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Bus tour examines bumps in road to county's success.
BY JOHN ROSZKOWSKI | STAFF WRITER, Lake Forester

May 26, 2006 - Lake County must act now to address poverty, low-educational performance among Hispanics and lack of health care services for uninsured residents or it could face serious consequences down the road.

About 45 charitable donors and social service representatives heard that message during a bus trip last week. The tour started at the College of Lake County in Grayslake and included stops at St. Martin de Porres High School, a Catholic high school for economically disadvantaged students in Waukegan, and at a private health clinic that serves uninsured residents of the county.

"We have big challenges in Lake County, but they're still not too big that we can't get our hands around them and provide the resources to address them," said John Anderson, chairman of the Lake County Community Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic foundation, which organized the tour.

Education was one of the major topics discussed during the tour.

Richard Fonte, president of the College of Lake County, spoke during the trip about "a growing gap" in educational attainment between the county's rapidly growing Hispanic population and whites.

"The level of educational attainment in Lake County is going down, it's declining," he said. "We have a huge crisis that fundamentally affects the future of the county."

Graduation rates

Fonte pointed to a recent study by Notre Dame University's Institute of Latino Studies comparing high school and college graduation rates among whites, Latinos and other ethnic groups in a six-county Chicago region that includes Lake County.

According to the study, which used 2000 Census data, only 9 percent of the Latino population in the region were college graduates, compared to 37 percent of whites. And, the study found only 48 percent of Latino students graduated from high school, compared to 89 percent of whites.

"If that trend continues, you'd have a less well-educated Lake County than in the past," said Fonte, noting a less well-educated workforce usually means lower-paying jobs and fewer economic opportunities.

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