Merrimack Valley non-public meetings prompt questions about how district leaders disclosed overspending
Published: 01-30-2025 5:51 PM
Modified: 01-31-2025 8:44 AM |
Editor’s note: This story was updated on Friday morning to note that the minutes for one of the meetings described were updated following this story’s publication.
A pair of non-public meetings held by the Merrimack Valley School District and its school administrative unit raise questions about how and when district administrators informed board members and the public they had overspent by $2 million last school year.
Minutes of these meetings – which occurred last December and earlier this month originally revealed scant details about what was presented and in one case don’t align with what Superintendent Randy Wormald has previously said was discussed. (After this story’s publication, minutes for the second meeting appear to have been updated with additional details and posted on the district’s website.)
Moreover, the meetings should not have been closed to the public at all, according to Gregory V. Sullivan, the president of the New England First Amendment Coalition.
“There shouldn’t be anything confidential about the way the taxpayers’ monies have been spent by a school district,” said Sullivan, who reviewed the meeting minutes, including the reasons the boards cited to enter into the non-public sessions.
Wormald has repeatedly declined Monitor requests for an interview following his public disclosure three weeks ago that the district had spent more money than it had raised. The overspending was primarily due to unexpected out-of-district special education tuition and transportation expenses, he said in a statement and emailed responses to questions from the Monitor.
Wormald wrote in the statement that district leaders learned over the course of the fall that they had exceeded their budget and that he “presented a detailed report of the situation” to the SAU board on Dec. 3.
Minutes from that meeting, however, do not mention that presentation. The lone topics listed are “discussion of SAU staff and salaries” and “recognition of the resignation of the business administrator,” without further details.
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Wormald did not respond to a question about whether his “detailed report” about the district’s financial situation was separate from the discussion about the business administrator’s resignation.
Business administrator Hilary Denoncourt, who has not been present at recent board meetings, said in a brief interview earlier this month that she would be resigning from the district for “personal reasons” at the end of February. She declined to answer specific questions about the overspending and Wormald did not respond to a series of questions about whether her departure was connected to the district’s financial issues.
Prior to the Monitor’s inquiries, Denoncourt’s resignation had not been publicly disclosed.
About a month after the initial SAU meeting, the district school board entered into non-public session again in order to discuss “the statement of financial challenges” that would be released three days later and to discuss “the dire bus driver situation.”
In both meetings, the boards justified entering into non-public session by citing a portion of state law that refers to matters that “would likely affect adversely the reputation of any person.” In the first meeting, the SAU board also cited an exemption that refers to the firing, promotion, or compensation of an employee, while in the second the district board cited an exemption that refers to hiring.
Sullivan said a resignation would not satisfy the first carve-out unless the employee had been “facing discipline or dismissal had been discussed,” and he said none of the other portions of the law cited would satisfy conducting discussions about the school budget in non-public session.
“I would question whether or not the school board is being sufficiently transparent with respect to their non-public sessions,” he said.
Though the December and January non-public sessions spanned 47 and 86 minutes, respectively, the meeting minutes obtained by the Monitor do not reveal much of what was discussed.
The meeting description portions of the documents were originally limited to two lines each and read more like agendas than explanations of what happened. An updated version of the second meeting minutes posted after this story’s publication now includes several sentences.
While state law requires that minutes only include “a brief description of the subject matter discussed,” the non-public minutes for the first meeting offer significantly less detail than the district’s standard practice for public minutes, which typically provide significant information about what each person says.
“If you look back over the [non-public] minutes for the last 10 years, we’re pretty consistent,” Wormald said in response to a question about the differences between the public and non-public minutes.
Both sets of minutes are drafts and could still be revised before they are finalized.
The transparency questions the minutes raise come as the district prepares to head into a busy budgeting week. On Monday, the board will hold its first meeting since news of the overspending surfaced. An agenda for that meeting had yet to be posted online as of Thursday afternoon.
On Tuesday, the board will hold its public hearing on its proposed budget for next year, which if passed, would grow 7% from $48.3 million to $51.7 million.
In March, voters will also consider appropriating $300,000 to the special education trust and $150,000 to the maintenance expendable trust, both of which were depleted earlier this school year to cover a portion of the shortfall.
Wormald has said that the remaining $1 million of the deficit that was not covered by the trust fund withdrawals will be absorbed this school year. He did not respond to questions about how that process is affecting the educational experience, if at all, and about what would happen if the money can’t all be absorbed.
“We understand that this situation may raise concerns, but we want to assure you that we are taking decisive and proactive steps to address the issue,” Wormald wrote in the statement released earlier this month. “… Our goal is to restore financial stability while continuing to provide the high-quality education that our students deserve.”
Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.