Claremont School District Deficit Crisis — Timeline and Fiscal Acts

How the hole was dug

Strip away the personalities and the deficit has three moving parts, and the district ran all three at once for roughly six years.

Money was spent against federal grant revenue that was never collected. Grants reimburse: the district spends first and files for repayment. Claremont spent and repeatedly did not file. The unreimbursed spending fell back on the general fund, year after year.
Surpluses that did not exist were handed back to taxpayers. Each autumn the district reports its year-end unassigned fund balance to the state on the DOE-25 and MS-25; whatever is not retained reduces the next tax rate. Claremont reported surpluses it did not have, so it raised less in taxes than it had already committed to spend.
Nobody audited any of it. The audits that would have caught both errors were years behind, so each year's wrong number was carried into the next year's budget and tax rate.

The auditor and the board's own chair walked through exactly this on camera on August 5, 2026 (0:54:02), more than a year after the crisis broke. Michael Campo, of Plodzik & Sanderson: "what your business administrators have done or your finance person had done has gone and used a number for unassigned fund balance that they didn't have. So what happens is when you raise the taxes in the community, you're not raising that number, but you're still raising the appropriation, so you're still obligated to spend that money." He added, at 0:55:42, "Nor did you pull back on spending… And then you also factor in that you were absorbing… grant expenditures being counted as revenue that we were getting… Never came in."

Board member Candace Crawford put the grant half in plain words at 0:56:00: "the grant expects you to spend the money and then you turn in the receipts and get reimbursed… And what the district was doing was… they were spending the money and then not submitting the reimbursements. So they never got the money back. And so the general fund had to pay for those expenditures year over year." She called the tax-rate half "falsification"; Campo corrected her on the spot at 0:56:47 — "That's a loaded word. But misrepresentation is a better word."

The arithmetic of the over-returns

Year-end unassigned fund balance actually available, against the amount reported and applied to reduce the tax rate. FY2020 and FY2021 figures are as Business Administrator Mary Henry read them to the board on May 21, 2025 — except the FY2021 deficit, which she did not state separately and which is subtracted here from her own two figures. FY2022 figures are as interim Business Administrator Matt Angell read them on October 1, 2025.
Fiscal year	Actually available	Reported & returned	Deficit opened	On the record
FY2020	$966,213	$1,731,546	$765,333	5/21/25 — 0:19:46
FY2021	$133,150	$1,456,960	$1,323,810	5/21/25 — 0:20:54
FY2022	none — audit shows a $198,888 deficit	≈$1,200,000	$198,888 (audited)	10/1/25 — 3:00:38
FY2020 + FY2021	$1,099,363	$3,188,506	$2,089,143	Henry gave the combined deficit as "$2,089,152"
Three-year total returned	—	≈$4,388,506	not summable see note	arithmetic from the figures above

Three cautions on this table. (1) The "deficit opened" column is not summable across all three years: for FY2020 and FY2021 it is the excess returned over what was available, while for FY2022 it is the audited year-end deficit, a different quantity. FY2022 had no surplus at all, so the whole ≈$1.2 million returned that year was money the district did not have. (2) Henry gave the FY2020–21 combined deficit as "$2,089,152"; her own two pairs of figures add to $2,089,143 — a nine-dollar gap that may be a transcription artifact or an arithmetic slip, and is reproduced rather than reconciled. The Valley News reported the FY2021 side as "$1.27 million" where her spoken figures give $1,323,810. (3) The FY2022 line combines two separate findings that are close but not identical: Angell's "$1.2 million was returned to the taxpayers" against an audited FY2022 deficit of $198,888, and the FY2022 audit's separate finding — reported by the Valley News on January 2, 2026 — that roughly $1 million of unassigned fund balance was applied to the 2022 budget when the actual balance was negative $29,000. They describe the same mechanism from the budget side and the tax-rate side; they are not shown here as one number because the sources do not reconcile them.

HIGH The audit lapse was a federal compliance failure, not merely bad housekeeping

New Hampshire's own audit statute is permissive. RSA 21-J:19 says districts and school boards may "hire a certified public accountant or a public accountant licensed by the state under RSA 309-A:8" to audit within one year of the fiscal year's close; RSA 197:23-a requires the treasurer to submit books to auditors only "whenever so requested." Nothing in either compelled Claremont to audit annually.

Federal law did. A district expending federal awards above the Uniform Guidance threshold must obtain a single audit, and 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1) fixes the deadline: "The audit, the data collection form, and the reporting package must be submitted within 30 calendar days after the auditee receives the auditor's report(s) or nine months after the end of the audit period (whichever is earlier)." Claremont ran years past that while drawing ESSER, Title I and IDEA money — which is why the consequence arrived as a federal-funding hold rather than a state sanction. The state-law gap was closed only in 2026, by SB 586 (2026 ch. 272), which repealed and reenacted RSA 198:4-d to require annual independent audits (¶VI), with the audit report due within 9 months of fiscal year end (¶VIII).

Sources: RSA 21-J:19; RSA 197:23-a; 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1); SB 586 / 2026 ch. 272.

