Catholic Schools, Charlottesville and The Idiot in the Classroom

One encounters very few 'idiots' in Catholic high schools.  They are led away from folly or disciplined to control their impulses.

Go to any Catholic high school next week.  Really.  Pop in on one. Go to the Office and make your presence known and listen.   You will be astounded by the . . . quiet.

Catholic schools succeed because they are free, for the most part, of idiotic policies that do nothing to help young people learn to master literature, history, math, science,music, art and theology.   The best Catholic schools have empty halls during class periods and the 36 or so actively engaged males and/or females are being engaged by someone with a command of the discipline being taught.

More than often, in single gender and many co-ed Catholic schools, those teachers also coach most of the sports and moderate the extra-curricular clubs and activities.  That is even more conducive to classroom management, because the young people engage the instructor 'beyond the classroom walls' and learn that the guy in the tie, was also struggling to get both legs over the high hurdles, while maintaining a B+ average, working part-time and coping with adolescence.   Shared goals and sweat make easy alliances and seed respect.

Catholic schools are diverse, but not daffy about it.  I have yet to witness a Selma moment at Bishop McNamara, Bishop Noll, or Brother Rice High School.  In 21 years at Leo High School, situated in Auburn Gresham and south edge of Englewood, I watched a dozen white boys from suburbs and Canaryville USA bond with hundreds of black gents from Englewood, Brainerd, Gresham, Chatham, and Grand Crossing.  The Canaryville guys took the Halsted bus from 79th to the Ville without incident, when the school vans were unavailable for transport home.  Two dozen Mexican Americans fared even better.  One white boy graduated from Leo and of the dozen or so Mexican lads, one graduated as a Gates Scholar.

There were dust ups.  The "N" word was used, back and forth in the more heated debates over Hip-Hop artists, Hillbilly music and places in the offensive line.   Some times words came to blows and both colors sat in detention,  " That Irish N@##eer ( redhead from St. Gabe's) said Vic Mensa's from O Street!!!!!   N@##ah' stays near 62nd & Stony Island. "

Such distinctions are very important to sophomore age male egos.

At Brother Rice there was even less attention made to skin and more to ego and placement in the upcoming football line-up.  One Blue-chip African American junior stands 5'6" and already has D-One colleges asking for the diminutive but elusive Seniors season highlight disc and his arch-enemy  a 6'4" offensive lineman and Blue-chip wrestler will challenge one another in every class they over ability, toughness, endurance and appeal to the fair sex.

That is the reality of American racism that I see most days.

Here is what the delicate creatures of the Chicago Tribune editorial board announce, having wached cable news for three days of coverage on the idiots and blood shed in Charlottesville, Virgini, "America does have a problem with racism, with anti-Semitism and many other forms of bigotry and intolerance. That's no secret. The question Americans must confront every day is how will they respond." Bruce Dold et al. 

The Tribune's application of the modal auxiliary assures all and sundry - America has a problem with race . . .and with Anti-Semtism ( when conflated by Zionism, Gaza, Palestinians, neo-Stalinist rhetorical flourishes, or matters of policy).

No. Charlottesville this week was a gathering of idiots left and right with an emphasis on right.

Charlottesville and Chicago Tribune editorials concerning race relations should be treated the same way a good Catholic high school teacher/coach treats someone's cherished and darling nitwit, attention demanding idiot and sophomoric time assassin - chided and isolated with warm sarcasm, until he gets with the program, " Mr. Hickey, our discussion concerns analyzing Steinbeck's monster metaphor from chapter five of The Grapes of Wrath, join us or spend some quality with Kenny moving tables for the Circle of Champions over the next two Saturdays."

The Class was not inattentive.  Hickey was an idiot . . .again. Let us not dwell on idiots, let us learn that Banks to Steinbeck were like the living dead - zombies with an insatiable appetite for human beings.

Racism : "[t]he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race"  was only used by a human being for the first time in 1930's by Communist, abortion and gay activist Magnus Hirschfeld.

That is the root of the term.  What it truly means is something else and I do not believe that I have witnessed overt acts racism anywhere, but by a few idiots on television.  I used to see Nazi dress-up losers on Kedzie at 63rd Street but they seem to have disappeared.

Lives matter.  Tiki torches not so much.

Go to any Catholic high school and watch lives being lived and one or two malleable idiots getting straightened out.

CPS or Catholic Schools

 

On the left, Shedd Elementray at 200 E. 99th Street -not closing - tuition free and God is not welcome; on the right Catholic Leo High School at 79th Street unadorned by gang tags, but there is tuitiion to pay and God is here 24/7

CPS has closed the schools it wants to close.  The hearings are closed.  The Closing Are Not Racist!  Get it?

The CTU howling is a smoke-screen for CPS and Mayor Rahm.  Remember?  Karen and Jesse Sharkley ( Kaen's ventriloquist) were 'part of the process,' and Okee Doked the Closings during the strike negotiations.

Karen is doing her best smoke dancing with the always handy race-card set a torch ' "The Closings are Racist, People!"

I agree. What is not Racist?  The closings are Progressive.   The meme coming from Rahm and Dr. B Cubed is this - The Schools  were closed to make test scores jump like Forrest Claypool for a new government job appointment.

Dr. Barbara Bennet-Byrd ( Dr. B-Cubed, B3, B to the Third Power) says, "I cannot agree with adults who would use the excuse of gangs to leave children trapped in failing schools," (emphasis my own).

The excuse of gangs?  Tut, tut and tut yet again, Dr. B Three!  Gangs, one dare suggest?  Hhhhwhat Gangs, indeed.

Lemme see, Mike Cobras (my personal favorites) Gangster Disciples ( not to be confused with the Black Gangster Disciples, Four Corner Hustlers, The Stones ( of many color), Vice Lords, Latin Kings . . .??????????????

