Participants
Names follow the project's 2015-2023 roster and attribution report; no minutes exist to confirm spellings or attendance. District employees named in the budget lines are described by position, not named.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Brian Rapp | Chair | Presides; adds public comment to the agenda; explains past cuts, budget freezes and fund balance; calls the motion for the nonpublic session. Says he “wasn't here for the discussion about when this meeting was scheduled” (0:03:02). |
| Chris Irish | Vice chair | Keeps the master spreadsheet of questions and will send it to the business administrator; argues the board's authority is the bottom line, not staffing decisions. |
| Michelle Pierce | Member | Raises many lines where budgeted amounts exceeded actual spending; moves the nonpublic session. |
| Frank Sprague | Member | Leads the Stevens High School review; finds duplicate salary lines and asks about new positions and full-year staff. |
| Rebecca Zullo | Member | Raises transparency about positions the board was not told of; asks about school board line items; keeps a separate list of questions. |
| Dr. Alex Herzog | Member | Addressed by name (0:50:12); no speech is attributed to him with confidence (the CSV leaves two at-the-table voices unidentified). |
| Michael Petrin | Member (attribution low confidence) | Four short rows, including “No, no.” when asked if he has more on the high school (1:20:48). |
| Unidentified | Board members (two voices) | One explains a TSA line as a tax-sheltered annuity match (1:19:12); not separable between Herzog and Petrin. |
| Public comment: opened at 0:02:08 and closed at 0:02:34 with no speaker. |
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda survives. The chair refers to “And we have our agenda.” (0:01:00); the items below follow his transitions.
Items in the order taken up, with dispositions heard on the recording
| Taken up | Item | Disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:14 | Call to order; pledge; roll | Roll taken as “Everybody's here.” |
| 0:01:00 | Agenda | Zullo asks for a nonpublic session at the end: “RSA 9183 personnel.” [RSA 91-A:3]. The chair: “it isn't there, but I'm going to add public comment.” Approved as amended on Pierce's motion, voice vote (0:01:58). |
| 0:02:08 | Public comment | No speakers. |
| 0:02:34 | Discussion: [FY20]19 budget | Line-by-line review: Stevens High School and the tech center (0:54:46), the middle school (1:21:10), Bluff (1:32:55), Maple Avenue and Disnard (2:15:32), district-wide and school board lines (2:32:58). No votes. |
| 2:45:03 | Process for the question list | Irish to send one spreadsheet to the business administrator (flag 3). |
| 2:47:28 | Nonpublic session | The chair: “With that I need a motion for nonpublic.” Pierce: “I'd like to make a motion to go into nonpublic.” The chair adds “For personnel.” A second is noted; no vote is heard before the recording is shut off (flag 1). |
Discussion timeline
Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/9470 SchoolBoard112917.mp4.CSV) and link into the recording.
Topics in order; hover or focus a summary to expand it
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:01:33 | Public comment added | The chair adds public comment to an agenda that lacked it; no one speaks (0:02:34). | POSITIVE |
| 0:03:32 | How to proceed | Sprague proposes starting at the high school this year, and recalls the superintendent saying a second year of cuts “we would have to be looking at personnel”; “we have not received any recommendations from the administration based on the constraints that we put on the administration around data driven staff reductions.” He proposes a class-capacity (saturation) study (0:06:54). | |
| 0:11:57 | Last year's Saturday session | Irish: “we had our Saturday session, we came up with our thoughts and then we got together.” and the board “found a ton of stuff they hadn't even thought of”. | |
| 0:12:57 | Comparisons and affordability | Irish compares Claremont's per-pupil cost with similar districts but argues the question is what the community can afford. Rapp: last year's budget was cut “75,000” while the tax rate rose because revenues changed. | |
| 0:17:39 | The directive, from two who were absent | Pierce: “you guys had a meeting and Brian and I unfortunately were not part of that.” The administration “came back with a 1.7 million increase”; she wants special education reviewed. | |
| 0:20:18 | Technology in the budget or a warrant article | Rapp: technology has been kept in the operating budget because “A warrant is sort of a hit or miss.” Irish would consider putting a disputed item on the ballot: “Let the voters have that say.” | |
| 0:22:36 | Consolidating the elementary schools | A new high school would have cost about $42 million and “We don't have the bonding capacity.” Pierce estimates “$5 million less a year if we consolidated”; Irish: real tax relief requires consolidation. | |
| 0:26:44 | Which draft | Members work from a draft dated 11/15; Irish has one the business administrator sent dated 11/29 (0:26:48). | |
| 0:27:03 | Duplicate salary lines | A paraprofessional appears twice: “we just found $16,584.75 in a typo error of a double on a paraprofessional.” A truant officer's salary is also listed twice, “Nine $39,802.” Sprague: “Maybe he found this error already. Maybe not.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:30:36 | Positions that changed | Sprague questions a truant officer now full time, curriculum specialist positions that replaced a single curriculum director (“So it looks like we've taken one job and split it into three.”), a nurse now listed as a program assistant, and an added secretary at the high school (0:46:54). | OBSERVATION |
