CLAREMONT, N.H. – Citizens attending the Oct. 1 Claremont School Board meeting expressed disappointment after they were told the night’s agenda would address the $5 million financial deficit “a little bit.”
“A little bit” was also the response to Claremont resident Derek Ellerkamp when he asked the board, “Are there any proposals to dig out of that?”
Resident Erica Abbey echoed Ellerkamp’s request for more information about the deficit. “What happened, what will the future safety nets be, and how will we avoid this happening in the future?” Abbey questioned.
Citing the meeting’s crowded agenda as the reason they were unable to go into the deficit discussion in detail, Board Chair Heather Whitney reassured the crowd, “We are absolutely, 100% going to have meetings…that are very narrowly focused and will provide a lot more time. We [will be] having one- or two-item agendas in the future to ensure that there is [time for] a lengthy debate.”
Whitney also told the community that the board had implemented several new policies after recognizing that audits had been conducted but were never turned in to the school board, going back as far as 2016. Moving forward, there will be a deadline required for all audit presentations. A new mandate will call for the auditor, not the administration, to present the audit to the board, and all critical financial documents must go to the school board, and not solely to the administration.
Matt Angel, senior comptroller and interim business administrator, presented the financial update. “We’ve cut so much from the budget,” Angel told the meeting. “Right now there is $5.8 million available from the budget that we can use to try to pay down the deficit, and then also try to make it through to the end of the year.”
Angel included a cash flow summary of the current year in the presentation, explaining that it was very tight. The full report is available to view on the Claremont School Board website, www.sau6.org/claremont.
James O’Shaughnessy, attorney for the school district, was at the meeting, and reported that he had been working with Angel over the past several weeks to figure out how to best restore the deficit – essentially, by cutting expenses this year, leaving enough cash flow to operate, and working to pay down the debt.
O’Shaughnessy told the board their margin for error was minimal. “Your financial position right now is every bit as precarious and vulnerable as it was in August,” he said. “You don’t have a safety net.” He said the last resort should be to go to the state legislature for help, but there have been many people assisting with the corrective response, including Kaitlin Davis, commissioner of education, and others.
After much debate, the school board voted to adopt a resolution that would establish a revolving loan fund to act as a safety net.
Angel presented the fiscal year 2022 financial statement and single audit update, also available to view on the school board website. The accounting firm Plodzik and Sanderson conducted the audit, and will begin working on fiscal years 2023-2025 once they receive the financial information from Angel. The firm’s findings uncovered multiple delays, discrepancies, inconsistent monitoring, reconciliation of cash activities, and gaps in grant reporting.
Moving on from the financial discussion, Interim Superintendent Kerry Kennedy ran through the schedule for the closure of Bluff Elementary, which began the week of Monday, Oct. 6, with a farewell celebration.
All elementary schools will be closed Oct. 7-8, to move classrooms from Bluff to Disnard and Maple, and teachers will set up in their new locations Oct. 9-10. Oct. 14 will be the first day of combined classes.
There were three candidates for a vacancy on the school board at the meeting: Don Lavalette, David Putnam, and Kevin Tyson. After hearing from each of the candidates, the board’s vote was split 3-3 between Lavalette and Tyson, with Putnam withdrawing his application. The decision was made to table the discussion until the first board meeting in November.
Regarding continuing discussion on potential resolutions to the current budget deficit turmoil, O’Shaughnessy explained there were still a lot of unanswered questions.
By way of explanation, Whitney said, “The 2016 audit was not completed until 2019. 2017 was not completed until 2020, and 2019 was not completed until 2022. So, unfortunately, this is a longer-standing issue than we would like to believe.”
The next Claremont School Board meeting will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 6:30 p.m., at the Sugar River Valley Technical Center.