Fifty three ( 53) neighborhood schools like Marcus Garvey Elementary and others will be closed and the students from Garvey will be required to travel out of their neighborhood and into neighborhoods that might, just might, mind you, be dominated by a gang.   That is not an excuse; that is a fact.

I work at Leo High School in the Auburn -Gresham neighborhood, 6th Police District (Beat 621),no stranger to senseless killings, home to a number of prominent gangs.  Some gang territories might be as small as block or few houses, or a larger portion extending many miles.  Leo High School resides within what might be termed Territory of the Conservative ( not be confused with the Insane) Vice Lords.  Also within spitting distance of the realm claimed by the Black Disciples, Black P Stone Nation and those scamps of the Gangster Disciple congress of thugs.

Leo sits within what might be termed a Gang Quilt Celebration of Diversity or more ominously a DMZ.  North and South Korea are more amicable. That said the property between 79th Street and the two allies north & south and Morgan and Peoria Streets remain un-tagged and respected territory.  The statue of the Virgin Mary and Memorial to the the Leo War Fallen are untouched.  The building is untagged. God is here.

A few blocks in any direction from Leo High School are CPS elementary and high schools and Charters adorned with Gang tags.  Those schools represent Tax Dollars.  Leo represents God's presence in Auburn Gresham, as does St. Sabina Faith Community.  Churches like the 27 small congregations between 87th & 79th on Racine are untagged by gangs, due to God's presence as well.

CPS are Tax Dollars - they have that going for them, as well as CTU teachers who owe the allegiences to Karen Lewis and Jesse Sharkey and the dictates of the CPS board appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  CPS recorded  24 students murdered and 319 wounded by gunfire in 2012; that was before 53 neighborhood schools in gang quilted zipcodes were closed.

Dollars are what FREE CPS and public education in general are all about, the children notwithstanding.  A woman who pulled her son out of a CPS school and enrolled him at Leo told President Dan McGrath that Catholic school tuition was  a much better bargain than a  young man's funeral.  

God is what Catholic schools are all about, as well as academic success, no drop-out rate, violence free school days and college placement.

For the families* who remain ignored after the CPS hearings, the choice seems simple enough to me - a tuition free duck and dodge through rival gang territories, or God centered education at a Catholic school.

*Remember -a Charter School is only a public school with a better wardrobe.  God is not allowed in a Charter.

Where is CTU Mastermind Jesse Sharkey in Chicago Media Coverage of CTU Outrage? The Reds are Denouncing Jesse and Karen Lewis

"Let's not pretend that when you close schools on the South and West sides, the children affected aren't black," Lewis said. "Let's not pretend that's not racist." Chicago Tribune

Amid growing opposition to planned school closures and consolidations in Chicago, Illinois, a March 4 Socialistworker.org article entitled “Rahm's scorched-earth assault on our schools” crudely attempts to re-write the history of events surrounding the assault on public education in the city.Socialist Worker, the publication of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), seeks to whitewash the role of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), in which it has a leadership position. ISO member Jesse Sharkey is the current vice president of the CTU. Far from opposing the closure of schools, the CTU and the ISO have collaborated in implementing the Obama administration's school “reforms” with Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel. WSWS

Wow, hard to get happy after that one, Jesse. Who's the racists?  You? Karen? Rahm? Arne "Demosthenes" Duncan? President Obama? Whom to believe?

Here is the Chicago Media coverage of yesterdays Occupy the Loop with Karen & Jesse & CTU & SEIU lalapalooza singing like Joan Baez with VISA commercial contract and then there is the World Socialist Web Site going all Stalin on ISO member and CTU VP Jesse Sharkey the Karl Rove of the XXX Red Shirts.

The difference is that Jesse Sharkey is invisible in the Chicago Media coverage, while Jesse Sharley is universally denounced as a running dog counter-revolutionary Obama/Rahm stooge in the authenticist Lefty organs.

Denunciation is as Lefty as a Saul Alinsky Hoe-Down on WTTW, or a Studs Terkel Fashion Retrospective.
The Chicago news organs dedicated to whomever they take their daily meme rations has some old-timey Public Radio-worthy copy - let's begin with this pearl from the Medill sausage -

Among those who were sitting on LaSalle Street in front of City Hall hoping to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience was Tom Balanoff, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1. He said he was demonstrating to show that massive school closings are "not the right direction. This is not the way to really solve the problem in education."
Balanoff said he had been arrested in acts of civil disobedience "many times over the years."
"It's as American as apple pie," he said.

Sing me some Joe Hill, there Union Maid!

Then we have the Sun Times which not only trotted out compelling "it's about the children" laments from real folks, but also this bit of nonsense news -

Elementary education expert and professor Bill Ayers — whose ties to President Obama sparked controversy because of Ayers 1960s radicalism — was in the crowd in support of teachers and kids like his granddaughters who attend CPS schools.
“The assault on public education and abandonment of these communities has to be resisted,” Ayers said. “How can we abandon public education at this point in history and move away from the one thing that’s going to give people hope for the future, and that is a solid powerful education.”

Makes you want to bomb something, don't it?

There is the obligatory accounts of Chicago's Ed.- Zeppelin CTU President Karen Lewis tossing race-cards at Rahm like so many Frisbees and third person narratives about Dr. Bennet-Byrd and Mayor Rahm and the mention of Aldermen who really, really, really care - Ricardo Munoz, Bob Fiorreti and. of course America's favorite family guy Rev. Jesse Jackson -unquoted.

No Jesse Sharkey*?