The fiscal acts

Ordered by the date of the act. "Board seated" names the members holding office when the act was taken — for the tax-rate acts that is the autumn board, not the board that sat during the fiscal year whose balance was being reported, because the DOE-25 and MS-25 are filed after the fiscal year closes. Where the recording establishes how members voted, the tally is given; where the board acted by uncounted voice vote, that is said plainly, because in those cases the record does not show how any individual member voted.

Acts 1–4 built the deficit; acts 5–12 are the decisions taken while it was building; acts 13 onward are the response. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for full text.
#	Date	Act	How it was recorded	Recording
1	FY2016–FY2019	The board stopped obtaining audits. No annual audits for 2016, 2017 or 2018. The FY2015 audit was not completed until January 2019 — four years late — and found the Stevens High School renovation fund overspent by about $420,000 and no monthly account reconciliation. Superintendent Tempesta restarted the audits in 2019 and got them current only through FY2021.	No contemporaneous record located	Crawford, 9/3/25 — 1:11:33
2	Autumn 2020	$1,731,546 applied to reduce taxes against $966,213 actually available. Opened a $765,333 hole. Henry, 5/21/25: "we have run into an issue… because of the money that had been returned to taxpayers and error." The auditor had already warned the administration: Campo said he told management "for 20 and 21… to be conservative with what they returned in terms of use of fund balance."	No minutes or agenda located; no vote recorded	candidates listed below; none timestamped
3	Autumn 2021	$1,456,960 applied against $133,150 actually available. Opened a further $1,323,810. Same mechanism, second consecutive year, after the auditor's warning.	No minutes or agenda located; no vote recorded	candidates listed below; none timestamped
4	Autumn 2022	≈$1.2 million applied when the year had produced a deficit. Angell, 10/1/25: "In the audit, it's showing us a deficit of $198,888… I do want to give a comparison of what was put down for your tax rate for a surplus. Available, $1.2 million was returned to the taxpayers." He also found the revenue estimates used to set that tax rate were overstated — "your revenue estimates used to set the tax rate artificially lowered your tax rate. Right. If you want to know where your deficit started it's those two places."	Vice Chair Petrin, three years later: "the vote was to give back 1.2 million"	Angell, 10/1/25 — 3:01:39
5	Feb 15, 2023	The ESSER cliff is named on the record; the board votes 4–2 to restore $600,000 to the default budget. Whitney Skillen moved to restore $600,000 "to fund the positions that are under low [LOAs], and we're going to be funded by Esser and the positions that we're going to be funded under title grants," giving as her reason: "when those grants run out, if we decide these positions are necessary, they're already in the budget. And it doesn't put us at risk for a structural deficit where we need positions that we don't have funding for." Sprague seconded.	Roll call, 4–2. For: Miles, Sprague, Skillen, Petrin. Against: Whitney, Horsky	motion 1:09:52 · roll call 1:40:44
6	Mar 1, 2023	The grant-reimbursement posture is presented and not challenged. Assistant Superintendent Mike Koski on the three ESSER grants: "Esser one, the entire allocation has been spent and reimbursed and it is closed. SR [ESSER] two… We were granted 2.879 million. We have budgeted 2.6 of that… reimbursed is 400,000. The bulk of that is waiting. We spend it first." Later in the same item he said, "I've never done Esser reporting, I'm not sure how that works actually."	Report only; no board action	0:09:49
7	Oct 18, 2023	The board retains up to $424,000 — expressly as insurance against the missing audits. Henry recommended it in terms that name the whole problem: "I'm going to recommend that only because of a[u]dits and what has been happening with those. They're not complete. I worry about if we've given back too much to the taxpayers on those audits, that if we hold our fund balance, that enables us to offset that." Sprague asked what he should tell a city councillor who wants the money back; Henry: "it's about fiscal responsibility in the sense that you have not have had your audits all done."	Voice vote, no count taken	Henry 1:08:42 · vote 1:17:38
8	Jan 17, 2024	FY2025 budget adopted at $36,117,406.87; ESSER-created positions folded into the operating budget; $420,000 of retained balance applied to hold the tax rate. Crawford moved the figure; the chair took it on an uncounted voice vote — "All in favor?… any opposed? Budget passes. Budget is approved." Earlier the same night Crawford moved to "use Esser funds to, to purchase a modular unit" for the Academy, carried unanimously — one-time federal money committed to a capital asset. Henry explained the fund-balance history: "In 23 we had 1.7 million in fund balance. Last year we had 736. Now, out of that 1.7, the board chose to hold 426,000. This year they've chosen to hold 420,000."	Voice vote, no count taken (reported as 6–0; the recording carries no tally)	motion 2:23:10 · vote 2:25:07
9	Mar 6, 2024	The board reverses the one protective act it had taken — the $420,000 retention is moved out to the general fund. Jennifer Gallagher moved "to transfer $420,000 from the retained fund balance to be used for unanticipated special education costs." Skillen, in favour: "I haven't heard any reasons to retain the funds that just make fiscal sense… I haven't heard a compelling reason to retain the fund balance and withhold it from the taxpayers as a relief to the tax burden." Five months earlier the stated reason had been the unfinished audits; it was not revisited.	Voice vote — "seeing no opposition, the motion passes"	motion 0:32:16 · vote 0:35:51
10	Oct 16, 2024	Retention set at up to $350,000 on a reported $611,000 surplus; the rest returned. Henry gave the maximum retainable as "$466,664 and $0.43." Sprague moved "that we retain up to $350,000… that that money be used to offset the tax rate in 25, 26." This is the autumn whose Department of Revenue Administration filing the district's later termination letter blamed for setting the tax rate too low.	Voice vote, no count taken	motion 1:24:57 · vote 1:31:31
11	Jan 7, 2025	FY2026 budget built on a $1.9 million one-year jump in state aid; pre-K eliminated; a $255,000 property purchase decided in nonpublic. Henry: "adequacy eight [aid] increase by 1.9 million. That was due to the extraordinary grant" — the state having raised its per-student figure from $8,500 to $11,500. Pre-K came out at $430,104. Arlene Hawkins read a written dissent: "I cannot support the elimination of the Claremont School Department pre-K program." The property — the former Masonic Temple, bought on the superintendent's recommendation — was never occupied; by May 2026 it had cost $438,350 against an assessment of $270,900.	Pre-K eliminated on a unanimous voice vote over a written dissent	aid 1:04:26 · dissent 1:34:07
12	May 7, 2025	$888,998.42 drained from five trust and capital reserve funds, leaving $91,796.69. Henry: "[b]e a total of $888,998.42. That would leave a balance in those trust funds of $91,796.69." Every dollar reimbursed spending already made — "All of this is already expended. I cannot… ask for money out of a trust without spending money." Crawford, for the record: "these are expenses that already have been have occurred in this budget year, and we're reimbursing ourselves from our savings account, if you will." Five separate motions in about twelve minutes.	Five voice votes, no counts taken	total 0:30:55 · first motion 0:36:45 · last vote 0:40:15

