By Patrick Adrian
[email protected]
CLAREMONT — The Claremont School District appears to have improperly warned residents of its special meeting scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 21, as well as a related public hearing that took place on Wednesday, Nov. 6, based on New Hampshire requirements stated in RSA 197:3-a, Special Meeting for Change in Education Funding.
The Claremont School Board has scheduled a special meeting next week at Stevens High School, asking Claremont voters to consider appropriating $650,000 of unanticipated revenue to the district’s special education budget. The money comes from $1.3 million in additional state funding the district received in the 2020-2022 state budget.
The district had to hold a public hearing on Nov. 6 to decide how to appropriate the money, since it was not included in the 2019-2020 budget approved by voters in March.
At that public hearing, the school board decided to use about half of the $1.3 million to offset taxes and move the other half into a new special education expendable trust fund to expand special and alternative education programming, according to multiple sources.
State law requires that voters must approve appropriating the money to the school district in a special meeting. However, the Eagle Times has determined that this public hearing was not properly warned in accordance with state law, as the district did not post a notice about the public hearing on its website.
RSA 197:3-a, part IV states that: “notice of the time, place, and subject of such hearing shall be posted in at least two public places within the school district, one of which shall be on the school district’s website, if such exists, at least seven days prior to the hearing.”
Assistant Superintendent Donna Magoon told the Eagle Times yesterday that the district had posted notices for the public hearing inside Claremont City Hall and the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center (SRVRTC), where the hearing was scheduled to be held. Though, the only mention of the public hearing is on the Nov. 6 meeting agenda, located inside a folder on a Google Drive containing the school board meeting packets. The inclusion in the agenda does not meet the requirements of a public notice.
Additionally, the district did not follow state law when warning its special meeting.
RSA 197:3-a, Part V requires the district to post notice of the meeting “which shall include the warrant, in at least two public places within the school district, one of which shall be on the school district’s website, at least seven days prior to the meeting.”
A second notice must be posted in a local or regional newspaper that circulates within the district, the RSA additionally states.
The district did not post a notice of the meeting until yesterday, after the Eagle Times brought the matter to the district’s attention.
Magoon said that, before this issue was brought to attention, the notice was tucked inside the Nov. 6 meeting folder on the school board’s Google Drive. The assistant superintendent also recounted that the district announced the special meeting in the Nov. 12 edition of the Eagle Times, and that the notice included a link to the warrant. However, in the Nov. 12 issue of the Eagle Times, the post is located in the Classifieds section on page B9 and does not include a copy of the warrant article.
Moreover, while the notice tells readers to “visit our website, www.sau6.org, under School Boards” to view the warrant, those directions would not lead a reader to the warrant. To find the warrant, the reader would need to go from “School Boards” to “Claremont”, scroll to the bottom of the page, click on the link to “CSB Meeting Packet” and open the “11/06/2019 Meeting Packet” folder.
Magoon said she was not aware of the notice’s location until after her initial conversation with the Eagle Times. After finding the notice, she moved it to the SAU 6 homepage and notified the newspaper.
Physical notices for the meeting were posted in City Hall, the SRVRTC, the Dow building and Stevens High School, where the meeting is scheduled to be held, according to Magoon.
Superintendent Michael Tempesta was unavailable for comment.
It is unsure whether this information will impact the scheduled meeting date. Currently, the meeting will be held in the Stevens High School auditorium on Thursday, Nov. 21 at 6:30 p.m.
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