Salon, a clearing house for smug Progressive shouting, quotes Jesse Sharkey ISO/CTU with this fiery hammer and sickle that somehow went unmentioned in Chicago's reportage:

“The only thing that’s like it( Rahm's Murder of Schools) is Hurricane Katrina,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey of the potential devastation, “except this is being done on purpose.” ( parenthetical my own)


The WSWS goes on to really give Karen and Jesse a comeuppance -

The ISO closes its article with the claim, “As the CTU rightly argues, we should oppose all school closings and stand up against Rahm's scorched-earth war on public education...”
This too is a lie. Lewis made it clear on the second day of the strike that CTU accepted the mayor’s plan to shut down schools. The main concern of the CTU leadership was to ensure that school shutdowns be carried out with the collaboration of the union and not unilaterally by CPS.
Lewis told the Chicago Tribune September 12, “We understand the whole movement of closing schools and doing it aggressively... we either do this together in some reasonable way or we will always be fighting, and I think the key is that the people that are making these decisions want to make them unilaterally.”
In the aftermath of the strike, during a November episode of Chicago Tonight, CTU Vice President Sharkey said nothing to oppose what he termed the “unpopular policy” of school shutdowns, and instead advised that it need be carried out in an orderly fashion. “There’s no point in closing schools until there is a plan in place.”
Speaking at a union organized rally earlier that month, Sharkey said, “What the school board should do is take a year off. Have a moratorium on school closings and have a real process where there is a study of plans and the people who are part of the coalition here, the parents, the community and the teachers of Chicago have real input into what happens to our schools.”
This “real input” has been a series of sham hearings on the school closures and consolidations, where thousands of parents, teachers and students have voiced their opposition to the closures.
On February 11, CTU president Karen Lewis released a video announcing CTU would be sending organizers to assist those displaced by school closures. She admonished teachers—many who will be losing their jobs, and many more whose teaching conditions will become much more difficult after the closures—to support the CTU's efforts to do so.

Which side are you on, Bill Ayers, you elementary education plutocrat?

Why is Chicago's media taking the side of capitalists?

HOW much longer will Americans be satisfied with the endless Progressive Banquet of Bullshit?




                    Here's a good start - send you kids to a Catholic School.


* 24 hour Jesse Sharkey News:

  

On Monday The Children Will Be in School -Catholic Schools

No less a political genius* and storied-back benching alderman than Thundering Dick Simpson of U of I at Cement City offers this concerning the looming CPS/CTU Strike -


" (Karen) Lewis can claim victory if a short strike ends with a contract favorable to teachers, according to Dick Simpson, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (Karen) Lewis could argue the teachers union flexed its muscles and the Emanuel administration caved.

"The problem isn't so much if the teachers strike," Simpson said. "The question is how long they strike and on what terms it's settled." ( Emphases and Parentheticals, my own) -Thundering Dick Simpson - author of They's CarUption In the Soberbs!

My God!  Why is this man not more of an influence universal? The insight!  The grasp of the obvious!  The cool Dewey-esque arrival at the conclusion inquired of! 

On what meat does this our Dick feed?

Any way.

Leo High School, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Cajetan, St. Barnabas, Mother McAuley, St. Ben's, Gordon Tech, Marist, Brother Rice, St. Rene Groupil, St. Benedict the African . . .etc. and etc. will all be open for school on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Yadda, Yadda, Yadda until Columbus Day and then . . .till when summer comes.

Simeon and Morgan Park?  Could be, but then again maybe not.

You can count on Catholic Schools, Lutheran Schools, Dutch Christian Schools and the nopn-sectarian private schools, because the teachers and staff want to be there to practice their professions. If a teacher is unsatisfied with his or her contract, that teacher can say Adios!  More importantly, if a teacher is really unsatisfactory and should be selling Groupon futures and Green Energy ventures over the phone, the school can say, "Here's your hat; leave the keys; leave the stapler and the globe and best of luck in all of your future endeavors!"

School Monday!  Long strike, short strike, outcomes political and actual notwithstanding, Catholic Schools ( and our Protestant and non-Christian compeers) will educate your child, because God is our platform.

For those who think not, keep asking Thundering Dick Simpson what he really thinks. 

Stuff like what is the edge of bowling ball like?

* N.B. - If one were to seek a political insight from a practiced professional and genuine scholar in this Proco Joe Burg, one must consult Dr. Paul Green of Roosevelt University. To paraphrase the eminent restaurateur and lay-historian Jackie Schaller of Schaller's Pump - " Thundering Dick Simposn couldn't carry Paul Green's jockstrap. . .too heavy."

http://www.enotes.com/julius-caesar-text/act-i-scene-ii

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-teacher-strike-politics-20120909,0,6197296,full.story

CPS Strike? No Problem. Send the Kids to Catholic Schools

Hey, Folks!  Which Chicago educator is in it for the money?

The Chicago Teachers Union filed a 10-day strike notice Wednesday that moved the city closer to its first teacher walkout in 25 years and left the district racing to finalize a plan if more than 402,000 students are locked out of the classroom. 

Parents also were left wondering what they'll do if their children have no classroom to go to.

Do what thousands of Chicagoans do already!  Send your kids to Catholic Schools.

Karen Lewis and the CTU waited to set the strike order so that CPS can get the enrollment count set for State funding.  All about the children?  I think not.

Catholic Schools are tuition driven -some folks call them "Pay Schools."  You bet.  You get what you pay for. For the last three years, every Leo graduate was accepted at the colleges of choice and then some - Northwestern, DePaul, Valparaiso, Purdue, U of I, and Loyola.

Catholic schools provide safe, structured, caring and academically rigorous environments where students are challenged to accept their better angels.

Tuition is a shared sacrifice between the parents, students and the teachers.  Catholic schools are staffed by people who are committed to teach and motivated by Faith.

