Claremont School Board Finance Committee — December 13, 2024

MEDIUM A televised budget meeting of a public body that appears in none of the district's own date lists

RSA 91-A:2, II requires that "a notice of the time and place of each such meeting, including a nonpublic session, shall be posted in 2 appropriate places one of which may be the public body's Internet website, if such exists, or shall be printed in a newspaper of general circulation in the city or town at least 24 hours, excluding Sundays and legal holidays, prior to such meetings."

Every district document that lists this committee's December dates omits 13 December. The approved minutes of 18 September and 16 October 2024 list "Finance Subcommittee Meeting dates: 1-3 PM at SRVRTC John Goodrich Community Room" with November 12, November 19, December 4 and December 18. The 20 November agenda and approved minutes give 4 and 18 December. The November superintendent's report gives "12/4- Claremont School Board Finance Subcommittee Meeting 1:00PM SRVRTC" and "12/18- Claremont School Board Finance Subcommittee Meeting 1:00 PM SRVRTC". The 4 December agenda and the Future Dates list in its approved minutes give 18 December only. Each gives an afternoon time; this was a morning session.

What does exist is an announcement on camera nine days ahead. On the 4 December recording (show 16192, about 68 minutes in) the business administrator said: "And then on the 13th, having one that would be here and would be on CCTV. And I haven't asked you what time you want to do. You said something about morning, but." The committee chair: "Can you let Chelsea know so she can get it out." Arlene Hawkins asked: "Will the Friday morning be publicized? Is that televised? Right." The approved 4 December minutes record: "Ms. Henry had emailed Frank Sprague to ask to meet with the finance committee on Thursday next week and then a second meeting on Friday to be televised; the Board will have the budgets before the meeting." So the district said in public that it would publicise the session. The posted notice itself has not been found.

The by-laws' destination is empty for 2024. The by-laws adopted 5 June 2024 direct subcommittee notices and minutes to the SAU 6 website. The Finance subcommittee folder linked from the board's web page, inspected 2026-08-29, was created 4 February 2026 and holds nothing from 2024. The site as it stood in December 2024 cannot be inspected, so this is "not found", not "never existed".

Graded MEDIUM on the mitigating limb: the meeting was announced at a noticed public meeting, an instruction to publicise it was given and minuted, and the session was broadcast and archived. What would move it to HIGH: confirmation that no notice was posted. What would clear it: a posted notice or a dated capture of the district calendar for that week.

Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); RSA 91-A:2, II (2024 codification); approved minutes 18 September 2024; approved minutes 16 October 2024; 20 November agenda; approved 20 November minutes; November superintendent's report; 4 December agenda; approved 4 December minutes; Claremont School Board By-Laws, adopted 5 June 2024.

MEDIUM A closed working session of the whole subcommittee was scheduled for the day before, described as preparation for this one

On the 4 December recording (show 16192, about 69 minutes in) the board chair said: "We're going to do the the first meeting on the 12th is just to do a pre meeting for, the 13th. So we can go over everything within the budget, make sure that we understand what we're doing before we, come out in public". The approved 4 December minutes: "The meeting on Thursday the 12th will be a premeeting for the 13th so that the finance committee understands the budget before it is presented to the public." The time was discussed in the same exchange ("Any time after 9:00"; "if we did 9 or 930, and then I'll just make sure we have the conference room for a couple hours").

RSA 91-A:2, I defines a meeting as the convening of a quorum of a public body, in person or electronically, such that the participating members can communicate "contemporaneously", to discuss or act on a matter within its jurisdiction. Its four exclusions (strategy for collective bargaining, consultation with legal counsel, a political-party caucus, and circulation of draft documents formalising decisions already made at a meeting) do not include a budget work session, and the caucus exclusion is unavailable to a school board elected on the non-partisan ballot RSA 671:30 requires. A session of all three members on the draft budget is a meeting.

What this page does not say. No notice, agenda, minutes or recording of a 12 December finance meeting has been found, and nothing establishes that it took place, who attended, or what was discussed. The 13 December recording does not refer back to it, and Crawford's remark that she is working from "the budget copy that we had last Friday" (0:20:11) runs slightly against a full briefing the day before. The flag rests on the documented plan. Crawford objected to the schedule at the time: "That's a very. Compressed schedule" and "I know last year we spent several meetings going over the budget. And then I thought it was a very clear process." (4 December recording.)

