Participants
Everyone heard or addressed on the recording. There are no minutes to check spellings against; names follow the project's 2015-2023 roster and the attribution report for this recording, and the participation cell says where a name rests on a single transcribed mention.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Brian Rapp | Chair | Presides. Asks for staffing encumbrances by school once hiring is done, questions whether a board-only session is needed at all ("This is our this is our meeting", 1:02:05), asks whether a 9:00 high-school start is feasible, and proposes reusing the old policy's definition of an official school function. |
| Chris Irish | Vice chair | Asks how Pathways to Success will be funded after year one, questions a posted in-school suspension monitor position, presses for a board-only session on budget goals before the administration presents a budget, offers to arrange the room, and questions the drug-free workplace policy's alcohol rule. |
| Patrick Adrian | Member | Raises a state robotics grant and the existing 4-H program, asks for a shorter Saturday goals meeting, asks about the YRBS exception in the survey policy and the religious-objection language in the health-education policy, and moves the early release change. |
| Frank Sprague | Member | Asks for faculty saturation studies and 2016-17 actuals, describes himself as "a fiscal conservative" (0:47:06), moves the calendar change, and proposes edits to the guidance and child-abuse reporting policies. |
| Rebecca Zullo | Member | Called Becca in the roll call and Becky by Irish (1:07:28); describes herself as a Newbie (0:43:16). Asks about the $1.95 payment fee, wants the budget work to "just get to the meat and potatoes", and questions the drug-free workplace and health-education policies. |
| Michael Petrin | Member | Answers the roll call (0:00:45). Supports a group-consensus session (1:08:23), raises child-care costs for families under the split early release, and asks why head lice is on the future agenda again. Several of his rows are assigned by elimination in the attribution report. |
| Michelle Pierce | Member | Called in the roll call (0:00:45); no answer is heard and she does not speak. Probably absent; not confirmed. |
| Middleton McGoodwin | Superintendent, SAU 6 | Report on induction and mentoring, Pathways to Success and GEAR UP; food service and the free and reduced-price application glitch; strategic plan next steps; asks how the board wants to set budget dates; presents the calendar correction, nominations and policies. |
| Cory LeClair | Assistant superintendent, SAU 6 | "it was my error, not Middleton's" on the calendar (1:17:47); explains the quarter-end and conference changes, the split early release model and the robotics grant terms; reports open positions. |
| Michael O'Neill | Business administrator, SAU 6 | Explains the $1.95 card fee as "a credit card processing fee" (0:24:41) and offers a staffing encumbrance report. Surname from the project roster; not said on this recording. |
| Mary Woodman | Clerk (recording secretary) | Calls the roll (0:00:45). |
| Unidentified | Various | 141 of 960 dialogue rows (14.7%), including most seconds and several motions. |
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda survives. The chair refers to "an agenda in front of us" (0:00:59) and the superintendent to items by Roman numeral (0:57:08); the items below are reconstructed from the chair's transitions.
