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Mr. Corrente, with all due respect, while I’ve felt the need to often challenge your comments regarding schools, these particular comments are probably the most ridiculous to date. As you evidently do not know, the schools cannot run a deficit and their budget is audited independently every single year and those results are public. Ask for those past audits before you make the charge. Also, neither schools nor municipalities fund capital improvement projects out their operating budgets. As a businessman, I thought you would realize that but I guess not. Your characterization of the School Committee is totally off base and your claim that they won’t spend bond monies on repairs as “their past performance strongly suggests” is ludicrous. Don’t vote for a bond of you don’t want to – that’s your prerogative. But you can then explain to the teachers and students (whom you so often laud in your comments) why they'll have to be stuck in the same classrooms that haven’t been updated in 25 years and why they have to go to buildings that haven’t been updated in that same amount of time. I’d also remind you that in the last 8-9 years of level funding from the city the schools have closed more than 5 buildings and reduced staff to deal with that level funding. And in every school closure debate, more than a couple of Council members would show up insisting that closings were not necessary. Try to square that circle if you please. Respectfully sir, you sound like someone who arrives at the game in the 9th inning thinking that they’ve played the first 8.

David Testa