I just love those blue ribbon commissions.

It happens every couple of months or so in governments all over the world, and here’s the usual scenario: Some politician — mayor, governor, what have you — decides it’s time to pay more than lip service to whatever happens to be the citizens’ outrage du jour.

Guns, drugs, trash, graffiti, dog poop on the sidewalks — the subject really doesn’t matter that much — but when there’s enough public outcry on any given issue, a blue ribbon commission is sure to follow.

So the politician summons a group of well-established muckety mucks — high-ranking officials, advocates, business owners, pundits, professors and assorted experts on the subject at hand. Those people agree to meet and discuss the subject, and ostensibly recommend solutions.

During those meetings, the panelists bring their own ideas, and their own massive egos, to the table, so what you end up with is lots of self-serving bluster, rhetoric and sharp elbows. (Those sharp elbows come in handy, if you’ve ever seen these folks jockey for position in front of the news cameras at press conferences. It’s like watching NBA power forwards fight for rebounds in the low post.) This, ladies and gentlemen, is your average blue ribbon panel, or commission if you prefer.

Now, the blue ribbon commission, after weeks, months, or even years of internal bickering and finger pointing, finally publishes its findings and recommendations. This generally happens so far down the road, no one remembers why they were impaneled in the first place.

Those findings are fed to a waiting press corps, who dutifully passes the information on to a (by now) less-than-interested public. The public reads the findings and is frustrated to learn that after months of study, the blue ribbon commission tells you exactly what you already knew, and offers common sense recommendations so blatantly obvious your head explodes.

And so it is with the latest Blue Ribbon Commission on Safe Schools, who, with trumpets and great fanfare, this week released its findings and recommendations after more than a year of studying the level of violence, and its reporting procedures, in Philadelphia schools.

Are you ready? Here, verbatim, are a few highlights of the commission’s findings:

• There are inconsistencies in the reporting and tracking of serious incidents.
• There are inconsistencies in the reporting of “possible” crimes.
• There is a lack of clarity and consistency in the implementation of the Student Code of Conduct and discipline procedures.
• There is no ongoing process to share best practices about safety and climate strategies that work across District schools.

Of course, every word of the above has been well documented, and common knowledge, for years. Is there anyone in Philadelphia who will find this information surprising? Anyone who didn’t know that District officials, and school principals, have for years been manipulating their crime statistics by downgrading or underreporting violent incidents?

Lest you think I’m being too harsh on blue ribbon panels in general, get a gander at their plan of action, again straight from the report:

• To apply the recommendations from our partners to the work of the District in creating safe learning environments for our students and staff.
• To identify “best practices” that have proven to be successful in our own schools, and use them to model for other District principals and leadership/safety teams that this work is doable.
• To continue to use the Blue Ribbon Commission as a vehicle for all stakeholders (students, teachers, school officials, police, youth workers, government leaders, courts, community partners, families, business owners, parents, and neighborhood activists) to work together to create safe learning environments for all students.”

That’s right, a full year of study by the best minds we can put on the problem, and at long last they decide we should identify successful safe schools and emulate their practices, and express the hope that everyone in the city can work together for the common good.

All of which we could have gotten from the average elementary school student in about three minutes.

It’s not that I think school violence is unimportant — we all know that it is, and should be the District’s highest priority. I just don’t think another dog-and-pony show of a blue ribbon commission is the way to get things done — that is, if you really want to get things done.

Me, I’m still waiting for that groundbreaking report on dog poop on the sidewalks.

Daryl Gale is the Philadelphia Tribune's city editor.