When was the last time any one can remember a Catholic School strike?

Tough one.

Tuition is a challenge and Catholics help people of every race, creed and color meet that challenge - The Big Shoulders Fund is one great resource for parents.

Click the links below and find a Catholic School in Chicago.  You can depend upon Catholic Education.

Public Schools???? Not so much.

http://schools.archchicago.org/schools/elementaryschoolsearch.aspx
http://schools.archchicago.org/schools/highschoolsearch.aspx
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-cps-strike-notice-0830-20120830,0,1018577.story

Catholics Forward - The Big Shoulders Fund 25 Years of Success and Opportunity for Poor Kids

The Big Shoulders Fund supports Cardinal George's Lions at Leo High School!




Chicago has the largest Catholic school system in America, led by Francis Cardinal George and Sister Mary Paul McCaughey, O.P..  Catholic schools in Chicago save billions of tax-dollars for Illinois tax-payers.  Catholic schools cost money - cash money, hard dollars, the long-Green difference. The Big Shoulders Fund* is that long ( 25 Years and going strong) difference. The average Catholic grammar school tuition runs in the neighborhood of  $ 5,000 and a  high school cost sits between  $ 7,500 and $ 8,000 per student.


Catholic students receive a solid grounding in college prep course, but also a foundation in values absent in public education.  

Catholic schools focus on the values of faith, hope, love, and community. We talk openly about values and spend time each day giving children an opportunity to learn, share, and understand the consequences of good and bad behaviors. We believe in Jesus Christ and we have a feeling of grace that comes from our beliefs.
Can the school your child attends teach the sort of lessons that will help your child become a good and compassionate person? Is there a clear expectation that all children will be treated with respect by teachers and other students?
How a school handles these issues indicates whether the school is capable of reinforcing the values that you and other parents teach at home. Ultimately, we want your child to grow up to be a good and compassionate person, and we will do everything we can to help you raise your child in the right way. 

The Chicago media would have you believe that Chicago is and always has been a Secular City.  It is not and never has been.  Chicago is was and should be always a City of Faith - founded by French Catholics ( Monsieur Du Sable was a child of Rome).  The Chicago Tribune is and has been an anti-Catholic news organ.  Its editorial board and most of its columnists never give the Catholic Church and Catholics themselves short shrift.  Short shrift is a Catholic term by the way. It is an Anglo Saxon derivation of Latin Scribere(L) -scrifen (OE) -schriven -meaning to possess what has been written, or prescribed for forgiveness.


Back in the day and, yes, even today, Confession, or Penance, was the means by which one could be forgiven by the Church Universal - back in Communion.  My personal door to the Confessional swings like a saloon door on pay day.  I get shriven and then forgiven.  " See you soon, Hickey! Try to make it past the Holy Water font on the way out."

Too many comfortable Catholics are ashamed to be comfortable and Catholic, these days, because the only news about Catholics in the newspapers, especially Know Nothing Joe Medill's Tribune, is a Ha-Ha piece by the always smarmy Eric Zorn - today, ( Abort-Hissy Fit! Abort Hissy Fit!) it happens to be about a kid getting disciplined for a Tebow-moment during a Catholic high school graduation somewhere in this vast Republic of ours - or a Neo Theo Personal Jesus Was a Community Organizer and Abortion Friendly Nun by the loony Manya Brachear, not to be out-done by Bruce Dold, the disk-jockey-cum-editor of course, who regularly churns out chides to Cardinals and Catholics to abandon their Faith and evolve like Dick Durbin and Pat Quinn.

Catholics live under the radar in this media-propped Secular City. They live in neighborhoods defined by Catholic Parishes - St. Tommy More, St. Sabina's, Our Lady of Tepeyac & St. Columbanus. Catholics are civil servants, teachers, nurses, cops, firemen, skilled tradesmen, business leaders and tax-payers.  They pay twice - tuition that keeps taxes down and ever soaring taxes to pay for public education.

Catholics fund the tuition of Muslims, Jews, Protestants and even the children of atheists and agnostics who want their children educated. Catholics have always done that and will continue to do so until the day that laws promoted by the Tribune make that impossible.  That day is looming very quickly.  Catholics can still vote.

Tonight Catholics and people who understand that Chicago would still be a smoking pile of 1871 embers were it not for Catholics celebrate 25 years of really Big Shoulders

The Big Shoulders Fund will host a 25th Anniversary Dinner on Thursday, May 24, 2012 at the Chicago Hilton and Towers.The evening will honor all of the Big Shoulders' Champions with special recognition of the Founders. Dinner committee in formation.

      Founders of Big Shoulders Fund      Mr. James W. Compton
Sr. Mary Brian Costello, R.S.M.
Mr. Lester Crown
Mr. Ronald GidwitzMr. William McIntosh
Mr. Andrew J. McKenna Sr., founding Vice Chairman
Mr. James J. O’Connor, founding Chairman
Mr. Edmund A. Stephan (deceased)
Mr. Barry F. Sullivan
Mr. Arthur R. Velasquez

 Celebrate 25 Years of Carrying Children's Dreams

Celebrate your Faith.  Celebrate your history, not as Joe Medill, Eric Zorn, Bruce Dold and Manya Brachear would have you believe, but as it is, was and should be.

Esse quam Videre, Catholics.  Viva Cristo Rey!  Catholics Forward . . .while you can move.

