Cover Story
School segregation’s new frontier
New Berlin, a village with 1,500 people separated from the outskirts of Springfield by 12 miles of pale blue skies and sunlit cornstalks, still has many hallmarks of a small town. It hosts the county fair, with chili cookoffs, livestock exhibitions and country music stars drawing crowds during the long days of June. Tractors occasionally…
Best New Restaurant Opened After 8/1/18
BEST NEW RESTAURANT OPENED AFTER 8/1/18Route 66 Motorheads Bar, Grill & Museum Route 66 Motorheads Bar and Grill is relatively new to the scene, having just opened last year off I-55 at the Toronto Road exit. If you’re lost, just look for the racing car on top of the beer garden, and you’ll know you’re…
J.B’s staff silent on pot vaping
Deputy governor Christian Mitchell is Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s go-to guy on marijuana legalization. Mitchell last spring spoke at legislative committees and community forums, pushing plans to legalize marijuana for recreational use. As recently as last month, he was telling reporters that any veto-session changes to the legalization bill that passed last spring will be minor.…
Cool hand New Berlin
I don’t know much about Adam Ehrman, the moderately embattled superintendent of the New Berlin School District, and I know as much after a four-hour school board meeting last week as I did before. The New Berlin Education Association had called on Ehrman to resign, saying its members had taken a no-confidence vote. Two television…
Making the numbers work for first responders’ benefits
One of the provisions of the sweeping state pension reform law passed in 2010 has always stuck in the craw of first responders. Police and (especially) firefighter unions fought the local government lobby for decades to increase survivor benefits, and then they watched many of those hard-fought wins get wiped away when the General Assembly…
Letters to the Editor
COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDEDNow that AFSCME employees are receiving back pay for step increases, with interest to follow soon, let’s have a round of applause for Rep. Tim Butler for this overdue largesse. Some might think Mr. Butler spent the last four years defending the indefensible union-busting efforts of former governor Bruce Rauner for no…
Editor’s Note
The Ministerial Alliance of Springfield and Vicinity has the right idea about marijuana – recreational use of the drug is not good for kids or communities. The organization has condemned the city council’s decision to allow legal marijuana sales in Springfield. But the good ministers should know by now that criminalizing marijuana use causes more…
Last rights
A state-by-state initiative is gaining momentum to allow terminally ill, mentally competent people to request and obtain medication from their physician to shorten their suffering and achieve a peaceful, dignified death. Polled nationwide, a large majority, across political, religious, ethnic and gender lines favor this initiative. So far it is legal in nine states –…
Dog sports
Capitol Canine Training Club Inc., a nonprofit organization, was founded in 1965 and sanctioned by the American Kennel Club in 1975. This weekend it will host two days of American Kennel Club-licensed agility trials. An agility trial is a timed dog sport in which the dog and its handler negotiate an obstacle course that requires…
Railroads, revenue, revitalization
Two unique factors have come together that would allow District 186 to become a world-class school system. They are the railroad relocation project and the county sales tax for schools. Alan Woodson, Tom Kerins and Jack Pfeiffer, all former teachers and school administrators, will present their research on how that can be achieved. The discussion will…
Stuck
Performance on advanced placement tests in Springfield high schools isn’t what administrators hoped for when the district began an AP push in 2017. A passing grade on an AP exam is considered a 3 or better on a 5-point scale. This story has been updated with enrollment statistics on the number of Southeast and Lanphier…
Illinois State Museum returns artifacts to Australia
The Illinois State Museum is making national news in Australia. The Australian government recently announced that 42 culturally significant objects will soon be brought home from the United States. They include secret/sacred, ceremonial and secular objects. The ISM is the first institution in the world to return culturally significant objects as part of the Return…
GET READY FOR LAYOFFS
As the big day nears for GateHouse Media, parent company of the State Journal-Register, some folks are worried. On Nov. 14, stockholders in Gannett and New Media Investment Group, which runs Gatehouse, will vote on a merger to create the nation’s largest newspaper company. If it goes through, one in six daily newspapers in the…
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
Following the example of departments elsewhere, the Springfield Police Department has instituted a Safe Passage program wherein folks who’ve fallen prey to drugs or alcohol can get help by showing up at the police station or flagging any cop they see: Please, I need treatment. Gateway Foundation has committed to providing beds. Lt. Brian Oakes…
Onward in October
Rolling right on through the fall as we’re rocking your world, our music takes us to a bunch of fun stuff, as one might well imagine. Shall we see what? Thursday evening delivers a couple of blues news extras as Johnny Burgin returns with a rockin’ blues show at Hand of Fate in Petersburg and…
Carolyn Sills Combo
This award-winning (2018 Ameripolitan Best Western Swing Act) music group peels back layers of time to present old-fashioned Western Swing music, while adding all the contemporary class necessary to make it plausible and pleasing. Praised by critics, fans and anybody within earshot, Carolyn Sills (bass, vocals) and the crew of Jimmy Norris (drums), Gerard Egan…
Economies of a scale
Has the experience of spending my first six months of retirement working in a restaurant kitchen made me a better home cook? It definitely has, but not in the ways I would have expected. Much of my time in the kitchen is spent picking little leaves off of thyme sprigs or cutting a basket of…