HIGH Three consecutive tax rates were set from figures nobody had audited — after the auditor said not to

Under RSA 198:4-b, a district's legislative body — the voters — authorises retention of year-end unassigned general funds "indefinitely until specific rescission," capped at a percentage of the net assessment under RSA 198:5. Claremont's voters had authorised 2.5 per cent, not the statutory maximum of 5; Henry told the board on October 18, 2023, "Yours is only 2.5%, even though the RSA allows up to five. You would have to… put another Warren [warrant] article on to increase it to the 5%." Everything the board does not retain flows into the DOE-25 and MS-25 and reduces the next tax rate automatically.

This matters for how the acts are characterised. The over-return was not a board resolution to mail money back; it was the automatic consequence of reporting a surplus the district did not have. The board's lever was the retention decision, and that lever was small: the maximum retainable figure the board was given was $424,000 in 2023 and $466,664.43 in 2024, so a cap of broadly that order in FY2020 could not have absorbed a $765,333 excess even if the board had retained every dollar available to it. The board's culpable acts are therefore the surrounding ones: adopting budgets and permitting tax-rate filings built on unaudited numbers, declining across nine years to obtain the audits that would have exposed them, and releasing the single buffer it did create (act 9).

What sharpens it is that the warning was given and is on tape. Campo, May 21, 2025, at 0:39:21: "I had conversations with management at the time for 20 and 21, with concerns with not knowing… where fund balance was, was at to please be conservative with… what they returned in terms of use of fund balance."

Sources: RSA 198:4-b; RSA 198:5; recording 16556 at 0:39:21; recording 15357 at 1:09:13.

MEDIUM Every major money motion in this sequence passed on an uncounted voice vote

Of the money decisions above, exactly two carry a countable record: the February 15, 2023 default-budget restoration (a roll call, 4–2) and the September 3, 2025 borrowing (a roll call, 6–0). The $36.1 million budget adoption, the $424,000 retention, its $420,000 reversal, the $350,000 retention and all five trust-fund withdrawals totalling $888,998.42 were taken as "All those in favor? Aye. Opposed?" with no count and no roll call.

The consequence is not hypothetical. It is why this page can tell you which four members voted to restore $600,000 in February 2023 and cannot tell you which members voted to drain the trust funds in May 2025. A voice vote is lawful; the absence of any count in the minutes or on the recording means individual accountability for those decisions is not recoverable from the public record.

MEDIUM The reserves were emptied to pay for spending already incurred

The May 7, 2025 withdrawals are not capital planning. Henry stated the constraint herself — money cannot leave an expendable trust until it has been spent — so each motion converted a completed overspend into a reimbursement from savings. The special education trust alone gave up $425,000 "This amount will offset the overage and out of district tuition for FY 25." Sprague, chairing finance, acknowledged the position on the record at 0:39:25: the funds "are very important to our onward budget planning, and we will be making every effort as we move forward to replenish these accounts."

Three months later the district had no reserves left to draw on. Angell told a legislative committee in October 2025 that "the prior administration depleted all the reserves before the end of the last fiscal year," and the board's own counsel told the public on October 1, 2025 that "there are no reserve funds for Claremont, and the district has already spent down its trust accounts."

ATTRIBUTION CAUTION On this recording the automatic speaker separation merges the chair's recognitions into the mover's turn: the row timed 0:36:45 opens in Petrin's voice ("Are we doing one motion at one at a time?") and continues in Sprague's ("I want to make a motion to withdraw 283,800…"), and the row timed 0:38:04 attributes the chair's "All those in favor?" to Sprague. Read the movers as Sprague and the chair as Petrin, and treat the CSV speaker labels for this passage as unreliable.