*Mission StatementThe mission of the Big Shoulders Fund is to provide support to the Catholic schools in the neediest areas of inner-city Chicago.
Big Shoulders Fund is unique in that administrative expenses are supported by an endowment and other income which ensures all funds currently raised go toward programs that benefit the Big Shoulders Fund schools and the students they serve through scholarships, special education programs, instructional equipment, much-needed school facility improvements, faculty support, and operating grants.

http://schools.archchicago.org/Values/

 http://www.chitowndailynews.org/2009/03/02/Families-struggle-with-Catholic-school-tuition-23006.html
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2012/05/abort-hissy-fit-abort-hissy-fit.html

Gale Sayers - Discipline, Dress, Self Esteem, Health and Happiness at Leo High School: A Studied Carelessness Requires Great Care

Gale Sayers # 40 1965
Gale Sayers Citizen in 2011 with Mrs. Townsend Miss Adams and Miss Hamp of Leo High School

A cravat was the forerunner of the modern necktie. It consisted of a strip of immaculately white starched linen about 12" by 60" that was wound around the throat several times and tied. To achieve the "studied carelessness" of the creases in his cravat, Brummell reclined in his chair as if he were being shaved and wound a cravat around his neck. Then lowered his chin, ever so slowly, until the starched linen wrinkled to perfection. If one wrinkle was too deep or too shallow, the cloth was thrown aside. Once, when a visitor saw Brummell's valet carrying an armload of lengths of tumbled white clothes as he descended from his master's dressing room, he asked what the man was taking away and was informed, "These are our failures, sir." Cravat knots could be simple and casual like the Mailcoach or complicated. Brummell was famous for his cravat worn in a waterfall.

Georgian Men's Fashion

NFL legend Gale Sayers* of the Chicago Bears never did a touchdown dance. In one game, he scored six touchdowns and after each courteously handed the ball to the Referee. " I wanted them to know that I had been here before. . .and that I was coming back."

Today our dred locked and Viking maned mesomorphs are indistinguishably the same with antic finger points upon a tackle, or frantic dancing in the endzone. They play to the camera alone.

Gale Sayers never made near the salary of a taxi squad NFL player today. However, he is and remains a legend.

Mr. Sayers has no drug, gun or assault charges against him, nor doe she have creditors pounding his doors. He and his bride of many decades Ardi conduct charitable work in the inner-city as a well as employ people in business. Mr. Sayers dresses with the simple dignity and singular virtue that marked his career on the football field. Through the Gale Sayers Foundation, Gale Sayers mentors the young men at Leo High School, as well as the many younger boys and girls on the West and South Side of Chicago.

Gale Sayers continues to look remarkably like he did when he signed with George Halas. We want our young men to model themselves on a man like Gale Sayers, who happens to reflect the very same image cast by Leo Legends -Bob Foster, Jimmy Arneberg, Jack Fitzgerald, Tony Parker, Dr. Stafford Hood, and Mike Holmes.

We have a dress code and code of discipline. They are ideal and tight. Daily life is anything but that - life is prosaic, messy and quotidian. Too many of our students come from tough family and economic circumstances. In fact, many of our young men arrive here at Leo High School shortly after I get my broad manly rump into the chair. More so, we have a tough time getting some of them to get home for the day's end. Believe it or not, and this is something we try to impress upon our hard-working teachers, for most students the happiest hours of their day are spent within the walls of this old Catholic high school.

Our discipline problems are very few and they become the Molehill Mountain for us -"Tuck in that Shirt! Where's Your Belt? Take off that Hoodie! Those Aren't Uniform Shoes! Your Hair is Extreme."

Now, this being Leo, with its rich history of manly manly miscreance ( think Bill Nelligan, or the late Tom Foy)there are the odd crap games and the occasional Marlboro Light incidents, some tardiness and a bit of back-sass. Nothing in the way of a public school, or Leo circa 1968.

Dress Code and general comportment are standards that this school holds up with its rock-solid Catholic orthodoxy as ideals and expectations the student is obliged to meet - to the very best of his ability.

Many times, home life impacts with this. Last November, President Dan McGrath (Leo 1968) explained to our Alumni at a meeting that one of our young men was receiving amny detentions for being out of uniform. Dan also remarked that this young guy wore the same shirt and pants for the last three weeks. Upon some delicate investigation, President McGrath learned that the family was in dire financial trouble, the Dad out of full time work taking handyman jobs and the Mom working at two minimum wage stores and only getting the hours available. Their lights were turned off, hence the unlaundered attire.

Our guys immediately raised about $400 in cash to help get the young man some new clothes and to help the family get the lights back on - several volunteered to find the Dad some meaningful employment.

That is one kid out of scores more.

Leo High School is working on a plan to combine neat, simple and manly dress with a code of virtuous conduct that reflects the individual packaged within.

Do clothes make the man; no, but that speak loudly of he is all about.

I'll try and report more articulately on this topic in the weeks to come. It is an easy thing to set-out a dress, or disciplinary code; it is another thing altogether to make it attractive given our goofy culture. Gale Sayers worked himself without mercy in order to present a 'studied carelessness' on and off the field - he made it look so easy.

Taking a hard look at the life of Gale Sayers and how he presents himself is a damn good start.




*

Halfback >>> 6-0, 198
(Kansas)
1965-1971 Chicago Bears
Gale Eugene Sayers. . .Kansas All-America. . .Exceptional break-away runner. . .Scored rookie record 22 TDs, 132 points, 1965. . .Led NFL rushers, 1966, 1969. . .Named all-time NFL halfback, 1969. . . All-NFL five straight years. . .Player of Game in three Pro Bowls. . .Career totals: 9,435 combined net yards, 4,956 yards rushing, 336 points. . . NFL lifetime kickoff return leader. . .Born May 30, 1943, in Wichita, Kansas

http://www.georgianindex.net/tailors/tailor.html

Chicago Tribune Editorial Hypocrisy Avoids School Choice, Vouchers, to Plump More U. of Chicago Influence - School Choice is The Metric that Matters

Nepotism, political hiring, crony capitalism, and toe-nail fungal infections get full bleat from Chicago's lily-livered editorial boards.

