How far do we still have to go before we really brag about public schools?

Sitting in the City Council chambers Wednesday, it almost seemed as though Mayor Rahm Emanuel should have been waving about a set of pom-pons while wearing a tight sweater emblazoned “CPS.”

EMANUEL: "Go CPS!!!"

As in “Chicago Public Schools.” For Emanuel literally was in a cheerleader-like mode, telling the aldermen how far he thinks the public school system has come during his stint as mayor!

BUT KEEP IN mind that even crummy sports programs have cheerleaders – trying to get crowds worked up over teams that perform mediocrely at best.

And that certainly would be in line with any effort to find reasons to praise the Chicago Public Schools these days.

Now I’m not here to bash the city’s public school system. There are other people who will gladly do that, and I don’t really feel the need to chime in.

It’s just that when the City Council considered a resolution Wednesday that praised the Chicago Public Schools because it is being estimated that 82 percent of its high school senior classes will actually graduate this year, it made me snicker.

WHY?!??

Perhaps it is because I know of high school districts in the suburbs that are considered academically challenged that are going to be able to claim that about 90 percent of their seniors will graduate later this month. The quality high school districts are going to be very close to 100 percent.

There’s a sense that a school district getting all worked up over “82 percent” is as pathetic as those Chicago Cubs fans who try to find some great moral victory in the fact that their favorite ball club managed to lose three fewer games than did the Chicago White Sox.

It’s just too much of a stretch to take seriously. The Cubs were as dreadful as the White Sox (Sox fans find shame in the fact that their favorite ball club played down to Cubs-level last year). The Chicago Public Schools still have quite a ways to go before they can brag about system-wide excellence.

ALTHOUGH I CAN kind of comprehend why Emanuel and other Chicago boosters want to get excited about “82 percent.”

On the rise in Chicago?

For as Emanuel himself admitted, this is a public school district that used to only be able to claim about half of its senior class graduating each year.

Such as back in the days when then-President Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, William Bennett, hung the “Worst in the Nation” label on the Chicago Public Schools that the political ideologues still like to use when they want to make partisan attacks.

Of course, I always suspected that if Chicago weren’t so overwhelmingly Democratic when it came to voting, Bennett wouldn’t have been so willing to use the label here. It was part of an effort to take pot shots at public education, perhaps shifting young people to private schools that might accept some of their ideological theories more openly.

BUT BACK TO today, where conditions are improving in the city schools – although the idea that nearly one in five students aren’t able to get that high school diploma is still something that is less than desirable.

It means a large number of future residents whose options in life are going to be so limited that they will be the drag on the society of the future..

It even was encouraging to hear 14^th Ward Alderman Edward Burke talk about the day when “100 percent” of Chicago Public Schools graduates will be “college-level and college ready.”

Emanuel talks of that as the city’s ultimate goal. “This is our challenge the city is facing,” he said. “We can actually achieve it.” For all our sakes, let's hope he's correct.

Much more appealing for CPS?

JUST ONE THING. I wish Emanuel could find a more attractive sight for the “rah rah” stuff for Chicago Public Schools.

Perhaps we could dig up the old Honey Bears out of retirement. Even after all these years, the former Chicago Bears cheerleading squad still would look much better than that nauseating image I created of Mayor Rahm in a cheerleader outfit!

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Some people just don’t get the concept of doing things more efficiently!

We’re in a new year, and it seems that the Cook County Board has a resolution – they’re going to try to run their twice-a-month board meetings more efficiently.

At least that’s what their intent seems to be. In actuality, the board on Wednesday managed to plod its way through its public business in as inefficient a manner as possible.

FOR THE RECORD, the news reports that will come out of the Wednesday session will focus on gun control – particularly the fact that the county board approved a resolution telling the General Assembly to approve a bill now pending to restrict firearms even further.

The board also will consider a measure to make it a crime to fail to report a firearm missing. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says too many people who resell firearms to people who shouldn’t have them try claiming that “oops, I forgot” to report that weapon stolen!

But that activity managed to take up about, at most, a half-hour of a four-hour session. And it came at the very end of the session.

Anybody sitting through the county board activity on Wednesday had to endure hours of minutia – particularly a full hour on the subject of when it is appropriate to use electronic monitoring on someone rather than keeping them confined in the Cook County Jail.