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I (2024 codification); RSA 91-A:2-a (2008, 303:4); RSA 671:30 (1979, 321:1; never amended); Approved CSB minutes 12.4.24.

MEDIUM Catastrophic special-education aid described to the public in figures the statute then in force does not contain

At 0:06:56: "The state reimbursement for special ed is set, I think, at a 95% by law and over costs of $70,000 per student." At 0:07:23: "It's going to be like 63%… That's the local taxpayer who has to pay that difference. And so I just want voters to realize that that's beyond our control."

None of the three figures is the rule. RSA 186-C:18, III as in force in December 2024 (2023, 79:141, 142, eff. July 1, 2023) makes the department liable for 80 percent of costs above three and one-half times the estimated state average expenditure per pupil and 100 percent above ten times it, with the appropriation "prorated proportionally based on entitlement" when insufficient. There is no 95 percent, and the threshold is a multiple of a statewide average, not $70,000. FY2025 catastrophic aid was paid at 67.5 percent of entitlement, as reported by the New Hampshire Bulletin on 15 November 2024; the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute gives 68.8 percent. The $70,000 figure appears later in this meeting as the superintendent's average out-of-district placement cost (1:03:14). At its 19 November session this committee was told the State was to fund "up to 90%", also absent from the statute.

No breach of State law is implied. The 80-percent-of-entitlement floor in today's RSA 186-C:18, III(a) was added by 2025 legislation (HB 2, §137) and did not exist in December 2024; citing it here would wrongly accuse the State. The defect is one of public information. In mitigation, the statement is hedged and makes a point that is substantially true: the district carries mandated costs the State does not fully fund.

Sources: RSA 186-C:18, III (2024 codification, in force at this meeting: proration, no floor); RSA 186-C:18 (current text, with the later floor; not applied); New Hampshire Bulletin, 15 November 2024 reporting, not law; New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute secondary analysis; companion page Finance Committee, November 19, 2024.

MEDIUM A proposal to dissolve the preschool programme rests on a statutory citation that does not support it, and reaches a placement question that belongs to IEP teams

For about twenty-six minutes from 1:40:25 the board chair argued for closing the district's preschool programme and moving its paraprofessionals into unfilled posts elsewhere: salaries "close to $450,000"; a study finding that the typically developing "model students" "were performing below their peers that did not attend the Claremont Preschool Program"; five paraprofessionals inside the programme against five or six vacancies outside it. She put it as a redeployment, not a cut: "It's not a demotion of care, it's just an alternate way of providing their needs".

The statute offered does not say what it is offered for. The transcript renders the citation as "per RSA one six C semicolon 3-A". The only section it can name is RSA 186-C:3-a, headed Duties, which opens "The division shall help school districts meet their responsibilities under this chapter and under federal law regarding the education of children with disabilities." It sets duties for the State's division and department; it says nothing about preschool or children aged three to five, and nothing releasing a district from operating a preschool programme.

The underlying proposition is arguable. No located provision requires a district to run its own preschool, and the district used push-in services in daycares and Head Start before this programme existed (1:43:49). Federal law does require FAPE for children from age 3, a continuum of alternative placements, and that each child's placement be "made by a group of persons, including the parents", determined at least annually, "as close as possible to the child's home", with "consideration is given to any potential harmful effect on the child or on the quality of services." The state finding the chair recounts was itself about serving children with disabilities alongside typically developing peers. The discussion is a cost analysis, measuring only the peers' academic results; it is not a least-restrictive-environment analysis. A board decides how to organise and fund services; it does not decide in the aggregate where individual children will be placed.

The proposal was made and referred to the administration at a meeting with no located notice, no agenda, no minutes and no public comment, with no parent or preschool staff present. In mitigation, the chair raised the disruption to families herself at 1:59:03, the committee referred the question rather than deciding it, and the driver is the real staffing shortage in flag 2.

Sources: RSA 186-C:3-a (source note ends 2024, 351:2, eff. Oct. 1, 2024); 34 CFR 300.101; 34 CFR 300.115; 34 CFR 300.116.

MEDIUM One student's out-of-district placement was discussed in open session in identifying detail

Explaining an $87,000 rise in special-education transportation at 1:24:04, the director of student services described a single placement: where the child is placed, its annual cost, when it is expected to end, and the personal circumstance that would end it. A committee member added detail. The superintendent stopped the exchange ("We don't want to get into it too much"). No name was used.

