CLAREMONT, N.H. – At the Wednesday, Feb. 4, meeting of the Claremont School Board, New Hampshire State Rep. Hope Damon updated the board on House Bill 1399.
Calling it “a long shot effort,” Damon detailed the push for a $5 million appropriation to the Claremont School District. Damon said the funds would be “a retroactive payment for the building aid project that was done at Stevens [High School] during the moratorium.” The bill is expected to continue moving up the house chain of command for the finance committee to approve sometime this month.
“I would encourage anybody who wants to see this money come to Claremont,” Damon commented, “to not only contact your local state reps, of which you have five, [but] much sooner, if you go online to ‘Gen Court N.H.,’ the website for the House, [you] can go to the finance committee and get the names of the individuals involved.”
Currently, the website cannot accept citizen’s comments online, so Damon strongly suggested Claremont residents email or call those individuals directly.
Senior comptroller Matt Angell addressed concerns he said he’s been hearing from teachers regarding cash balances. “I want to make sure teachers understand that our cash balances are fine,” Angell stated. “When I talk about loans, the loan is the revolving line of credit…[and] right now we are not borrowing against it.”
Angell stated the district has about $3 million in the bank, which should carry them through the month. “If we have to borrow any money,” Angell expressed, “it [would] be less than $50,000 just to get us through.”
The district anticipates needing to borrow money in March, but plans to pay the loan off at the start of April utilizing their final adequacy payment. “What we receive for the remainder of the year should carry us through the rest of the year.”
Interim Superintendent Kerry Kennedy announced that the Annual Report “is going to the printers very soon and will be…ready ahead of the March 10 voting day.”
After returning from a nonpublic meeting session, the board set the tuition rates for fiscal year 2027 at $15,000 for elementary schools, $15,500 for middle school, and $17,000 for high school, based on Angell’s recommendations.
School board member Candace Crawford presented the meeting with recent findings pertaining to funding athletics across the district. “At our last meeting,” Crawford said, “the school board set the 2026-2027 proposed budget at $42,957,714. In that budget, the allocated funds for athletics were $1. The administration was tasked with finding changes in line items that could be made to free up funds for athletics.” New Hampshire law allows the board to transfer money between budget line items.
Crawford stressed that the board supports athletics and is aware of their important role as part of the educational experience. She reported that members of the school board and administration reviewed the budget and were able to identify some sources for funding athletics. The discovery of two duplicate entries amounted to a savings of approximately $250,000. A savings of $450,000 came from a request from Stevens High School for additional teachers that was subsequently withdrawn. The reconfiguration of “a couple of support programs with limited enrollments that are not mandated [will] free up another $150,000,” Crawford stated.
Michael Petrin, vice chair, commented that it was time to stop “rubber stamping” programs without reviewing cost and benefit each year. Crawford stated that, although they may have discovered $850,000 in potential savings, they were not obligated to spend it on athletics, or at all.
The board gratefully accepted a $15,000 donation from The Byrne Foundation to help fund the Claremont Middle School eighth grade field trip to the Boston Museum of Science. Kennedy told the board the amount will cover “not all, but a good chunk” of the cost of the trip.
The school board’s next regular meeting will be Wednesday, Feb.18, at the Sugar River Valley Technical Center.