Participants
From the chair’s opening attendance statement and the dialogue. No public comment period appears on the recording.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Candace Crawford | Board chair; Finance Subcommittee chair | Presided (195 rows); pressed on the SchoolCare payment, the September 30 grant deadline and the tuition agreements; asked about the budget calendar; agreed to take negotiating-team selection to the full board. |
| Heather Whitney | Board member; Finance Subcommittee | Asked about business-office vacancies, grant recovery, turnaround on purchase orders and bank-account policy; cited policy DB’s budget calendar; said she alone was nominated SREA representative in March and asked for a board nomination process. |
| Don Lavalette | Board member; Finance Subcommittee | Commented on the procurement guide’s fit with existing policy (“our number four says approved by the business administrator”). Rendered “our level” in the chair’s attendance statement. |
| Dr. Timothy Broadrick | Superintendent, SAU 6; acting as business administrator | Presented nearly every item (259 rows): the DOE-25 filing, held checks, the SchoolCare assessment, cash position, the business-administrator search, revenues and tuition, the forensic audit, staffing, the procurement guide, the budget calendar, negotiations and capital planning. |
| Tammy Cody | SAU 6 central-office staff (title not stated on the record) | Named in the chair’s attendance statement; 23 short interjections on staffing. Name as given in the dialogue file. |
Named on the record but not present: Michael Campo (Plodzik & Sanderson; rendered “Mike Campbell from Second Sanderson”), a Department of Education division director and a Department official the transcript renders “Marc Manganiello”, finance director Bob Gonyea, payables and payroll clerk Corey, grants clerk Katie Bullock, Vicki Lee, Tracy Hanson (out-of-district coordinator’s assistant), Heidi (Medicaid billing), former business administrator Matthew Angell and former finance director Lori, and Bill Madden (Capital Improvement Subcommittee). The district’s attorney on the forensic-audit contract is at Bernstein Shur.
Agenda
No agenda was posted to the district’s shares. The items below are reconstructed from the chair’s transitions, and labeled reconstructed.
| Taken up | Item (reconstructed) | Leading text from the dialogue / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:01 | Call to order; attendance | “Okay, let’s call the meeting to order.” At 0:00:10: “Present our level [Don Lavalette]. Heather Whitney, Candace Crawford, doctor Tim Broderick and Tammy Cody.” All three members present. |
| 0:00:23 | Old business: end of FY26 | “Let’s go to old business. Please give us any updates on the end of fiscal year 26.” DOE-25, held checks, SchoolCare, cash, the business-administrator search, revenues, grants. Discussion only. |
| 0:20:06 | Forensic audit status | Deposit check uncashed; a new Bernstein Shur attorney is following up. No action. |
| 0:21:00 | New business: business office | “Let’s move on to new business and and give us an update on the business office.” Role-by-role walkthrough; tuition agreements and receivables at 0:24:39. |
| 0:32:37 | Audit corrective actions | “I have to say, this next one seems like a biggie to me. Corrective actions.” The procurement guide shared with members for comment; five corrective-action areas at 0:57:22. |
| 0:57:47 | Budget calendar | Official-ballot (SB 2) cycle; policy DB; proposal by early November; board approval by the first January meeting. Calendar promised for the August 19 board meeting. |
| 1:02:31 | SREA negotiations | Who represents the board; cost items as a separate warrant article. The chair will take team selection to the board (1:05:35). |
| 1:07:13 | Capital Improvement Subcommittee | Superintendent to give the subcommittee a schedule and action plan. |
| 1:09:54 | Future items | “All right. I think that gets us down to future items.” The recording ends at 1:10:07 during a note on an SREA ground-rules meeting. The August 19 minutes give the next meeting as September 15 at 4:00 p.m. |
Discussion timeline
