| 0:01:59 | Donations added to the agenda | The superintendent: “Two different donations, sums of money that we'd like to school board to approve.” LeClair counts three, because the Project Lead the Way grant, already listed for discussion, needs an action item too. The superintendent: “Project lead the way is is on the discussion.” | HIGH MED |
| 0:03:47 | Student report | National Honor Society caroling at the county nursing home and Silver Maples; a week-long collection for a staff member whose wife is in the hospital; “Maple Avenue collected over 700 items that will be delivered to the local food pantry this week.” Boys basketball 3-0, girls 3-2, bowling undefeated. | |
| 0:05:51 | Pinkerton school-climate rally | Sprague describes a rally of “A couple thousand kids probably” at Pinkerton Academy where a video of the Stevens celebration for a retiring staff member was shown. The student representative explains how the National Honor Society organized that celebration and the local businesses that donated gifts. | |
| 0:09:16 | Fall athletic honors | Irish asks that the video be shown at the next meeting “So we publicize on CCTV”, then reads the all-state selections in football, soccer, field hockey, volleyball and golf and adds: “We had three coaches named coach of the year this year.” | |
| 0:12:06 | Superintendent's report | The football banquet on December 18; a December 15 radio interview with the student representative, chosen “one of two students in the state” for a Washington trip; concerts. On bargaining: “we are wrapping up our collective bargaining with our respective units or associations” and “have reached agreements, and we'll be discussing that more publicly in early January”. | OBS |
| 0:14:58 | A venue for student art | Irish asks about a student art show at the Claremont Opera House, citing a gallery attached to the library in Newport. Pierce says an office downtown has started showing art. The superintendent: “I'm not satisfied that we're doing enough”. The student representative describes the National Honor Society talent show's art walk-through and raffle. | |
| 0:19:11 | Citizens' comments | Pierce: “Number three out of the nine most prettiest cities in New Hampshire, according to a New Hampshire poll.” Herzog announces “Claremont. First night coming up on December 31st.” No member of the public speaks. | |
| 0:21:08 | Nonpublic session | The chair: “Now we have a public take a motion for nonpublic for RSA 91 a two.” and Two C. Irish moves; Sprague seconds; roll call, with only some answers audible. The superintendent: “We're going to convene into the side room.” The recording cuts to the motion to come out (0:22:04). | OBS |
| 0:22:33 | Project Lead the Way Launch grant | LeClair: Maple Avenue “has been awarded a grant in the amount of $5,000 from hypothermia Hope Foundation” [the transcript's rendering of the foundation's name] for an after-school program starting in mid-January; “the funds would be used to help offset the cost of the staff member to staff that program and supplies”. Asked for numbers, she says the total cost will be covered by the grant: “There's no additional cost to the district.” | HIGH |
| 0:25:30 | January budget schedule | The superintendent: “we need to have a deliberative session on February 8th and we have to have a public hearing on January 11th”; “Public hearing doesn't mean that we're going to have a finished budget”; “I have put in a placeholder of Saturday, January 7th”. He recommends that January meetings focus on the budget. | |
| 0:27:56 | Food-service request for proposals | Asked whether February 1 is enough time, O'Neill says the decision can follow the budget process: “I don't believe at this point, based on the information I received, that it's going to have a budget impact”. He had feared a $50,000 administrative cost; bidders now expect meal sales to cover their expenses. | |
| 0:29:00 | Substitute pay comparison | The superintendent: “We are setting $65 a day, $75 if the if the staff member is certified and you see the long term sub is 100”; compared with the districts that answered, “we're below”. Pierce asks why Charlestown is missing; Adrian reports Charlestown starts near 80 with incentives for certified substitutes. Sprague suggests paying the most qualified substitutes more. | |
| 0:35:26 | Long-term substitutes and certification | LeClair: long-term positions are posted separately and draw people with certification. The federal highly-qualified requirement ended partway through the hiring season with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; the state advised continuing it this year, but “it's no longer a federal requirement”. | |
| 0:38:50 | Substitute versus paraprofessional pay | LeClair recalls that paraprofessionals had been paid less than substitutes, so people stayed in the substitute pool, and para pay had to be adjusted; any substitute increase has a “ripple effect”. Nathan: the district “found a document from 2011 that reflects what we're paying today”. | |
| 0:42:10 | Substitute budget overrun | The superintendent recalls the substitute line running over; after Sprague calls out 60 and O'Neill “Thousand.”, he settles on “Over 50,000. Okay, $50,000 over.” and adds “we don't even budget adequately for the number”. | |
| 0:43:21 | Staff absence counts | Pierce reads the absence summary; the superintendent corrects the years: “That was for half the year was 577 the year before, 2459.” O'Neill: “Is this the Paris miss 1903 days and the teachers missed 767 days.” [paras] and “That's 3670 days that we paid out a substitute for.” (the figures as spoken do not add up to the total, and the two counts appear to cover different periods). | |
| 0:44:23 | Negotiated leave | Irish: “They're taking days that they are given to take.” and “If the issue is we have too many teachers getting too many days, then perhaps we shouldn't be.” The superintendent: taking a day only to avoid losing it is “inappropriate”. Nathan: “it is our only short term disability plan”. | |