The warnings the board had, and when

Points at which the record shows the board was told, in public, something that should have prompted action.
Date	Warning	Said by	Recording
Feb 15, 2023	"it doesn't put us at risk for a structural deficit where we need positions that we don't have funding for" — the phrase "structural deficit" enters the record two and a half years before the crisis breaks, in a motion about the ESSER cliff.	Whitney Skillen, board member	1:13:03
Mar 1, 2023	Only $400,000 of a $2.879 million ESSER 2 allocation reimbursed, with the bulk "waiting" because "we spend it first" — and the assistant superintendent volunteering that he had never done ESSER reporting.	Mike Koski, Assistant Superintendent	0:09:49
Oct 18, 2023	"I'm very worried about those audits and what they may reveal. And if you don't have the funds, you will run into a deficit warrant article." The business administrator asks the board to hold money back specifically because the audits are missing.	Mary Henry, Business Administrator	1:08:42
Apr 2, 2025	The first public deficit figure — about a million over in tuition and $700,000 over in contracted services within special education. Reported to the board as roughly $1.4 million on tape, $1.5 million in the minutes.	Mary Henry	0:21:53
May 21, 2025	The over-returns disclosed to the public for the first time, with the FY2020 and FY2021 figures read out. Superintendent Pratt's framing, immediately after: "this was not on Mary Henry's watch or my watch. This was something that was inherited… We found it. We're fixing it."	Mary Henry; Chris Pratt, Superintendent	0:19:46 · 0:24:17
Jun 18, 2025	"right now I have $2.3 million in encumbrances. I know some of those encumbrances are going to go away" — twelve days before year-end, the purchase orders had not been reviewed.	Mary Henry	0:09:47

The crisis breaks

Date	Event	Vote	Recording
Aug 14, 2025	Chair Heather Whitney: "it gives me no pleasure to convey to the public and to the board at large that as of fiscal year 25, we have a massive deficit anywhere between 1 and $5 million." William Madden objected to the framing that had preceded it — "I think in April, we have the first inkling that there was a problem… I think the presentation was somewhat deceptive," and then: "We put fancy words and names to the problem. I think we hid behind our lawyer… From what we've been told, this is because of negligence, mismanagement."	No action	disclosure 0:22:29 · Madden 0:30:10
Aug 20, 2025	Mass public meeting at Stevens High School. A resident, Chris Irish, reads the pattern back to the board from its own April packet: "We ended with a $1 million, $1.4 million surplus. A million was returned to the taxpayers 2022. We ended with a $500,000 in her plus [in surplus], but $1.7 million was returned to the taxpayers."	No action	1:26:54
Aug 22–25, 2025	Nineteen new teacher contracts cancelled (≈$1.8 million), then twenty non-teaching positions eliminated (≈$1 million) and all athletics and extracurriculars cut — about $3 million in all. Henry placed on paid leave; Angell appointed interim business administrator.	Not on a recorded roll call	8/21 and 8/26 meetings have no recording
Sep 3, 2025	$4 million Reimbursement Anticipation Note approved 6–0 after a public hearing. Angell: "I have discovered approximately $5 million in outstanding overdue invoices and liabilities." Counsel O'Shaughnessy: "it's like a payday loan." Crawford put the cost at "between 65 and $75,000 of interest." Angell was explicit that it "does not reduce the deficit." Sprague's resignation was announced at the same meeting.	Roll call 6–0: Crawford, Hawkins, Howard, Madden, Petrin, Whitney	Angell 0:18:34 · roll call 2:59:39
Sep 12, 2025	SAU 6 board accepts Superintendent Pratt's resignation with $39,500 severance and three months' health insurance; Kerry Kennedy named interim superintendent; TMS Consulting engaged.	Accepted at the SAU 6 meeting	no minutes of this meeting exist
Sep 17, 2025	Bluff Elementary closed 4–1. Roughly 170 K–5 students moved to Maple Avenue and Disnard; projected first-year saving about $65,000.	4–1: for — Hawkins, Petrin, Crawford, Madden; against — Howard. Whitney absent	recording 16857
Sep 25, 2025	Deficit fixed at $5.01 million. Board commits to seeking a criminal investigation.	—	—
Oct 1, 2025	Revolving loan fund resolution passed 6–0, and the FY2022 audit presented — the meeting at which the origin of the deficit is stated most precisely on the record. Petrin, after Angell explained the mechanism: "the BA, the business administrator, comes with this information and tells us that this is the fact. How does the board then dig in to try to find out that this is not the fact…? The vote was to give back 1.2 million. How do we not trust the BA?"	6–0	Angell 3:00:13 · Petrin 3:03:12
Nov 2025	Henry's termination agreement signed, preserving claims for "criminal conduct or intentional acts or omissions… theft, embezzlement, fraud, or any violation of RSA 638." Forensic audit authorised.	—	—
Jan 21, 2026	FY2027 budget recommended 4–3 at $42.9 million, about 0.5 per cent below the current year. Athletics carried in the budget at $1.	4–3: for — Whitney, Petrin, Sprague, Madden; against — Howard, Crawford, Hawkins	recording 17095
Mar 10, 2026	Voters reject a budget cap 1,345–560, approve the $42.9 million budget 1,537–310, and authorise the sale of Bluff (1,675–201) and the Masonic Temple (1,731–149). Lavalette and Rapp elected; Sprague defeated.	Ballot	—
Apr 2026	CBIZ Forensic Consulting engaged through Bernstein Shur, scope January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2025, ≈$50,000. Crawford: New Hampshire State Police urged the district to hire a forensic auditor after Claremont Police declined; two firms had already refused the engagement.	—	—
Jul 21, 2026	$4.4 million of the $5 million eliminated; the $4 million bank loan repaid in full; draft FY2023 audit presented. FY2024 and FY2025 audits still incomplete.	—	—