Chronological topics. Quotations are from the dialogue transcript as transcribed; bracketed text is an insertion or correction.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:51 | The year-end filing on unknown numbers | Broadrick has talked to the auditor and to a Department of Education division director. At 0:01:16: the Department and Revenue Administration “need end of the year financial statements”, which matter because “it goes to setting the tax rate for the city.” At 0:01:44: a surplus means “we’re going to get less money from the city”. At 0:02:25: the question is “how do we file end of the year financial report right when we know we don’t really know.” At 0:02:48: “normally if I filed a false 225 [DOE-25] report, I would be like, oh, you have to fire me now.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:04:09 | DOE-25 due date | “So do 25 [DOE-25] is due September 1st. And any district that asks can get a free days [an extension]. Right.” “So our time frame is two remaining weeks in August and September”. Crawford at 0:04:35: “so you get a six week window.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:04:37 | Held checks continued into FY26 | “look, we’re recording this. This is a public conversation. I don’t think it’s necessary to go to nonpublic for this.” At 0:05:03: “The old practice of holding checks did continue to occur during 2025, 2026.” At 0:05:28, on the checks the treasurer flagged: “those weren’t held intentionally. Corey was waiting for the business administrator or director of finance to help her with a process she didn’t know how to execute, and it took them until the end of June”. | MEDIUM POSITIVE |
| 0:05:49 | The $868,000 SchoolCare assessment | Crawford: “that $868,000, that paid like a third of it”. Broadrick at 0:06:18: “The mid-year assessment from school here [SchoolCare] that nobody budgeted for.” At 0:06:32: a payment agreement for thirds; at 0:06:43: “We have not yet paid the other two thirds.” “he did encumber the full amount.” At 0:07:04–0:07:08: “it’s really a cash management” issue, “not a balance sheet issue.” | OBSERVATION |
| 0:07:15 | Surplus on paper, cash in the bank | “cash management is really the area that ultimately the district slipped up on.” At 0:07:36: “we’ve got a $4 million surplus for fiscal. Right 26. Congratulations everybody. Right. But if we don’t have the money in the bank to meet obligations then.” At 0:08:08: “I’m going to get a handle on our cash position and release these checks.” At 0:16:09: the city’s first payment “is like a triple payment”. | MEDIUM |
| 0:08:46 | Acting business administrator | “I would love to hire a qualified business administrator, because the scary answer is mine. Because I’m the one right now.” At 0:08:55–0:09:03: “Which means I am including Mike Campo.” “In everything I do.” “When it comes to decision making in business office.” At 0:09:53: “I don’t think I can be the BA for the year.” Fallback at 0:09:53: find someone “with the raw materials and build our own.” At 0:11:49: “I don’t think that’s really sustainable.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:14:01 | A thin market | Claremont “Is seen as a professional risk.” At 0:14:22: “there is not a lot of people are clamoring to come to Clemmer [Claremont].” One candidate from another district still in talks (0:14:52); a decision expected “within a week or so” (0:15:38). | |
| 0:17:45 | Revenues possibly not billed | Tuition invoices were sent by the business administrator or finance director; “So I am now working on figuring out if that’s been done for the last two years”. “That’s a revenue issue.” At 0:18:36: unrecovered FY26 grant revenue otherwise goes “to our bottom line”. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:19:03 | Grant claims: September 30 first | Whitney: “Is any of the grant money from the previous fiscal year recoverable as well?” Broadrick at 0:19:21: “We actually have a year right, to recover the fiscal 26 funds.” “Because otherwise this is one of the things that used to happen here.” At 0:19:37: the business administrator “would submit their 25 report anticipating that revenue and”; Crawford: “Never submit the reports.” At 0:19:56: “So the 2425, you’ve got until what, September 30th to get that reimbursement. So that’s that’s the first priority.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:20:06 | Forensic audit in limbo | The attorney who handled the agreement is unavailable; an associate at Bernstein Shur has taken it up. At 0:20:30: “After approving this in May, you should a $10,000 deposit check. Right? They haven’t cashed it.” At 0:20:40: will they say “since we were acquired by a new company that charges more, we’re going to give you a new quote”? | OBSERVATION |
