CLAREMONT — The interim business administrator for SAU 6 — who has been largely credited with keeping Claremont schools open last year despite a multimillion-dollar deficit — has abruptly resigned.
In a statement last week, Superintendent Tim Broadrick said Matt Angell “unexpectedly took a leave of absence from the SAU 6 office” while Broadrick was on a scheduled vacation earlier this month. When he learned of the absence, he said, he reached out to Angell promptly.
“Mr. Angell has decided that he wishes for us to find a permanent business administrator sooner rather than later and he is ending his interim engagement with Claremont,” Broadrick wrote in a statement last Thursday.
The resignation was effective immediately.
School board Chairman Candace Crawford said Angell, who was hired for two years, deserves the community’s gratitude for taking on an unenviable task and making difficult and unpopular decisions to help the district survive financially.
“I can’t thank Matt enough for all the hard decisions that he made,” Crawford said Monday. “Many weren’t popular and no one wanted to do that stuff, including Matt. But for us to get through the year, those hard decisions had to be made and he took the leadership to do that and we are all grateful that we made it through the year.”
Angell was hired last August after the Mary Henry, hired as the district administrator in July 2023, was placed on administrative leave (and later resigned) not long after the district disclosed it was facing a deficit of about $5 million.
The school board also replaced Superintendent Chris Pratt, who was placed on administrative leave in late August and reached a separation agreement with the district in September. Kerry Kennedy, the Claremont Middle School principal at the time, served as interim superintendent until Broadrick was hired.
The deficit and severe cash-flow problems threatened the opening of the district’s schools. When Angell was hired as the business administrator, he had already been working on the finances as the district’s comptroller for a couple of weeks. Angell could not be reached for comment on his resignation.
Schools did open on time, but several severe cost-cutting measures were implemented. Most significantly, the school board decided about a week before school started not to follow through with contracts for 19 new teachers and to lay off 20 district employees.
Also cut was funding for sports and other extracurricular activities, which led to a major fundraising effort organized by the Stevens High School Alumni Association that received enough donations to ensure sports, arts, theater and music were not affected during the school year.
The district also received a $4 million short-term loan from Claremont Savings Bank to help shore up its cash flow. The district did tap money from the loan during the year but everything has been paid back, Angell said previously.
Another cost-cutting measure was closing Bluff Elementary School in September because of special education staffing shortages, and to send students in grades K-5 to the district’s other two schools, Disnard and Maple Avenue.
During the academic year, Angell provided minimal information to the public on the cuts he made to steadily reduce the deficit, but did report regularly that he was able to chip away at it. At last week’s school board meeting, it was stated that nearly $4.4 million of the $5 million estimated deficit had been eliminated.
“It was not major stuff, but Matt was continually holding the line,” Crawford said Monday. “Almost every week, something would come up that may not have been authorized and Matt would say we are not paying it.”
Complicating everything was the district’s failure to conduct audits for fiscal years 2016-2018. When they resumed in 2019, the district and its auditing firm had to play catchup.
The actual deficit from 2025 has not been determined; the district won’t get audited financial statements for the period ending June 30, 2025, until later this fall.
At its meeting July 21, the board had expected to see the audited statements for the fiscal years ending 2023, 2024 and 2025, but instead saw only a draft audit for 2023.
Crawford said Monday that Mike Campo of the auditing firm Plodzik and Sanderson had hoped to finish audits of the two most recent years by July 21, but questions kept coming up, and getting the answers took more time than expected.
In announcing Angell’s resignation, Broadrick said a new bookkeeping clerk joined the staff full-time on July 27 and he has been speaking informally with “experienced business administrator candidates.” He believes there is a strong likelihood of filling the post quickly.
Crawford said the district has been advertising the position since January.
Broadrick praised Angell for the “difficult, thankless work he performed in Claremont.”
“He should have the entire community’s undying gratitude.”
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
