← All meetings: School Board Meeting Navigator
Claremont School Board, Goal Setting Meeting — July 29, 2026
Annual goal-setting work session built around the superintendent's nine-domain "Foundation" framework — post-it brainstorming on chart paper, then a domain-by-domain group review. Summary generated from the meeting video transcript, the annotated agenda, and the draft minutes.
- Body
- Claremont School Board (SAU 6)
- Date
- Wednesday, July 29, 2026
- Start time
- 6:00 p.m. per the agenda; the recording (2:39:58) opens with the workshop already underway and ends at a five-minute break before the noticed nonpublic session
- Location
- Dow Administration Building, 165 Broad Street, Claremont NH
- Minutes
- 7.29.26 DRAFT CSB Meeting Minutes (packet folder; incomplete draft — see flags)
Participants
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|---|---|
| Candace Crawford | Chair | Present; wrote goals onto chart paper, kept time |
| Heather Whitney | Board member | Present; read the chart-paper post-its aloud to drive the review |
| William "Bill" Madden | Board member | Present; dress code, school visits, equal treatment, pace of change |
| Brian Rapp | Board member | Present; facilities and school-visit remarks |
| Don Lavalette | Board member | Present; special education, curriculum "C. Don" feedback, master-teacher proposal |
| Loren Howard | Board member | Absent — submitted written feedback that Broadrick read into the session ("giving Loren a voice") |
| Michael Petrin | Vice Chair | Absent |
| Dr. Tim Broadrick | Superintendent | Facilitated the workshop; 395 speaking segments |
| Tammy Cody | Executive Assistant (listed "Tammy Cote" on the agenda) | Listed on the agenda; printed Howard's feedback for members |
Agenda
From the posted agenda (CSB Agenda - July 29 2026). Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for full text.
| Scheduled | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|---|---|
| 6:00 PM | I. Call to Order & Pledge of Allegiance | Roll call per the annotated agenda — Present: Candace Crawford, Bill Madden, Heather Whitney, Brian Rapp, Don Lavalette. Absent: Loren Howard, Mike Petrin. (The call to order is not clearly audible on the recording, which opens with the workshop in progress.) |
| 6:05 PM | II. Citizens' Comments (Policy BEDH) | "Please reference CSB Policy BEDH — Public Comment & Participation at Board Meetings." None offered, per the draft minutes. |
| 6:15 PM | III.1. Feedback on the superintendent's "Build a Foundation" presentation | "Loren Howard provided written feedback on the superintendent's July 21 presentation. Heather Whitney provided documents on Roles and Responsibilities for Board Members. Bill Madden provided documentation on dress code. Members discussed following the superintendent's proposed 'foundation' framework for goal-setting and agreed to do so." Broadrick: "You can't solve every problem in one school year… my goal is to continually work with you to make sure we're solving the right ones first." |
| — | III.2. Brainstorming exercise: what do we need in each domain? | Post-it notes on chart paper across the nine "foundation stone" areas: School Board/Superintendent roles; Special Education; Student Wellness – Counseling, Civil Rights; Facilities & Maintenance; Business Administration; Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment; School Operations; Human Resources; Information Technology (about 25 minutes). |
| — | III.3. Group review: synthesis and discussion of action items | Whitney read each sheet to facilitate discussion; Howard's written feedback reviewed — "The board needs to set timelines along with goals and hold itself accountable… All audits must be completed by July of 2027." Domain-by-domain discussion detailed in the timeline below; output to be typed up, circulated to the board and administrators, and folded into the recovery plan. |
| 9:00 PM | IV. Nonpublic Meeting — RSA 91-A:3, II(a, c, e) | The recording ends with Crawford calling a five-minute break "and then we will come back into nonpublic." The draft minutes do not record the entry motion, roll-call vote, times, or outcome — see the flags below. |
| 9:30 PM | V. Adjournment | Not captured on the recording; not recorded in the located draft minutes. |
Discussion timeline
Times are from the dialogue transcript (Output/Dialogue/Claremont School Board - 72926.CSV), which begins with the workshop underway. Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording.