Who was on the board

Rosters for FY2019–FY2023 were reconstructed from Claremont election results, the district's 2023 Annual Report and contemporaneous local press; the 2023–2026 rosters come from this project's own verified meeting record. Confidence notes are given because the pre-2023 minutes are not public.

Claremont School Board membership at the time of each act. Seats are at-large, in three staggered classes; the district clerk, moderator and treasurer are separately elected district officers, not board officers.
When	Members	Officers	Confidence
FY2019 the audits stop	Frank Sprague, Rebecca Zullo, Michael Petrin, Steven Horsky, Jason Benware, Carolyn Towle, Michele Pierce	Sprague chair; Zullo vice chair	High for six. Pierce is established only as the defeated incumbent in the March 2019 results and is single-sourced.
Autumn 2020 act 2 — FY2020 balance applied	Frank Sprague, Michael Petrin, Carolyn Towle, Robert Lovett Jr., Heather Whitney, Rebecca Zullo, Jason Benware	Sprague chair (confirmed in print January 2021)	High for six. Benware is inferred from a three-year term won in March 2018 and is not independently confirmed in FY2020–21. Vice chair for this year is unknown. Zullo confirmed sitting in October 2020.
Autumn 2021 act 3 — FY2021 balance applied	Frank Sprague, Michael Petrin, Robert Lovett Jr., Nicholas Stone, Heather Whitney, Joshua Lambert, Steven Horsky	Sprague chair (confirmed June 2021 and January 2022)	High. Lambert and Horsky joined at the March 2021 election with Whitney; Stone was appointed in June 2021 to the seat of Carolyn Towle, who died that year. Vice chair unknown.
Autumn 2022 act 4 — FY2022 balance applied	Michael Petrin, Heather Whitney, Frank Sprague, Steven Horsky, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen — and one vacant seat	Petrin chair; Whitney vice chair (confirmed by February 8, 2023)	High on membership; the board ran a member short, the vacancy being Joshua Lambert's Class C seat, corroborated by the one-year seat on the March 2023 ballot. The exact date the chairmanship passed from Sprague to Petrin is NOT established — it falls between mid-March 2022 and February 8, 2023, and no local outlet covered the reorganisation.
Feb 15, 2023 act 5 — the 4–2 roll call	Michael Petrin (chair), Heather Whitney, Frank Sprague, Steven Horsky, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen	Petrin chair; Whitney vice chair	Very high — the roll call is on the recording, read by Business Administrator Richard Seaman, and six members answer.
Jul 2023 – Mar 2024 acts 7, 8, 9	Heather Whitney (chair), Frank Sprague (vice chair), Arlene Hawkins, Jennifer Gallagher, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen, Candace Crawford	Whitney chair; Sprague vice chair	Very high. Sprague and Hawkins won the two three-year seats in March 2023, Gallagher the one-year seat over Petrin. Steven Horsky held the seventh seat until he resigned on the record on June 21, 2023; Crawford was appointed to it on July 19, 2023, 4–2 over David Bailey and Kevin Tyson, with Whitney and Sprague opposed (Valley News, July 21, 2023). All three acts fall after her appointment.
Mar 2024 – Mar 2025 acts 10, 11	Heather Whitney (chair), Frank Sprague (vice chair), Arlene Hawkins, Bonnie Miles, Whitney Skillen, Candace Crawford, Michael Petrin	Whitney chair; Sprague vice chair	Very high. Gallagher's one-year seat expired in March 2024 and Petrin returned as a write-in; both officers were re-elected on voice votes with no count at the March 20, 2024 organisational meeting.
Mar 2025 – Mar 2026 act 12 and the crisis	Heather Whitney (chair), Michael Petrin (vice chair from 3/19/25), Candace Crawford, Arlene Hawkins, William "Bill" Madden, Loren Howard, Frank Sprague	Whitney chair; Petrin vice chair	Very high. Madden and Howard were elected March 11, 2025, replacing Skillen and Miles. Sprague resigned on September 3, 2025, leaving six members until he was reinstated on a 3–2 vote on November 5, 2025 after two deadlocked attempts to fill the seat.

