It’s three mini-shows for the price of one this week. Three smart beat reporters who know their topics thoroughly.

We start with Rob Wildeboer, who’s been covering the Blago soap opera for WBEZ from the beginning. Rob says Judge Zagel made it clear that the heavier sentence sends a message to corrupt politicians, but it also sends a message to ordinary citizens that “this isn’t a joke”.  And there could be a grain of good news for Jesse Jackson Jr, in that, despite an ongoing investigation by the House Ethics Committee, the fact that Blago’s prosecutors have allowed the investigation to proceed could mean that criminal charges against Jackson are off the table, at least for now – barring any new charges. So says Mr. Wildeboer.

Sarah Karp joins us again from Catalyst Chicago to reveal that CPS is about to close its 100th school since the “turnaround” or Renaissance” movement began about ten years ago. The research she did in collaboration with WBEZ shows that, of the schools that later reopened in some other form, at least a third of them are performing about as poorly as the schools they replaced. To make matters worse, many schools were replaced with magnets or charters having city-wide enrollment that may limit access to neighborhood schools.  We also discuss the latest partnership between CPS and the Gates Foundation, which encourages higher funding and increased commitment to existing charter schools.

Kristen Schorsch covers health and medicine for Crain’s, and she tells us about the new CEO of the Cook County Health system, who’s being forced to run the County’s hospitals and clinic with a lot less money than the county spent last year. But he says he can do it. And she tells us that an alarming number of hospitals in the region might not survive. They’re turning to mergers and acquisitions just to stay in business.

That and more – including top stories on 2011, this week in The Newsroom.

Is Occupy Chicago morphing into an instantly-appearing crowd of protesters with the agility and flexibility to protest almost anywhere and grab media attention? There’s some evidence that, denied permanent access to Grant Park, the Chicago Occupy group has spent less time and currency fighting for a “home” and is focusing on specific events and issues. Joe Macare (In These Times) has been writing about this and other OC matters, and he joins our panel this week.

Mike Flannery (Fox Chicago News) recaps his Excellent Adventure, as he spent the day in Springfield for a legislative special session that gave Chicago red light cameras, but failed to grapple with pension reform. There was also that spectacular last-minute collapse in the House of support for tax breaks for CME and Sears. Flannery says that since Speaker Madigan represents CME professionally, he had to recuse himself, and without his leadership support for the measure vanished.

There’s also lots of drama in the City Council as aldermen battle behind closed doors to find a way of remapping the city that acknowledges huge population shifts but also protects the most important thing of all – their own jobs.  Hal Dardick says there’s been a lot of yelling in the past few days.

The big dustup over school restructurings and closings – and one last discussion about the legacy of Maggie Daley.

Forrest Claypool, President of the CTA, is our solo guest on this week’s program.

Claypool inherited a quarter-billion dollar budget deficit when he took the job, and the budget he just got passed is still technically over a hundred million out of balance, but he claims confidently that he’ll get the money by changing “antiquated” work rules and winning union concessions. But he insists he’s doing it to protect the CTA’s work force, with its “generous” pensions and higher salaries.  It’s controversial and it will almost certainly stir up a spirited response from the unions representing CTA’s bus drivers, train operators and mechanics.  Formal negotiations are about to commence.

On this show, Claypool lays out his case.

CTA is in many ways in better shape than it’s been in years. It has a billion dollars in hand to make some serious improvements on the Red Line. It’s phasing in 700 new state-of-the-art el cars. And ridership continues to rise steadily. But funding from state and federal sources aren’t keeping pace, so more and more of CTA’s operating funds must come from firebox revenues.

Toni Preckwinkle, President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, is our sole guest this week. We try to unpack the Cook County budget process in a half-hour conversation that goes a little beyond the daily headlines (will jurors have to pay for parking?)

Preckwinkle took seriously her campaign pledge to roll back the one-percentage-point increase in sales tax imposed by Todd Stroger’s administration, and that move alone, she says, will save every taxpayer a few pennies with almost every purchase. But she has to find the money somewhere to fund a 2.94 billion budget that now has a 315 million dollar shortfall.

That involves increases in a wide range of fees and the probable elimination of almost 500 positions, but underlying this budget is a commitment to making the judicial, courts and law enforcement systems more equitable. As she tells us, she sat in bond court for an hour the day before and barely saw anyone not of color. Our marijuana arrests are disproportionate, she says, and the number of indigents who crowd the jails because they have a substance abuse problem or just don’t have any money – that’s a huge part of the overcrowded and overly expensive system. She wants to use the budget system to begin reforming what she sees as unfair systems.

“Jail is the intersection of poverty and racism in this country”, she tells us.

There’s revolution in the air, and it’s not just Occupy Chicago. Now 28 aldermen have actually sent a letter to the Mayor saying that they aren’t completely pleased with the budget proposals and they demand — well, a meeting, and maybe some conversation. Then, perhaps, they’ll approve the budget unanimously.

Hal Dardick’s been following it all for the Tribune’s Clout Street. Steve Edwards has followed politics for years on WBEZ. And Elias Cepeda has just started a brand-new blog, Make Big Plans Chicago. And they have plenty to say about the week’s news.

