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Welcome to Lake County Illinois! Where our property taxes help to rank us as the 17th most expensive County to live in in the United States and #1 in Illinois! That's not bad I guess....except when you look at the 3,124 counties across the United States that are cheaper! Forbes estimates as of 2007 tax records that the average household in Lake County pays 6.7% of their income on property tax alone. Personally I think this is low as many people I know have had massive property tax increases in the past few years, some as high as $1,000 per year. We also have that 6.25% State sales tax to add on top of our local sales taxes. Oh and lets not forget the average family in Lake County pays 25% Federal income Tax. Not to mention what it costs to run Government Locally! I am sure you have all heard of the Gold Plated retirement and Health care plans or those obnoxious benefit packages.
American Legislative Exchange Council ranks Illinois 38th in education based partially on 68% of low income fourth graders tested not proficient in reading! Nation wide according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress who gives a nation wide test, 35% of our High school students scored proficient in Reading and only 23% in Mathematics. In the 2006 PISA exam according to the US Department of Education the performance of US 15 year old students in Math and Science Literacy, scored lower than 23 other countries and lower than the average scored by other industrialized Nations, such as Poland, Slovak Republic, Hungary, Norway and Spain.
CBS NEWS
"Our top students are just not world class anymore," Schneider told CBS News.
"And he's right. Of 30 comparable countries, the United States ranks
near the bottom. Take math - Finland is first, followed by South Korea,
and the United States is number 25. Same story in science: Finland,
number one again. The United States? Number 21."
Just by looking at one local public school financial report card you can take the per pupil operating expense plus the instructional expenditures per pupil and multiply that times and average of 21 students per class and I come up with a cost
per classroom of.....are you ready?
$451,248.
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