| Taken up | Item | What was said and done |
|---|
| 0:00:05 | Call to order, pledge, roll call | "Welcome, everybody, to first board meeting after the start of the new school year." Roll call at 0:00:45. |
| 0:00:59 | Agenda | No edits. Sprague: "Accept the agenda as presented." Second; "All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great." |
| 0:01:18 | Minutes of August 16, 2017 | No edits recorded; motion and second not separately audible; "Everybody in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay." (0:02:00). |
| 0:02:20 | Superintendent's report | Report and questions. |
| 0:18:21 | Citizens' comments | "Nobody's here." None. |
| 0:18:27 | Discussion: 2017-18 school year update (food service) | No vote. |
| 0:30:20 | Discussion: strategic action plan | No vote. |
| 0:35:57 | Discussion: fiscal year 2019 budget meeting dates; budget expectations | The board settles by consensus on a board-only goals and expectations session for Saturday, September 30, at 1:00 (1:14:04, 1:14:54); Irish to find a room. No vote. The "expectations" discussion itself is deferred to that session (1:01:20). |
| 1:16:45 | Action: school calendar correction | Voting day is November 7, not 14; parent-teacher conferences move to November 6. Sprague moves to "accept the administration's recommendation for moving of the parent teacher conference day and voting day" (1:24:10); the quarter-end date is left for later. "I second that." (1:25:35, in Sprague's voice cluster; see the method note); "All in favor I, I opposed. Great." (1:26:05). |
| 1:26:10 | Action: early release day schedule | Elementary students in the morning, middle and high school in the afternoon, on all five early release days. Adrian: "So moved. Yes." (1:38:04); second; "All in favor? Aye. Opposed?" (1:38:12). |
| 1:38:21 | Action: nominations | Six staff nominations (a grade 2 teacher, a guidance counselor, an alternative program teacher, two middle-school ELA teachers and a Title I teacher). Motion (unidentified), Adrian Second. (1:39:39); "All in favor? ... Aye." Approved. |
| 1:39:53 | Policy ILDA, non-academic surveys and questionnaires, second read | Sprague: "Make a motion to approve that for second read and move to third." (1:42:21); "All in favor? Opposed?" (1:42:28). |
| 1:42:37 | Policies, first read: GBC drug-free workplace and drug-free schools; JLD school guidance and counseling; IHAM health education and exemption from instruction; JLF reporting child abuse or neglect; and others listed by the superintendent (1:39:59) | Edits agreed in discussion: remove "addressing the effectiveness of the school counseling program" from JLD (1:53:56); carry over the old policy's definition of an official school function into GBC (2:00:14); add "or designee" after "principal" in JLF (2:10:30). Sprague: "I make a motion. We move this group of policies forward to second read." (2:12:41); "All in favor? I posed." (2:12:55). |
| 2:13:07 | Future agenda | September 20: scheduling committee progress report and the early childhood program; the curriculum coordinators' report postponed. |
| 2:15:55 | Adjournment | Motion (unidentified), second; "All in favor? Aye. Opposed?" |
Discussion timeline
Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/9315 SchoolBoard090617.mp4.CSV) and link into the recording. Quotations are as transcribed; bracketed words are corrections, with the transcript's wording kept where the correction changes sense.
Chronological topics with the most concrete material first.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:04:03 | Pathways to Success; GEAR UP | Ten students, most from Stevens, will earn free college credit with River Valley Community College, with room for four more: "you can almost earn an associate degree in college credit before you graduate from high school." GEAR UP week is "September 17th to 23, 2017" (0:07:22). | |
| 0:10:11 | A state robotics grant | Adrian would rather support the existing 4-H robotics program than start a rival one. LeClair: maximum awards of $1,000 for an elementary kit, $1,500 middle and $5,000 high school, plus staff stipends (0:13:29), with a sponsor letter required. Adrian: the program says it needs volunteers more than money (0:15:44). | |
| 0:17:00 | Who pays for Pathways next year? | Irish: "this year it's all funded by donations" and "if they're talking for years, they have $50,000. I don't think that's going to pay for four years worth of education for 14 kids." (0:18:00). The superintendent: "It is donations. You're right and is not being funded by our school district." | |
| 0:19:09 | Food service, week one | "90% of our, our, our employees are our former employees with with the Abbey Group". A glitch affected "30 parents": an online application that checked Medicaid blocked the income section, and "just because one receiving assistance through Medicaid doesn't automatically mean that they'd be eligible for free reduced lunch." (0:22:38). | |
| 0:23:47 | The $1.95 fee | Zullo: "I just think about parents who are week to week paychecks and the new two bucks adds up." O'Neill: "It's a credit card processing fee" and "a check is always welcome and it doesn't cost anything." Adrian asks whether the alternatives were explained to parents (0:24:53). | |