| Time | Topic | What was said (leading text; hover/focus for more) | Flags |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00:00 | Loren Howard's written feedback | Broadrick reads Howard's letter aloud: be up to date with audits — Howard wrote "by July [2027]," Broadrick "we want to beat that one"; attach timelines to goals and track data; the community didn't cause this; plan and budget for the unexpected; "we learned a valuable lesson about tactics folks will use to withhold information"; without capable in-house special-ed services "we spend insane amounts on placements"; middle-school upkeep, tech renovation, capital questions (has the Masonic Lodge sold?). | HIGH |
| 0:10:49 | Special education | Academy program under a Department of Education due-diligence review; staffing levels vs. needs; hire only certified special-ed administrators (board consensus); paras "need to mirror" teachers; IEP counts by category over time requested; DHHS/court placements — four children currently placed outside the district by courts or DHHS with "no local control" over costs; catastrophic-aid gap discussion ("for a long time cat aid… was fully funded, but in the last 5 to 7 years we've slipped"); certified director of special education search. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:24:23 | School operations: athletics, dress codes, food service | Athletics: follow the money, audits and fundraising, hiring/evaluation process, team rules and handbooks; no cross-country program despite low cost. Food service: outsourced; "the future of that company is in question" — vendor viability concern carried from Angell; federal procurement review requirement every third year noted. Dress codes: board-member involvement; 2005 policy unenforced. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:27:39 | Teacher observation & evaluation | Whitney: since she joined the board there has been no functioning teacher-evaluation model; "we haven't been able to move people along that haven't met" expectations. Lavalette: trust must come first — "you're not going to get buy-in with the hammer." Broadrick: "the law requires school boards in New Hampshire to adopt a teacher evaluation process… if there isn't one in place, the board has the authority to impose one," which could trigger a bargaining request. Evaluations must be written, specific, with a right to respond. | MEDIUM |
| 0:36:06 | Information technology | Network infrastructure and security; "compliance with data and privacy laws"; unified public-facing messaging (ParentSquare, website, Facebook, texts — "so many versions"); website quality ("Our website is horrible" — Whitney); tech audit needed; decrease elementary screen time; assess value of current technologies; audits posted online after the 7/21 commitment but hard to find. | |
| 0:41:43 | Consultant contracts (TMS / PR) | Broadrick kept only the PR service from the prior consulting arrangement and terminated a professional-development contract the day before ("we were paying a firm roughly $15,000 a year… and we employ a director of curriculum, instruction and assessment who's responsible for professional development"); the HR consultant and interim-superintendent advisor roles ended around June 1. | |
| 0:46:46 | Board/superintendent roles; professional reading | Lavalette proposes the board engage in professional reading (journal club); Broadrick assigns Fullan's "Leading in a Culture of Change" — the same book his administrators will read at the grant-funded two-day retreat with Michael Fullan as speaker; Whitney's "the administration exists to facilitate those that govern, not the other way around." | |
| 0:51:57 | Board bylaws; compliance calendar | Whitney: new members get almost no state guidance — build a framework other boards could use; Broadrick: NHDOE (with the administrators' association) has drafted a month-by-month school-board compliance calendar expected "in the fall" — "In July, here are all the things we have to do… we're still working on [one], but we've communicated with the department and we got an extension"; he drafted a version earlier with his former assistant superintendent. Policy priorities: fiscal policies with procedures attached, by Halloween. | POSITIVE |
| 1:06:57 | Board members inside schools | Madden: past tours were "dog and pony" walk-throughs; wants unvarnished visits and teacher conversations; Whitney: "fly on the wall, sit me in a classroom in the back"; Broadrick cautions about scaring teachers and proposes working with principals and volunteer teachers; Lavalette: "what would an ordinary citizen think if they can't bias on this?" | |
| 1:12:45 | Dress code | The 2005 dress-code policy exists but isn't enforced ("one set of rules for the girls and one set of rules for the boys" complaint from staff tours); CMS and SHS principals to bring dress-code proposals to the August 19 meeting; staff dress expectations discussed alongside professionalism-of-the-profession remarks. | |
| 1:18:21 | Discipline | Broadrick walks through exclusion law as he applies it: a principal may assess up to 10 days; "after ten days by the principal, I can assess another ten days"; beyond that a board hearing; "usually… either things get better… or the family will withdraw the student." Lavalette: lost learning time for the other 20 students is the missing part of the conversation; Madden: discipline failures depress academics; homeschool withdrawal as escape valve discussed. | OBSERVATION |
| 1:24:30 | Business administration | Post-its: procurement quotes and bids; audits; cross-training; educate the board on accounting ("never to accept an Excel spreadsheet… Ever, ever, ever" — with Broadrick agreeing some current reports displease him too); require annual training for the business administrator; who opens and logs mail and checks ("the mail gets routed and opened by an employee" — with a recent stir over routing); checkbook and manifests online with a one-slide visual summary each meeting ("I'm totally on board with this. I want to do it at one of your August meetings"); contracted services tied to contracts — recent RFQ/RFP rounds already run (five vendors solicited, two responses, low price won, certificate of insurance now on file); business-office proximity/office moves; capacity building. | POSITIVE |