| 0:21:18 | Who does what in the business office | Finance director Bob Gonyea “has a level of accounting expertise and knowledge that he can be a problem solver” (0:22:46). At 0:22:00: the person processing free and reduced lunch data “can’t also be the person who certifies the data.” Katie “is learning is extremely complicated” grants claiming (0:23:08). At 0:24:01: “there’s never been a individual dedicated to receivables”. At 0:30:23: combining payables and payroll in one post, “planning and training to make that happen. Well, didn’t occur.” At 0:30:59: “capacity building has been missing for years.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:24:39 | Tuition agreements; Unity; CTE tuition | “So far, I’ve only actually been able to get my hands on one of them, and it gave me more questions than answers”: that agreement names Claremont the anchor district, while the sending district’s website names another. Crawford at 0:26:36: “with unity coming out of the saw [SAU], that was an agreement with unity for their students to come to Claremont.” At 0:26:57: “I’m in a little bit of a race against the clock with this.” At 0:28:01: “districts under New Hampshire law must pay not may shall pay, vocational training.” At 0:28:45: “The good news is 75% of that tuition gets reimbursed by the state.” | OBSERVATION OBSERVATION |
| 0:32:37 | Corrective action 1: the procurement guide | “It’ll give us control over procurement and spending.” (0:32:44) “It’ll fix 75% of the problem.” (0:33:15) Asked whether Claremont had one: “You don’t have anything like this. Nothing like this.” (0:33:33) At 0:35:00: he sent it to the auditor, who “called back and was like, perfect.” At 0:36:10: “I wrote this in 2019 for a district that had just suffered embezzling.” “there is no purchasing without a purchase order.” | POSITIVE |
| 0:36:54 | Thresholds and rules | A $20,000 threshold to be set in policy. At 0:42:32: “if I just split my $22,000 purchase into three, nope. You you broke the rules.” At 0:42:50: “if you’re spending more than 5000, you must seek three quotes.” At 0:44:06: “petty cash limited to $50”. At 0:46:30: “right now we don’t have any district credit cards.” At 0:47:04: “Above $20,000, you go to the business administrator and we issue an RFP period.” | POSITIVE |
| 0:41:33 | Who approves purchase orders | “What I won’t allow, though, is the payables bookkeeper to approve the POS.” At 0:41:59: “I will not have my own account in the accounting system. Right. Because I oversee it.” At 0:42:23: “So right now I sit next to Corey, the payables clerk, and I let her approve them, as I say, yes, yes, yes. And I watch her do it.” | MEDIUM |
| 0:47:25 | Contracts, insurance and service logs | “the district has been entering into professional services contracts year after year after year after year with some of the same providers”; an RFQ produced a certificate of insurance “which we should have had” (0:48:20). Out-of-district special-education schools replied “we don’t issue contracts to school districts” (0:49:02); “What that means is they’ve just been sending us bills.” (0:49:46) At 0:50:32: “Every invoice must be accompanied by service logs”. | POSITIVE |
| 0:51:34 | Policy alignment | “these links and references are all to Alton and Farmstead [Barnstead] District policies currently.” Crawford at 0:53:08: “This is the written documentation for the procedure that they were looking for.” | |
| 0:54:12 | Bank accounts; manifest review | Whitney: opening of bank accounts “was a huge problem that we had.” At 0:54:57: “there’s no real reference document”; “we do have a manifest review policy now, but it never existed.” At 0:56:22: so the next board “they don’t just rubber stamp the manifest because they don’t know what they should be really looking for.” | |
| 0:57:51 | Budget calendar | “Do we really follow up two [SB 2] rules and not city rules?” Proposal “By the beginning of November” (0:58:35). Crawford at 0:58:43: “it has to be approved, like, the first meeting in January. Because we have to have the hearing in February to have the meeting in March.” Whitney at 0:59:07: policy DB starts “no later than the last meeting in August.” Broadrick at 0:59:16: the calendar will come “for next week.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:01:03 | Televised budget meetings | Whitney: “We’ve also had a lot of these meetings around budget season tell lies [televised] by CCTV.” On roundtable formats at 1:02:19: “you can’t really hear what the conversations are. And for public transparency.” | POSITIVE |