| 0:25:35 | Cafeteria experience | Sprague: some students avoid the cafeteria for social reasons, not the food. Stevens now has three lunch periods (0:27:15); students welcome metal silverware (0:28:50); less food waste at two elementary schools (0:29:50). | |
| 0:30:23 | Strategic plan: first steps | Principals will review year-one initiatives; a facilities team will look at building use, "grade configurations, enrollment projections, current schedules, and even the calendar" (0:32:23). Rising kindergarten numbers could argue for one kindergarten site (0:33:28). The superintendent recommends a strategic plan item "at every meeting" (0:34:03). | |
| 0:36:01 | Setting fiscal year 2019 budget dates | "We are five weeks into fiscal year 18". Adrian and Irish want a board-only goals meeting first; Irish: last year was "by far the best budget cycle I've ever been involved in" (0:38:28), and real savings mean "it's going to take millions" and "potentially with consolidation" (0:41:14). Zullo: "sometimes I go home and think, we didn't even really do anything." (0:43:17). | |
| 0:45:10 | Data before cuts | Sprague wants faculty "saturation studies" and "actuals for 1617 because we did some we didn't have those actuals last year" (0:45:34), so any staff reductions are "data driven". He calls himself "a fiscal conservative". | |
| 0:47:39 | Open positions | Paras, substitutes, a Title I position, a system-of-care social worker. A high-school secretary posting reflects a paraprofessional moved laterally (0:50:34). Irish on a posted full-time in-school suspension monitor: "That's a position we're paying for." The superintendent: it "has been in the budget for a while." (0:51:03). | |
| 0:52:37 | Staffing encumbrances | Rapp asks for "the encumbrances for staffing" by school; O'Neill: "I can run a report that will show me the encumbrances for the benefits in total cost for the year." (0:53:28). | |
| 0:57:08 | What "expectations" means | The superintendent: if the board says "no percentage increase budget has to stay the same", that is "a clear expectation". Irish wants the board to set goals before administrators present: "I don't want to talk to the administration until the budgets before us." (1:00:26). Rapp: "This is our this is our meeting." (1:02:05). Irish says last year's sessions found "$1 million"; Sprague: "We found some errors." (1:04:49). | OBS |
| 1:05:57 | A Saturday session is a board meeting | Rapp: "Whatever we have on Saturday, a Saturday meeting is a board meeting, right?" An unidentified voice: "It'll be televised." Petrin supports getting "a group consensus" (1:08:23); Sprague: rather than "laying the bomb on Corey" with an $800,000 cut late, say so first (1:08:41). | OBS |
| 1:14:04 | September 30 at 1:00 | Adrian: "It just has to be politically nounced, right?" [publicly announced] Irish: "Yeah. It doesn't have to be recorded." (1:15:43); he may use the community center to avoid a custodian, or "set up a tripod" (1:15:52). "the corpus of that meeting post will be for the board to meet as a board to discuss goals and expectations." (1:16:13). | OBS |
| 1:16:48 | Calendar error | "We incorrectly listed November 14th as voting day. It is November 7th". Schools close on voting day for congestion and security. Teachers' association leaders spotted the error; the superintendent will review the change with them the next day, since the contract gives teachers a say (1:21:59). Sprague: "the requirement is 990 hours, right?" (1:23:41). | |
| 1:26:10 | Split early release | Training "close to 170 teachers and another 120 pairs" [paras] at once is impractical (1:26:43), and high-school students may do better starting later. Petrin: "there is an added cost to a family." (1:31:19). Sprague: late-start talks are always derailed by "custodial concerns as opposed to educational concerns" (1:33:33). The first early release day is October 27 (1:31:10). | |
| 1:38:24 | Six nominations | Read from a cover letter that also summarizes the August 22-25 induction and mentoring program. Approved. | |
| 1:39:59 | "A ton of new policy" | "we have a ton of new policy due to legislative changes." Each draft comes "with the recommendation of New Hampshire School Board Association" (1:41:01). On ILDA the superintendent confirms "youth risk behavior surveys will not be affected by this." (1:42:03). | |
| 1:42:57 | Drug-free workplace awareness program | Zullo: the draft says the district provides a drug-free awareness program; "Does the school district do that already?" The superintendent: "In order to be employed, one must go through a drug screening protocol." LeClair: "Not that I've seen, but we can check." (1:43:54). Zullo's concern about the district paying for counseling turns out to be in the 2004 policy, not the draft (1:47:41). | OBS |
| 1:48:50 | Guidance program reporting | Sprague objects that an annual report "Addressing the effectiveness of the school counseling program" reads as evaluating the counselors; the superintendent agrees to drop the phrase (1:53:56) and says "Not every district has a public discussion about student performance." (1:54:53). | POS |