THE CHANGE IN policy is that county board meetings now officially will start one hour later than they used to. While all the committee meetings that previously took place simultaneously with the board meeting will take place in the first hour that used to be the county board session.

It is good in one respect. It used to be a pain in the derriere to have to keep straight whether the board was acting as a board, a finance committee or some other entity.

But on Wednesday, it meant that the committees were done within 15 minutes. And that was delayed because the bulk of the commissioners couldn’t be bothered to show up on time.

Although they eventually straggled in and a quorum was reached, I couldn’t help but notice Commissioner John Fritchey, D-Chicago, showing up for business two minutes AFTER all the committee activity was over.

NOT THAT HE missed much! Although I think Commissioner Peter Silvestri, R-Elmwood Park, hit it right on the nose when he said, “the first time we do this new schedule, there’s no business.”

Even county board President Toni Preckwinkle was off a little bit, as she initially started the formal part of the county board meeting with an announcement that committees would now meet – only to be told by Commissioner John Daley, D-Chicago, that the committee business was already complete.’

"I’m going off the old script,” she quipped.

Actually, if there’s something that the county board could do if it were seriously interested in shortening its board meetings, it would be to do away with all those ceremonial resolutions they feel compelled to debate and discuss at will.

ON WEDNESDAY, THERE was but one (by Commissioner Jesus Garcia, D-Chicago, honoring the memory of a long-deceased doctor of Mexican ethnic heritage). But there have been times when they feel compelled to honor a half-dozen people at a time – which stretches out the pomp and fluff into hours of mind-numbing activity.

Then there are all the little tidbits of business – such as the awarding of a contract to Finer Foods of Chicago to provide all the poultry products that will be fed to inmates at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, or the deal that says county jail inmates will now be used to clean and feed the animal population at the Animal Care Facility, 2741 S. Western Ave. The city will pay the county just over $323,000 per year for that detail.

Daley might have been right technically when he said that making the change would allow the board meeting proper to “blow right through the agenda.”

But it still is a mind-numbing place to watch politicking take place – not truly gross enough to be classified as sausage-making.

BUT STILL NOT the most refined of processes to watch.

Which is why listening to Daley in response to the county board’s invocation might have been Wednesday’s highlight.

The pastor in question who gave the prayer recently transferred from a Bridgeport-neighborhood church to one in Hyde Park.

Which Daley – the life-long Bridgeport native himself – said amounts to, “leaving a great ward to go to a good ward.”

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Shakespeare from people who say “pop?”

I’m not sure what to think of the idea that Saturday is “Talk Like Shakespeare Day” across Illinois, including Chicago.

QUINN: Can he speak Bard?



Sure enough, Gov. Pat Quinn made the proclamation saying that people should make efforts to speak in Olde English if at all possible, as a way of paying tribute to the playwright who – if not for mankind’s ultimate mortality – would now be 447 years old.

STATE OFFICIALS CITE the fact that there are at least 1,700 words in modern-English vocabulary that owe their origins to Shakespeare’s plays.

They also cited the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, which said people could use “thee” and “thou” instead of “you” when they speak. Insult phrases such as “jackanape” and “doghearted dewberry” also were suggested for those moments when one needed to tell someone off.

Although considering that many people, including some Cook County government employees, had Friday off because they used Good Friday as an excuse to not go to school or work, and some others chose to make Earth Day events part of their Friday routine, I’d like to think that there just wasn’t as much need for insults. A three-day weekend should put us all in a cheery mood.

Besides, this is Chicago, where there are many people who’d like to think we have our own unique language – much of which is meant to counter the mentality behind much proper English.

NOT THAT I’M saying Chicagoans are functionally illiterate. It just seems like a “Talk Like Shakespeare Day” would be anti-Chicago at its very character.

Take an all-too-common quickie lunch of a sandwich and a soda pop – which in Chicago-speak can easily be a “sammich” and a “pop.” Before you think I’m mocking anyone, consider that I believe the only people who are worthy of derision on this point are those who self-righteously insist on saying merely “soda.”

Or the use of the word “prairie,” which in much of the world can bring to mind an image of an open field with natural grasses growing two or three feet high. A thing of natural beauty. Something untouched and unspoiled.