| 1:02:31 | Who negotiates with the SREA | Crawford: “the three of us are on the Syria [SREA] negotiations.” Whitney at 1:03:05: “We didn’t vote for that.” At 1:03:48: “I was nominated as the SRA representative. I’m the only as a representative that was nominated in March.” At 1:04:06: “I want a nomination process.” At 1:05:29: “I think the whole board select who who the representatives are.” Crawford: “I will do that.” | OBSERVATION |
| 1:05:52 | Cost items on the ballot | “the cost impact of a tentative agreement has to be listed as a separate warrant article. On the ballot, we will develop a budget that shows no salary increases.” At 1:06:15: “So we actually have three this year” (teachers, custodians, and possibly a third unit). | OBSERVATION |
| 1:07:24 | Capital planning | Broadrick will give the Capital Improvement Subcommittee “a schedule and an action plan” (1:08:33) using a basic five-year template. Whitney at 1:07:59: announce the meeting cadence. | |
| 1:09:57 | SREA ground rules | “I’ve had some correspondence with the SRA about a ground rules meeting. They’re all unavailable next week, so I.” The recording ends. | |
Items flagged for review
These flags are a reviewer’s aid. They are not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each flag cites the rule it rests on; an Observation rests on no confirmed rule.
HIGH A noticed, recorded meeting of a public body with no agenda, packet or minutes in any district share
A subcommittee of a school board is a public body, and its minutes must be available for public inspection within five business days. For a meeting after August 22, 2025 they must also state the start and end times and who produced them. The August 5 board agenda gave the date and time, and the recording shows a quorum of all three members conducting business (0:00:10). As of September 25, forty-four days later, no agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting appear in the district’s shares (MAP.md section 131, re-confirmed September 24; a Drive search for the date repeated September 25). The August 19 board draft minutes give only a report that “The committee met August 12. The meeting was recorded and made available on CCTV.” The recording itself ends mid-sentence at 1:10:07, before adjournment. This applies the HIGH limb of the project’s missing-records rule: minutes are absent from every district share and nothing on the record explains the absence. Mitigating: the meeting was televised, and the subcommittee has drafted minutes before (a June 19 draft exists outside the district’s public share, per MAP.md section 127), which suggests the gap is posting rather than keeping.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (“any committee, subcommittee, or subordinate body thereof”); RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes within 5 business days; start and end times and producer, 2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025); 8.19.26 DRAFT CSB Minutes, subcommittee reports.
MEDIUM The DOE-25 must be filed by September 1 under the chair’s perjury certification, on figures the superintendent says are not known
The superintendent framed the task as how to “file end of the year financial report right when we know we don’t really know” (0:02:25), and is arranging a meeting with the Department of Education and the auditor to agree an approach (0:03:43–0:03:56). The financial report “shall be submitted on or before September 1 of each year” and must carry the governing-body chair’s certification “under the pains and penalties of perjury” that it is “true, accurate and complete.” The superintendent said “any district that asks” can have until the end of September (0:04:09); the statute contains no extension for the September 1 report, so any additional time is Department practice rather than law. From July 1, 2026 the reenacted section also lets the commissioner withhold state grant funding (other than RSA 198:40-a adequacy aid) from a non-compliant district “until the audit or financial report is completed and submitted”. The grant estimate in the report must match what is actually claimed; booking grant revenue never claimed “is one of the things that used to happen here” (0:19:21), and 2024–25 claims close September 30 (0:19:56). Graded MEDIUM because the deadline had not passed at this meeting and the administration was working toward it openly.
Sources: 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 272 (SB 586), approved July 2, 2026, eff. July 1, 2026: RSA 198:4-d, III and VIII as reenacted (the ¶III certification predates the 2026 law); 20 U.S.C. §1225(b) (one additional fiscal year of availability).