Are the proposed cuts to the library system real? Does the Mayor really want to cut so deeply into its staffing and programs? How hard will Commissioner Dempsey fight the Mayor, and how much political capital is she willing to spend?

Speaking of political capital, Pat Quinn used up an armored car-load of it railing against ComEd and its proposed rate-hike-smart-grid legislation, and for what? It might have been one of the biggest corporate/political smack-downs in recent memory, and, remember,  it was Democratic legislators whacking their Democratic governor. The panel also tries to make sense of Bill Daley’s interview with Roger Simon, in which he appeared to be critical of Rahm Emanuel.  And let’s not forget that former Mayor Daley now appears to have a date with deposition over his alleged role in covering up police torture. A busy week.

It really doesn’t matter if there are slot machines at racetracks, says veteran political consultant Don Rose. After all, the patrons are already gambling.  And those speeding cameras? Rose says he doesn’t think there should be as many as Rahm Emanuel has proposed, but if they stop speeding and reckless driving, maybe they’re OK.

John Dempsey (WLS-AM) says he doesn’t like the idea, because he prefers to drive just under ten mph over the speed limit. And he says it’s time for the city to be honest that it needs more money and not try to get it from dog owners and non-snow-shovelers.

Don Rose says there’s an easier way to raise revenues – just enact a finanical transaction tax.  It’d bring in a lot of money, and not hurt “too many people”.

How’s Toni Preckwinkle doing? Does Emanuel have aspirations beyond mayor? (is there a higher office than Mayor of Chicago?)

It’s all on this week’s Chicago Newsroom.

Some pundits like to knock the Occupy moment for its lack of focus or message, but a study shows its mere existence has shifted the news focus from “deficit” to “unemployed” and “1%”.

Carol Felsenthal (Chicago Magazine) and David Schaper (NPR) are in the Newsroom this week .

We talk CTA: Unions vs. riders?  Will Quinn hold fast in his opposition to current casino legislation? Yes, says Carol, if he want to get out from Rahm’s shadow.

Can Obama win enough states? Would Hilary help? This and more on this week’s CN.

Angela Caputo (Chicago Reporter) and the Community Media Workshop’s Steve Franklin (who recently became President of the Chicago Headline Club) are in the Newsroom this week.

Did you know that, if you’re a fully lease-compliant resident of the CHA, and your grandson who lives with you gets busted for possessing a few grams of pot, you can be thrown out, without any meaningful right of appeal? And he doesn’t even need to have been convicted – just getting arrested is enough. It’s the “One Strike” policy, and Angela has written extensively about it in the Reporter.

We also tackle Mayor Emanuel’s first official City budget. Lots of cuts, huge increases in water rates and other fees, etc. It’s the first time in years that a mayor has proposed making cuts in the sacred triad – police, fire and sanitation. And so far, his reviews have been guardedly positive.

This week – a big picture perspective on education.

We vilify teachers and argue about minor issues, but we’re not paying attention to the global environment, where the real challenges are. Terry Mazany, CEO of the Chicago Community Trust – and former interim CPS CEO – talks about his recent visit to China, where he witnessed the commitment its leaders are making to education, bolstered with a 9% annual GDP growth rate.

Only 17% of CPS students exceed state standards, he says, and only those students stand a chance of being able to succeed in college and compete in the global marketplace.

He has some harsh words for national education policy, too. “No Child Left Behind, with its emphasis on standardized test scores, that’s where the wheels came off for us,” he says.

Kate Grossman, our other panelist, is Deputy Editorial Page Editor at the Sun-Times, and was an education reporter for many years. “You can’t pretend adding another 90 minutes without adding resources is gonna be much different than it is now,” she says of the CPS’s drive to extend the school day.

The panel also discusses the recent Consortium study of CPS academic achievement, which reveals little improvement over the past 20 years.

A discussion about the racial disparities in marijuana sentencing and the class plots that have developed within Chicago’s African-American communities. Our guests are Mick Dumke (Chicago Reader) and Salim Muwakkil (In These Times and WVON). We talk at length about the article Mick co-authored with Ben Joravsky about the differences between white and black when arrests are made for the possession of pot, and the even worse disparities for incarceration (more than 90% of Chicagoans serving time for possession  are black.

Salim is writing an on-going series for In These Times about “The Other Chicago” an investigation into the lives of those African-American youth who have borne the brunt of the Great Recession.  In part one he discusses the growing rift between older African-Americans from the civil-rights era and younger blacks. Salim talks with a young guy who’s participated in what came to be called “flash mobs”. “You can’t get no iPods or nothing like that on the West Side. So we go to where you can and when we mob up, even the cops can’t stop us,” he says.

Here’s part one.

And here’s part two in which Salim considers changes in police-community relations. In this installment, a young man tells Salim that there are things one has to know when being stopped by police. “If I have my hands in my pockets when police stop me — and they stop me all the time — I freeze until they take my hands out of my pockets,” he says, because he knows someone who got shot as he removed his hands without warning.

It’s some very serious and worthwhile reading. And a solid conversation.