What a difference a day makes. Here we are, scaring people with the prospect of closing schools on the Casco Bay islands, eliminating foreign-language classes and crossing guard positions and other horrors if significant reductions were to be made in the Portland Public Schools budget.

Then, Superintendent Xavier Botana decides the reductions will not require such drastic changes and comes up with a set of alternatives nowhere near as drastic, ranging from eliminating a vacant educational technician position in a class with a projected enrollment of three students to a $25,000 reduction in the assistant superintendent’s budget. One wonders how many more than the handful of teaching positions systemwide could have been absorbed while still maintaining a very reasonable class size.

This budget planning looks like a game being played over the heads of the Portland taxpayers. I appeal to the editors of this newspaper to acknowledge and expose this problem where the people of this city are being manipulated by a self-serving, calculating bunch that is certainly not transparent, nor acting in the long-term interest of the people.

I really feel the editors should take a position and inform the public what is going on here.

Henk A. Pols

Cape Elizabeth

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