A long road ahead for Lorain Schools

Lorain Schools finally has a road map to free itself from state control. The district's improvement plan was approved Friday by Stephanie Siddens, the interim state superintendent. That was the easy part, we suspect. The hard part will be implementing the plan and meeting the benchmarks the district has set for itself. Those include improving its graduation rate from 76.3 percent to 78.7 percent, increasing the passage rate on the state's third-grade reading test from 20.8 percent to 45.8 percent and decreasing its chronic absentee rate from 63.5 percent to 20 percent or less. The district aims to improve numerous other metrics from preschool all the way up to high school, better train and diversify its leadership and teaching ranks, and implement arts education in all schools. Lorain school board president Mark Ballard told our reporter Carissa Woytach he was confident that the district would hit the majority of its goals. We hope, too, that the district is up to the task, because freedom from state oversight would be a great benefit not only to it but also to its students. "Now the work begins," Ballard said. Make no mistake, though, it will be hard work, and the timeline to complete it will be tight. The district, led by CEO Jeff Graham, is supposed to complete the plan by 2025, although two one-year extensions are available. Otherwise, it will remain under the heavy hand of the state, which no one should want. Although we don't believe that state control was the proper vehicle to fix what ailed Lorain Schools, there is no denying that it has had its struggles. The answer, however, was for the state to provide greater support for local educators, not to seize control of the district. That happened in 2017, two years after state legislators rammed through the ill-conceived House Bill 70, championed by then-Gov. John Kasich. It allowed a state-controlled Academic Distress Commission to appoint a nearly all-powerful CEO and sidelined the elected local school board. Lorain's first CEO, David Hardy Jr., was a micromanaging disaster who refused to meet with the board, even though its only real remaining authority was to place tax levies on the ballot. Furthermore, although Lorain did see some small progress under Hardy, he never came close to leading the district out of state control. Schools in Youngstown and East Cleveland also fell prey to HB 70, and other districts seemed likely to follow until a moratorium on state takeovers was put in place. The General Assembly finally gave school districts a realistic way out in this year's budget. (The state also has approved improvement plans that would help East Cleveland and Youngstown reestablish local control.) Another piece of good news is that Lorain Schools is in better financial condition than appeared to be the case last month, when voters shot down a levy that was supposed to help the district stave off a deficit projected for 2023. A new five-year forecast, which incorporated rising enrollment and additional state funding into its calculations, showed that the financial picture wasn't as dire as had been predicted during the levy campaign. The district isn't expected to hit the red until 2026. That's one less thing for school leaders to worry about in the short term, although they should keep an eye on it. In the meantime, the district isn't required to begin implementing its plan until July, but waiting until then doesn't make much sense. Graham and company know where Lorain Schools needs to go, but there's a lot of ground to cover. They would do well to get a head start.