CLAREMONT, N.H. – The Claremont-Unity School Board (SAU6) held a public hearing on Wednesday, Feb. 18, to present and discuss two articles that will be on the March 10 ballot. Warrant Article 7, regarding open enrollment, and Warrant Article 8, which proposes a budget cap, were discussed at the meeting.
The public hearing, which was required by law, presented an opportunity for the board to explain the articles in further detail, and allowed citizens to make comments and ask questions.
Warrant Article 7 permits students living outside the school district to attend schools in the district, in an amount not to exceed 10% of each school’s enrollment. Article 7 also limits the percentage of students residing in the district who may attend open enrollment schools located outside the district to 0%.
Board member Candace Crawford clarified that if students want to attend other schools, they still can, but the financial burden remains with the family, as it is in the current policy. Crawford warned that if the board does not make its own policies, “the school district would be responsible for 80% of the costs of students going to another district, without any restrictions on how many students that could be.”
“Additionally,” Crawford continued, “If we did not have this article in place, we could have an unknown number of students coming to our schools whether or not we had the capacity for them. There is no way to plan ahead for these costs.”
“The point right now is we need this warrant article to limit Claremont’s exposure for tax purposes…[and] our financial responsibility,” Crawford concluded.
Complete details on the financial ramifications to the school district can be found at www.sau6.org.
State Rep. Hope Damon offered “updates and clarifications on the House and Senate bills. For those that want to look them up, it’s House Bill 751 and Senate Bill 101.” Damon explained that neither would be signed into law until late spring.
“The school board does not recommend this article,” Board Chair Heather Whitney stated. She read aloud the terms proposed by Article 8 to “implement a budget cap whereby the school board or budget committee shall not submit a recommended budget that is higher than the [2025-2026] fiscal year per-pupil cost times the average daily membership in residents of the school district as of Oct. 1 of the year immediately preceding,” while accounting for an annual increase to cover inflation as determined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Whitney presented the legal opinion of the district’s attorney, James O’Shaughnessy, purporting that “the language does not follow the law. [That language] requires that the budget cap be set as a dollar amount. Changing a dollar amount to a fiscal year reference is not permitted under the statute.”
O’Shaughnessy argued that, due to the lack of reference to a dollar amount, “voters do not know what they are voting for or against. If it passes, I will likely advise the board that it is unenforceable.”
Comptroller Matt Angell spoke to the implications the district would face should this proposed budget cap be approved. “Back in January…I calculated an operating budget of just under $36 million, which represents a $9.1 million dollar decrease as compared to what’s being proposed.”
Angell further detailed the “easy areas of elimination” that would be the first school programs to be terminated to meet the demand of cutting more than $9 million from the projected budget.
Angell provided the board with a possible list of cuts that could include the elimination of all Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center programs, closing the Dow Building and relocating those operations elsewhere, complete termination of all athletics and extracurricular activities, and the potential of closing Maple Avenue and Disnard elementary schools.
Several residents took the opportunity to address the potential loss of extracurricular programs such as sports and music, including Stevens High School senior Kiren Adrian, who told the board he had “been heavily involved in the music program for all four years of my high school life and…plan to pursue composition at the collegiate level.” Adrian pointed to studies related to extracurricular activities that prove participation in sports or music programs increases test scores, GPA levels, and graduation rates.
Angell reported on the current financial status of the district, stating that, although progress is slow, they are still moving forward with conducting audits for both Unity and Claremont.
The Claremont School Board meets on the first and third Wednesday of every month, at 6:30 p.m., in the John Goodrich Business & Community Room at the Sugar River Valley Technical Center.