That tradition continues with today's milk and water editorial on Chicago's permanently hobbled public schools.

School closings, due to complete failure, gets the Hurrumph of the day. The editorial board panda bears of the Medill Empire tout yet another fabulous University of Chicago ( home of John Dewey, the Prospero of our Caliban public schools) study as the silver-bullet cure.

Under the heading of saving poor kids trapped in failing schools, the editorial praises the factory that produced this mess from the get-go:

One in three Chicago students is stuck in an academically feeble school. Scores of public schools languish — some for more than a decade — on academic probation.

We strongly support the CPS effort to close the worst-performing schools and send those students to better-performing schools nearby. We back the CPS plan to send 10 schools next year into what's known as turnaround — an aggressive move in which teachers and administrators are fired, and specially trained replacements are brought in.

Critics say these moves don't work. The critics are wrong. These dramatic reforms pay off in significant student gains, according to a just-released report by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.

The consortium found that 22 lagging elementary schools made dramatic academic progress in four years under several reform strategies, compared with similar schools that didn't undergo reforms.

The highlights:

• Faltering elementary schools dramatically improved in reading and math. The schools cut the gap between their test scores and the CPS average by half in reading, and by two-thirds in math. That's astounding growth in four years.

And what of similar schools that didn't undergo reform? No change. Those schools continued to fail their students.

• Revamping struggling schools generally didn't mean pushing out lower-performing students. By and large, the students who enrolled after the CPS intervention had previously attended the school.

Yes, the schools still fell short of the average CPS school. But the metric that matters here is student growth. The trajectory is up.

Boy, Howdy! The metric that matters is student growth! Please, parse that one.

Here's the deal, Sweethearts - To wax automotively metaphorical, the engine is shot; call a tow; get a new one.

School Choice, Vouchers for all Illinois taxpayers with children would fix the problem, but you already know that.

Nowhere in the hand-wringing of this editorial word are the words -school choice, school reform, or vouchers.

Instead we get another, trumpet blow for Chicago's policy factory -University of Chicago - the same geniuses that gave us the CTA Reforms ( Frank " Too Smart" Krusei and Forrest Claypool, The Garbage Grid, Cook County Reform & etc.) and place for former Mayor Daley to train future policy peddlers.

We need a Shakman Decree or sorts to protect citizens from the tweedy geniuses.

Catholic schools outperform public schools. Catholic Schools, were they collectively placed in an iron lung, would outperform CPS on a snow day following a plague of locusts.

Catholic (Private School) -Still a Whoppingly Expensive Bargain; What Do Real People Do?

"Now is the time for a new covenant inscribed not on stone, but on the human heart"(Jeremiah 31.31)

Welcome to my world. In this world comprised of families, there are unbelievable pressures on the co-heads of households - mortgage and rent of the home, health care for children, safety, groceries, heat, water, electricity, gas, upkeep and home maintenance, schooling and transportation. That would no doubt be the priorities in order of essentials.

Quality of life does not equate to living a happy, loving and fulfilled life, but it sure does play Hell on doing so.

Where I live many co-heads of household work - husbands and wives take jobs. As mothering is essential to early childhood development many young wives stay home while the kids are growing up through early schooling. Moms often walk the Little guys to and from Pre-school, Kindergarten, and the early grades and tend to be home after school. Dads generally work full time jobs and in my neighborhood that includes a great deal of overtime. where I live there are many working as skilled tradesmen, police officers, firemen and government employees.

Many of my neighbors are getting laid off due to City, State and County cut-backs in service.

The vast majority of my neighbors, like me are Roman Catholic and send their children to parish grammar schools in order to ground their children in the Faith and give them a solid elementary education. Catholic schools out-perform public schools.

After grade school, there are no choices for secondary schools other than Catholic High Schools. Middle Class families of other races and Faiths, like their Catholic neighbors choose Catholic High Schools for their children as well. I know Muslim, AME, Baptist and Lutheran and Dutch Reformed kids who attended Kelloge, Clissold and Vanderpole CPS grammar schools now attending Marist, St. Ignatius, Brother Rice, St. Rita, Mount Carmel and my beloved Leo High School, because they and their parents want them prepared for college or the Skilled Trades.

Catholic High School tuition is brutal.

Here are the choices with a ten mile radius of Zipcodes 60620, 60643, 60655.

Marist High School
4200 W. 115th St.
Chicago, IL 60655-4397
3.7 mi

Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School
3737 W. 99th St.
Chicago, IL 60655-3398
4.0 mi

Brother Rice High School
10001 S. Pulaski Rd.
Chicago, IL 60655-3356
4.2 mi

Leo High School
7901 S. Sangamon St.
Chicago, IL 60620-2531
5.1 mi

St. Rita of Cascia High School
7740 S. Western Ave.
Chicago, IL 60620-5820
5.4 mi

Seton Academy
16100 Seton Dr.
South Holland, IL 60473-1899
6.2 mi

My youngest daughter is a junior at Mother McAuley and attends with most of her classmates from St. Cajetan Grammar School - the other girls attend Marist, St. Ignatius, and two at Mount Assisi in Lemont. McAuley's tuition this year was paid in full in August at a whopping bargain at $ 8,950.00 with an additional $ 700.00 for books and fees. St. Ignatius is far more and Leo High School a bit less.