| 0:46:45 | Leave buy-back and rolled-over days | O'Neill: the district pays up to three unused sick days and two personal days at $100 a day, “Mean we paid out $48,400 last year.” and later “the amount of days that were rolled over from last year to this year was 24,300”. The chair and Pierce suggest short-term disability insurance; O'Neill: it would need the unions to give back sick days. | |
| 0:53:14 | Substitute pay left open | The chair: “Well, we're not going to solve it tonight.” No action. | |
| 0:53:29 | Budget introduced | The superintendent calls it “an initial review of an unedited budget, meaning there have been no intentional strategic reductions”, representing the administrators' requests. | POS |
| 0:54:19 | One-page recap: salaries and paraprofessionals | O'Neill: “794 eight, 66, 37 as the increase in the wages and salaries” [the figure is garbled in the transcript], “realizing that there's no collective bargaining agreement cost in here because we negotiated every single collective bargaining agreement this year”; non-union staff get 2%. Two new high-school positions. Paraprofessionals the district hoped to cut remain: “So that's adding $600,000 to that.” | OBS OBS |
| 0:55:14 | Health insurance and retirement | Health insurance is budgeted at the carrier's guaranteed maximum of 11.7%; “Last year we budgeted a 5.7% increase. It actually came in at about of 1% decrease.” Retirement: the teacher rate “in 2000 and 607 was 5.7%” [2006-07]; “Now we're at 17.36, so it's up 300% ten years.” [the speaker's characterization]. “That's adding about $168,000 to the budget. So basically that's $1.1 million right there on those four things”. | |
| 0:57:39 | Detail on new positions | Sprague asks how the board will learn what a new position is; O'Neill: the detail report “It's 272 pages.” Sprague recalls a page listing changes “with justifications”; Adrian asks for the earlier presentation format. The superintendent: “Tonight was to give you a mile high view and to set the stage for January.” and a PowerPoint will follow: “And the community deserves that as well.” | POS |
| 0:59:48 | Technical center costs and the wish list | Irish asks for the spreadsheets electronically and a “Soup to nuts income expense” summary of the technical center. O'Neill on deferred work: “I don't want the first time you need to hear about it is, oh my God, we really got to do this now.” Irish: “if our wish list is starting at 3.2%”, that is a better start than last year. | POS |
| 1:02:40 | Regular education and supplies | Regular-education salaries up $204,000, benefits up $82,000. On supplies, budgets rise about 10% a year while spending stays below budget; “I haven't got taken the the hatchet in this case I think it's going to be a sickle, to the supply accounts and reduce those.” A 15% increase “which just defies logic”. Supplies are now delivered by W.B. Mason. | |
| 1:07:46 | Special education paraprofessionals | Special-education salaries up 625,139: “you're talking close to 25 positions that we had hoped to cut that are still in this budget”. Why? “we just we couldn't legally justify the reductions that we wanted to make” after revisiting IEPs over the summer. LeClair: some cut positions were filled by long-term substitutes, so cutting them did not reduce the para salary line; Maple Avenue and Bluff matched para coverage to each IEP. | OBS |
| 1:11:03 | Out-of-district placements | O'Neill: out-of-district placements and transportation are “actually down 152,000 639 year over year”, which he credits to in-house programs bringing students back. Overall special education adds about $576,000. | |
| 1:16:10 | Technical center daycare removed | The 1390 function falls because of the removal of the technical center's daycare: “That's reducing the budget by 234,000 974, but also reducing revenues by $200,000”. Athletics up $52,287. | |
| 1:21:33 | Technology replacement and legal | Media-services property “up 111,725” for the equipment replacement cycle. School board legal fees increased: “I increase the legal budget because we've been overspending”. The SAU 6 budget is the approved one: “The apportionment went up 73,000 317”. | |
| 1:23:16 | Technical center administrative support | O'Neill reports about $25,000 requested for administrative support at the technical center. Irish: “Did we start opening programs again that I didn't hear about?” The superintendent: “It's the first.” [look]. | |
| 1:24:49 | Buildings and grounds | Bluff heating controls not covered by the Johnson Controls project; middle-school floor tile, doors and a fire pump: when the city's community center was built, water pressure fell so that “we don't have enough water to pass a fire inspection because we need to make a pump”; “It's about $135,000 project to do the whole project”. About $35,000 for the single-pane window wall in the high-school technology room. | |
| 1:31:57 | Transportation and lease payments | Transportation down on fuel costs; “we still have one lease payment left on each of the propane busses. So that's that's $40,000.” Other objects down 273,801: Johnson Controls kept a surplus from the escrow, and “They told me they would use it to pay my next two years worth of lease payments.” | |
| 1:32:57 | Ending the walk-through | The chair: “We're we're almost at ten. I'd like to. I think we're starting to lose people.” O'Neill gives the total as “10 million, $8,180 or 3.2%” as transcribed. The superintendent: principals will work on the budget the morning of January 4 and the board will discuss it that evening. | |
| 1:35:34 | Grants accepted | LeClair: “It's the $5,000 from the Hope Foundation.” Accepted on Adrian's motion by voice vote. Then “One is from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and anonymous donor for $2,000.” and the second “from the Greater Claremont Board of Realtors”, $1,100, for the One for All space at 169 Main Street, where the district is applying for a child-care license “for up to four infants” of high-school students, with a parenting component, so they can finish school. | HIGH MED |
| 1:39:13 | Policies deferred | The chair: “We'll bring those up next time.” | |