But in Chicago-speak, a vacant lot in between existing homes or other structures whose grasses are overgrown weeds. Something that is definitely spoiled and in need of new construction – except for the fact that the lot may well be too small to accommodate a traditional structure, making the land virtually worthless.

UNLESS SOMEONE CAN manage to buy up a few more surrounding lots and then tear down everything to create some super-huge structure (which likely will then be considered to be an architectural eyesore that people will wish could be torn down).

Definitely not something lasting like the literature of Shakespeare. Not even anything beautiful in its graphic bluntness such as the literature of Nelson Algren (whose own fiction about the Chicago of old is more honest than most reporting that occurs on any given day).

Insofar as what constitutes Chicago-speak, one can find many websites around the Internet that will give you would-be glossaries that define various terms – most of which are merely phonetic pronunciations of the way in which the English language is mispronounced by past generations of city residents who were still learning the language.

Such as one website that tried passing off “Grachki” and “Frunchroom” off as legitimate Chicago-speak words for “garage key” and “front room” respectively.

IS IT REALLY right to think that a city whose residents used to repeatedly elected a mayor who openly referred to “O’Hara Field” (for O’Hare International Airport) are going to get all worked up over the thought of saying “thee” and “thou” for a day?

It almost makes me think that Quinn, who likes to go on and on about how he lives on the West Side of Chicago, is forgetting his roots. Perhaps it is because his long-time residence in the Austin neighborhood is dangerously close to suburban Oak Park.

This sounds like the kind of thing that residents of that town would enjoy doing – in addition to pretending that Ernest Hemingway was in any way respected as an author when he lived in that Illinois town.

So excuse me for not trying to write a mock commentary in anything approximating Olde English or the writing style of William Shakespeare. Unless I could have a few hours alone with the youthful Gwyneth Paltrow who appeared many years ago in “Shakespeare in Love,” it wouldn’t be worth it.

FOR I COME from Chicago, the land where pizza is made in a deep pan and stuffed with all kinds of fattening foodstuffs and where our sports teams tend to get more attention than any author ever would.

On those occasions when we get off our duffs, step away from the television and go to see a game, we go to “Soldiers Field” or “Cominskey Park.” Going to a “Globe Theater” sounds like a place that gets raided by the cops when officials want to appear as though they’re cracking down on vice.

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Michael Jackson becoming a sore spot

“Oh, be quiet!”

That’s what I want to say to just about every political geek who wants to use the death of Michael Jackson to pontificate on the evils of perversion, or any other ridiculous rant that happens to pop into their heads.

THE MOST RECENT outburst came about because, during a lull last week in activity right before passing a budget for the state, the Illinois House of Representatives approved a resolution praising the “King of Pop.”

The resolution was one of nine that were passed with one vote, and they were all pretty typical of the type of resolutions that commonly get approved by government bodies – symbolic statements of support on some general topic that are meant to create the illusion that the Legislature has a clue about the goings on of the outside world.

Among the other “issues” approved with that same vote was a measure praising the track team at Hillcrest High School in south suburban Country Club Hills. Pure fluff.

Even the Jackson resolution, sponsored by state Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, was like that. It praises his musical achievements, and makes no mention of the rest of his life. Considering that his only real significance is because of his music, it makes sense to limit one’s thinking about him to that one segment of his life.

BUT THIS RESOLUTION, which passed without opposition last week, is now stirring up resentment this week.

For it turns out that our legislators mostly had no clue what they were voting for. They now say that had they been aware there was something mentioning Michael Jackson and his legacy, they would have opposed it.

Some say they would have gone so far as to bring up his later life eccentricities, and the two occasions in his life when he was put on trial in criminal court on allegations that he committed sexual acts with young boys.

Apparently, it means nothing to these political people who claim they’re standing up for the Democratic ideals upon which our country is based that Jackson was acquitted both times.

AS IN “NOT guilty.” As in a prosecutor was unable to ever prove that he did anything that warranted a criminal conviction.

They still want to think of Jackson as nothing more than a criminal prevert, so to speak. Perhaps they realize that publicly bashing Michael Jackson would have warranted themselves national news attention, and favorable support from a segment of our society.