| 1:55:24 | Alcohol at "official school functions" | Irish asks whether a cocktail at a conference reception would breach the draft. Rapp reads the old policy's definition: "An official school function is defined as one which is authorized and conducted by the school, with school officials present in charge and on duty" (2:00:14), and the board agrees to carry it over. | |
| 2:01:11 | Health-education exemptions | Rapp reads the opt-out for "religious reasons or religious objections" (2:02:42). The superintendent: the new element is "notification two weeks in advance" (2:03:06). Asked whether parents can opt out of health education "for any reason": "Absolutely. They can. Yes they can." (2:06:45); earlier, "Parents do not have the right to decide if their child will be educated. Parents have the right to decide how." (2:05:42). | OBS |
| 2:08:24 | Reporting child abuse | Sprague: the policy says staff "shall immediately report his her suspicions to the building principal" and should add "or designee". Later: "a lot of staff members are very nervous about calling DC [DCYF], leaving their name with DC" and "this is a good policy and it puts it on the administration." (2:11:51). Zullo asks whether staff still get training; the superintendent: staff sign that they have reviewed the policy (2:11:34). | OBS |
| 2:13:07 | September 20 agenda; head lice again | Petrin: "the review of the head lice. I feel like we were just there." The superintendent: it is "a placeholder" because the member who raised it was absent on August 2 (2:15:13). | |
Items flagged for review
These flags are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each one names the rule it rests on, as that rule read on September 6, 2017, or is labeled an observation where no verified rule applies.
MEDIUM No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting survive in any district share
MAP.md records no Drive material: the district's shares hold no year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023. The recording is the only public account of the calendar change, the early release model, six nominations and the first-read edits to four policies. RSA 91-A:2, II, in the text in force for calendar 2017, required minutes including "names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, and a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions", open to inspection "not more than 5 business days after the meeting". This page applies the MEDIUM limb of the project's severity rule because the record mitigates the gap: the board approved its August 16 minutes on tape (0:02:00) and worked from a written agenda and packet, so minutes were being produced. What is missing is any public copy now. Without the minutes, Michelle Pierce's attendance cannot be confirmed.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2016 codification, the text for calendar 2017)
OBSERVATION A board-only budget session was set for September 30, with a member saying it need not be recorded; no record of it is in the corpus
Members agreed to meet as a board on Saturday, September 30, at 1:00 to set fiscal year 2019 budget goals without administrators presenting (1:14:54). The members treated it correctly as a public meeting: Rapp, "a Saturday meeting is a board meeting, right?" (1:05:57), and Adrian asked that it be publicly announced (1:15:41). A gathering of a quorum to discuss district business is a meeting under RSA 91-A:2, I, so it required 24 hours' notice and minutes under RSA 91-A:2, II. Irish said "It doesn't have to be recorded" (1:15:43), which is correct: the statute requires minutes, not video. But no recording of a September 30, 2017 session is in the project's Cablecast-based corpus, and no minutes survive, so the only public record of the board's budget expectations for fiscal year 2019, the subject members said matters most, is whatever minutes were taken that day. Irish also said a similar Saturday session the year before "was all noticed and one person showed up" (1:01:00).
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I and II (2016 codification: "convening of a quorum"; notice; minutes)
OBSERVATION The child-abuse reporting policy was praised for putting the report "on the administration", but the state duty to report falls on each staff member
The draft JLF policy, as read aloud, has staff "immediately report his her suspicions to the building principal" (2:08:24), and Sprague welcomed it because staff are "very nervous about calling DC [DCYF]" and "it puts it on the administration" (2:11:51). Under RSA 169-C:29, teachers and other school officials "having reason to suspect that a child has been abused or neglected shall report the same", and RSA 169-C:30 requires an oral report "immediately by telephone or otherwise" to the department. A policy that routes reports through the principal is common and lawful as an internal step, but it does not discharge the individual reporter's own duty. The full text of the draft is not on the record, so whether it says this is not known; the concern is that the board's discussion described the policy as relieving staff of the call. The superintendent's answer on training ("When in doubt, you move", 2:11:44) points the right way.