Let's say one of my neighbors worked as a driver ( Garbage Truck, Snowplow, & etc.) for the Dept. Streets and Sanitation and was bringing in about $ 70,000 a year and his wife was working part-time as a nurse at Advocate Christ, or Little Company of Mary Hospital - they have three boys at St. Rita and a daughter in college. Their mortgage on a three bedroom raised ranch is $ 1,036.00 with escrow and insurance per month. They are feeding three teenage boys, mind you. Clothing is less of a concern as they live in standard issue Bev Rat habiliments - SR Polos and chinos at school and baseball caps, cargo shorts and hoodies for formal occasions

Dad has worked the Ward for twenty years and change and some empowered dillies will now pick up the Virgin Mary Blue Recycling containers*. That must cause a chill in the otherwise steel spine of any man. but now let's talk about the gelding of Ward Organizations with Garbage Grid Gambit. If the "Bossism Reform GOOGOOs" are for it get ready for a pocket rape, Citizens! Are layoffs looming? You Betcha! Clout no longer exists. Shakman saved Illinois from corruption, Y'all! We got Garbage Grids a'coming!

Corruption and Crony Captialism remains unchecked to be sure but they benefit no one down on this level of the food chain. Ted the Helot's financial fanny flaps in the breeze and the "Ain't They Great" clowns always have a pay day. "Ain't They Greaters" are the idiots in Government whom the media and the Left Field advisers tag for Preferment. They are Reformers who lose elections and always get appointed to a swell paying bullet proof job in CPS, CTA, Lt. Governor, Congress, or the County Wastelands.

Ted the Helot gets a notice for unpaid days on the job, unpaid furloughs and finally the Layoff. That is what the Pie-Chart Gurus call Smart Sizing.

Catholic Schools offer a Tuition Covenant for Catholic Grammar Schools and secondary schools like Leo High School make sure that families can meet tuition costs. Big Shoulders Fund is a magnificent body of people who never seem to get any attention from the Chicago Media Icons. The Big Shoulders Fund raises millions of dollars specifically for inner city Chicago families who want a Catholic Education elementary and secondary.

Here at Leo High School fund-raising revenue is out-pacing tuition revenue, due to this lousy economy. Families are up against it. Dan McGrath, Leo President for Institutional Advancement, has collected $ 50,000 from new donors and $ 200,000 from an anonymous source since August to help move things along. Catholic Schools are tuition and fund-raising driven operations that outperform public schools.

Leo High School is working to bring Catholic Education to families with high school aged sons that are up-against-it. The Leo Advisory Board is helping craft and exciting tuition program that take some of the worry out of families facing lay-offs and other unforeseen financial burdens.

Government will not help. School Choice only happens in Indiana, folks. Until, things begin to make sense again, give Dan McGrath at Leo High School a call.

Leo High School - Male Only 9-12 College PreparatoryDan McGrath -President for Institutional Advancement
Leo High School
7901 S. Sangamon Street
Chicago, IL 60620

(773) 224-9600 7AM - 4PM.

Pat Hickey - Development Office
(773) 224-9600 ex. 208 5AM - 3PM


http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/7016120-418/emanuel-to-switch-trash-pickup-to-grid-system-to-save-60-mil.* Oh, Yeah. It happened - $ 25M is some sweet garbage unless your life depends upon it. And the City will Save $60M with Garbage Grid? Dancer, Please! well, someone will save quite a bit - Chicago United Indsutries, n'cest pas?

As discussed in the Chicago Reader, Chicago’s recycling program has been both ineffective and expensive for a long time — and the city pays millions of dollars each year to maintain the program. Before he left office, former Mayor Richard M. Daley negotiated (but did not finalize) a new plan to privatize pickup of recycling in blue bins. (Like the current contract that gives the materials to Allied Waste, the blue bins would not cover multi-dwelling buildings, but would increase the number of households getting blue bins by about 200,000. The city would give up market value for the collected commodities, and continue to pay private contractors to haul and then sell the materials.)

It remains to be seen whether the Emanuel administration will adopt this plan; this week the city workers who currently collect the city’s recycling argued the proposal is counterproductive and too expensive.

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s plan to privatize household recycling would saddle Chicago homeowners with hidden costs, collection fees and late-night deliveries while depriving the city of millions of dollars in revenue from the sale of recyclables, union leaders contend.

Laborers Union Local 1001, whose members stand to lose their jobs to a private contractor, is further arguing that the 14-year contract would shortchange minorities and women, who would get just 9 percent and 3 percent of the deal respectively. That is a far cry from the 25 and 5 percent set-asides tied to most other city contracts.

Local 1001 business manager Lou Phillips noted that the city’s own forecasts project $3 million from the sale of recyclables this year, nearly three times the take in 2010.

“Can we afford to give up such an expanding, long-term revenue stream that, in reality, is better than the now-famous parking meter deal?” Phillips said.

“In bad economic times, more people eat at home, stay at home [and] create more trash which, with the proper education, has begun to create more recyclables [and] more potential revenue. . . . Why would we give away $3 million a year or more?”

Under fire to deliver suburban-style curbside recycling to 359,000 Chicago households without it, Daley chose Waste Management in late March to provide the service in four of six designated zones.

Fiscal shortfalls have led large cities to drastically change their recycling programs before. The irony is that contracts with Waste Management have often been too costly for municipalities to bear. Chicago ended a previous contract to collect blue bags with the firm several years ago and switched over to Allied Waste before ending the blue bag program altogether. In 2002, New York City had a serious budget crisis — and a recycling contract with Waste Management that cost the city over $40 million each year. The city decided to eliminate glass and plastic curbside pickups.

Immediately, residents protested. Faced with a highly unpopular policy decision and an unaffordable contract, the city looked for alternatives. Within months they found one. New York City entered into a contract with a scrap materials dealer (Hugo Neu) who treated the collected materials as commodities to sell rather than wastes to remove. Today, Hugo Neu pays New York City a few million dollars per year from the revenues they make off collected metals on the open market. That revenue offsets the costs of collecting all recyclables, including glass and plastics. Changing contracts to recognize that recyclables are commodities to sell rather than wastes to be charged for provided New York’s residents with a functioning recycling program that didn’t exhaust the budget.