But because they were so careless as to not be aware of what they were voting on, they lost that chance for attention. Plus, there is now a record indicating they voted in support of something that was positive toward Michael Jackson.

Heaven forbid, they voted for the prevert. Maybe that means they’re preverts themselves. Or maybe they fear that is how their political opposition in the 2010 elections will try to distort the record into saying.

ACTUALLY, I’M GLAD that this resolution did not devolve into a debate on the significance of Michael Jackson, which is what happened when a representative from Texas tried to get Congress to consider a similar resolution. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refused to let the measure come up for a vote, and many political people insisted on stating their opposition.

It seems that many black people in this country are going to focus attention on the Michael Jackson who started making music at such an early age that he had a decades-long career as a musician – even though for all practical purposes, he was “washed up” after age 31.

To much of the white population, they want to think of those years afterward when he wore the goofy costumes, faced criminal charges and tried to create a “Neverland” (as in Peter Pan) atmosphere at his gaudy luxury mansion.

It is an issue that we, the people of this nation, appear to be split upon. What would have been accomplished if we had yet another “debate” on this affair?

NOT A THING, except that perhaps a politico or two would have strained his throat from spewing nonsense rhetoric.

Think I’m exaggerating? Take the debate among members of Congress, where Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., is on record as having called Jackson a “child molester.”

His comments came during the same Independence Day holiday weekend that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., talked about how Jackson was a positive influence on both black and white America.

I’m not sure I agree in full with his observation that the white kids who grew up idolizing Jackson and “Thriller” grew up into the adults who, “followed Barack Obama into the voting booth.”

BUT IT’S NOT the most ridiculous thought I have ever heard come from the mouth of a political person.

And it certainly makes more sense that much of the “trash talk” that we were denied from the “Statehouse in Springpatch” had our state Legislature engaged in a serious and heated debate over Davis’ resolution.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: We didn’t get an embarrassing debate from the Statehouse on the merits (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1672383,CST-NWS-jacko18.article) of Michael Jackson.

This is the “controversial” resolution that dares to offer praise to the memory (http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=76&GA=96&DocTypeId=HR&DocNum=544&GAID=10&LegID=48336&SpecSess=&Session=) of Michael Jackson.

Despite the appearance that the Jackson debate has become enmeshed in race, I couldn’t help but notice (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/article_bf2b823c-15cb-51ca-aa5b-19a89b0fd046.html) that the Congressman made his comments before a mixed-race crowd in the Chicago suburbs without stirring up a riot.

COUNTY BORED: How old is too old?

Is Cook County Commissioner Jerry Butler aging himself just a bit too much with his wisecrack Thursday about retiring broadcast newsman Art Norman.

The longtime reporter and news anchor for NBC-owned WMAQ-TV announced his retirement two months ago, but the Cook County Board took it upon themselves to pass a resolution praising Norman’s contributions to the Chicago-area.

MOST OF THE county officials’ witticisms were along the lines of comments from Commissioner Earlean Collins, who said Norman’s polite demeanor ought to be taught to all kinds of news reporter-types.

Then, there was the comment from Butler, who gets our “Quote of the Day” honors for the way in which he tried to say that Norman has been around Chicago for a long time (since 1982, to be exact).

Only it came out of Butler’s mouth as follows:

“Whenever I see one of you young guys retiring, it reminds me how old I’m getting. I remember when you weren’t here.”

FOR THE RECORD, Butler is three decades older than Jack Benny’s perpetual age of 39.

The "Iceman's" birthday is Dec. 8.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Needless to say, many of the people who had nothing better to do with themselves two months ago than to take anonymous cheap shots at Art Norman (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/towerticker/2009/05/wmaqtvs-art-norman-retires.html) on the Internet will disagree with the thought that went behind the county board’s resolution praising the broadcaster’s career.

Inhabitants of “Planet Springpatch” recognize Pluto as full-fledged planet

A part of me wants to take a few science-oriented geeks who likely spend too much time goofing off on the Internet and smack them about a bit.

What have they done to annoy me? They’re ragging on the Illinois General Assembly.

NOT THAT I have any problem with anyone who wants to dump on the collection of clowns, misfits and hacks who populate our state’s Legislature in the land called Springpatch. They usually deserve it.