| 1:35:56 | Relationship with the treasurer | Welcome the treasurer into the process — "we're not the boss, superintendent's not the boss"; meeting about weekly; Whitney wants regular treasurer reports to the board; Lavalette/Diamond to codify best practices and procedures so the next treasurer inherits a working system. | |
| 1:39:06 | Curriculum, instruction & assessment | Lavalette's "C. Don" feedback: do elementary math programs support middle school?; build a coherent K-8 structure and learner attributes; no scripted-curriculum handcuffs; develop a district master-teacher program ("maybe we become the first in the state"); instructional leadership from within grade-level teams; program-buying costs ("the cost of buying a math program for this district is enormous… nobody becomes proficient"); over-reliance on technology assessment; over-identification into IEPs when instruction is the problem; fidelity means evidence-based routines, not pacing-calendar compliance. Broadrick's writing-instruction story; Whitney: "$150,000 a year for zero" vendor value; Kerry to present the in-use programs at the next meeting; Wit & Wisdom middle-school pilot conversations already underway. | |
| 1:56:19 | Student wellness, access & counseling | New director role split from special education, ~90% grant-funded (SASS grant, "between 250 and 300" thousand, competitive, 6–8 districts) plus a full-time West Central Behavioral Health clinician under an MOU; intervention teams meeting weekly with data-driven tiers; DHHS/court placement dollars ("my big complaint in Concord"); truancy — the truancy officer resigned, attendance 10–20% truancy discussed, "did more kids come to school when we had a truancy officer?"; homeschooling — "they don't even have to tell us anymore" under the new law, guidance to staff: treat families no differently; GED/adult-ed program lapsed after grant reports went unsubmitted ("the superintendent didn't submit it") — meetings underway to restore it. | OBSERVATION |
| 2:12:51 | Human resources | Nomination and hiring procedures for certified and non-certified staff; stipends need board approval trails; "limit MOUs"; one personnel file per employee held centrally ("bring them all here"); benefits administration; one system for monitoring staff schedules; every non-CBA contract to come before the board — "and it creates real inequities here on the staff. And they know" (three years of health insurance for a departed employee cited again); treat staff like customers. | |
| 2:17:22 | Facilities & capital planning | Five-year capital plan with annual reviews; no money currently in reserve funds ("I don't think you have money in any reserve funds"); combine purchases/contracts with city, county, state; include human capital in maintenance-cost assessments; priorities and cost-benefit to be set with the capital subcommittee (Madden). | |
| 2:20:08 | Next steps; budget process note | Broadrick will type up all sheets (including Howard's letter), share with the board and administrators, then with the public — an update (no decisions) at the August 5 meeting; turn the material into "a real actionable plan with dates, objectives, deadlines" within weeks; wants to present progress to the State Board of Education in January. Budget process: "the law says that the superintendent recommends a budget to the school board"; "it's funny, you're a city, but you do SB 2" — deliberative session and ballot ahead. Whitney: elevate the budget presentation to Hanover's standard. | |
| 2:32:26 | Preparing for the auditor (Aug 5) | Board members to send audit questions ahead through Tammy and the superintendent; Campo can meet in public and nonpublic; corrective actions are the answer to "how do we prevent this going forward"; Broadrick: "24 and 25 are going to look a lot like what you're looking at" — all the more reason to finish them; audit-history recap (no audits 2016–2019 era; drafts for FY20/21 in late August 2025; FY22 in November). | HIGH |
| 2:39:40 | Break before nonpublic session | "We're going to have a five minute break and then we will come back into nonpublic." The recording ends here; no entry motion or roll call is captured, and the draft minutes do not record one. | MEDIUM |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the discussion against current state and federal law. They are not findings of violation, and nothing here is legal advice. Each flag cites the rule it rests on.
HIGH "All audits complete by July 2027" now runs against a statutory funding clock
The board adopted Howard's written goal that all audits be completed by July 2027 (Broadrick: "we want to beat that one"), with FY24/FY25 informally expected around Thanksgiving 2026. Under SB 586, signed July 2, 2026 and effective July 1, 2026, each district must file an annual audit or a certified financial report within 6 months of fiscal year end, and "the commissioner shall withhold any and all state funding allocated to any non-compliant… school district… until the audit or financial report is completed and submitted." The FY26 filing window therefore closes around December 31, 2026 — well before the July 2027 goal — and the report requires the board chair's certification "under the pains and penalties of perjury." The federal single-audit deadlines (nine months after year end) for the unaudited years have already passed.
Sources: SB 586 (2026), Chapter 272 (effective July 1, 2026); 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1); New Hampshire Bulletin, Apr. 22, 2026 (bill coverage); Valley News, Apr. 26, 2026.