What the record does not show

OBSERVATION The three decisive acts have no retrievable video, minutes or vote

Acts 2, 3 and 4 — the tax-rate filings that opened roughly $2.29 million of deficit — are the acts this page can document least. Four separate routes were tried and all closed:

Minutes. The district's public Meeting Minutes share carries year folders for 2023–2027 only. The board-packet share and its archived subtree likewise begin in 2023. Nothing from 2020, 2021 or 2022 is posted.
Captions. Cablecast holds the recordings, but every pre-2023 school show was checked individually and none has a caption track — the captions.en.m3u8 playlist is absent, not merely empty. A separate whole-history inventory of 316 playable Claremont board and SAU 6 recordings, built the same day, records station captions as absent on every one of these meetings.
Transcription. The recordings are downloadable MP4s in principle, but reflect-claremont.cablecast.tv is unreachable from both of this project's shells (HTTP 403 at the proxy), so the files cannot be fetched for transcription without a browser-side workaround.
Local press. The e-Ticker News archive covers autumn 2020 and 2021 but reports only the city's tax rate, never the school board's fund-balance decision; the paper ceased publishing around mid-2022, so autumn 2022 has no local coverage at all.

The candidate recordings are listed below. Each is a Claremont School Board meeting falling in the window when the DOE-25 would have been prepared and the tax rate set. None has been confirmed to contain the decision; they are offered so that someone with the recordings open can find it. Cablecast event dates run a day early on a small number of shows, and show 14627's own title (9/21/22) disagrees with its event date (9/15/22).

Window	Candidate recordings (runtimes, not timestamps — none of these is a linked moment)
Autumn 2020 (act 2)	9/2/20 runtime 3:03:20 · 9/23/20 runtime 2:21:27 · 10/7/20 runtime 2:20:57 · 12/2/20 runtime 2:06:30 · 12/16/20 runtime 1:39:39
Autumn 2021 (act 3)	9/1/21 runtime 1:40:26 · 9/15/21 runtime 1:49:31 · 10/20/21 runtime 2:06:35 · 11/3/21 runtime 2:04:32 · 12/1/21 runtime 0:36:43
Autumn 2022 (act 4)	9/7/22 runtime 1:42:13 · 9/15 or 9/21/22 runtime 1:42:36 · 10/5/22 runtime 2:45:10 · 10/19/22 runtime 2:11:56 · 11/3/22 special runtime 0:36:29 · 11/17/22 runtime 0:50:32

The gap is closable. A Right-to-Know request to SAU 6 for the September–November board minutes of 2020, 2021 and 2022, and for the MS-25 and DOE-25 tax-rate packets of those years, would produce both the motion and the vote. The Claremont City Clerk holds the certified election returns that would settle the two roster uncertainties above.

OBSERVATION Conflicts left standing rather than resolved

When the over-returns happened. The Valley News (May 30, 2025) and Henry's own presentation put them in FY2020 and FY2021. The Union Leader, quoting Angell, dates the origin to a late-2022 filing to the Department of Revenue Administration. The recordings support both: three consecutive years, not one event.
Whether FY2022 ended in surplus. Crawford told the City Council on September 2, 2025 that "the 2022 audit showed a surplus that cleared the deficit." Angell told the board on October 1, 2025 that the FY2022 audit shows a deficit of $198,888. The audit was finalised between those two statements.
The FY2021 shortfall. $1,323,810 from Henry's spoken figures; "$1.27 million" as reported.
The January 17, 2024 budget vote. Reported as 6–0; the recording carries only an uncounted voice vote.
Pratt's severance. $39,500 (most precise, and matching the SAU's own account) against "$40,000" in later coverage. His start date appears as both 2022 and January 2024 within NH Journal's own reporting; January 2024 is corroborated repeatedly.
Loan interest. Crawford said 2 per cent and $65,000–$75,000 on September 3, 2025; the Valley News reported $70,000; a later legislative account gives about 1.75 per cent.
Counsel's first name. "John O'Shaughnessy" in the earliest coverage and in his own self-introduction on the August 14, 2025 recording; "James" or "Jim" everywhere afterwards. Same Drummond Woodsum attorney.

POSITIVE What the board did that pointed the other way

February 15, 2023 — restored $600,000 to the default budget, on a recorded roll call, expressly to avoid a structural deficit when ESSER expired.
October 18, 2023 — retained $424,000 against the risk that the missing audits would reveal over-returns. It was the correct diagnosis, nineteen months early.
September 2025 — adopted a policy requiring annual audits, and required federal grant documentation to go to board members directly rather than to administrators alone.
2025–2026 — authorised the forensic audit; appointed a member as audit liaison; adopted formal policies on manifests and monthly budget reporting; adopted a budget 0.5 per cent below the prior year.

Two of these four are the reason the record contains its own warning. The board that voted 4–2 in February 2023 to protect against the ESSER cliff, and the board that voted in October 2023 to hold money back because the audits were missing, both understood the danger. The March 6, 2024 reversal undid the second of them.

The reporting timeline

The two reporters cover the same crisis from different angles. O'Grady is at the meetings and carries the tallies, the rosters and the mechanics; Fisher works the documents, the personnel files and the State House. Neither is a substitute for the other, and several of the most fiscally detailed pieces in the Valley News run and the NH Journal run carry other bylines — those are marked.