But these scientific types don’t have enough sense to realize petty actions when they occur, so they’re trying to make an issue out of nothing.

Actually, they’re trying to make an issue out of Pluto, the distant planet that some people want to say really isn’t a planet and whom most people just associate as being Mickey Mouse’s dog.

It turns out that our very own Illinois Senate (the legislative chamber that gave us Barack Obama, where his intellect caused him to stand out like a sore thumb) has come up with another one of the hundreds of trivial resolutions that are meant to let some local legislator claim he took some action on behalf of a hometown interest – without actually doing something that might cause long-term harm for the people of Illinois.

IN THIS CASE, the resolution supports the notion that Pluto is a planet.

It says that Friday will be “Pluto Day” in Illinois – that is the date upon which some people are estimating that Pluto’s orbit around the sun will put it into a position where it aligns perfectly above the sky with Illinois.

That sounds like a lot of guessing and playing along with mathematical calculations that I’m not going to pretend I fully understand. But I’ll go along with the thought, just for kicks.

I expect most people in this state will pay as much attention on Friday to Pluto as they did back on Feb. 25, which was decreed by the same General Assembly to be “Eating Disorders Awareness Day” all across the “Land of Lincoln.”

BUT THE REAL reason that our Legislature feels the need to have such a resolution is that the astronomer who is credited with calling Pluto a planet back in 1930 was born in Streator, a downstate Illinois town that many of us pass without giving much thought whenever we go back and forth from Chicago to St. Louis.

I think that is a noble intent – and one that likely was worth the two seconds or so that most of our legislators actually spent in thought about this resolution.

Anyway, the geeks who like to spend their time at Discover magazine’s website get to read a piece of commentary that calls our Legislators “frakkin’ goofy.” And there is an extended commentary currently running as to who can best cheap shot our political people.

Apparently, it is now a severe crime in the scientific community to suggest that not everybody agrees with the decision a few years ago that officially reclassified Pluto as a “dwarf,” rather than as a full-fledged “planet.”

THE DISCOVER WEBSITE commentary refers to such an act as a potential “Constitutional crisis,” and ridicules the idea of passing a symbolic resolution meant to bolster an Illinoisan (even if he did leave the state fairly early in his life, and lived elsewhere from that point on) as “misplaced local pride.”

From where I sit, I can’t help but think there are worse things our Legislature could be doing with their time – particularly if they wind up having to pass that tax increase that probably is necessary (and which now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich claims has secretly been in the works for some time) to balance out our state’s financial mess otherwise known as a budget.

I’d almost rather have them spending some time on purely symbolic gestures that most lawmakers probably approved without giving it much thought.

Illinois, after all, is the state that has officially declared “square dancing” to be the Official Illinois Dance and “drummer silty clay loam” as the Official Illinois Soil – which local political observers usually quip means Illinois has its very own “official dirt.”

WE’RE EVEN THE state that once had its legislators consider an equally non-binding resolution calling for the impeachment of then-President George W. Bush. This “act” probably deserves to be taken as seriously as that one was – which was not very.

Seriously, if the worst thing that our state legislators do during the 2009 calendar year is approve a trivial resolution relating to Pluto that attempts to recognize the Illinois ties of a somewhat relevant scientist, then I would say it is a good year for them.

After having watched the General Assembly go through the process of impeaching Milorod and having to cope with questions over whether they improperly “vetted” Roland Burris when they had their chance at questioning him before he became a U.S. senator, I’d say those of us political observers who watch the Statehouse Scene are entitled to a tad bit of trivia such as a Pluto resolution.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The “commentary” that ticked me off (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/03/05/illinois-plutocrats/), along with (http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/96/SR/PDF/09600SR0046lv.pdf) the resolution itself.

For those of you who can’t remember a thing from high school astronomy class, some general (http://www.solarviews.com/eng/pluto.htm) background information on the physical entity known as Pluto.

From George W. Bush (http://provisoprobe.blogspot.com/2006/04/hc-m-yarbrough-introduces-impeachment.html) to eating disorders (http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/illinois-general-assembly-designates-february,719460.shtml), many topics get symbolic action from our state’s General Assembly.