| 0:38:49 | Full-year staff | Sprague proposes reviewing which non-teaching staff work the full year, recalling his earlier proposal to put both middle school assistant principals on 220-day contracts (0:39:29). | |
| 0:48:20 | Hires the board did not see | Zullo: “sometimes there's been people hired since I've been on the board that we haven't approved well, even known about.” Irish: “I think they were restructured. If they were, we don't have any say in that.” Rapp disagrees (0:50:36); Irish: “Our job is not to micromanage.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:54:46 | Stevens High School lines | Lines where actual spending ran well under budget, guidance dues and fees, student activity fees and the senior celebration (1:02:53), which Irish says he is “used to student activities being money that's raised by fundraising and put in a separate account, not in the budget.” | |
| 1:13:52 | Money moved between lines | Irish: money “could have very well spent that money on a different line item somewhere else”. Rapp credits the business administrator with “fixing a lot of fairness” [errors] in misplaced lines. Pierce tallies “almost $90,000 in just 4 or 5 different things”. | |
| 1:22:23 | Special education paraprofessionals | Members ask whether every special education paraprofessional serves a student's IEP and is Medicaid-reimbursable; Irish: “Just middle school alone is almost $300,000 in Paris.” [paras] | |
| 1:44:37 | The absent business administrator | Pierce: “Mike, I hope you're watching this so that you can.” Rapp explains grant money appears as both expense and revenue (1:44:39). | |
| 2:04:37 | Budget freezes and fund balance | Rapp on unspent lines: “that's what a budget freeze will look like though”; unspent money “All goes into fund balance. It doesn't just disappear.” Irish: “we actually pay taxes on it that we didn't necessarily have to spend”. | |
| 2:06:51 | Break | Five-minute break; the review resumes at 2:07:42. | |
| 2:08:14 | Bus drivers | Members count about 17 driver salaries and ask what drivers do between routes. | |
| 2:32:58 | School board lines | Zullo: of the school board line, “what was spent out of this was 160,000 169,000”; she questions some charges, including a deli bill that members connect to a mediation day (2:35:59). Rapp: “we're not going to be in negotiations with the teachers for two years.” Meeting notices are advertised in the newspaper (2:37:31). | |
| 2:43:22 | Technology contracting down | Irish: technology contracted services fell from “120,700. It is now budgeted at 48,000.” “Expanding the IT department has absolutely done what we hoped it did.” | |
| 2:45:03 | Sending the questions | Irish will circulate the spreadsheet, take members' additions by email, and send it once he has “everybody's blessing by like tomorrow night”; “I'll copy everybody in because it's informational. Just don't go back and forth.” | OBSERVATION |
| 2:45:54 | Joint meeting with the City Council | Irish confirms the December joint meeting with the council is cancelled until the budget is done (2:46:21). | |
| 2:47:28 | Nonpublic session | Motion “Personnel hearing for personnel.”; the chair: “So we have a motion who was seconded.” and “And just write it down.” Then: “Just tell him to shut off. Yeah, he just shut off.” | HIGH |
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 November 29, 2017, or is labeled an observation where no verified rule applies.
HIGH Nonpublic session entered "for personnel", with no exemption cited and no vote heard
RSA 91-A:3, I(b), in the text in force for 2017, requires that "Any motion to enter nonpublic session shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II", and that the vote be a recorded roll call. The motion at 2:47:31 is “I'd like to make a motion to go into nonpublic.”, completed by the chair's “For personnel.” and the mover's “Personnel hearing for personnel.” "Personnel" is not a paragraph II ground; the statute's employee-related grounds are II(a) (dismissal, promotion, compensation or discipline of an employee) and II(b) (hiring), and reputation is II(c). The chair then notes “So we have a motion who was seconded.” and the recording is shut off (2:47:51) with no roll call heard. Mitigation: when the session was added to the agenda, the mover cited “RSA 9183 personnel.” (0:01:23), which reads as RSA 91-A:3 but still names no paragraph. If a roll call was taken after the camera stopped, it was not public in any surviving form, and no minutes exist (flag 2) to show the vote, the ground or any decision; RSA 91-A:3, III required nonpublic minutes and decisions to be disclosed within 72 hours unless sealed by a recorded two-thirds vote.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(a)-(c), III (2016 codification; source note ends 2016, 30:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2017)
MEDIUM No agenda, notice or minutes for this session survive in any district share
A budget study session of the full board is a meeting under RSA 91-A:2, I (a convening of a quorum to discuss matters within its jurisdiction), and the 2017 text of RSA 91-A:2, II required notice 24 hours ahead and minutes including "the names of members, persons appearing before the public bodies, and a brief description of the subject matter discussed and final decisions", "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting". MAP.md records no Drive material for this meeting: the district's shares hold no year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023. This page applies the MEDIUM limb of the project's severity rule because the record mitigates the gap: the superintendent said on November 15 that he would post the session, and the board was producing minutes at the time (it approved the November 1 minutes on November 15). The gap still matters: the recording stops at the nonpublic session, so its business is unrecorded anywhere (flag 1).
