* Breaks common at affluent schools are rare in impoverished areas…

All 10 affluent schools offered at least 20 minutes of daily recess, usually tacked on to a lunch period of at least 20 minutes. Most of the impoverished schools offered no regular recess and a 20-minute lunch, though two of the schools did squeeze in 10 minutes of recess daily.

The typical affluent school featured far more phys ed than the one period a week usually found at the impoverished schools. And both art and music were common at advantaged schools, while impoverished ones mostly offered art and no music, though one had both and two had neither.

* Meeks Offers to Call Off School Boycott

* Multi-Million Deal Could Prevent School Boycott

* Meeks has new school pilot project - Plan ties funding to performance…

A Democratic state senator and a former Republican candidate for governor on Monday proposed a three-year, $40 million pilot project aimed at proving that better funding and more resources would give low-performing schools a lift.

The proposal could lay the groundwork for the long-sought statewide overhaul of public school funding, possibly including a tax increase, once the 2010 race for governor is over.

Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago), who outlined the proposal with GOP businessman Ron Gidwitz in a meeting with the Tribune editorial board, also tied the proposal to his call for Chicago Public Schools students to boycott the first day of classes Sept. 2.

Meeks said he will rescind his boycott plan if three fellow Chicago Democrats, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Senate President Emil Jones and House Speaker Michael Madigan, would publicly back the pilot proposal. Meeks said he hoped to meet with them in Denver during the Democratic National Convention.

* Officials awaiting word on IDNR budget cuts

* Blagojevich: Ethics bill will get complete overhaul…

Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Monday he’s following through on his promise to “rock the system” by drastically changing an ethics-reform measure to target lawmakers while cracking down on campaign contributors with large state contracts.

Blagojevich, at a news conference in Chicago, said he’ll use both his executive-order and amendatory-veto power to rewrite the measure the legislature sent him in May.

The announcement drew an immediate rebuke from reform advocates and lawmakers, who promised to try to overturn the changes.

* Ethics bill vetoed, sent back

Quinlan said the governor cut the provision of the bill that would restrict donations from people bidding for contracts because it could be an unconstitutional restriction of free speech. Quinlan said the governor strengthened the bill in other ways, such as prohibiting lobbyists and lawyers from donating on behalf of state contractors they represent.

Asked why he did not sign the bill as passed and seek to improve the law later, Blagojevich put the blame on lawmakers for not acting sooner on ethics legislation.

* State Lawmakers Strike Back at Governor

* A governor’s charade…

Rather than push legislators to write his “improvements” into law, he’d rather grandstand for the cameras, make noise about reform, and hope that—with public attention focused on the Democratic National Convention in Denver—nobody is paying much attention to the culture of political sleaze back home in Illinois. For those of you reading from Denver: Nothing has changed. The culture of political sleaze is as virulent as ever.

* Eastern budget avoids governor’s slash

* Mounds supporters call for federal takeover…

Pauketat and other archaeologists have written letters to state and federal officials urging an agreement. They say the federal government is far better funded to take care of the 2,200-acre property, home to the world’s largest prehistoric earthworks and the centerpiece of a village that once housed 10,000 people.