MEDIUM Nonpublic session and minutes documentation gaps
The agenda noticed a 9:00 p.m. nonpublic session under RSA 91-A:3, II(a), (c) and (e), and the recording ends with the board breaking to enter it. Entering nonpublic session requires a motion stating the specific exemption and a roll-call vote taken in public; nonpublic minutes must be kept and disclosed within 72 hours unless sealed by a recorded 2/3 vote with statutory findings. The located draft minutes for this meeting record none of this — no entry motion, roll call, times, or disposition — and the draft itself is visibly unfinished (a section trails off mid-list). No minutes for July 29 appear in the district's "Meeting Minutes" share at all; the only copy sits in the packet folder. Public-session minutes are due for inspection within 5 business days (drafts suffice). Worth confirming: whether complete public and nonpublic minutes exist at the district office.
Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b) and III; RSA 91-A:2, II (minutes within 5 business days); 7.29.26 DRAFT CSB Meeting Minutes.
MEDIUM No functioning teacher-evaluation system
Board members stated that no approved teacher-evaluation model is currently in place or consistently applied, despite years of discussion, and the superintendent told the board that state law requires an adopted evaluation process and that the board could impose one (potentially triggering a bargaining demand). An adopted, documented professional-evaluation system is part of the state minimum standards framework for school approval; the absence of one affects personnel decisions the board is asked to ratify. Flagged for follow-up as the administration builds its model with principals.
Sources: superintendent's statement in the dialogue (0:33:32); N.H. Admin. Rules Ed 306 (minimum standards framework) — specific evaluation-rule citation not verified against the discussion; treat as the superintendent's characterization pending confirmation.
OBSERVATION Court/DHHS placements: mandated costs without local control; catastrophic aid shortfalls
Four Claremont children are currently placed outside the district by courts or DHHS, with the district liable for education costs it does not set — "a form of local tax based on demographics," as the superintendent put it. State special-education "catastrophic" aid covers 80% of costs above 3.5 times the state average expenditure per pupil (100% above 10 times), but the appropriation is prorated when insufficient, with a floor of 80% of entitlement — the "we've slipped in the last 5 to 7 years" the board described. An accurate placement-cost report was requested and is a follow-up to track.
OBSERVATION Food-service vendor viability and third-year procurement review
The outsourced food-service company's future "is in question" (a concern inherited from the former business administrator), with one year left on the arrangement. School food-service management contracts sit under federal Child Nutrition procurement rules, and the superintendent referenced the recurring competitive-review obligation ("every third year"). If the vendor fails mid-year the district would need an emergency procurement path; flagged as a continuity risk to watch during budget development.
Sources: 7 CFR 210.16 (food service management companies; contract/rebid limits); 2 CFR 200.318 (procurement standards).
OBSERVATION Discipline, truancy, and the new home-education law
The suspension ladder described (10 days by a principal/superintendent's designee, a further period on additional authority, then board involvement) tracks RSA 193:13. The truancy officer's resignation left enforcement of compulsory attendance (RSA 193:16 framework) unstaffed while truancy was described at 10–20%. On homeschooling, the superintendent's "they don't even have to tell us anymore" reflects HB 1268 (2026), which removed the notification requirement for most families beginning home education; his guidance to staff was to treat families no differently. The board's worry — that aggressive attendance enforcement pushes withdrawals into now-invisible homeschooling — is a policy tension, not a compliance issue.
Sources: RSA 193:13 (suspension and expulsion); HB 1268 (2026), Chapter 297 — final text; NH Homeschooling Coalition summary of the 2026 changes.
POSITIVE Oversight practices adopted or promised beyond legal minimums
The session produced a cluster of transparency and control commitments: checkbook and manifests posted online with a one-slide financial summary at each meeting (targeted for August), a board rule of never accepting bare spreadsheets in place of general-ledger reports, competitive RFQ/RFP solicitation already applied to previously sole-sourced services, a written best-practices handoff for the treasurer's office, board professional reading, and an NHDOE month-by-month compliance calendar expected in the fall to keep required items from being missed.
Context: RSA 91-A:2 (the open-records baseline these practices exceed).
Appendix — source files
Official meeting records
- Remote video: Claremont School Board - 7/29/26 (Cablecast show 17512)
- Packet folder: 2. 7.29.26 — Goal Setting Meeting (2 documents)
- Agenda (annotated with roll call and workshop notes): CSB Agenda - July 29 2026
- Minutes: 7.29.26 DRAFT CSB Meeting Minutes (no copy in the district's Meeting Minutes share as of 2026-08-19)
Project files (internal working files; not published online)
- Dialogue transcript: Output/Dialogue/Claremont School Board - 72926.CSV
- Video file: Input/Videos/Claremont School Board - 72926.mp4
- Diarized transcript: Input/Transcripts/Claremont School Board - 72926.json
- Meeting/document map: Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:2, RSA 91-A:3 (Right-to-Know Law)
- RSA 193:13 (discipline); RSA 186-C:18 (catastrophic aid)
- 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 272 (SB 586); 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 297 (HB 1268)
- Ed 306 (minimum standards); 7 CFR 210.16; 2 CFR 200.512