Dear Claremont Community, 

We want to share with you that Mr. Angell has completed his internal review and has found a total deficit of $5.011 million for Claremont School District. We are working to develop a plan that will substantially reduce the overall deficit by the end of FY26.

Mr. Angell determined the deficit number yesterday and was planning on presenting it last night at the Claremont School Board meeting. With that meeting being postponed, we decided to share the information with the community today. We felt you deserved to know as soon as possible.

Mr. Angell worked closely with the SAU #6 business office, the human resources office, and external auditors to determine the deficit. As you know, early estimates ranged between a $2 million and $5 million deficit, and each day often brought key information to light during their analysis. A draft of the auditors’ report for FY22 showed significant deficiencies around internal controls, which have contributed to the current financial situation.

Mr. Angell has been able to identify a number of areas we need to focus on in order to clean up our financial situation. It will take some time to address these areas, but tightening certain controls will help reduce our deficit immediately.

Going forward, we are working together on a plan that will focus on maintaining current operations to ensure students and teachers have the necessary resources, while still addressing some of the deficits this year within the current budget. Mr. Angell believes we should be able to reduce the deficit substantially by the end of the year.

That said, we are not yet prepared to share a number we can reduce the deficit by. We are finding savings that we can implement, sometimes by tightening controls and others by eliminating spending we discover. But we are also discovering new, unpaid bills.

While we anticipate the deficit will be substantially lower, we want to caution you that there will be a deficit of some amount at year-end without financing. Additional controls and guidelines will help minimize this, and they will be put in place over the next several months.

When the Claremont School Board meets next on October 1, 2025, we look forward to providing a more detailed explanation of the deficit and an initial plan to move forward.