Sources: RSA 169-C:29 (2016 codification; who must report); RSA 169-C:30 (2016 codification; immediate oral report to the department)
OBSERVATION The board was told parents may opt a child out of health education "for any reason"; the statute is narrower
Asked whether parents can opt out of health education without a religious reason, the superintendent answered "Absolutely. They can. Yes they can." (2:06:45). RSA 186:11, IX-b, in the text in force that day, requires a policy allowing an exception to a unit of health or sex education "based on religious objections", with alternative learning; IX-c covers specific course material a parent finds "objectionable", on written notice to the principal, with an alternative "at the parent's expense". So a parent may object to particular material for any reason under IX-c, but the statute provides a wholesale exemption from a unit only on religious grounds. The superintendent was right that the new element in the draft is two weeks' advance notice: the 2017 codification, effective September 16, 2017, adds "not less than 2 weeks advance notice" of human-sexuality course material. Members asked why religion appears in the policy at all; the answer is that the statute puts it there.
Sources: RSA 186:11, IX-b and IX-c (2016 codification, in force to Sept. 15, 2017); RSA 186:11, IX-c (2017 codification, eff. Sept. 16, 2017: two weeks' notice)
OBSERVATION No one could say whether the district runs the drug-free awareness program its policy promises
The draft drug-free workplace policy commits the district to a drug-free awareness program for employees. Asked whether one exists, the superintendent described pre-employment drug screening (1:43:16) and the assistant superintendent said "Not that I've seen, but we can check." (1:43:54). Federal grantees must establish "a drug-free awareness program" informing employees of "the dangers of drug abuse in the workplace", the grantee's policy, "available drug counseling, rehabilitation, and employee assistance programs" and the penalties for violations. Screening applicants is a different thing. The district receives federal grants (about $3 million a year, per the business administrator on August 2), so the question Zullo asked is the right one; this record leaves it unanswered.
Sources: 41 U.S.C. §8103(a)(1)(B) (drug-free awareness program for grantees; Pub. L. 111-350, 2011, from the 1988 Act)
POSITIVE Members read the draft policies line by line and fixed three of them before second read
Members caught and corrected wording in three first-read policies: a guidance-program report that read as an evaluation of counselors (1:48:50), an undefined "official school function" in the drug-free workplace policy, fixed by carrying over the old policy's definition (2:00:14), and the absence of a designee in the child-abuse reporting chain (2:10:30). Zullo compared the draft against the 2004 policy and withdrew a concern once she saw it was in the old text (1:47:41). The superintendent invited the edits ("the board has every right to critique. Edit.", 1:52:44) and committed to public reporting of student performance data more than once a year (1:53:56). No statute requires this level of review; it is the board doing its policy-making job in public.
Sources: Cablecast: SCHOOL BOARD MEETING 9-6-17; Dialogue/9315 SchoolBoard090617.mp4.CSV (rows 694 to 900)
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/9315 SchoolBoard090617.mp4.CSV (960 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/9315 SchoolBoard090617.mp4Input/Transcripts/9315 SchoolBoard090617.mp4.jsonInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 39Scripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/9315 SchoolBoard090617.mp4.md (speaker attribution report)
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:2, I and II, 2016 codification (source note ends 2016, 29:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2017; the text for calendar 2017): meeting defined; notice; minutes content; five business days
- RSA 169-C:29 and RSA 169-C:30, 2016 codification: who must report suspected abuse; immediate oral report
- RSA 186:11, IX-b and IX-c, 2016 codification, and the 2017 codification (eff. Sept. 16, 2017): health and sex education exceptions; two weeks' notice
- 41 U.S.C. §8103: drug-free workplace requirements for federal grantees