Date	Outlet / byline	What it established
Jan 18, 2024	Valley News — O'Grady	The ESSER cliff baseline. A $36.1 million budget approved 6–0; some ESSER-created positions moved into the operating budget and others eliminated; $420,000 of FY2023 surplus applied against $852,000 in new taxes.
May 30, 2025	Valley News — O'Grady	The earliest warning story, and the source of the over-return figures: FY2020 surplus $966,000 against $1.7 million returned; FY2021 $133,000 against $1.4 million; combined $2 million. Henry: "We were spending the money but not submitting to the state so they could reimburse us." The article does not identify who decided to return the money.
Aug 15, 2025	Valley News — O'Grady	"Survival mode." Preliminary deficit $1.8 million at June 30; $900,000 drawn from capital accounts; special education year-end overage ~$2.5 million; $1.5 million of FY2026 funds already spent on FY2025 bills. Counsel: "a state of fiscal distress." Madden: "All of us… have failed."
Aug 18, 2025	NH Journal — Fisher	Breaks the cause. Madden: the district "built its district budgets with a significant amount of money coming from the federal government via COVID-19 relief dollars. But district administrators failed to follow through and submit the applications for reimbursement." Madden: "It's negligence and total mismanagement and lack of oversight."
Aug 27, 2025	NH Journal — Fisher	Vice Chair Sprague resigns the day the $4 million loan becomes public. Five state warning letters between May 2022 and October 2024; three fiscal reports from 2019 onward flagged the district as high-risk for federal funding loss. City Councillor Koloski notes no board vote or public hearing had yet occurred on the loan.
Sep 2, 2025	NH Journal — Fisher	State reviews flagged the disarray years earlier: ~$14 million in federal grants mismanaged 2022–2024; the state withheld all federal grant funding for most of 2024, compliance reached only in October 2024.
Sep 5, 2025	Valley News — O'Grady	The audit-failure timeline, from Crawford's presentation to the City Council: problems begin in 2016 when the audit process "began to fall into delinquency" after the long-serving business administrator retired; no audits in 2016, 2017 or 2018. Assistant Mayor Deb Matteau: "You go three years before anyone realizes that didn't happen… that is a failure at the board level."
Sep 7, 2025	NH Journal — Fisher	Chair Whitney calls for an Attorney General investigation and the over-return is put in print: officials "falsely believed there were surpluses and returned about $2 million in total to the taxpayers." At least $5 million in unpaid critical bills, including $1.2 million in state retirement payments.
Sep 18, 2025	Both	Bluff Elementary closed — O'Grady carries the 4–1 tally and the names; Fisher carries Howard's dissent: "I just don't see how we didn't see this coming."
Oct 2, 2025	Valley News — O'Grady	The best single account of causation and cash position: the prior year's budget overspent by $1.6 million; retired teachers' health insurance unrecorded; an $868,000 SchoolCare bill. Only $60,000 cash projected by the end of March. Angell: "For a school district this size I would expect $3-6 million cash balance monthly."
Oct 14, 2025	NH Journal — Michael Graham	Not Fisher, and carries the sharpest single disclosure: a bookkeeping document reported a $390,000 fund balance; the account actually held negative $2.5 million. Angell: "The prior administration depleted all the reserves before the end of the last fiscal year." And: "It was the Wild West."
Jan 2, 2026	Valley News — Alex Hanson	Not O'Grady, and the deepest audit reporting in the corpus: the FY2015 audit finished four years late; every audit FY2015–FY2022 carried adverse retiree-health-care findings; Commissioner Edelblut warned in May 2023 that $5 million in federal grants would lapse, with $12 million+ unspent and 25 grants wholly unspent; the FY2022 audit found ~$1 million of unassigned fund balance applied to the 2022 budget when the actual balance was negative $29,000.
Jan 11, 2026	NH Journal — Fisher	The termination letter, itemised: a HealthTrust membership entered in June 2024 without board approval; a SchoolCare settlement signed without board knowledge; inaccurate data sent to the Department of Revenue Administration in November 2024 resulting in a tax rate set too low; and vendor cheques entered as paid but kept in a desk drawer.
Apr 2, 2026	Valley News — O'Grady	The forensic audit engaged, and Henry's own account of the over-return: the 2020–2021 audits revealed a nearly $2 million deficit and "over $3 million was returned to taxpayers" across the two years. Henry: "We thought we had this money, but we didn't."
Jul 27, 2026	Valley News — O'Grady	$4.4 million of the $5 million eliminated; the bank loan repaid; Angell resigns abruptly. No audited statements yet for the year ending June 30, 2025.

Sources

Primary — meeting recordings and transcripts

All timestamps are drawn from this project's dialogue CSVs in Dialogue/ and link into the corresponding Cablecast show with the seekto parameter. Meetings cited: 2/15/23 · 3/1/23 · 10/18/23 · 1/17/24 · 3/6/24 · 10/16/24 · 1/7/25 · 4/2/25 · 5/7/25 · 5/21/25 · 6/18/25 · 8/14/25 · 8/20/25 · 9/3/25 · 10/1/25 · 8/5/26.

