services" and acting as the LEA (0:46:52). Crawford wants the budgeted certification met before anyone is hired (0:47:58).
"this is conceptual. This is not hard numbers in a spreadsheet": a full-time CMS coordinator, "a budget increase"; an elementary coordinator for Maple and Bluff funded by eliminating the early-childhood coordinator (0:49:12); a high-school coordinator largely funded from the current lead-teacher salary (0:50:10). "This proposal I have here is not included in the budget." (0:58:22).
Nester: "The budget, as it was prepared last year, did not account for positions that were needed or vacant. It simply rolled over, filled positions". Henry: five people sit in the Stevens special-education line and "we may be going over on that budget line" (0:54:00); "Right now in salaries, we are $100,000 over in that line." (0:54:58).
Sprague finds a supplies line for a program "we closed back in 2000 and about ten years ago"; Henry: "That's probably in the wrong place" and removes it during the session (0:57:04, 0:57:33).
Nester: "The elimination of the of the preschool director position. Using that to fund the special ed coordinator position for elementary." Crawford: Oh, my. (0:59:46). Nester would support keeping it but "from a budgeting perspective, we need to eliminate one" (1:01:50).
SAU staff such as the special-education director are paid in the SAU budget and billed to Claremont as one line (1:09:32, 1:10:12). Henry moves an ESL salary into its own line (1:15:21). A second social-worker line "sounds like a double count" (1:18:02).
Summer and extended-school-year teacher pay (75,000 historically) drops because "The intention is to, esser fund that" (1:18:49); Tempesta: "This is the last summer." (1:18:59). The IDEA special-education grant funds "six full time teacher salaries right now" (1:20:18).
Crawford: "last week they said I think six, six positions were cut" (1:21:50); the middle school has "Two deans and the partridge in a pear tree" for 375 students against the high school's 500 (1:23:27). Tempesta: "All all of those points are valid" (1:24:10).
Crawford: comparisons to last year's budget are "kind of a crapshoot" and "Some of the numbers are mythical." (1:25:45). Sprague: "So when when will the rest of the board see this document?" (1:25:47); he does not want "The perception that we're working in a vacuum and without their input." (1:26:53). Henry: "I have stated they could pick them up." (1:26:59). Tempesta: "We'll bring them tonight." (1:28:43).
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 6, 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 quorum of the Finance Committee met on the budget with no posted notice, agenda or minutes in any district share
RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) makes any committee of a school board a public body ("or any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof", statute), and two of the committee's three members are a quorum of it. RSA 91-A:2, II requires a notice posted "at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings" and minutes "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting" (statute). The date and hour were set aloud five days earlier on the December 1 recording, which is announcement, not posting; the same evening's board agenda lists no Finance Committee session. MAP.md records no notice, packet or minutes in either share (checked 2026-08-28, including the next board meeting's folder and keyword searches). That evening the board's approved minutes say only that "Sessions have been recorded on CCTV" (minutes' wording); a public 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 says minutes were produced, and the deadline passed years ago. This matches the grading of the committee's December 1 and December 18 sessions.
MEDIUM The prior-year budget was built from filled positions only, and a special-education salary line is already $100,000 over
The special-education director explains that last year's budget "did not account for positions that were needed or vacant. It simply rolled over, filled positions" (0:51:55), so needed but vacant posts were left out (0:52:22). The business administrator then reports five people now in the Stevens special-education salary line and "Right now in salaries, we are $100,000 over in that line." (0:54:58). Other lines show the same weakness: a water-and-sewer history its own author doubts (0:05:52), prior-year postings that "need to be moved back into 22" (0:07:19), a supply line for a long-closed program (0:57:04) and a social worker counted twice (1:18:02). Crawford's summary is that "the last year's budget numbers are not reliable" (0:41:11). RSA 32:5, IV requires the budget form to show prior-year appropriations and expenditures for comparison (statute), and RSA 32:8 bars spending for a purpose with no appropriation while RSA 32:10 permits transfers within the total, so a single line overrun is not shown to be a breach. A comparison base that omits known needs and that members call unreliable is a control weakness in the document they were using to set the FY2025 budget. The committee's December 1 session found a negative $688,426.17 line in the same base (see that page).
OBSERVATION Questions about a position and its holder are answered "afterward", off the record
Asked about the qualifications behind the preschool director line, the special-education director says "I can't say that on air, candy." (1:04:33) and later "Speak to that on air. I'm happy to afterward." (1:07:17). Keeping an individual employee's details out of a broadcast is reasonable. But the two members present are a quorum of the committee, and if they received that information together after the camera stopped, RSA 91-A:2, I would treat it as part of a meeting. The lawful route for matters that would harm a person's reputation is a nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(c), entered on a motion stating the exemption and a roll-call vote under 91-A:3, I(b), with minutes. Nothing on the record shows that any such conversation took place, so this is an observation.
OBSERVATION The budget binder is not published, and the full board had not received it
The session runs on a binder and a loose preschool sheet (0:27:42) that the public cannot see; the chair complains that, unlike earlier years, staffing is no longer shown by name (0:32:57–0:33:42). Asked when the rest of the board would see the document, the business administrator answers that it is not ready, that board members could pick copies up, and that one had (1:25:51–1:26:59); Crawford adds "They can watch CCTV." (1:28:22). RSA 91-A:4, I makes the binder a public record available on request; no rule required posting it, so this is an observation. The evening's approved board minutes record "Budget binder provided" (minutes' wording).
POSITIVE A televised working session that ends with the budget going to the whole board, and student data offered only in redacted form
No rule required a committee working session to be televised. The chair pressed for the rest of the board to have the document so the committee was not seen to be "working in a vacuum" (1:26:53), and the superintendent agreed to bring it that night (1:28:43); the evening minutes confirm the binder was provided. On out-of-district placements the special-education director offered the committee "a redacted spreadsheet" (0:37:20) rather than student-level detail, consistent with the federal bar on releasing personally identifiable information from education records without consent.
No notice, agenda, packet or minutes found. MAP.md section 213 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 2026-10-03 returned only the 27. CSB 12.6.23 and SAU 6 packet folders. Search results are not proof of absence; this is "not found", not "does not exist".