For most of its history, Elyria was a leader in community amenities.  For the last several decades, however, Elyria has not kept up.  This has been a major contributor to Elyria’s overall decline, and it has also been a major contributor to the Elyria City School District’s decline.  It is now to the point that the City and the Schools are very negatively influencing the other’s ability to succeed.

Elyria leaders, including myself, have long avoided addressing the fact that our school district, as good as we believe it to be, is one of the lowest rated districts in Ohio.  According to the latest State of Ohio Report Cards, approximately 90% of school districts in Ohio are rated higher, including all but one district in Lorain County.

Elyria Schools administrators have long rationalized the District’s low rankings by emphasizing that it is somewhere in the middle of the pack of Ohio’s urban characterized districts.  The fallacy of accepting this rationalization is that Elyria isn’t competing for families with urban districts around Ohio.  Elyria is competing with Avon, Midview, North Ridgeville, Sheffield-Sheffield Lake, and other nearby districts.

One of Elyria’s problems is that many families who are interested in moving to this area will not consider Elyria, and many young Elyria families will leave the city before their children begin school.

It is important to note that our teachers are exceptional members of their profession.  I know this because I have spent considerable time with many of them as friends and in my capacity as Mayor attending many of their class functions.  Our teachers are continually improving their skills, they care deeply about their students’ success, and they do exceptional work with the ordinary resources that are made available to them.  This raises the question, if our teachers are so good then why is our District’s overall performance rated so low?

The Elyria City School District was classified as an urban district due to the high rate of student poverty and high percentage of the student population that is considered at-risk.  While our District is no longer in this official category these conditions remain.  Our at-risk children have needs that make their achievement in school more difficult.  Ordinary school resources are inadequate to meet their needs on a scale necessary to effect overall District achievement.

We also know that school children in Elyria who are not at-risk do very well in school.  Their level of achievement and future success compares with students anywhere.  The same can be said for some of Elyria’s at-risk children, however, they are too often the exception.

It should be inspiring to know that there are examples around the country of schools with similar populations as ours, when provided extraordinary resources, are able to achieve overall excellence.  They are the exception, but it is being accomplished.  If Elyria is to regain its standing as a city that families and companies desire to call home, we must be one of those exceptions.

This isn’t Elyria School District’s burden alone.  Elyria Schools and the City of Elyria have an interdependent relationship.  Its cliché, but true, neither can be its best without the other being its best.

Imagine the impact on our neighborhoods if our District achieved the improvement to rank it among the top districts in Ohio.  Young families would be rushing into Elyria to have the opportunity to send their children to such schools.  They would fix up and make more current our obsolete houses and they would be great neighbors.  Imagine the positive transformative impact this would have on our neighborhoods and our community.

This will require all the community’s resources that we can bring to bear.  We should have visible benchmarks toward our goal.  We should have community rallies to announce our objectives and to celebrate our successes along the way.  Our journey to reach this goal can be the instrument of building community spirit and unity beyond what we have ever experienced.  This could be Elyria’s moonshot and be worthy of our best effort.  By the end of this decade, we will…