Quotations reproduce the automatic transcript as spoken; bracketed text marks a correction of a transcription error, and ellipses mark omitted words. The transcripts are machine-produced and machine-attributed: speaker labels are reliable for sustained turns and unreliable across short exchanges, particularly where a chair's recognition runs into the next speaker's first words. Every quotation used here was re-read in context before use, and the one passage where attribution is known to be wrong is flagged above.

Reporting

Damien Fisher, NH Journal — Incompetence, Mismanagement Blamed for Claremont's Multi-Million-Dollar Budget Hole (Aug 18, 2025) · Superintendent, Finance Chief Absent (Aug 20) · Class Dismissed (Aug 24) · Claremont Confirms $5 Million Deficit (Aug 25) · Vice Chair Resigns, Slams 'Architects of Disaster' (Aug 27) · Fiscal Disarray Flagged by State Reviews Years Before (Sep 2) · School Chair Wants Criminal Investigation (Sep 7) · Bluff Elementary Could Be First Casualty (Sep 8) · Ousted Superintendent Gets $40K Parting Gift (Sep 14) · State Begins Audit as Claremont Says Bye Bye to Bluff (Sep 18) · Claremont Schools Confirm $5 Million Deficit (Sep 25) · Pushing for State Fund (Oct 1) · From Claremont to Concord (Oct 13) · Did Claremont's School Scandal Stay Hidden? (Oct 26) · Finance Boss Out (Nov 6) · Dems Balk at Reforms (Nov 18) · Audit Notes 'Concerning' Stipends (Dec 4) · $10K Stipend May Be 'Tip of the Iceberg' (Dec 16) · Senate to Vote on 'Payday Loan' Fund (Jan 6, 2026) · Senate Clears Loan Fund (Jan 7) · 'Reign of Chaos' (Jan 11) · Claremont Crisis 2.0 (Aug 3, 2026).

Patrick O'Grady, Valley News — School budget up nearly 4% as pandemic relief funds dry up (Jan 18, 2024) · District uncovers $2 million deficit (May 30, 2025) · Financial crisis has Claremont school in 'survival mode' (Aug 15) · Fate of the school year in limbo (Aug 21) · Schools to stay open with help of $4 million 'payday' loan (Sep 5) · Financial woes prompt questions (Sep 5) · Financial woes could force Bluff to close (Sep 8) · School board mulls closure of Bluff (Sep 11) · SAU 6 superintendent resigns (Sep 12) · Board approves plan to close Bluff (Sep 18) · District faces $5 million shortfall (Sep 25) · District seeks lawmakers' support (Oct 2) · Three more administrators resign (Oct 9) · Up to 9% increase in school tax rate (Oct 16) · Budget plans propose merging elementary schools (Dec 15) · Community pans restructuring plan (Dec 19) · Board rejects three-school proposal (Jan 8, 2026) · Board votes 4-3 on budget that avoids tax increase (Jan 22) · Proposed budget cap sparks debate (Feb 9) · District questions legality of cap petition (Feb 22) · Board revises superintendent criteria (Feb 24) · Candidates address financial crisis (Mar 1) · Voters reject budget cap (Mar 11) · District hires firm for forensic audit (Apr 2) · Board picks new superintendent (Apr 16) · District inks contract with new superintendent (Apr 22) · Schools whittle deficit down to $1 million (May 21) · A sudden resignation (Jul 27).

Same subject, other bylines — Michael Graham, "The Wild West" (NH Journal, Oct 14, 2025) · Michael Graham, Biz Manager Off Payroll (Oct 17, 2025) · Alex Hanson, Financial audits reveal long-term struggles (Valley News, Jan 2, 2026) · Ethan Dewitt, NH senators move forward on loan fund (Nov 19, 2025) · Ethan Dewitt, Republicans push for annual school audits (Apr 26, 2026) · Arlene Hawkins, Reflecting on a tumultuous time (Apr 16, 2026) · Molly Hughes, Mary Henry (Aug 24, 2026) · Union Leader, "longer-standing issues".

Statutes and rules cited

RSA 198:4-b — retention of year-end unassigned general funds, by vote of the legislative body, capped against the RSA 198:5 net assessment; public hearing required before retained funds are expended.
RSA 21-J:19 — districts and school boards may hire a licensed accountant to audit within one year of the fiscal year's close; publication of the summary in the next annual report.
RSA 197:23-a — treasurer's duties; books submitted to auditors "whenever so requested."
RSA 32:11 — emergency expenditures and overexpenditure of appropriations; prior application, budget-committee consent or public hearing, and a designated revenue source.
2 CFR 200.512(a)(1) — single audit submission "within 30 calendar days after the auditee receives the auditor's report(s) or nine months after the end of the audit period (whichever is earlier)."
SB 586 (2026 ch. 272), repealing and reenacting RSA 198:4-d: annual independent audits (¶VI), report due within 9 months of fiscal year end (¶VIII); enacted after and because of this crisis.

Roster sources

Claremont election results and board membership 2018–2023 were reconstructed from the e-Ticker News archive (March 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 results), the Claremont School District 2023 Annual Report (roster with term expirations), Valley News March 2023 results, the Valley News report of the July 19, 2023 appointment, and the Eagle Times candidate forum of March 4, 2022. Rosters from February 2023 onward are corroborated by roll calls on the recordings themselves.