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, I-II (2016 codification; source note ends 2016, 29:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2017); November 15, 2017 page
OBSERVATION Members' sign-off on the question list was to be gathered by email
The vice chair proposed to circulate the spreadsheet, take each member's additions by email, and send it to the business administrator once he had “everybody's blessing by like tomorrow night” (2:46:25). He framed it as information only: “I'll copy everybody in because it's informational. Just don't go back and forth.” (2:46:50). RSA 91-A:2-a, I requires public bodies to deliberate "only in meetings", and ¶II provides that communications outside a meeting, "including, but not limited to, sequential communications among members", shall not be used to circumvent the chapter. Exchanging information is permitted; collecting every member's approval of a list the board will put to the administration is closer to the line, because the approval is a collective decision. The instruction against back-and-forth shows awareness of the rule. Whether any approval was in fact exchanged by email is not on the record.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2-a, I-II (2016 codification; source note 2008, 303:4)
OBSERVATION The first-draft budget carried two duplicated salary lines
Members found a paraprofessional listed twice (“$16,584.75 in a typo error of a double on a paraprofessional”, 0:27:53) and a truant officer's salary listed twice at “39 802.44” (0:32:25), together about $56,387 of apparent overstatement in the draft. Members were also working from two different versions of the draft, dated 11/15 and 11/29 (0:26:44), and could not tell whether the later one had already corrected the errors (0:26:57). The business administrator was not present to answer. No rule is cited; the point is the reliability of the figures on which the $1.2 million directive was being measured, and whether the corrected draft removed both lines would be shown in the December budget documents.
Sources: Dialogue/9470 SchoolBoard112917.mp4.CSV (rows 183 to 239)
OBSERVATION Members say positions were created or changed without the board's knowledge
Reviewing the payroll lines, members questioned a truant officer position now full time, a curriculum director's role split into three specialist positions (0:35:10), a nurse relisted as a program assistant (0:37:49) and an added high school secretary (0:46:54). Zullo: “we didn't get told about another secretary to the high school.” (0:49:46). Irish said of restructured positions “we don't have any say in that”, and “we legally we don't have any” [say beyond the total]; Rapp disputed that the board had been kept uninformed (0:50:36). The statute that does give the board a say is RSA 189:39: "Superintendents shall nominate and school boards elect all teachers". It covers teachers, not secretaries, nurses or coordinators, so the positions named here are not, on the record, a breach. The board's other lever is the budget it adopts, which is what this session was using.
Sources: RSA 189:39 (source note ends 1971, 371:2; the same text governs 2017)
POSITIVE Public comment added to a work-session agenda that lacked it
The agenda for this study session had no public comment period. The chair added one on his own initiative: “it isn't there, but I'm going to add public comment.” (0:01:33), and opened it before any business (0:02:08). In 2017 no statute required a school board to take public comment; RSA 189:74's 30-minute rule dates from 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022. The session was also held on camera although the board described it as a work session, which is what RSA 91-A requires of any convening of a quorum to discuss board business.
Sources: RSA 189:74 (2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022; not law on this date); RSA 91-A:2, I (2016 codification)
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast: SCHOOL BOARD MEETING 11-29-17 (show 9470)
- Google Drive: no packet folder, agenda or minutes. MAP.md: "neither share holds a year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023 (checked 9/26/26)." Not searched again for this page, per the run instructions for meetings with no Drive material.
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/9470 SchoolBoard112917.mp4.CSV (1,981 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Dialogue/9442 SchoolBoard111517.mp4.CSV (November 15, 2017, when this session was scheduled)Input/Videos/9470 SchoolBoard112917.mp4Input/Transcripts/9470 SchoolBoard112917.mp4.jsonInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 48Scripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/9470 SchoolBoard112917.mp4.md (speaker attribution report)
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:2, I-II, 2016 codification (the text in force for calendar 2017): meeting defined; notice; minutes content and five-business-day inspection
- RSA 91-A:2-a, I-II, 2016 codification: deliberate only in meetings; no circumvention by outside communications
- RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(a)-(c), III, 2016 codification: nonpublic motion must state the exemption; roll call; 72-hour disclosure
- RSA 189:39 (source note ends 1971): superintendents nominate and boards elect all teachers
- Context only: RSA 189:74, public comment period, enacted 2022, 333:1, eff. Sept. 6, 2022, so not law on this date