Corrected 2026-09-25. An earlier version of this page cited RSA 21-J:34 for the September 1 filing date and said SB 586 added a perjury-attested certification and withholding of all state funding. RSA 21-J:34, II governs the appropriations report filed within 20 days; the September 1 financial report is RSA 198:4-d, III, whose chair’s certification predates SB 586; the withholding in ¶VIII excludes RSA 198:40-a funding. See Data Quality Report C1.156.
MEDIUM The superintendent is his own business administrator, and the payables clerk approves purchase orders at his side
With the business administrator gone, “the scary answer is mine” (0:08:46), and the superintendent does not consider the arrangement sustainable (0:11:49). He stated sound rules: the payables bookkeeper must not approve purchase orders, and he keeps no account in the accounting system (0:41:33–0:41:59). He then described current practice as the payables clerk approving them in the system while he watches (0:42:23), which puts approval and payment in the same login. Internal control over federal awards requires reasonable assurance that transactions are properly authorized. He also said he includes the auditor “In everything I do” in business-office decisions (0:08:55–0:09:03); the August 19 draft minutes record the board discussing “auditor independence”. Mitigation: a finance director started August 3, the treasurer now reviews disbursements, and the superintendent expected to know about a candidate within a week.
Sources: 2 CFR 200.303 (internal control over federal awards); 8.19.26 DRAFT CSB Minutes, finance report.
MEDIUM Checks were still being written and held during FY26, the practice the auditor tied to the misstated balances
The superintendent: “The old practice of holding checks did continue to occur during 2025, 2026” (0:05:03). On August 5 the auditor had named held checks, with ledger maintenance, as the reason the general fund could be overdrawn unnoticed (August 5 page, flag 3). A check written and recorded but not sent makes the cash position look worse than the obligations and the ledger look settled when it is not. The instance the treasurer found was, by this account, not deliberate: a clerk was waiting for help with a process she had not been taught (0:05:28). The superintendent will establish the cash position before releasing the remaining checks (0:08:08). Graded MEDIUM as a control weakness; no statute addresses holding a check already written.
Sources: 2 CFR 200.303 (internal control); the recording at the timestamps above.
OBSERVATION Two-thirds of an unbudgeted $868,000 insurance assessment was still unpaid
The SchoolCare mid-year assessment “that nobody budgeted for” (0:06:18) was committed by a December board vote; one third was paid and the full amount encumbered in FY26 (0:06:32–0:06:43). The superintendent treats the remainder as cash management, not a balance-sheet problem (0:07:04–0:07:08). The August 19 draft minutes still describe additional amounts “still due”.
Source: the recording at the timestamps above; 8.19.26 DRAFT CSB Minutes.
OBSERVATION Tuition revenue may not have been billed for two years, and only one tuition agreement could be found
The superintendent is checking whether tuition invoices went out “for the last two years” (0:18:13), with no one historically assigned to receivables (0:24:01) and the two people who knew now gone. He had located one written tuition agreement, which conflicts with the sending district’s own website on which district is its anchor (0:24:39–0:25:37); Unity’s departure from the SAU raises the same question for its students (0:26:36). He said explicitly he was not reporting that billing had lapsed. Unbilled tuition would fall on Claremont taxpayers the way unclaimed grants do.
Source: the recording at the timestamps above.
OBSERVATION The forensic audit is stalled: deposit uncashed, firm acquired, counsel changed
The forensic-audit agreement approved in May carried a $10,000 deposit that has not been cashed, and the firm has since been acquired (0:20:30–0:20:40); on August 5 the superintendent said the $50,000 authorized is unlikely to be enough. A Bernstein Shur associate is determining whether the signed terms stand. The forensic firm also requires the annual audits to be done first, and those are behind (August 5 page, flag 4).
Source: the recording at the timestamps above.