Roosevelt Professor Carl Zimring discussed New York City’s experience in the last chapter of his book Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America. He also discussed it and Chicago’s continued problems in SUST 240 Waste this past spring and will cover any updates to Chicago’s program in SUST 210 The Sustainable Future (offered online this summer beginning May 31). For more information on this or any other of our courses, visit our Sustainability Studies website, call 1-877-277-5978 (1-877-APPLY RU) or email applyRU@roosevelt.edu.

Chicago Catholic School Leader Board - Enrollments Up! Send Your Kids to Catholic Schools!

The other day Leo Admission Director and Head Football Coach Mike Holmes, President for Institutional Advancement Dan McGrath and your humble correspond ant were on 79th Street welcoming the Young Lions through the Portals of Leo High School.

A gentleman asked us, "How long are you your lunch periods, if I may ask, my daughter and son attend Perspectives ( formerly Calumet HS of CPS) and they are afforded twenty(20) minutes - there are 500 kids."

Mike Holmes asked the man, "Who many in a lunch period?"

The man replied, "There are hundreds of children and my kids must go to their lockers and the cafeteria is a very long way from their classrooms."


Mike Holmes informed the gentleman that Leo High School affords twenty-five minutes per lunch hour divided into three separate lunch periods -one Freshman only and two for the upper classmen.

Catholic Schools schedule, develop curriculum, monitor the halls and lunch rooms and provide mentoring with the students in mind.

Policy is based on what is good for the kids and not on what a Teachers Union or Central Casting dictates.

Sticking to mission and adherence to Catholic values* makes success.

The fruits of these labors can me seen in the resurgence of Chicago's Catholic Schools. Leo High School is vigorously addressing our enrollment shortfall here in economically distressed Auburn Gresham - Leo High School students are African American young men and eight of ten are non-Catholics from Chicago Public Elementary schools.

However, our brother and sister Catholic Schools are hitting their enrollment stride -

"For a long time, Catholic schools didn't necessarily toot their own horn. It was just expected (that Catholic students would attend). There wasn't that sort of critical communication," said Sister Mary Paul McCaughey, schools superintendent for the archdiocese and former president of Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights.

Well said, Boss! Like all Catholic Schools, Leo High School is tuition and donation drive - The Big Shoulders Fund and the Leo Alumni Association behind Rich Furlong's leadership provide thousands of dollars annually to this great school in order to help struggling families meet the costs of tuition. Our parents, like all parents of Catholic School Kids, pay for Public Schools, as well as meet the costs of a Catholic Education. They pay twice - and kids succeed.

Not all Catholic schools are struggling to stay afloat.


THE LEADER BOARD

According to 2009-10 school year numbers, four Southland Catholic high schools were among the top 10 in the Archdiocese of Chicago based on enrollment. The schools, their ranking in the Archdiocese, and last year's enrollment:

2. Marist (Mount Greenwood), 1,797

3. Marian Catholic (Chicago Heights), 1,505

4. Mother McAuley (Mount Greenwood), 1,409

10. Brother Rice (Mount Greenwood), 1,029

Eight Catholic elementary schools were among the top 30 based on enrollment. The schools, their ranking and last year's enrollment:

4. St. John Fisher (Beverly), 691

8. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (Orland Hills), 679

13. St. Christina (Mount Greenwood), 630

14. St. Michael (Orland Park), 618

17. St. Damian (Oak Forest), 572

25. St. Catherine of Alexandria (Oak Lawn), 485

26. Saints Cyril & Methodius (Lemont), 481

29. St. Bede the Venerable (Chicago), 477

Source: ChicagoCatholicNews.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BY KATE MCCANN

(708) 633-5960

kmccann@southtownstar.com

Unlike the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Diocese of Joliet had a roller coaster year, closing and consolidating several schools.

To the dismay of parents and students in Joliet, the diocese closed St. Joseph School at the end of the 2009-10 school year.

"The bishop has made some difficult decisions. Anytime you close a school it is a very emotional issue," diocese spokesman Doug Delaney said. "His vision is we will have a stronger Catholic education system in the long run."

But the diocese's long-term plans could mean more school choices for Will County parents.

Part of Bishop Peter Sartain's strategic plan is to weigh opening new Catholic schools in Frankfort and Homer Glen, as well as expanding St. Joseph Catholic School in Manhattan. In New Lenox, the bishop is mulling establishing a new parish and school, and possibly expanding the existing Catholic school, St. Jude.

Some Will County schools were also encouraged by early fall enrollment numbers.

Mary Jane Bartley, principal of St. Liborious in Steger and Crete, said enrollment at her school increased by 10 students.

"This is the first time in the six years I have been here that enrollment has not fallen in any way, and we are very pleased with that," Bartley said.

Bartley partially attributes the increase to the closing of St. Joseph School in Dyer, Ind.

Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox is up 30 students from last year, bringing enrollment to about 1,200. School officials said the bump is largely due to financial assistance the school has provided to struggling families.



*

Catholic schools focus on the values of faith, hope, love, and community. We talk openly about values and spend time each day giving children an opportunity to learn, share, and understand the consequences of good and bad behaviors. We believe in Jesus Christ and we have a feeling of grace that comes from our beliefs.

Can the school your child attends teach the sort of lessons that will help your child become a good and compassionate person? Is there a clear expectation that all children will be treated with respect by teachers and other students?

How a school handles these issues indicates whether the school is capable of reinforcing the values that you and other parents teach at home. Ultimately, we want your child to grow up to be a good and compassionate person, and we will do everything we can to help you raise your child in the right way.

http://schools.archchicago.org/Values/