FERPA's definition of personally identifiable information includes "Other information that, alone or in combination, is linked or linkable to a specific student that would allow a reasonable person in the school community, who does not have personal knowledge of the relevant circumstances, to identify the student with reasonable certainty." In a district of about 1,900 students with a small number of out-of-district high-school placements, a location, a cost, a projected end date and a personal circumstance together meet that description. Disclosure of education-record information requires prior written consent.

RSA 91-A:3, II(c) was available for matters that "would likely affect adversely the reputation of any person, other than a member of the public body itself", the ground boards commonly use for individual student matters; or the line could have been explained by cost band. This page reproduces the $340,000 cost and none of the identifying detail.

Sources: 34 CFR 99.3; 34 CFR 99.30(a); 20 U.S.C. §1232g(b)(1); RSA 91-A:3, II(c) (2023, 189:1).

MEDIUM ESSER explains a large part of this budget's increase, and the board's request for an ESSER accounting has not been met in any public record

Federal pandemic relief is the explanation for one line after another. At 0:13:29: software, out-of-district placements "That totaled around $600,000", computers, curriculum, supplies and positions. It explains the middle school's $500,000 tuition increase ("There's 600,000 that went through SR [ESSER] special ed tuitions"), the end of summer school, and unusable furniture at Maple Avenue. On the transcript's renderings (Esser, Essa, SR, asset, SA1, us or) it is invoked twenty-one times across fourteen rows by three speakers.

The accounting the board asked for is absent from the record. The approved 18 September 2024 minutes: "Mary Henry will share a summary report of ESSER funding and where the FY24 budget stands in October". The approved 16 October minutes: "Frank Sprague shared that he would still like to see a presentation on ESSER". No such presentation appears in any recording, agenda, packet or minutes in this corpus. That is stated as silence, not construed: nothing shows a report refused or produced elsewhere. The member who asked sat through this meeting without renewing the request.

At 0:30:07 the business administrator says ESSER furniture was bought "in the last few months" and "we did try to get some things in last minute and Esser with the remaining funds that we had." ARP ESSER funds had to be obligated by 30 September 2024 and liquidated by 28 January 2025. The record does not show when any order was placed, and this page asserts nothing about it; the point is that this sentence is the only public description of the district's final ESSER purchases, with no accounting to check it against.

In mitigation, the superintendent's account of the funding cliff (0:14:55) and the business administrator's correction about summer school (0:41:30) are clear statements the public record needed.

Sources: 2 CFR 200.344(b) (2023 edition; liquidation within 120 days); 2 CFR 200.303 (2023 edition; internal control); 20 U.S.C. §1225(b); approved minutes 18 September 2024; approved minutes 16 October 2024.

MEDIUM The year-end buffer the committee says is gone has never been reconciled in public, and $350,000 retained for this budget goes unmentioned

At 2:18:22–2:18:56 the board chair describes how budgets have balanced: increases offset by the year-end balance, "generated by unfilled vacancies", which "is not the case anymore", because it has been "a failure to hire". RSA 198:4-b, II lets a district retain year-end unassigned general funds up to 5 percent of net assessment, with a public hearing before expending them and an annual accounting. The practice is lawful, which is why the size of the balance matters.

The last year of it cannot be checked from the public record. The approved 18 September 2024 minutes print "At about $540,000", "Down about $60,000 after roof projects and others; could change" and "a revenue surplus at about $210,000". The approved 16 October minutes print "there is a surplus of $497,000, plus an additional $114,000 in additional revenue for a total of $611,000." No bridge between the two was offered. The same minutes print "The maximum that can be retained is $469,000", while the business administrator had stated the ceiling as $466,664.43.

The retained sum was earmarked for this budget. The approved 16 October minutes: "Frank Sprague made a motion to retain up to $350,000 with the stipulation that it be used to offset the 25/26 tax rate". FY2025–26 is the year this committee worked on. That $350,000 is not mentioned once in this meeting, including when revenues are listed at 2:19:48. The two statements are compatible (the chair is describing future balances drying up), but a resident relying on this recording would not learn it.

Sources: RSA 198:4-b, II (2023 codification); approved minutes 18 September 2024; approved minutes 16 October 2024; companion pages September 18, 2024 and October 16, 2024.