OBSERVATION The CTE tuition rules described in the meeting could not be matched to the statute cited for them
The superintendent said districts “must pay not may shall pay” vocational tuition where their own center lacks the program (0:28:01), and that “75% of that tuition gets reimbursed by the state” (0:28:45). An earlier version of this page cited RSA 188-E:9 for these points. Read on September 25, 2026, RSA 188-E:9 provides that reimbursement of tuition and transportation is made annually, calculated on the previous year’s actual costs, and states no percentage and no sending-district duty to pay. The page has not located the provision the superintendent described; the regional agreement under RSA 188-E:1-a carries a tuition and transportation plan. Claremont is both a receiving center and, for some programs, a sender, so the terms matter both ways.
Sources: RSA 188-E:9 (reimbursement of tuition and transportation; read 2026-09-25); RSA 188-E:1-a (regional agreements, tuition and transportation plan; 2022, 272:2).
OBSERVATION The board has not settled who negotiates for it with the SREA
The chair understood all three finance members to be the negotiating team; Whitney said only she was nominated in March, “We didn’t vote for that”, and asked the full board to choose (1:03:05–1:05:29). The chair agreed to bring it to the board (1:05:35). The superintendent’s account of the ballot is consistent with the statute: only cost items of a tentative agreement go to the legislative body, as a separate warrant article, so the operating budget is built without raises (1:05:52). Three units are up this year.
Source: RSA 273-A:3, II(b) (“Only cost items shall be submitted to the legislative body”).
OBSERVATION The budget calendar as described puts the hearing in February; the statute puts it in January
The chair said the budget “has to be approved, like, the first meeting in January. Because we have to have the hearing in February to have the meeting in March” (0:58:43). For an official-ballot district, the budget hearing must be held “on or before the third Tuesday in January”, with notice posted by the second Tuesday: January 19 and January 12, 2027. The February event is the first (deliberative) session. The superintendent committed to a dated calendar for the August 19 board meeting (0:59:16), which is the right place to fix the dates; the June 19 subcommittee minutes had expected a draft calendar by August 15.
Source: RSA 40:13, II-a (budget hearing on or before the third Tuesday in January; 2019, 192:2).
POSITIVE A written procurement guide answers the audits’ purchasing findings, and the board adopted it a week later
The guide requires a purchase order before any purchase, bars splitting purchases under a threshold, requires three solicited quotes above $5,000 and a formal request for proposals above $20,000, caps petty cash at $50, keeps the district without credit cards, and requires every employee to sign that they have read it (0:35:21–0:47:04). The superintendent is requiring contracts, certificates of insurance and service logs from vendors who had been billing without them (0:47:25–0:50:32). Written procurement procedures and documentation are what the federal standards require of grant recipients. The August 19 draft minutes record the board adopting the procedural guide unanimously (Lavalette/Howard), with policy alignment referred to the Policy Subcommittee.
Sources: 2 CFR 200.318–200.327 (federal procurement standards); 8.19.26 DRAFT CSB Minutes, superintendent’s report item 1.
POSITIVE A televised subcommittee that kept a sensitive financial subject in public
Before describing held checks, the superintendent said “This is a public conversation. I don’t think it’s necessary to go to nonpublic for this” (0:04:37), and the subcommittee met on camera. Whitney credited televised budget-season meetings and asked that formats keep the conversation audible (1:01:03–1:02:19). Nonpublic session is limited to the enumerated grounds; general financial condition is not one of them.
Source: RSA 91-A:3, I(a) (nonpublic session only for a purpose in paragraph II).
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.
Laws and rules cited on this page
- Right-to-Know: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d); RSA 91-A:2, II (2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025); RSA 91-A:3, I(a)
- Education and budget: RSA 188-E:1-a; RSA 188-E:9; RSA 40:13, II-a; RSA 273-A:3, II(b)
- Session law: 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 272 (SB 586), approved July 2, 2026, eff. July 1, 2026 (RSA 198:4-d, III and VIII)
- Federal: 2 CFR 200.303; 2 CFR 200.318–200.327; 20 U.S.C. §1225(b)