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Mr. Corrente,

Your continual calls for an "audit" is a political red herring verging on conspiracy mongering. As I laid out and as the info Bob Cushman has provided, the fact is that 80% (or more in past years) of the school budget is spent on salary and benefits. So of the BILLION dollars, $800 MILLION has gone to paying staff (and 70-75% of that has gone to the teachers). The other 20% can quite easily be accounted for thanks to the Uniform Chart of Accounts (as explained before, it's mostly "cost of doing business" expenses with a relatively small amount for building upkeep).

The City Council's job is to provide oversight, which they do every year at the annual "take the school department to the wood shed" portion of the budget hearings. As for the $4 million health care cash reserve, I believe that is a hedge against increasing health care costs that helps with offsetting said costs against the collectively bargained (and I believe fixed) rate of employee health care contributions (again, mostly teachers). But that is just a guess and I'll certainly defer to anyone who may know.

As far as the negotiations, it takes two to tango. It's one thing to "publicly" negotiate by talking about the methods and forums, it's quite another to no be public about what your offers and counter-offers are. With arbitration, court rulings and mediation all coming to a head soon, I think we'll have an answer (and then where will that talking point go?).

Finally, I'm not generally what would be called a "politically correct person", but you parenthetical reference to Dean Johnson as "wheelchairman" was pretty despicable.